Oh, something else I would do during my "down time" is learn to play an instrument or two such as the harmonica and/or guitar so that I could keep myself company without burning valuable power.
You guys seem to have a two-man concensus about happy canadian wildernesses. :P But I keep coming back to big cities... do Zombies make them uninhabitable? Because look at all that work people have done in constructing those cities... seems a shame to let it go to waste! Also, finding survivors would be among my first priorities, I think, not way down on the bottom of the list.
Heck if I wanted to go live alone in the wilderness I could do it right now! :D
Assuming 99% of the global population is gone, that leaves roughly 60 million people left alive. While that number seems high, on a global scale it is extremely low. If the death toll was equal in all areas regardless of previous population density or how remote the location and you spread the survivors equally, then I believe that establishing a survivors colony could be a very difficult task.
Say you live in a city with a population of 1 million, that's 10 thousand survivors which makes the task a little easier.
However, this the deaths are equally dispersed.
But if we go further, begin to discuss causes, then in the vast majority of circumstances it would be the areas of densest population that would be worst hit. Plague, for example...
And personally, given the equation, I think that sickness is the most likely candidate for such a huge population reduction. Of course there are other options which I am sure others here will point out.
When I was considering the question, however, I was sort of thinking that you (see: me) would be one of the "last men on earth" kind of scenario. So if you go ahead and increase the percentage of humans gone (remembering that my baseline was 99%) to say 99.9%...
I agree with you Shake, if our survival scenario allows for a significant enough population left alive then bringing survivors together would probably be a good idea. Probably.
Because if we allow for certain other options where-in the cause is man-made then perhaps rebuilding human society is not the best idea. It all depends on the situation.
Either way, I can think of a few hundred thousand million species of plant and animal which would be glad for the break!
Oh, sir, definitely revise that harmonica plan. Harmonica would get so super-ultra-terrible-boring after like a week. Fortunately you've found the leading expert in the world on Cataclysmic musical entertainment: you definitely want a violin, or you could create an ethnicesque flute from wood, that would be fun.
Oo, also a hunting horn or similar. This would work very well for finding other survivors.
Edit: One of the last men on earth? Oh dear, I wouldn't want to be in that scenario. Opt-out, please. ;) Avoiding a terrible population-devouring plague? Still a bit harsh, but managable, and yes the wilderness outpost looks verrry appealing then. Maybe check out cities once you're no longer at risk of infection?
Human societies, if history has been any example, are temporary things. Cities have come and gone, been swallowed up by nature. I don't personally think that just because they are is enough reason to preserve them.
And I think, in this scenario, the opportunity to start over and perhaps do things differently is just too delicious an option to pass up. Think of it as a crash diet, getting away from our consumption based societies.
I think that in such extreme circumstances humans can be incredibly savage and I would worry that groups of people in such a situation would encourage extreme acts. I would worry about harsh competition over the remaining goods, about groups of individuals endorsing extreme ideals and so on.
I'd leave that to people who have more trust in humanity then I do. I would respect their desire to group up and I would hope that it would all be for the best but in the back of my head I'd be looking at the whole thing like some sort of powder-keg, just waiting to blow.
Human societies are temporary things, but don't forget that you are also a human and also temporary! (More so.) I don't like mindless-consumption-based society but I do like big buildings, higher learning, and advanced technology. :/
Regarding your pessimism... Perhaps there would not just be the "inner savage" to worry about here, actually... If there were any reasonable number of people left, I could so see them acting like nothing happened and turning (here in the US) into America 2.0 because they didn't know what else to do. O_O Scary. I would not want this to happen but I don't know if I would have the power to avoid it. Perhaps this is what your sort of wilderness neo-tribe is for. O_O Perhaps I agree.
I would be in favor of, and assist with, anyone who in their desire to gather survivors aimed to create a hunter/gatherer tribe. I wouldn't be in favor of city building again. I think that given the chance those survivors, myself included, would be well met by going back in time 10,000 years to a point when human tribes did not remain long in a given area, or at least moved frequently within a much larger area, allowing the earth time to regrow what those tribes take during their brief periods of sedentary habitation.
I realize that given my earlier post I sound like a hypocrite, but I believe there is a fundamental difference between a single human living in a certain area for a prolonged time and a large tribe of humans doing the same.
So, assuming the scenario leaves me (or you) isolated and alone even in formerly populated areas, I stand by my earlier ideas. However, with a significant enough number of survivors I would change that stance... and while much of my survival kit load-out would remain the same, my actions afterward would not. Even if others were disinclined to rekindle the hunter/gatherer ideals, I would by my own example try and prove the merits of it and rather then establish a base camp, I would prepare myself over a period of time following the event to take up a mobile lifestyle never remaining in one area for too long and would hope that others would do likewise. And this isn't to say we have to do away with agriculture all together, only that 'we' would need to understand how to grow crops within a season, move on with the seeds, and so on.
