*points and snickers* You caught me between edits. :P I took the dark ages reference out becuase I while I don't mind stepping on people's toes, I don't want to kick them in the jimmies.

As for the decay of human society towards a new dark age, I really want to be wrong as well. I want to be wrong when I predict the fall of Pax America in favor of either Pax China or Pax India, but is easy enough to read the ignorant scribblings on the walls and ceilings.

Part of my survival preperations include things like saving old books, and protecting them. If they are so beat they can't be recovered, old books like my 1910 mechanical engineering handbook or my text on how to refine chemicals from raw sources from the 1880s get copied on archival paper and spiral bound. And these are guys I found in yeard sales, or library book sales!!! "Oh, it's just an old text book that is pretty ratty, someone will pay a buck for it as curiosity."

What I'd love to do is build the microfilm reader that I designed that only needed candlelight (sunlight too strong), and put everything on microfilm and store it in cans with nitrogen atmospheres.

The knowledge, that is what I will protect above everything else, including the lives of those I care about. And they know it. I might not put stock in organised religion, but I have the greatest respect for the monks who protected the written word through the European dark ages. Those guys are my heros.