I decided to start up this forum to get discussions going on thought-provoking books. I've always been a fan of thought experiments, and lots of Sci-Fi novels get my neurons firing pretty well.

I've been on an apocalyptic fiction bent recently, and in many cases the books deal quite a bit with people's reactions to extreme crises. You have the father in Cormac McCarthy : The Road (Oprah's Book Club) (Spoiler Alert) who refuses to give up even when hope seems completely lost, while his wife completely gives up on everything fairly early on...not to mention the vast majority of people in the book who have taken to eating each other to survive. Themes often repeat themselves in other books as well...you see very similar ideas in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle : Lucifer's Hammer .

These and many other books in the same vein got me thinking about how I might react in an extreme situation. Would I fight to preserve something of the values and cultural upbringing I've had...would I give in to depression and/or suicide...would I abandon ethics and morality for expediency?

I'm not sure I can answer, though I rather hope I would opt for the foremost...maybe you can never know without being so tested.

Thoughts?

It may be a lot of fun to discuss all of this and I encourage you to go for it, but I can assure you that if one said hypothetical situation you already discussed was to happen, you can be almost certain you'd never react the way you anticipated. I would also wish you never have to deal with one of these situations, for your own mental and physical well being.