I noticed an ad for a reality TV show called The Colony on the Discovery channel.
It looked heaps like a larp. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world where a small group need to fend for themselves, make tools an weapons, and trade with/fight off other bands of humans.
Anyone seen it ? It’s on at 9:30pm tonight.
[quote=“Mike Curtis”]I noticed an ad for a reality TV show called The Colony on the Discovery channel.
It looked heaps like a larp. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world where a small group need to fend for themselves, make tools an weapons, and trade with/fight off other bands of humans.
Anyone seen it ? It’s on at 9:30pm tonight.[/quote]
yeah i’ve seen it, its supposed to a reality tv experiment about a group that (supposedly) represents a cross section of society dealing with the stresses and needs of post apoc survival.
I’ve watched most of the series and have to say yes it was more like a larp than reality, honestly anything they could do wrong (besides building technical stuff) they did WRONG!
How so may I ask?
they were totally unable to work as a real team, proved far to trusting when a new group of survivors were introduced to the experiment after seven days, you name it they did it wrong.
Why is trusting other survivors inherently a bad thing?
they were totally unable to work as a real team, proved far to trusting when a new group of survivors were introduced to the experiment after seven days, you name it they did it wrong.[/quote]
Sounds like a few LARPs I’ve been to then.
Lord of the Flies?
Lord of the flies yes, at the end of the day in a world without rules, law enforcement, hell even the basics people get nasty, take a look around in any disaster where relief has not reached the area in under two weeks and you’ll arleady see the cracks forming.
as for trusting groups of other survivors, you have to ask:
who are they?
what do they want?
are the crazy?
are they part of the gangs we ran into?
are the diseased?
hell you can add to the list, but in that kind of environment where the only help and support you have is yourself those you know, along with whatever you can scrounge together, your not going to simply open the door after a five minute chat and let them in, un-searched or unchecked. harsh as it may sound, that’s a fools mission. worst still allow them in as a group instead of one at a time so as to be sure.
well that’s what happened, luckily for them they turned out to be the real deal, and one of them was armed, though he did admit to carrying a knife and surrendered it when questioned.
Lord of the Flies?[/quote]
It’s been a while since I studied it, but I thought the idea behind it was the culture collapsed because they stopped trusting each other and turned into an every-kid-for-himself anarchy.
Anyway, I realised I phrased it wrong, the “inherently” is attached to trusting not survivors. So phrased better it would have been “Why is it inherently a bad thing to trust other survivors”
Because they’re humans.
In most situations, humans are quite dangerous. It’s only when they’re relatively well fed and cared for, and when they know there will be repercussions for misbehaviour, that they tend to be better behaved.
Speaking of larps in settings like this:
Quite. Even in societies where there is plenty to go around, a lack of repercussion can lead to very aggressive behaviour.
E.g. in Maori society (which is characterised as having lots of resources, including food), the powhiri was basically a way to determine whether your visitors had hostile intentions.
Thanks for the rundown, David. I think I’ll check it out tonight.
welcome mike, i did actually enjoy it from an educational perspective 