A Storm Is Coming

Big Slide by James Howard Kunstler

“Big Slide,” by James Howard Kunstler, is a three-act play set in the autumn of an unspecified near-future year, at an Adirondack “great camp” where three generations of the Freeman family have taken refuge from New York and Boston during a severe national political maelstrom. We are never fully apprised of the exact nature of this event, but it appears to involve a coup d’etat in the White House and the uprising of local militias all over the nation in response. The estate at Big Slide is isolated from these events, but news dribbles in by radio. The electricity has stopped working and law enforcement seems to have been suspended, making it dangerous to travel even to the nearest town for food and necessities. The thirteen members of the family, ranging from the dying patriarch, Clifford Freeman, to his grown children and their spouses, to the two teenage step-siblings, Raven and Zach, struggle to work out how they will organize themselves for survival in the months ahead against a background of old and deep personal grievances with each other.

What to do...how to prepare? How about this from Cluborlov?

...local resiliency and self-sufficiency...

Also from Cluborlov...

Act I of James Kunstler's new play "Big Slide" is now available as a staged reading via KunstlerCast, with Acts II and III to follow, and the entire text also available as an e-book.

The play is set in the not-too-distant future, after West Los Angeles has been obliterated by a bomb, Chicagoland's drinking water has been laced with Botox, the President has been suicided, gas is at $10 a gallon and mostly not for sale, stores have been looted, electricity is off for good and armed gangs in police uniforms man checkpoints and confiscate anything edible. Other than that, everything is fine. It is a story of three generations of the prosperous and privileged Freeman family, who flee the growing mayhem in New York and Boston and hole up at Big Slide, which is their family compound in the Adirondacs.

Big Slide comes complete with a stalwart and competent caretaker, a large collection of guns and fishing tackle, a nearby lake stocked with trout, a forest full of deer, rabbit and seasoned timber felled by a winter storm, a greenhouse and an ample garden plot. If only the Freemans had prepared... but then their varied needs include morphine, a replacement hip joint, a strict vegan diet and plenty of booze—all inaccessible or in short supply, now that even venturing into the nearby town has been deemed inadvisable. Also, with family tensions worthy of Anton Chekhov, can they avoid shooting each other?

Podcasts here I come!