Wondering about Recovery VS Resurrection

I’m writing a short story in which the setting is a future where our planet is struggling to recover from a catastrophic event after seventy-five years. The descendants of the people who in my first novel, Eden.2, escaped as Earth grappled with a terrible plague, return. The history stored in these refugees’ computers fails to prepare them for the social and environmental struggles they now find confronting their home planet. But what would those challenges look like?

       The plague I imagined happening in 2062 CE would not be the first time that an illness decimated the human population and changed the order of society. We all have recent experience of the stress of a worldwide pandemic which continues to affect the emotional and social health of our communities. The illness I envisioned, though, was much more like the Black Death which stalked Europe in the 14th century. A quick check of Wikipedia confirms that after the worst of the bubonic plague, three aspects of the Earth’s life have to be considered when applying the term “recovery”.

       It’s perhaps normal for us to consider the impact on the human population first. In Europe, historians estimate the Black Death killed fifty percent of the population over a period of just a few years. When I remember the scenes of overcrowded hospitals, grieving families and refrigerator trucks serving as morgues that appeared in our limited modern pandemic, the scale of death in medieval Europe staggers my imagination. And it took about two hundred years for the population to regain its pre-plague numbers back then.

       In the short story I’m writing, a world-wide crash came about because the 2062 pandemic hit with the same force as the Black Death in Europe. How long in a modern world would it take for the human population to recover? Given the burdens of overpopulation stressing the environment and making life difficult for the less fortunate for many years now, would complete recovery in numbers be the goal? In the aftermath of a disaster, would humans consider what the optimum number of people in relationship to the Earth would be and strive for that? I suspect that survival would take the upper hand for many years after a fifty percent drop in population. I imagine that the question of how many people the Earth can sustain would not be asked unless the issue was forced. What kind of catalyst would raise this question?

       The second area of consideration for recovery after the bubonic plague was how people structured their relationships. The Black Death profoundly affected the way people thought of themselves and their society. So much dying drove home the point that no matter where you found yourself in the hierarchy- serfs to kings- all people ended up the same. Common workers became more scarce, forcing the nobility to treat them better, pay them wages, and compete for their skills. Society changed dramatically from a feudal culture to one of more upward mobility, a change leading eventually to the Renaissance.

       In a future disaster of that magnitude, would our culture change as dramatically? Much speculative fiction focuses on a backward trajectory, where humanity reverts to a hunting and farming mode with extended family units vying for natural resources. While pulling back into smaller units of community and concentrating on food production might be the first instinct of most people, I wonder how long that retreat would last. Perhaps technology, while not as accessible, would become even more valued. The world might restructure around supporting those who could provide such luxuries as wind and solar power, communications, medical interventions, etc. Would cooperation between surviving groups prove to be more successful to this re-ordering than competition?

       The third aspect of recovery after the Black Death concerned the environment of the planet itself. Because of the decimation of the human population, not as many acres of land were cultivated. Forests grew up in the places that had been abandoned. One scientist (Thomas Von Hoof of Utrecht University) speculates that this development helped bring about the Little Ice Age in the North Atlantic region, so not all change was helpful!

       Might a sudden drop in population now, with the resulting dip in CO2 emissions, plastic waste, pollution and pesticides, etc., allow the Earth to heal? Or would the changes we have already made—diverting waterways, paving the wilderness, cutting down the rain forests, etc. — without maintenance cause further catastrophes? Would humanity recognize the gift of starting over after a disaster or ignore the planet once more? I fear that without visionaries, we’d repeat our failure to respect interdependence with nature, but the possibility of prophets being heard increases during difficult times. Who would speak for the planet in a time of recovery?

       These are the issues I’m stewing about as I imagine a world recovering from a catastrophe. While I don’t know the answers, one thing is clear to me: “recovery” doesn’t mean a return to the status quo. Perhaps it’s more a resurrection that I anticipate. However, unlike the return to life of one person or even all people, this resurrection must be understood as a new pattern of life which includes all of creation and the deeper cooperation between humanity and the entire world. As we enter the Easter season, I speculate that this is the new life God calls us to, even now.

       [As a side note: This is another reason I enjoy writing Science Fiction- it’s an opportunity to imagine with hope!]