John Ptak, proprietor of the JF Ptak Science Bookstore, reviewed a research project report filled with “putrified moral-punk thinking on envisioning American society post nuke holocaust.” He says it’s one of many “very badly written, deeply obfuscated, sinful research projects” that he’s come across, but says this one stands out because “it is the first I can recall that restarts taxes right off the burned-up bat. Quite something, really. ”
[T]he authors clearly assume that there will be something approximately preattack life in the post-attack world. Amidst the horror and chaos, we read that “Businessmen, in particular, but others as well, would experience disturbing and subtle changes in familiar institutions and in such bases of mutual trust as methods of establishing or verifying credit…or estimating delivery dates”–pg 11.
“Disturbing and subtle” changes to delivery, indeed.
We further read of “widespread readjustments of status, status symbols, and values” (page 11) which no doubt would come if all of your possessions were burned up, or lost or destroyed in some way, along with the owner. It is definitely difficult to maintain status relationships in the evidence of no status and no relationships. Of course this whole deal is complicated by the issue that status symbols are also relationships and associations, much of which could also be gone in the same fire cloud.
Monumentally bad writing: recovery from thermonuclear war, loan forgiveness, and taxes (1966)