I live in central Pennsylvania, in Lancaster County - there's an Amish farm walking distance from where I sit.
I think about societal collapse a lot, and was just recently ruminating on how the Amish would do in that scenario.
They're clearly more prepared for it than most of us, but they're a bit more dependent on the outside world (or "the English", as they refer to us) than you might expect.
It's pretty common to see buggies parked at farm and tractor supply shops around here, and you'll even see them in the local ERs. When they sell stuff at farmer's markets I've seen a lot of plastic wrap, plastic containers, plastic bags, and aluminum foil. Some even have cars, depending on the sect.
All that said, they do live much simpler, lower-tech lives, with plenty of ingenious manually-powered tools (I once saw a mule-powered lawn mower in action while driving past a farm).
I expect they'd have some bumps adjusting, but that they'd mostly be able to, unlike the rest of us.
I live in central Pennsylvania, in Lancaster County - there's an Amish farm walking distance from where I sit.
I think about societal collapse a lot, and was just recently ruminating on how the Amish would do in that scenario.
They're clearly more prepared for it than most of us, but they're a bit more dependent on the outside world (or "the English", as they refer to us) than you might expect.
It's pretty common to see buggies parked at farm and tractor supply shops around here, and you'll even see them in the local ERs. When they sell stuff at farmer's markets I've seen a lot of plastic wrap, plastic containers, plastic bags, and aluminum foil. Some even have cars, depending on the sect.
All that said, they do live much simpler, lower-tech lives, with plenty of ingenious manually-powered tools (I once saw a mule-powered lawn mower in action while driving past a farm).
I expect they'd have some bumps adjusting, but that they'd mostly be able to, unlike the rest of us.