Yeah. I never bought into that kind of extreme disaster-preparedness, even when I was reading the books as a kid (to be sure, I never did read Time Enough For Love).
I figure, if for some reason I really need to learn how to do most of those things, I will probably have time to go find a book and swot up. Even in the zombie apocalypse I can always loot a library or bookstore.
I find it irresistible to note that, in another early Heinlein story ("Elsewhen," 1941) this is pretty much what happens. College students get sent to other time tracks and one of them, who winds up in a civilization with different technology than Earth has, wants to help them out. Rather than berating himself for not knowing how to build radios and airplanes and so forth, he comes back and gets all the engineering textbooks and reference manuals he can (and a sliderule, natch).
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Date: 2010-08-20 10:04 pm (UTC)I figure, if for some reason I really need to learn how to do most of those things, I will probably have time to go find a book and swot up. Even in the zombie apocalypse I can always loot a library or bookstore.
I find it irresistible to note that, in another early Heinlein story ("Elsewhen," 1941) this is pretty much what happens. College students get sent to other time tracks and one of them, who winds up in a civilization with different technology than Earth has, wants to help them out. Rather than berating himself for not knowing how to build radios and airplanes and so forth, he comes back and gets all the engineering textbooks and reference manuals he can (and a sliderule, natch).