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Thursday 28 January, 2016
Continuing from where I left off previously (day 3) in the survival mode of the game, I managed to survive for an additional 12 days. What went wrong? Well, my first encounter with the survival mode introduced concepts of how the individuals could get affected physically in terms of hunger, sickness or exhaustion. But what seemed to take a toll was the mental dilemma that each person was fighting against due to the circumstances/ situations they were being put in.
Up to the first week, I believe I was able to plan and manage the resources and the state of the individuals well. It all started to go wrong when I decided to scavenge an already inhabited shelter. My skilled scavenger returned fatally wounded and without much loot. He was basically a liability as he wasn't in a position to work but at the same time needed resources in the form of food, medicine and precious time. The very next day though the game seems to throw you a replacement, in a sense a choice: do I sacrifice an individual for the sustenance of the group or do I continue to take care of him. Morally so, I decided not to let him die and tried my very best to prolong his survival. I traded out several goods in order to get medicine and also used up baggage space in order to scavenge for them. This started to take a toll on the group though. Food as a resource is hard to come by and one night during a raid, I lost all my of the food related resources. I now had 4 mouths to feed and my supply wasn't in any way meeting the demand. I had to let 2 of the 4 individuals starve and had to resort to stealing items.
I managed to stretch another 2 days by any means, which led me to a do or die situation, as I had to make sure the next scavenge mission was successful. Up to this point I had avoided all confrontation but had to resort to murdering someone during the next night in order to continue the scavenge mission. This now started to take a psychological and mental effect on the individual. They started to move into states of sadness and depression which ultimately broke them. This brings up several points about the ethical conduct of people. In a perfect society/ world, murder is definitely unethical, but does a war or in other words what does constitute so desperate a situation which would bring a man to resort to murder? Does survival during a war fall under that category? Once you realize that morals are but human constructs in place to ensure the smooth functioning of a society, it can be far easier to accept the fact that you broke one of your ethical principles for the greater good. I would consider them to be the exceptions that the moral frameworks are made to deal with in their own way.
I lost another two days trying to get scavenger ready for his nocturnal rounds but lost precious time during which I lost the guy who was fatally injured. I must admit though that I was a little disappointed as I had tried to keep him alive. The murders and the death of the individual now started to take a toll on the 3 remaining survivors. The individual who had joined us a few days back and who I had made the murderer abandoned the shelter one night. I was now down to two. Things only got worse, in terms of resources (food especially), the physical and mental state of the two. I did try to have them talk to each other to bolster spirits but it had a very short term effect. Within a span of three to four days I lost the remaining survivors to suicides.
It is human instinct to want to survive and it truly is survival of the fittest.
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