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Monday, October 10, 2016

I Awaken October 10, 2116

Yesterday my wife and I were driving back from a company function in Monterrey, California. We were heading North of the beautiful Highway One when we encountered a group of Ford Model A's and Model T's going the opposite way. They looked so frail and primitive. Probably they were up to 100 years old. I speculated to Elena what a driver from 1916 would think if they were transported to 2016 and saw the technical marvels that cars have become. She felt that they would be in shock and awe for the first few days. Then in her mind, they would adapt to the new things.

I have had this recurring thought for years. I got to bed after the Trump/Clinton debate. It is the night of October 9, 2016. When I awaken the following morning it is October 10, 2116. What am I going to see and experience?

Sadly all of your family, loved ones and friends would be gone. You would have to start your life over again alone. The first challenge you would have would be to convince people who you encounter that you are actually from a century past. With the help of DNA and other medical tests you could prove your actual age.

We then have the dilemma of what the world will be like 100 years from now. Some pessimistic people will say that some stupid war or pandemic has halted all progress and sent us reeling back to centuries past. I look back to the 20th Century where over 100 million people died in World War I and World War II. Another 60 million died in famines in China, Russia, the Ukraine, etc. We had the various flu pandemics that could have killed up to 200 million. Then we had the real danger from 1950 to 1991 to a nuclear holocaust that would have wiped out all human life on the planet. We had some close calls with this nightmare during the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis, in 1983 and a couple of other times when technical glitches pushed us right to the brink of war. We survived all of those disasters and possible disasters. We have made incredible scientific and technical advances.

My good sense tells me that we will survive another century with rapid scientific and technological advances that we could not dream of today. Mars will be colonized. The asteroid belts would see mining and commercial activities. Some moons of Saturn and Jupiter would have human outposts. We will have a serious program to send a manned vessel to some nearby star. Medical science will have advanced to the point that most diseases have been conquered. We will have technology that we could not even imagine in our wildest dreams today.

What will societies and the political structure be like 100 years from now. I could not even hazard a guess.

If one had a 401(K) or some stock investments they would be worth a vast sum of money in the next century, (You would have to reclaim them from the state that probably took them as unclaimed property. If you owned a house or apartment it would be gone.

I speculate that some people declared dead during the 9-11 attacks are not dead at all. Rather they saw the tragedy as a perfect excuse to escape a dull or very unhappy life to start anew as a new person. Awakening after your long sleep you would have that same opportunity.

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