Preparing Kids for Future Apocalypse

KarissaMann05

KarissaMann05

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The Onion Asks: Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Our Kids For The Apocalypse?

Video games can be beneficial. They better our children's hand-eye coordination, spatial relationship understanding and teach the basics of strategy. But are they doing enough to prepare them for a nuclear future and zombie infestations?

The Onion Asks: Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Our Kids For The Apocalypse?
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I know this is satire, but I'm curious, what do you think?

Sorry, it seems the video does not have CC or subtitle...
 
I will write a transcript if you like. It's funny. I think that some of the issues that crop up in games like Fallout or Gears do make you at least think how they are coping with certain basic needs like food, water and shelter.
 
already happening, dumbing down, and dont touch failing and hence more bullying, all efforts gone down the hole...
 
Transcript!

JULIANNA (HOST): Coming up, many of today's most popular video games take place in dangerous post apocalyptic landscapes. But are these games enough to prepare our kids for the post apocalyptic future we'll all soon face?

LAURALEE: There are studies that show that these games are quite effective in teaching our kids skills they'll need after the apocalypse like finding shotgun ammo and leading squads of elite supersoldiers.

TED: But these aren't the advanced skills they're going to need! They're going to need the more practical skills like how to build a shelter out of abandoned cars or ... or finding water by collecting the morning dew in human skulls.

DAVID: Or how you deal with depression when the sun is blocked out for 500 years by a cloud of radioactive dust?

TED: Exactly! Now that's the kid of knowledge these kids will need when their world's been turned into a brutal hellscape!

ROGER: These games don't need to be an accurate depiction of a postapocalyptic landscape, they just need to teach the basic skills which they do. 72% of kids said they know how to find items to barter in weapon shops, and how to use medicine packs to heal zombie bites with these video games!

LAURALEE: The game Fallout 3 has taught my son Charlie that it's easier to kill cyborgs with grenades than with a machine gun!

TED: The games make it all seem deceptively simple. A kid's not going to be able to kill a six foot long irradiated beetle just by pressing a few buttons! He's going to have to get down there with an axe, and hack, and hack, and hack.

ROGER: David, our kids are going to have the rest of their lives to get actual experience and to learn how to desperately fight for survival!

LAURALEE: What's important is that we teach our kids the fundamentals now, that they can be successful in whatever nightmare scenario they find themselves in.

ROGER: If they survive that long...

TED: The other flaw with these games is that most of these kids will become mutants themselves once the apocalypse hits.

ROGER: It's a huge problem!

LAURALEE: It's just a chance we'll have to take. Playing video games all day alone and friendless is simply the best way that we have to prepare our children for a life of solitude in a barren wasteland.

ALL: (mutters of agreement)
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A game that has taught me about survival is WURM Online. Notch (he of Minecraft fame) worked on it before starting Minecraft. WURM is a much, much more hardcore game than Minecraft, but shares the similar need to gather resources to build shelter.

Here, you need to make your own tools, your own nails and bolts, cut down trees and saw them into logs and then into planks... not to mention feed yourself, farm your food, mine for rock and minerals. Eventually you can build a big castle, a town or a ranch. You can build carts and boats and ships. There's some fantasy elements in the form of the local wildlife but generally it feels very realistic in its depiction of being a medieval peasant.
 
metalangel said:
A game that has taught me about survival is WURM Online. Notch (he of Minecraft fame) worked on it before starting Minecraft. WURM is a much, much more hardcore game than Minecraft, but shares the similar need to gather resources to build shelter.

Here, you need to make your own tools, your own nails and bolts, cut down trees and saw them into logs and then into planks... not to mention feed yourself, farm your food, mine for rock and minerals. Eventually you can build a big castle, a town or a ranch. You can build carts and boats and ships. There's some fantasy elements in the form of the local wildlife but generally it feels very realistic in its depiction of being a medieval peasant.
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Going to try it... needs Java, the gfx probably suck, but going to try it anyway :)
 
metalangel said:
A game that has taught me about survival is WURM Online. Notch (he of Minecraft fame) worked on it before starting Minecraft. WURM is a much, much more hardcore game than Minecraft, but shares the similar need to gather resources to build shelter.

Here, you need to make your own tools, your own nails and bolts, cut down trees and saw them into logs and then into planks... not to mention feed yourself, farm your food, mine for rock and minerals. Eventually you can build a big castle, a town or a ranch. You can build carts and boats and ships. There's some fantasy elements in the form of the local wildlife but generally it feels very realistic in its depiction of being a medieval peasant.
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I've never played the game so I'm not going to comment on it but I know lots of people who read a book or watch a video on something and think that gives them the skills to do it. It does not. Making tools, farming food and mining rocks takes lots of experience to be even remotely successful.
 
The game tries to simulate this by having the products of your labours be extremely crappy (and thus either break or degrade quickly) at first, until you gain experience.

I get what you're saying. I think, however, that understanding the concept of how something is done/that it's even possible is a significant part of it. You might just know there's such a thing as crop rotation or tempering steel, but you'll only get good at it through actually trying to do it yourself.
 
Sure but learning what crop rotation or steel tempering is takes minutes. Learning to make a good knife or grow successful crops takes years of actually doing it.

Plus I'd be really surprised if the game got stuff right. Where you live and what is available to you vary so greatly I don't see how a video game could give you much real world useful knowledge.
 
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