The Drought - J G Ballard

 THE DROUGHT - J G BALLARD

Is it fanciful to imagine the occurrence of a world-wide drought? I can assure you, it's most certainly not. J G Ballard wrote his novel, The Drought, in 1965 and now just almost 60 years later it looks mightily prescient. In Ballard's book the drought is caused by a pollution-generated membrane forming over the world's oceans preventing all evaporation of surface water into the air above, leading subsequently to no clouds being formed and subsequently to no rain. It's not a sudden occurrence at all but a gradual build-up over ten years, the first major effect of it being food shortages due to seasonal rainfalls failing to materialize in important agricultural regions.

Farmlands turn to arid dust-basins, reservoirs and rivers run dry, and the world goes awry as cities are abandoned. Populations head to the coasts to be nearer to water even if it's undrinkable. Huge distillation units are constructed and run by the army before being taken over by citizens' militias as millions of people start living in cars and shacks on the beaches that turn into salt dunes from the distillation process. Water, food and guns become the currency, anything else is useless surplus apart from such things as abandoned cars which act as make-shift coffins.

The actual plot and storyline of Ballard's book isn't really up to much and although this is a bit of a problem (as well as the fact that it could have been edited a lot better) it doesn't really matter because the premise is all. Ballard is essentially imagining what it would be like if a world-wide drought was to occur, focusing on a stretch of England not more than a hundred miles in diameter. We're not just talking a seasonal drought here, it should be said, but one that stretches over a ten-year period.

Society, of course, collapses as the landscape turns to desert. There being no water means there being no crops, which means there is no livestock. The only food to be had is from scavenged canned goods and fish from the sea. Fiefdoms of various sizes are established whilst other groups eke out an existence on the peripheries.

Apart from the initial mass exodus from the cities to the coasts there is no great, uncontrolled panic that takes hold, just a gradual but inexorable slide into desperate living. There is almost a complacency about it all, an abandonment of hope against the inevitable. At times it's reminiscent of Nevil Shute's On The Beach, where against the slow but inescapable approach of mass death by radiation from a nuclear war, people tend to try and continue as normal. Taking it on the chin with grim acceptance as the surreal becomes the new normal.

So, could such a vision of the future ever become reality? That is the question. Could such a drought as described by Ballard ever happen? Could the water to our cities, to our agriculture, to our homes simply one day run out? The answer - worryingly, disturbingly, depressingly - is 'yes'.

Who could ever have imagined that one day the world's economic systems might be closed down and whole populations told to stay at home and to not venture out? This is one of the great lessons from the Covid pandemic: to not dismiss anything as being impossible and for it to be said it could never happen. Imagine the unimaginable and then with a cold, clear eye just look to see how far we might actually be from it. Or rather, how close we actually are.

John Serpico