this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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Yeah given how warped our understanding of the old west is from movies and TV I'm gonna bet most of what we think we know is bullshit and it was actually a lot more chill since people liked living. A lot like how if you check TV you'll see all sorts of stories on murder because those are prominent events. You'll see the same in history books and wiki articles. Years and years of nothing special being recorded, everyone being chill, but check out this Sheriff who did a backflip off a horse and shot three people in the dick in 1762.
You were a hell of a lot more likely to die of dysentery, or break a wagon wheel and starve to death, than you were to die in a gunfight, but gunfights could and did happen. If you were a homesteader then you had all sorts of wild shit to deal with, since you were literally living in the wild. Attacks from natives who didn't like the idea of you just claiming their land and fencing it off, wild animals stealing your livestock that you needed to live. Drought killing your crops that you needed to live. It was fraught with peril on all sides. But you were free as fuck.
Yeah free to die from drinking shit water, absolutely. I don't idolize that way of life whatsoever. Shit was brutal, most everyone died from things we easily prevent today, and nearly all of the things we use to make us comfortable didn't exist. Like the concept of ice in your drink was mind blowing. No thanks. I'll be a corpo slave with air conditioning.
That's called technological progress, baby!