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"I have to say that it MIGHT have been a little easier for you to walk away if your family was drifting away and you had friends outside the congregation."

Without a doubt, that made it easy for me. I've come to realize that I was in an unusually accomodating situation! I know it's far more difficult for many other people, whose family and friends remain in "the Truth"; for them, it's really throwing away everyone closest to them. My hat is off to everyone in that situation who manages to escape; they're far tougher than I needed to be!

Re fear of the New System: Very interesting take on things – and, I have to admit, a surprising one to me too! I don't believe I ever heard of any JW expressing fear of the New System (at least, no one said anything like that to me!).

In my case, I never pictured that all the works of mankind would be destroyed. Maybe that idea is in a publication I missed, or maybe it's an area where different JWs imagine different things, but – to the degree I thought about it at all – I imagined that, sure, we'd still have boats and buildings and all kinds of stuff in the New System. Maybe pre-NS art, music, etc. too, as long as it wasn't sacrilegious stuff (and I'll grant that, from the fundamentalist viewpoint, that does whittle the offerings down a lot). 

Cars? Trains? I myself never heard a prediction one way or the other on that; my assumption would have been that, sure, we'd still have them if they were needed and the bad effects (pollution, etc.) were mitigated (divinely?). Or maybe we wouldn't need them, and then, hey, that's great, because, you know, eternal life in paradise to the max! (Translation: Maybe the NS story is as vague as "life in heaven" scenarios, after all...)

In any case, I guess I imagined that we'd still have as much technology and art and other good man-made things as we wanted (as long as it was also Pleasing To The Lord and all that). And on a personal level, I was pleased as could be about the thought of living down close to the animals and bugs. But that's because I was a kid, and was already outside trying to play with all the animals and bugs I could catch. : )

Now, all that said, there was still one quiet horror lurking below all that Tribulation + NS stuff, and you touched upon it: Billions of dead people denied entry because they didn't have the right religion. Including Grandma and Grandpa and all those school classmates and...

We kids did ask about that, and the answer was always some sort of vague cross between "That's why Jehovah's giving them a chance now" and "When the NS comes, you'll be happy and you won't worry about it". Or something like that. Essentially "don't think about it". 

It seems to work on kids. But I'm certain that had I stayed with "the Truth" into my 20s, that point would have caused an ever-widening crack in my "faith". My thinking now is this: If, bizarrely enough, it should turn out that the Christian God is real and "the End is nigh" and all that, then I would praise Adam for having chosen his wife over God, and I would likewise throw in my lot with humanity, not some invisible sky alien. If that means passing up God's little "reward" and going down with my loved ones, then so be it! I can't respect anyone who'd choose otherwise.