I’m sure you’ll thank me for this later. Even if I am about to send you off on hours of fossicking about on how to survive various forms of apocalypse. The link takes you to the first of eight essays, each of which contains a jillion interesting and useful links to other places and… well, you can see how quickly it could turn into one of those lost-on-the-internet expeditions.
We can start a new club: Future Survivors of Disaster (sort of like 4H or Junior Achievers except with iodine tablets and Geiger counter…)
Nicola and I amuse ourselves sometimes over a glass of wine by playing the Come the apocalypse, what store shall we rush off to loot and what shall we get? game. While everyone is over at Best Buy ripping off the flat screen TVs (because you need those in a crisis!), I’ll be at the pharmacy stuffing a basket with every opiate, antibiotic, and anti-anxiety drug I can get my hands on, thanks very much. Followed by salt, spices, liquor, matches and, well, the list goes on.
We muse on the possible scenarios. Will the social order crumble? Should we get a gun? What will be the critical needs until order is restored? It’s a game, but not completely. We’re not yet ready for the megaquake or the dirty bomb, but we’re not unready either. And it’s probably no coincidence that I take it a little more seriously than I used to: hard times bring closer the lesson that survival isn’t just a game to play in a warm room with dinner on the stove.
What are your plans for survival?
I think the resourceful will survive.
Compare those in Kentucky who froze to death during the recent ice storms with the 92-year old lady who survived because… she built a fire.
I’m still kicking myself for not picking up a book I once saw at Powell’s. I can’t even recall its title, but it was a large book with very small print on newsprint-like paper. Its contents covered how to do everything: plant crops, grow a garden, sharpen an axe, etc. While you raid the pharmacy, I could raid the library. Who wants to have to rediscover everything like Brother Francis?
I would make a web of whichever people I could find and cooperate like hell just like we did when we came down out of the trees and onto the savannah. We didn’t have any but the most basic technology then either. I’ve always believed that we evolved because we cooperated, and unless we learn to do it again, we won’t survive.
Might I suggest a visit to http://www.getemergencyprepared.com/ ?
We’re already making plans over here… http://www.l2020.org/index.php?page=home
I want to join the club.
I think about this sometimes too. I’ve thought of the pharmacy too. Need that stuff – we won’t be the only ones to think of it. I want guns and ammo and non-perishables ahead of time. Stuff to barter with.
Sometimes I think about what will I do after The Big One (earthquake) hits LA? I think about which friends I will go to first, and how I can help them, because I know they will be clueless. All that camping gear in my garage that hasn’t seen day light in ages will come in handy.
I read an account of that recent plane crash on the Hudson – it seems people are amazingly well behaved and even heroic in times like that.
But still. There has to be a significant element of wackos and criminals that will run wild. We will need to be fortified.
And I thought of the library too. Just the other day I was thinking about technical know-how. Probably can’t find those books in your average library. I was wondering if I could learn electrical-type stuff. I was thinking about it after going to an ATM. It had been replaced, and I thought what is happening to all of the old machines? Are they recycling the parts? I doubt it. Then I got to thinking about all those kinds of things after the apocalypse – thinking how we could probably use a lot of the parts to make other stuff if we knew how.
Definitely need a web. People that know how to do different things. We should buy some defendable land somewhere with it’s own wells, etc. Store stuff there. After the crisis, we all meet up there.
I do think about these things sometimes, but then I’m back to reality and wondering how to survive the next month. Forget about stockpiling stuff for the future….
I have a name suggestion for the club: The Octavia Butler Memorial Post-Apocalyptic Survivors’ Club (OBM-PASC). We can all stencil it on the wooden crates full of canned goods, first aid supplies and ammunition in our basements (the initials make it look like some quasi-official NGO, don’t they?).
I’m clumsy and prone to depressive episodes, so owning guns seems like a really bad idea for me — but I live in Kansas, so lots of my friends are well-armed and know how to hunt. I’m with Ms. Sanchez on the cooperation idea; I figure, even post-apocalypse, it will be who you know. And getting someplace where you can grow some food. Guess I’d better start now sucking up to those growers at the farmers’ market.
Stacy, the library is definitely an Apocalypse Destination. I have The SAS Survival Handbook, but am definitely lacking in the crops/preserving/pioneering resources.
Barbara, I’m with you. We are fortunate to have great neighbors as well as family close by, so I would hope that we’d all survive and pool our skills and resources. At least one of our neighbors is a fantastic gardener; one can fix just about anything; and my mom can brew beer and cook squirrel stew (and we have a lot of squirrels around here, I’m guessing they’d become the new beef).
Phoenix, thanks for the link! Very useful. And I admire what you’re doing with Local 20/20.
Jennifer, I agree (with sadness) that many folks will Go Bad in such scenarios. Frightened people are dangerous because they are irrational and unpredictable; bad people are dangerous because they see others’ vulnerability as an opportunity. There will be some of both on the streets come the ‘pocalypse.
Sarah, yep, make friends (grin). A friend of mine used to say It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you. Took me a long time to figure out the difference there.