Apocalypso

Apocalyptic stories are always popular. I think the reason for their popularity is that people want to think they’d be a survivor. Talking about the purely fictional stories, here. The religious ones are usually more depressing – whether it’s the Hell on Earth immediately following the Christian Rapture, or the total destruction of everything as foretold by the Norse Ragnarok. I’d like to note the whole 2012 thing from the Mayans, but researchers (and crackpots) disagree as to whether it will be a good or bad thing.

I’ve noticed that a lot of post-apocalypse stories have a very industrial feel to them, which is kind of ironic considering we’d lose our industrial base immediately. It always annoys me when a writer sets the story far enough in the future that modern-day technologies are puzzled over when the remnants are found (It says ”Pan…a…son…ic.” What does it mean?), but people are still driving around in gasoline-powered automobiles.

Another cliché is that we’d return to a feudal/agrarian society. The agrarian I’ll grant, but I have doubts about the feudal system taking root in America, even after everything falls over and goes squick. I figure cities will become No Man’s lands – the refuge of scattered groups protecting their rooftop gardens and rain barrels, while small rural towns will dynamite their bridges or otherwise barricade themselves in. Bartering will become the norm, and xenophobia will be seen as a rational worldview.

The Postman, The Stand, The Road Warrior, Jericho – they all use the end of civilization as their starting point, and they all approach it differently. Brin’s Postman brings hope to suspicious, insular townspeople, while King allowed his survivors to restore the power grids before Good fought Evil. The Road Warrior didn’t even try to be anything other than a popcorn romp. I enjoyed Jericho because the writers did a good job exploring the problems (technical, social, and otherwise) involved with a town suddenly cut off from their entire support structure (i.e. everyone else).

One of my favorite books on the subject is Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Two scenes that stand out in my mind: the diabetic scientist who collects (and hides) engineering books and Chilton manuals to increase his worth, so he can convince a township to let him have a valuable pig or goat every month in order to make the insulin he needs; the Boy Scouts that become guerrilla fighters who prefer to stay in the mountains rather than join any of the towns.

Sometimes, when I’m mowing the lawn or washing dishes or doing some other repetitive, brain-neutral task, I think of the different types of people you might run into in a post-apocalyptic world. The military would probably be the only governmental agency to come through fairly intact, because they already have the infrastructure in place to function in other-than-first-world conditions.

Then you’d have the paranoid survivalists who have been preparing for just such an occasion, and have stockpiled food, water, medicine and toilet paper. I think we’d probably lose about 5% of them in the first week because they’d be picked off while they were gloating.

If, for whatever reason, we did end up as a feudal society, expect the D&D and SCA nerds to rise to the top, because they’re already used to working within that framework. The Scadians in particular have studied the Dark Ages closely, and have developed skills that aren’t dependent on electricity.

Similar to the diabetic scientist mentioned above, I imagine reference librarians would be in demand, just for their knowledge base. Similarly, chemists and medical personnel would be sought after. On the opposite end of the spectrum, gossip columnists and American Idol “celebrities” would become food.

Farmers would find themselves targeted by desperate, short-sighted people, and we’d probably lose most of them to mob action.

That’s all just off the top of my head. It would take a much larger canvas than this blog to explore all of the ramifications.

Of course, you have to wonder how you would fare in “Year Zero.” A friend who read my comment a few days ago about snaring birds and rabbits called to chortle at me, because she thought I had no skills in that area. I assured her that I had plenty of dental floss.

If you understand that last comment, you’ll probably be among the survivors. For the rest of you, I’ll explain.

Dental floss is one of the most useful filaments in the world because of its high tensile strength. It can replace a shoelace, slice cheese, serve as heavy-duty thread, and replace Teflon plumbing tape. You can braid it into an extremely strong rope (a few years ago, a Washington prisoner escaped by scaling the prison wall on a dental floss rope), hang pictures with it, replace a broken zipper pull, or even clean your teeth with it.

In addition to all of the everyday uses, dental floss is also a vital part to any post-apocalyptic survival kit, as it makes a great fishing line, suture thread, tripwire, garrote, or small animal snare.

My Scout troop once went on a “Shoebox Campout.” As the name implies, all of the gear we carried (apart from food) had to fit inside one shoebox. That will prioritize you in a hurry, and force you to think creatively. It also serves as a pretty good model for an emergency kit in case the bombs go off or the zombies arise.

There are a metric buttload of sites that offer survival packs, ranging from the outdoor enthusiast sites to the oh-my-god-we’re-all-doomed-dig-a-bunker sites. They’re all fun to browse through, though. This site

http://www.survival-gear.com/

is pretty good because they offer pre-made kits, as well as the individual pieces to build your own custom kit.

Whether it’s nukular war, alien invasion, zombie uprising, plague, or you’re just hiking in the backcountry, these kits don’t do a bit of good if you don’t know how to use them. Throw a Boy Scout manual in there, too.

Or you can just come get me.