Tag: nuclear war

Chapter 16: How to survive in a nuclear wasteland–mostly, by doing the opposite of Mad Max

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A nuclear war is–scarily–far more likely than an alien invasion, zombies or other apocalyptic possibilities. How would you survive?

I say this with love, as a big fan of the Mad Max movies: the smartest ways to survive involve doing the opposite of Mad Max.

1) Roaming the wastelands in a sweet muscle car is a terrible, horrible, no-good idea

If you’re like most people, you drive a car. Maybe it’s a Ford F150, or a Toyota Camry.

And maybe you change the oil yourself. I’ve done that. Changed the headlights a few times, replaced the battery, even changed an alternator and such.

HOWEVER: Working on modern cars is increasingly tough without all kinds of computer diagnostic nonsense. It’s crazy difficult today, with the lights on and a NAPA store down the street full of fresh parts.

After any sort of nuclear war, driving whatever car you can find around the radioactive wasteland is just a bad idea. Because it’ll break down, and chances are you will not be able to crawl under the car with a wrench and just fix it. 

Even if you’re a pro mechanic with your own set of tools, spare parts and gas will vanish in a hurry. Your car will eventually break down, or run out of gas, or both. And being stranded means death.

But let’s say those problems don’t exist. You have a magic Tesla 3 that that runs on solar panels and never breaks down. Great. Roaming around the countryside is still a terrible idea, because you’ll want to stop wherever there may be resources, like food and water that doesn’t glow in the dark, and there will be people there, defending those resources from raiders like you.

Those local people will have the advantage. They know the territory and will have set up defenses and traps. You’re gonna lose.

2) Loners will not last long

Mad Max is a lone wolf, right?

Only in the movies does a lone hero win real fights while being outnumbered 10 to 1, or 100 to 1.

Any serious effort to survive an apocalypse, fictional or not, means having a team or a tribe.

You need people who are good at different things: finding food and water, healing the injured, creating shelters, making fire, crafting tools and clothing.

And you need people to watch your back.

3) Staying put is smart

Sure, if you can’t find a decent supply of food and water, move until you do. But once you do, stay put.

Any sort of nuclear war will affect different areas in different ways. There’ll be places that get hit with all sorts of bombs, like major cities and military bases, and other places left untouched.

Prevailing winds and ocean currents will also bring radioactive fallout to some places while sparing others.

You don’t want to wander far and wide, because you’ll inevitably wind up in a place where the geiger counters go nuts. 

Of course you might need to do a little hunting and gathering, or go on supply runs. Even so, do that from a solid home base. Because staying put in a good place is the smartest option. Fish, farm, grow mushrooms, whatever floats your boat. Build a wall. Set up watchtowers and keep a lookout for dudes driving Interceptors with big turbos sticking out of the hood.

4) Be sustainable

Mad Max famously carries a sawed-off shotgun with maybe four shells, two of which tend to be duds.

Shotguns are also a bad idea. You need a weapon with plentiful ammo that you can make. A slingshot, a bow and arrow, spears you can throw–anything is better than a weapon that only gives you two bites of the apple.

Remember the bad guys in every Mad Max movie? They carry crossbows a lot of the time. Because that’s sustainable. You can re-use the ammo and make new crossbows a lot easier than trying to manufacture more AR-15s for your friends, since there won’t be any factories making bullets anymore, either.

Same thing with armored muscle cars and semis. It takes a tremendous amount of time and resources to keep a single car functioning and fueled up during an apocalypse. A fleet of vehicles would be insanely tough to keep going. 

Your time and resources are better spent improving quality of life and survivability: growing more food, building better walls, crafting new tools. That sort of thing.

VERDICT

Mad Max is a great character on screen. To survive a nuclear apocalypse, remember him and do the opposite.

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Chapter 12: What types of apocalyptic insanity should you actually prep for–and which can you ignore?

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Fitness Tips for the Apocalypse

Just as it’s not brilliant to (a) quit your job, cash out your retirement and move your family to an underground bunker in the Yukon to eat canned beans and get ready for the arrival of zombies, aliens or killer robots, it’s equally dumb to (b) do absolutely nothing. Because there will always be hurricanes, earthquakes, raging wildfires and pandemics. No matter where you live, something can go wrong.

HOWEVER: What should you actually prep for, and what scenarios are fanboy fantasies you can safely forget about?

Two bits of terrible nonsense that definitely will happen, but you can completely ignore

Last week, I did a post with a great infographic created by the BBC, which sorted possible disasters in a great way. Click here: Chapter 11: What’s the actual likelihood of all the different flavors of apocalyptic craziness?

Two big ones on the BBC list are things that will happen. Guaranteed.

Yet you can safely ignore them.

  • Death of the Sun–Yes, this will happen, eventually. Billions of years from now. What are you gonna do about it?
  • Heat death of the universe–Also guaranteed, if current physicists are right. Also impossibly far off in the future and not worth your time pondering or prepping.

Four horrific things that MAY happen that you should also ignore

  • Gamma Ray Bursts–Doesn’t sound that bad. Isn’t that how Bruce Banner became the Hulk? But no, in the actual universe instead of the Marvel one, Gamma Ray Bursts are insane space death rays that originate from black holes and such and can fry a planet like earth just like that. Nothing you can do about it. No way to predict or stop one, and they’re crazy rare. Fuggetaboutit.
  • Rogue Black Holes–Yeah, this is theoretically possible. One of these might float into our solar system and eat Jupiter for breakfast and Earth for dinner. Not likely and there’s nothing you can do about it.
  • SimCity–Some people think our entire universe is a simulation, and some 13-year-old alien may get tired of it, shut it down and play Batman: Arkham Knight instead. Also not likely and impossible to stop if true.
  • Zombies–Though I adore zombie movies, you have to really stretch to pretend there’s a scenario where zombies actually happen.

Eight different Apocalypse Maybes

Now we’re talking. These scenarios are (a) possible, if not likely, (b) capable of causing global havoc,  (c) preventable, (d) survivable and (e) good fodder for a movie starring The Rock.

  1. Waterworld–Kevin Costner was a prophet, right? Climate change is happening. Seas are rising, weather is getting more extreme and it doesn’t look good.
  2. Spanish Flu on Steroids–Airplanes circling the globe make it super easy for a new virus or disease to spread unnaturally fast.
  3. Supervolcano Goes Boom–There are about a dozen supervolcanos on earth. Any one of them going off could ruin things for, I don’t know, a century. Nasty business.
  4. Overpopulation–We’re already kinda there, with 7 billion people using more resources than the earth can replenish every year.
  5. Underpopulation–The flip side, most likely in combination with another disaster.
  6. Mad Max–Though it’s a Hollywood cliche, nuclear war is still a real-life issue.
  7. The Terminator–Killer robots, or AI gone rogue, are definitely possible, especially if militaries increasingly deploy killer drones and AI tanks and such.
  8. Killer Rocks from Space–Little asteroids hit Earth all the time. A big one could end modern civilization.

In the next few weeks, I’ll dive into each of these eight scenarios. Can it be prevented, and how would you actually prep to survive it?

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Chapter 10—Prepping for Day 1 of Any Sort of ‘Pocalypse

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Fitness Tips for the Apocalypse

The worst day of any flavor of apocalypse—killer robots, zombies or The Spanish Flu of 1918 on Steroids—will be Day 1, when civilization as we know it goes buh-bye faster than an airline steward can wave you off a Boeing Dreamliner.

What’s the best way to get ready for the chaos of that first day?

Step Number 1: Where Will You Be?

Unless you’re retired or on vacation, you’re typically (a) at work or school, (b) in your happy home, (c) traveling between those two places or (d) running errands and such.

Where you are makes all the difference in the world when the world goes sideways, because most people will have all their useful possessions and loved ones back home, not in their cubicle at work or the trunk of their car.

It also matters because you probably work or study in a city and live somewhere less populated. And when things go south, the last place you want to be is in a city, because that’s where the most trouble will be. Trouble is defined as hordes of zombies, armies of killer robots or scavengers willing to pull a gun so they can loot the mall before you can.

This means you’ll need different plans and contingencies depending on your location when WATERWORLD starts being non-fiction or Donald Trump starts mashing buttons on the nuclear suitcase.

Step Number 2: Where Do You Want to Go?

Conventional wisdom would say “home,” which is wrong. Without power, heat and running water, homes will become magnets for scavengers searching for gear and supplies.

The real trouble will be food, which will run out quickly, seeing how semi’s won’t be delivering Doritos to Safeway anymore and farmers won’t be planting and harvesting Doritos anymore in the first place.

Of the essentials of food, shelter and clothing, food will be the toughest problem. Farming isn’t a good answer, since even if you already had a working farm and 10 years of experience as a farmer, the starving masses will show up and devour all your hard work.

So what did smart people do before farming was a thing? Well, the ones who survived were hunters and gatherers. Nimble nomads who followed food sources along with the seasons.

That’s the best strategy, since it keeps you out in the wilderness, close to food and far away from (a) zombies,  aliens or killer robots and (b) populated areas where scavengers will be killing each other as they battle over quickly dwindling resources.

This makes it critical to pick a good area with a source of fresh water and a variety of food sources.

That rendezvous point, ideally, would be halfway between home and work/school, so no matter where you are, it’s easy to reach.

Step Number 3: Who Do You Want to Rendezvous With?

“Friends and family” is the obvious answer and the wrong one, since there’s a fifty-fifty chance zombies will show up right in the middle of a staff meeting about TPS reports.

Making it through chaos and craziness all the way to the rendezvous point will be tough. Having a stalwart band of coworkers along for the trip, now, would truly boost your survival chances.

Asking people to meet you at the rendezvous point AFTER things get crazy, well, that won’t work at all. You have to figure this stuff out ahead of time.

Step Number 4: What Do You Need?

Out in the prepper community, you’ll see a crazy number of acronyms. Some of them apply here:

  • BOB is short for “Bug Out Bag,” pre-packed so you can simply grab it and go.
  • GHB means “Get Home Back,” with gear meant to, I don’t know, get you home.
  • INCH stands for “I’m Not Coming Home,” so it’s a more complete set of supplies, food and tools.

This series of posts hates complicated things, including acronyms. Hates them worse than black licorice and fruitcake. We’re all about simple and sturdy, cheap and sustainable.

Forget having four different sets of bags for different reasons. Keep it simple and have One Backpack of the Apocalypse, a single bag to rule them all.

This backpack will be with you whether you’re at home, at work, at school or stuck in traffic while radio shock jocks pretend to be outraged about something to fill three hours of airtime. How will it faithfully and magically stay by your side with you at work, home and while you commute and do errands? Here’s the trick: you’ll give that One Backpack and a Pair of Hiking Boots a comfy home in the trunk of your automobile.

The question of what goes into a One Backpack of the Apocalypse is deep, with a lot of options for specific teams. It’s worth a few posts to drill down on that.

Here’s the TL;DR version of what you’ll put in there: ways to make fire, filter water, catch food, stay warm, catch food, fix boo-boos, navigate, create shelter and defend yourself. Check out Survival Lilly, who’s from Austria and is completely practical.

P.S. Every loved one, neighbor, cousin you still talk to and coworker you take along can be of whatever shape, size, age, gender or background. Go wild. The lone condition for making them part of your Nimble Band of Nomads is they need to have their own One Backpack of the Apocalypse, because none of this will work if there are 15 people wandering around trying to share a single set of gear. That’s how you all win a Darwin Award.

Step Number 5: Prep Your Rendezvous Point

To get fully prepared, make your rendezvous point a welcoming safe haven.

Bury food and supplies in waterproof containers, like five-gallon paint buckets. Create a rough shelter, whether it’s a lean-to made of logs or a big tent you stash nearby.

While this is a good topic for a post, here’s one smart, easy way to make a shelter with no tools.

Bring your friends out there, wearing their hiking boots and backpacks, and stay one night. Make a campfire, filter water from the nearby stream or lake and figure out what you’re missing now, not after the aliens land and it’s too late.

Step 6: Be a Nimble Nomad with Food In Your Tummy

The last step is to figure out how you’ll migrate and follow food sources along with the seasons.

Migrating doesn’t mean traveling thousands of miles like the birds that fly from South America to Alaska and such. That’s crazy talk. You can accomplish what they do by simply heading into the mountains during the spring and summer, then back down to the valleys and the coast during winters.

The easiest way to do this is to follow rivers, either in a small boat or on foot. Rivers are born as streams on the tops of mountains after Zeus sends a stork and all that. This make navigation easy.

Finally, practice a bit of hunting and gathering. Spend a night or two at this rendezvous point with backup rations that you don’t touch. Practice trapping squirrels and rabbits, picking non-poisonous berries and catching these things I like to call “fish.”

P.S. Hunting big game like deer is a whole different topic. I live in deer country, and know all sorts of friends who also hunt bears and cougars. But this is not my expertise. Cute little deer hang out on my property, knowing that I only shoot photos of them, while the cougars hide in trees and the bears munch all my blackberries. I leave them be. If you want to practice this sort of thing, get a hunting license and buddy up with an expert. Big game is nothing to play around with and even a successful hunt means a lot of hard work to preserve the meat and make use of the fur and hide.

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Fitness Tips for the Apocalypse: Chapter 1—You’re Doing It Wrong

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Fitness Tips for the Apocalypse

If you live long enough, something bad will happen. The question is how bad, and whether you’re ready for it.

Here are seven easy ones:

  1. Rising seas from climate change, possibly leading to WATERWORLD (Kevin Costner is optional)
  2. An big, nasty asteroid decides to plow into our planet when Bruce Willis is otherwise engaged
  3. MAD MAX doesn’t seem much like fiction after a reality TV star starts a nuclear war with (a) North Korea, (b) Russia, (c) China or, for variety, (d) all of the above
  4. Aliens invade to enslave the human race, making us all mine unobtanium 20 hours a day after their home planet totally runs out
  5. Zombies—slow, traditional and terrifying
  6. Fast zombies—which tell you this film is full of CGI and no good at all
  7. Say hello to our robot overlords

Even if nothing truly terrible happens, it’s a good idea to be prepared for emergencies, be they tiny or huge. Public health folks have brilliantly latched onto this idea, using zombies to get people to prepare for earthquakes and hurricanes.

Plus it’s just fun to think, “What if?”

However: The traditional—and heavily advertised—ways of being fit and prepared for any sort of apocalypse aren’t all that smart. At all.

Rethinking fitness

The ideal of fitness today means (a) looking great in a speedo or bikini, (b) winning athletic contests or (c) looking great in a speedo or bikini while winning athletic contests.

It also means being highly specialized.

Yet all the tools people use to be fit today—gym memberships, Olympic weight sets, $400 running shoes and protein shakes—won’t exist in any sort of long-term emergency or apocalypse.

And being extremely fit and specialized, by today’s standards, would actually be a problem.

  • Giant muscles require a massive and steady amount of calories to maintain, along with all kinds of free time and gym equipment, none of which you’ll have in whatever flavor of apocalypse you favor.
  • Extremely low bodyfat makes you look great on a beach, yet nobody will see you on a beach during the apocalypse, and zero body fat gives you zero margin of error when it’s freezing at night or you can’t find food for three weeks.
  • Being highly specialized in one game or sport isn’t helpful for survival purposes, where you’ll need to be pretty good at a ton of different and random things.

So that’s what this series of posts will be about—researching and experimenting to find the smartest, cheapest ways to actually prepare for some sort of disaster or apocalypse. And the emphasis will be on cheap.

Each post will look at four different options for whatever we’re talking about, rating them on weight, price and practicality:

  1. Grizzly Adams: absolutely free and crafted from whatever you can find in the woods
  2. Scavenger Special: free or truly cheap, taken from recycled material, stuff you find in a junkyard or can buy today for almost nothing
  3. Best of Both Worlds: great quality for a great price
  4. Crazy Billionaire: the absolute most expensive option and top of the line, just for the sake of comparison

Next week: Lone Wolf in a Bunker vs Nimble Nomad with Friends