The Beginner’s Guide to the Apocalypse
People have been asking me when to expect the Collapse of Civilization for some time now. And not without reason. My first novel, Noise, which appeared in 2010, tackles this issue. Aggressively. In fact, the main characters in this story are two young men fixated on predicting such a collapse — and preparing for it. I spent a great deal of time researching prepper mindsets, separatist ideology, Utopian philosophy, sustainability — even how to make Molotov cocktails. I never made one, and I don’t intend to, but Noise details a rapid, violent collapse of global society and how people reinvent themselves in the New World Order. I couldn’t very well write about that without a few homemade incendiary grenades.
Noise might have been enough, in and of itself, to incline people to ask me about the apocalypse all the time, but then I followed it with another novel, Chimpanzee, which explores a completely collapsed U.S. and what might have happened if a movement like Occupy Wall Street had a fringe wing that knew how to integrate itself into a larger swath of disaffected Americans — and actually burn everything down.
After the events of the Arab Spring, I wrote the third book in this dystopian cluster: Totem. The Department of Defense has warned us that unchecked climate change will lead to increasingly unstable societies, and decreases in food production and employment opportunities will lead these instabilities into outright social unrest — as we saw with the Arab Spring and its roots in food and employment. Totem took the DOD’s idea and plugged it into the internet age, just to see what would happen. The result wasn’t pretty.
So, I’ve been thinking about apocalypse, unrest, collapse — whatever you want to call it — for a long time. I used to teach courses on it, particularly “Apocalypse, Annihilation, and Unrest in Contemporary Media.” That was a popular class. I’m used to people asking about these things.
The most common question is when we’ll know everything’s collapsing, and how soon to, as the young men in Noise say, “get the jump.” When should you quit your job, move to your cousin’s farm, and learn how to cultivate soy? And for good reason. There are plenty of indicators that we are already collapsing — the brink of new international conflict, the breakdown of peacekeeping international organizations and trade deals, runaway climate change that threatens global food supplies, heightened armament, vulnerable cyber infrastructure, and severe political polarization. Some of these can do away with us wholesale. Others have to work in conjunction to really mess things up.
So, the answer to when will we recognize the apocalypse is now. You’re in it, it just moves more slowly and in more directions at once than you might have expected. If you’re very fortunate, you might live out the rest of your life without experiencing its effects — unless the growing frequency of severe weather wipes your chalet unceremoniously off the map. The majority of the world, however, won’t be so lucky, even if they do survive the collapse’s unfeeling embrace. Many of these will find their post-event(s) lives irrevocably altered, and they may suffer the pains of their experience for many years, especially if they don’t have access to healthcare, economic assistance, or any other form of aid.
So It’s the End of the World. Now what?
Many of these threats are so abstract, or so potentially devastating, that it’s really difficult to get your head around them — much less how they’ll affect your daily life. Russia’s new Satan 2 missile, for example, is capable of completely destroying something the size of Texas or France. All of it. There’s not much you can do if this scenario plays out, despite what your bomb shelter salesperson might tell you. The U.S. and the Soviet Union both spent countless hours trying to get their administrative heads around how to protect the civilian populace in the event of nuclear warfare. After decades of fussing over it, they both essentially realized that there’s nothing to do about it. (Read One Nation Underground, if you want the painstaking details.)
If the bombs start flying, just get as close to ground zero as you can. You’ll be better off than the survivors.
But, if increasing political isolationism and belligerence don’t, after all, lead us into this nightmare scenario, the more mundane threats we’re facing can have less immediately lethal effects on your life — or lack of it.
Today’s growing concerns about cyber warfare are easy to ignore. Who cares if hackers can interrupt online commerce for a few hours, or cause flight delays for a day or two? In reality, sophisticated attacks can do more than that, and governments and infrastructure are increasingly dependent on steady online operations. Most of what you eat, drink, and wear depends on complicated global supply chain systems. Disrupt that for a few weeks, and you’d be surprised what happens when the local grocer doesn’t have anything for you.
Or what about water? If you’re fortunate enough to live somewhere with an ample water supply, count yourself lucky. Many people depend on water that comes from outside their immediate areas, and its delivery depends on automated systems. Even barring attacks on these systems, like the hack of a Houston water plant in 2011, you still need to be concerned about potable water. In the U.S., we’re facing a new era of EPA management by a policymaker who is less concerned about clean water than he is about standing bodies of industrial wastewater seeping into your tap.
Further, increased polarization between those who oppose “populism” and those who support it means you have two very different reactions to things like foreign states intervening in the sovereignty of other nations, like the U.S. election or the assassination attempt on Serbia’s prime minister (recall another famous global conflict that began with just such an assassination). That means you likely don’t live in a homogenous pocket of like-minded individuals. If water’s scarce, and food’s not around, you can find yourself surrounded by unfriendly neighbors who really would prefer you in some other part of town — or the world.
So What Can You Do?
Political activism aside, there are basic steps you can take. What I list here won’t help you if everyone descends into internecine conflict. For that, you need more intense strategies, like those people in militias everyone laughs at, or the guy who can distill his own water from hubcaps with a machine in his basement. Having done the research for my books, I can tell you that those rabbit holes go very deep. The ideas here, however, are as appropriate to storm preparedness as they are to weathering a weekend of civic unrest.
Water
It’s simple. Keep some in your house. You don’t need hundreds of gallons of it, and you probably don’t have the space for it anyway. Any number of things can disrupt your access to potable water: storms, industrial accidents, infrastructural failures. The duration of the emergency probably won’t last longer than a few days before relief arrives (barring worst-case scenarios), so figure about a gallon per day for each member of your family (pets need a little less). You can get distilled, drinking, or spring water cheap at the grocery store in one-gallon plastic jugs. Keep enough for a weekend on hand, and cycle it out every few months. If nothing happens, just open it, drink it, and replace it. Keep some extra on-hand to cook and clean with.
Food
Buy a little more of it. Ramen noodles, canned meat (if you eat it), canned vegetables, granola bars, dehydrated fruit — whatever you like (or can stand). It’s not a bad idea to invest in a propane stove. They’re small, and they’ll work even when the power is out.
Self Care
Do you like toilet paper? You’ll like it even more when everything else is compromised. You don’t need clean water to flush a toilet, so you probably won’t have to worry about that, but keep an extra package of rolls in a closet somewhere. Ditto for things like toothpaste, hand sanitizer, feminine hygiene products — I’ve read that tampons are great for plugging bullet wounds, so if things escalate . . .
If you don’t have a home first-aid kit with things like adhesive bandages, burn creams, pain killers, etc., you really should have one. At my house, we use ours all the time and occasionally refill it with the things we’ve used. They’re less expensive than you might think.
Entertainment
The apocalypse is very boring. Keep batteries, flash lights, candles, card games, books, or anything else to help you find your way around and pass the collapsing hours. If you have kids, this is doubly important. They’re going to get bored, then they’re going to get unhappy, and then you’ll feel better off outside with the mutants and the Molotov cocktails.
You might also consider communication. Your cell phone might not be reliable in the event of an emergency, so how can you check in with friends and family? Ham radio licenses are easy to get, and the equipment isn’t all that expensive. That network will function even when the power’s down, so if you do need to coordinate with like-minded people across town, you’ll be able to. Or you can just entertain each other and share news. I haven’t gotten my license yet, but my father’s had his for years, and it’s a source of recreation for him. I don’t think I’ll spend much time discussing conspiracy theories with guys in bunkers, but I live in Tornado Alley, and I got a little nervous the last time one blew over our town and scrambled the television. The phones were jammed with the influx in traffic, and the net was down in some places. That sucked.
You can also look into defense, if you’re inclined. You might not be shooting zombie hordes, but you might run into some unhappy and untoward people. If you really want to get ready for The End of the World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI, if you want to speak the lingo), I’ll leave you to it on your own, with these words from the survivalist manifesto in Noise to get you started:
[1] i) This Book assumes many things. ii) Among them, that you are still alive. iii) It assumes that the world has not been destroyed by fire, that it has not developed radiation flats and a meteorology of fallout. iv) It assumes there has been a breakdown. v) It assumes that a new competition for resources has begun; that there are resources yet available; and that primarily, the Event involved ab initio (or has since developed) an economic revolution.
[2] i) The destabilization of Trade informs the competition for resources—conflict, nationalism, religion, and consciousness are all Narratives for securing these. ii) These will be your ready tools.
You don’t need to buy all this at once. Although, given what’s ahead, I wouldn’t wait forever. Add a little bit each time you go to the grocery store. And if you’re a good human, stock enough that you can help your friends, neighbors, allies, or overlords, depending. And stay aware. Read the news. Compare it against multiple sources just to make sure you don’t freak yourself out unnecessarily. Watch the volatility index. Pay attention to bond markets. Listen to climatologists and environmentalists. Trust science.
Professor Hawking believes the only way we’ll survive as a species is to leave Earth. After all, according to National Geographic, “If greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, rising temperatures and humidity wrought by global warming could expose hundreds of millions of people worldwide to potentially lethal heat stress by 2060.” That means a few of us need to make sure there are still some of us around to follow his advice.
