Be a Cockroach and Survive

Use these insect skills to live through a zombie apocalypse, a pandemic, and other tough situations

Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

According to movies, zombies were the threat we’d have to vanquish when the apocalypse happened. Plenty of folks half-jokingly put together a Zombie Apocalypse kit containing canned meat and waterproof matches or bought a pre-packed kit on Amazon (yes, this is a real thing) to stash in their car. Others not-at-all-jokingly purchased semi-automatic weapons and stocked up on ammo. But 2020 surprised us all.

Turns out a virus that looks like a spiky red ball was the horror to contend with and instead of turning into brain-munching monsters, humans became TP-hoarding wackos. Who could have guessed?

Several highly intelligent and educated people did, actually, predict this. If we had only listened, we would have been buying hand sanitizer instead of bullets and investing in Zoom stock instead of Spam.

Folks dealt with the pandemic in different ways. Some used the time they normally spent on outside entertainment to go inward and learned to meditate, caught up on reading, cooked more meals at home, and dusted off their knitting, woodworking, or other projects.

Others got busier than ever with work at their essential and front-line jobs, bless their souls, while an alarmingly large number of people became de-railed and turned to junk food, alcohol, and other dark devices to get through an incredibly difficult period in our history.

I chose the cockroach method to keep my sanity and stay alive. Cockroaches have a bad image, but they are amazing insects and they’re everywhere. There are 4,600 different species with four to five species considered pests to humans. They’re incredibly adaptable and that’s why they’re hard to kill, giving them the reputation of being one of the creatures that will still be around after a nuclear attack. To eat the Spam. I’ve learned a lot about cockroaches as I researched this piece and here is why I modeled my survival plan after this mighty bug.

Cockroaches are flexible and stealthy. They can live and hide in really small places. I’m flexible because I do yoga. I can paint my own toenails and I fit well in small spots like airplane seats…