Preparing for the Apocalypse: Anticipating the End

With less than 10 months left until the Apocalypse, I decided to get all my survival research done as early as possible. Obviously, when the world ends, things might get a little distracting. Although the ancient Mayans were able to predict precisely the 21st of December 2012 End of Times, they neglected to describe exactly how it would happen. Unsurprisingly, preparing to not be killed by something is made infinitely more challenging by not knowing what that something is in the first place. 

Thankfully a quick Google search revealed 176,349,215 crazy individuals with fingers and an internet who all seemed to have confident insider knowledge to Armageddon and a CAPS LOCK THAT DOESN'T GIVE A FUCK! Typing 'Survive 21/12/12' into a search engine will find you literally millions of websites and forums dedicated to step-by-step guides to making ourselves as Doomsday-proof as possible – but unfortunately they can't agree on what the flavour of Doomsday is actually going to be.

Even the 'official 2012 Survival Page' offers around a hundred Apocalypses to choose from, leaving me unsure as to whether I should be stocking my battle-ready monster truck with dehydrated astronaut food or just filling my asshole with double rations of Dracula-repellant. Even something straightforwardly insane like building an underground bomb shelter seems a lot less like common sense when 'Possible Apocalypse 49' turns out to be UNKILLABLE MOLE PEOPLE.

With the clock ticking towards planetary extinction it seemed safest just to read every survival guide I could find and utilise the most commonly suggested survival tips.

If you filter out most of the 'sun explodes' or 'Earth gets hit by Mysterious Planet Nibiru' bullshit, you'll find that a majority of survival guides refer to basic human needs. The most consistently offered advice seemed to revolve around hoarding high levels of non-perishable food and drink. "You'll need lots of long-life, easy to store food to stay alive," is pretty smart advice, as without sustenance humans die, regardless of how many nuclear, predatory arthropods may or may not be chasing them. You and your kids might be out there in the wasteland, lording it over me in your state of the art fallout suits and all terrain dune buggies, but 3 days down the foodless apocalyptic line I'm going to be the one eating freeze-dried peach halves while you're trying to teach little Billy how to milk a giant scorpion.

Judgement Day resistant accommodation was the next, obvious suggestion. If the internet can show me on a blueprint exactly where in the Millennium Falcon Han Solo takes a shit, it sure as hell could tell me how to convert my flat into a middle finger to the mushroom cloud. It turns out that 'totally below ground' seemed to be the generally most accepted safe-zone, meaning that when the dust settles and survivors emerge, the task of repopulating the planet is going to be resting on the shoulders of janitors, Wombles and Josef Fritzl's family.

Because I live in Dumbiedykes I realised I'd have to concentrate on making the not-underground part I live in so secure that the only way the four horsemen would get to me was if they cunningly disguised themselves as a travelling band of oil-wrestling Lynda Carters. Returning to the forums I read the testimony of self-confessed 'Doomsday-Prepper' Paul from Arizona, who has spent the last five years transforming his broom closet into a survival cave. 'Paul' describes himself as 'single', 'well-armed' and 'a plumber' and is prepared to 'survive and restart the human race.' The plumber part of his description is actually pretty reassuring since, if I ended up pressed nipple to nipple with a gun-wielding, sexually active stranger in a soundproof cupboard while civilization falls, I'd want that stranger to be completely comfortable working in a 4 inch puddle of my faeces.

So after spending the better part of a week cataloguing the ravings of survivalists whose keyboards seemed to facilitate flippers, I ultimately ended up only sort of knowing three things I need to do to survive... and they're absolutely what I should have been doing anyway. Eating well. Building a home. Respecting my community. If I took the whole 'end of the world' part out of it and made some changes, I just prepared myself to live comfortably with or without an apocalypse.

And, if you still suspect that an Armageddon might be due, whether it be a Coronal Mass Ejection or something that doesn't sound like what my dong might do during Last Starfighter, I leave you with this advice: do some research on how to keep living and be very careful image-searching 'Monster Black Holes' without a safety filter and a laptop that closes in response to your own screams.