In Jeff's fantastic book, the main character's family has survived by becoming roving scavengers, while others have done so by banding together into communities. Both groups, though, have to make do with what they find (or grow).
Let's say the Collapse happened tomorrow. What would you use to survive? There are many, many lists on the internet about stocking up on food and emergency supplies. (And weapons.) But, most of us aren't going to do that. We're going to make do with what's around us. And, I don't know about you, but I live in city neighborhood with a natural foods co-op, a cupcake store, coffee shop, old theater, and a hybrid car on every block. So I looked for some ingenious survival tips that kind of fit a more modern urban-hipster (or suburban) lifestyle. (Not that I'm modern, urban, or hip, mind you.)
1. Turn your Prius into a generator . During one of our recent snowmaggedon's, an intrepid guy ran his refrigerator, freezer, woodstove fan, and lights for three days on five gallons of gas. (For some reason, blogger doesn't like this link. The address is http://lifehacker.com/5118575/use-a-prius-as-an-emergency-generator )
2. Make survival gear out of Ikea products. The Ikea Hackers show you have to make a firestarter out of a coathanger, a wine rack, and some ornamental doo-dads.
3. Use Craig's List to Barter for Future Currency Items Think cigarettes, chocolate, booze, and other things that will be scarce. (Obviously do this before the sh*t hits the fan.) Your bartering skills will also useful after the Collapse when you'll be using cash for kindling your Ikea product fire.
4. Build a shelter out of a gas or oil truck. After you steal it for the last of the fuel to run your Prius generator, you can clean this puppy out and build an apartment inside. Which might be useful if you need to flee the city.
5. Buy a Survival Ball. If you think the above are too much trouble--and you have the cash, why not spring for this comfy looking survival suit / home to weather the Collapse?
Ok, you got me. The last one isn't real. (But this one is.) The Survival Ball is a product of the Yes Men. Here's a clip from the documentary Yes Men Fix the World where they try to sell the idea to Halliburton:
btw, Halliburton took it totally seriously.
Your turn. Any ingenious survival tips you'd like to share? What would you use to survive the Collapse?
5 comments:
Funnily enough, I was just talking about this with him-who-knows-about-things the other night. (Yes, this is the kind of stuff we talk about). I'm ashamed to say I have no survival skills but I realised, whatever trouble we were in, I took it for granted that he would get us out of it. Maybe I should come up with a plan of my own. Just in case...
Based on what I've learned, you need a really good knife, preferably one the length of your wrist to elbow. No joke. :-)
I think PETA would have something to protest about with the survival suit. They think it is bad enough to eat Bambi now you can steal Bambi's life force to keep your disaster suit powered up.
From what I've learned, you should live in an area with a low population and have lots of food and weapons. A low population means that when everyone else becomes zombies, there won't be many zombies to fight in your area. (It also means less hungry people and hungry people are probably more dangerous than zombies.)
For lots of real survival tips, I look on http://www.survivalblog.com/
It's a blog run by a bunch of people who take the end of the world as we know it very seriously.
The Eleventh Plague is an amazing read and it was so thrilling it was hard to put my kindle down long enough. If you like thrillers with a little mystery woven into it, then you will love this book. This is the best book I read so far... I can really relate to some things with the main characters Jenny and Stephen.
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