Plan your Apocalypse

So I was thinking about Encyclopedia Britanica stopping their PRINT versions (in the news last week)... and it got me thinking about the Apocalypse... Oh, I know. It doesn't take much to get me to thinking about the Apocalypse. Though for newbies, let me clarify, this isn't a religious thing... it is a GIGANTIC world shift caused by natural disaster (meteor), unnatural disaster (nuclear war) or plague.  In ALL cases though, I see an interruption in... you guessed it... THE INTERNET!

So if the most recently printed manuals of how to DO STUFF in most people's homes are... you know... ancient... (My own set of encyclopedias is dated 1974), because we are all counting on just looking it up online when we need something, then how the heck do we figure out what we need to know in an age of no more stores, no more printed reference materials and NO MORE INTERNET!?

When that disaster strikes, chances are all communication goes. It WOULDN'T if we still had those ground lines linked place to place... those require no power. We could talk on THOSE, but the new system is not a HARD system.

There would be simple radio waves... walkie-talkies, Ham radios. Although that Ham needs power, so could only work with a generator. Still, I am a granddaughter of a Ham radio operator who talked to people all over the world and I have great faith in that system, were the other ones to fail, as the mechanics of it are simpler.

So if all this internet stuff disappears with that meteor hit or nuclear strike, or large enough epidemic that the population is decimated, what do you NEED? What is that crucial information you maybe should have in a hard copy?


Here are the things I would want handy:

Simple motor. (repairing, but ideally, also making)  I would like to be able to do some basic repairs for say... a really old pick-up or lawn mower. Jericho (the TV show) had a power surge that knocked out anything with an electronic chip, so the only watches that worked were the old fashion quartz, the cars with computerized panels seized, NOTHING digital worked. So the old cars became the only ones they could work.

Plant guide for naturally growing stuff. Talk about a time it would be nice to know how to eat off the land. There are some edible tubers (bulbs) and distinguishing which berries and mushrooms are safe would be very helpful.

A nice list of crucial minerals and such. Like I know they put iodine in salt because we need just a little. Same reason they put vitamin D in milk. Sources of the things we need would be good to know.


What would I DO if this happened?

Well honestly, it would depend a little what was 'out there'. All the shows based on an Apocalypse make travel look pretty darned dangerous. But my concern is where I live is very densely populated, so resources would grow scarce very fast. My instinct is I would head west (probably by going north first--maneuvering through Chicago is not even a little appealing under these circumstances--better to get up to highway 2 and cross—try to get to where my family is in Idaho. There are fewer people there to try to live off more space, and while northern Idaho is infamous for its militia-minded people, I grew up here. I don't believe these people are generally hostile, they are just anti-government. They are not the sort to move out and steal from neighbors. They are more the type who just feel justified defending their own lands through any means necessary. And I don't believe, if there were a large-scale population wipe-out, that I would have any need to try to take anything from anyone who was still around.

What about you? What instructions are you now thinking of printing up? Where would you go?


Side note for the curious:  The motherboard on my laptop is dead and the cost to replace is almost that of a new computer. I decided to have them pull the hard drive and I am currently using it as an external hard drive for my desk top... something that is only a short term fix, but for now, will work.  So I'm back, but limping a little, probably until summer.