Badmovies.org Forum

I love apocalyptic movies, and sometimes they get me thinking of logical things. Like in "The Stand", they just hop on motercycles and go cross country. But, if a car hasn't been started in a certain amount of time, doesn't the battery die? I would probably prefer to use the same vehicle, but then comes the question of gas. I'd have to figure out how to syphon it from other cars. Not only that but if you were going on a cross country trip you would have to plan accordingly for breakdowns in the middle of nowhere. I watched "I am legend" again last nite and there were some things that just didn't make sense to me on the second viewing. Is it safe 5 years later to eat spam? I'd be afraid of botulism, canned food does have a shelf life. So i thought it might be fun to have you list YOUR end of the world survival skills.

It's 1 year after what appears to be, the entire population of the world is killed off by virus or aliens (lol):

1. Would you go to look for survivors, if so, where? This is a good psychological question because you aren't questioning where others would go, but where others would think everyone might go. It could be a risky plan. You would also have to plan accordingly with the season, nobody wants to go to colorado in the winter.

2. If you chose to stay put and possibly go on living life alone, what type of life would you establish for yourself? What would be the home or place that you would live, or woud you simply move from home to home around the city? If you would rather live in a dwelling more in the country - specify

3. What would be the necessary supplies, including for back-up plans? What would be some unusual supplies or things you might gather or build?

4. Mode of travel? How would you overcome obsticals such as breakdowns or running out of gas, risking possibly dying in the middle of nowhere? Would you take chances on a motorcycle that could unexpectedly crash and have you with major injuries?  

5. Where would you take refuge if on the road?

6. A city is big, woud you attempt to open communication to let others know of your presence, if so, how?

7. Food. Woud you rely on the canned supplies of what may be left. Also consider if you are travelling on a motercycle you would not have room to store such food so you'd have to work on an assumption that you could readily find thi food. Or would you hunt? Hunting isn't easy, nor is learning how to properly handle the meat.

8.  Would you spend any time at the library gathering books, if so what type of books would you be collecting?

9. Would you seek out a pet? Knowing that if humans died, their pets probably starved in shelters and in homes or tied up in backyards? The only remaining might be hard to find or aggressive.

10. Would the rules/laws still apply, or would you become a bad guy?

And finally, what woudl be your one guity pleasure knowing you had the entire city to yourself? drive around the baddest cars, go to the mall, what?

I'd find a nice place out in the country, well off the beaten path, with good fields of fire in every direction so nobody could sneak up on me.  First thing to get would be a generator, I'm sure there'd be a good selection in the deserted hardware stores.  Then a vehicle, I'd go with a nice 4 wheel drive pickup or SUV.  Heck, might as well get a luxury SUV.  And I'd get a brand new Mustang.  For food, I'd have a small dairy farm, butcher a cow every once in a while for meat.  I'd have to go to the library and get a book on butchering.  Guess it wouldn't matter too much, it's not like I'd be worrying about fully utilizing the animals or anything.  For gas I'd use my big pickup to get a large above ground tank, probably several of them, and I'd need a pump to suck the gas up from the underground tanks at the gas stations.  I'd install a good alarm system in the house, and try to rig up some sort of trip wires around the property.  And I'd have a nice selection of firearms and gigantic supplies of ammo. 

For entertainment, well, all CDs and DVDs are free now.  Maybe I'd install that top-of-the-line home entertainment system I've always wanted.  I'd have my cat to keep me company of course.  Too bad about the wife and kids, Que sera sera as they say.  After a while I imagine I'd get bored.  Maybe I'd start exploring around the local area in my pickup. 

As far as good guy or bad guy, hey, I'd try to be nice.  But if I ran into a few nasty people, well, I'm heavily armed and have very little conscience. 

Hmmm...yup, that about covers it. 

First off, even gas has a shelf life and begins to break down and looses octane. So before all the gas goes bad I'd collect everything I needed to survive long term. So while a generator, motorcycle, truck will work for a while it's not a long term solution. Having grown up on a farm and having a farm now I'm not to worried about how to survive. Most of the stuff like butchering, bleeding, smoking, curing etc I already know. However Propane and Natural Gas do not go bad very first and likely will still be good in industrial storage, you can fill portable tanks and use it for stoves, heat or propane powered generators. I'd still set up for water powered, wind powered and solar powered energy supplies. Gathering these supplies might take some doing as I'm guessing UPS will not be running.

So I'd find a place with a year round running stream and collect the equipment needed to build a water power generator. I'd also make sure I was near a source of fish and game. Even canned foods begin to go bad in a couple or so years.
I also find a place you could have a good garden and and sunlight and install solar panels too. I'd have some horses to pull plows, wagons and ride. Fence it off and raise meat too, chickens, hogs, cattle, sheep etc. I'd build a green house they'd be plenty of free glass to have year round fresh veggies.

I'd be well armed, for hunting and protection. As far as books go, most of the books I currently own would be fine. Foxfire series, building, chemistry etc. I'd raid a hospital for medical supplies and the like.
 
I don't know if I'd look for others or not, the planet is a big place and the likelihood of finding a hand full of survivors would be slim. Perhaps with the electrical power I clime a radio tower and place some colored flashing lights the people could see at night if anyone was out there, without city lights it'd be easy to see for many, many miles around.

Overall I wouldn't to to worried, I feel fairly secure in my skills. I would have a few dogs, likely Rottweilers as I've always had those and they are very alert. They're good for killing zombies.

As far as law goes ... to quote Judge Dredd "I am da law!"

The main thing is fresh water, steady food supply and shelter, the rest is bonus.

Come to think of it, in post-apocalyptic times, you could probably just get a semi truck full of gas or propane.  As far as octane, I suppose you could get some aviation fuel from an airport or something.

Gas will last a while, a few years at most it get weaker with every passing year. True the higher octane jet fuel will last a little longer, but another thing you need to think about is moisture. This will build up in setting tanks. Another option is building your own still and make ethanol and moonshine.

Micro Hydro power is the way to go, I think as it's 24, 7, 365 power ... provided the water source is reliable.

Here are some basics ..
http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_hydro.html  (http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_hydro.html)

The upside to the events Susan proposed is that it's a event that would take place over time and not instantly and you would have a little time to track down the supplies you'd need while things little the internet still work. And during the anarchy and panic you could get a head start.

I live near the New Madrid fault line and while it is unlikely it will give and cause widespread destruction anytime soon, I'm so far out in the booners we'd be the last to be restored services, we're setup to off the grid for a while if needed. Even ice storms will kills our power for several days. The ice storm we had a few year ago our power was off over a month, but a built in propane generator kept things going.  So as the boy scouts say "Always be prepared."   

But to save time with all that you could just find this place and go there ...
Ready made ..
http://survivalproperty.com/secure_home_amenities.htm (http://survivalproperty.com/secure_home_amenities.htm)

I would pick my self up the pimpest car I could find, fill it with gas and twinkies (they never spoil) drive up to Chicago, figure out how to broadcast over the radio from the library, send as many distress signals as possible.  Grab as many guns as I can, move into a penthouse apartment and do whatever I feel like doing until people come in.  I'd probably become lonley after a while, but I'll live out my days having as much fun as possible.

The area I am in has a lot of greenhouse operations - small and large.  There are plenty of dairy farms as well; most of which have backup generators in place.  Orchards and vineyards abound.  The soil is also ideal for market gardening and field crops such as corn.  And it is common to have your own gas well for heating etc.  Water wells are less common - but there are some (we  have one).  We are near enough to major bodies of water and there are lots of streams and bush so fishing is do-able and the deer, turkey, duck and rabbit are plentiful.

I can garden and preserve vegetables and fruit.  I have dogs and horses.  Several farms around here have horse-drawn equipment for field work and trucks with propane tanks.  Assuming the area is not wiped out in whatever apocalypse it happened to be (we are quite near some major population centres): it might just come down to choosing the most suitable setup available and moving in, scavenging the rest of what I need.

Ever see Road Warrior?

Yeah...that'd be me.... :teddyr:

This has been one of my favorite subjects over the years as I have been a fringe survivalist for a long time.

There is so much to consider when talking about an Apocalypse. You will have over 6 Million people trying to do the same thing if any of them survived. You won't be able to use the roads because they will be full of others trying to get away.

People are weak. We are accustom to eyeglasses, medication for the common cold, regular meals (fast food at that), a place to sleep, clean water, and even entertainment. Forget about it. Most are now enslaved to this beast we call civilization.

You would need protection. You wouldn't be able to be a sole survivalist (especially with a family) in an Apocalyptic world. You would eventually have to become part of a much larger group (tribe) for protection and basic needs.

You wouldn't be able to have little farms for yourself as tribes would find them and ravage them. You would have to join them, pay tribute to them if growing food in the Apocalypse enable one to do so. Your other options would be to die at the hands of those you take your food and supplies.

If you have a family and are a responsible person you would have to find a group eventually and endure what ever horrors await.

It would be best to become a religious and prepare for death. A martyrs death. This is my final conclusion after a couple decades of thinking on the subject.

We're just strangers and pilgrims on this planet awaiting the Glory of God.

There are different scenarios depending on the extremes of the Apocalypse.
  

Wow, really good answers here with different reactions.

Jack - Tempting to watch movies for the rest of my life..lol Literaly i'd get bored of not having anyone to share my opinions with tho. You've butchered a cow? That would scare me because I saw a guy butcher a deer once and said it's not easy because you have to know the internal organs as if you don't properly remove them you can contaminate the meat with just one drop of urine.

Cheeze - just be sure you keep those tanks far away from your farm..lol Solar panels are a great idea, i'm not handy so i wouldn't even know the first thing to do in getting that set up or even where to get them. Yeah, my scenario does take place over time because that is a more likely scenario. This also means that because of the "panic", lots of necessities have already been bought up or stored because of fear of leaving the house or town or how long the situation could go on. This presents a challenge when particularly finding needed supplies including food.

Patient7- LOL! I have to admit i'm going to have to at least enjoy myself for a week with a trip to the mall and trying out different cars.

Conan - you are right. While we think we have survival skills we really don't. We've become a culture that has become spoiled and half of us don't even know how to grow food, only where to buy it. It's not as easy as just plunking something into the ground.  Remind me not to hang out in your camp tho, the people who become fanatically religious in the movies always wind up killing everyone else as a sacrifice? ;-)

I've always thought the first thing I would do with signs of a crisis is stock up on all the vegetable seeds I could from the nursery. After that stock up on stuff that has a long shelf life - popcorn can go for a couple of years, rice is good. But you've got to start off right away learning how to grow your own food because i would eventually grow scared of eating any canned goods i might find, those likely to have more protein source. I live in texas, and i've heard peanuts grow here although they are a pain to harvest. I have NO idea how you begin peanut planting, if it's just as easy as putting peanuts into the ground, i doubt it. You'd also have to learn how to save seeds from the things you do grow, so certain books on gardening at the library would just become a must.

The thing is, i wouldn't start all this on a serious level right away. I would store stuff and prepare but my first instinct would be to find others. This actually poses a greater danger for a woman in such conditions, however I ultimately believe that we are a very social species and suffer without the needed protection and companionship of others. Not to mention trying to find enough people where you might have those with different skills and knowledge that would be of benefit in thi situation - particularly a doctor or nurse. i don't think i could just live alone forever, knowing that we should try to survive as a species, I also wouldn't want to die alone.

So, that means going out and finding people. That also means arming myself and probably shaving my head..lol  Where would people go to find other people? I Would imagine places like new york are out, too far of a drive, and i bet would be congested with traffic or road blocks. that leaves other big landmark places - washington, perhaps the CDC but who thinks of that. It might depend on the situation or last blips heard on the tv about camps and such. It's too bad we don't have a nationa plan in place that goes something like "Hey, if the world ever ends and you need to find other survivors, everybody meet up in topeka kansas at the truck stop cafe" lol I would leave signs on major highways spraypaintd large, maybe on overpasses stating my journey or destination. Or maybe if i stay close to home indicating that every month on the 1st i will be at "such and such" location. I might leave obvious signs to draw their attention like huge american flags you see at the car dealerships along the higway overpass so they wouldn't pass it up thinking it was graffiti

We would need medicines, unfortunately what little there may be left and the shelf life going. This means you'd have to locate books on natural medicinal care - because we don't know how to grow antibiotics. I wonder if you could preserve them in cold temperatures longer. This means being extremely careful in EVERYTHING you do. There are no more tetanus shots, infections could spread and go into your blood and kill you. this is why people died young back in those early days, because life was hard. You got up before the sunrose and after the sun went down you stopped working because farming and doing all the things entailed in keeping yourself alive is hard work. I would hopefuly try and locate chickens, the problem being that post-apocalypse you can bet the ones in the mass chicken farms are dead so the only way to find any might be going out to the country and hoping to catch some wild ones - that would be a stab in the dark. But chickens produce a lot of eggs, this is great protein.

I guess to say it's not like the movies. You can only relay on what civilization leaves behind for so long before you have to take survival into your own hands by learning about cultivation and hunting and to be honest i think that you just need other people to make it easier and make it work. I don't wanna be walking in the woods and slip into a hole and can't get out an dnobody knows where i am and i die in that hole.

You don't have to be a fanatic or belong to a group to die a martyrs death. To be a martyr is simply to die for your chosen faith. Everyone has their own belief system whether they decide to die for God or not. Everything is religion. You are living and dying by your religion right now. Everyone is indeed a type of martyr. Whatever you are living for then you are also dying for it.  :wink:

Nice post by the way. Now for the bore worms ! ! !     :bouncegiggle:

This is a great topic!  My son and I are avid fans of apocalyptic movies and we often discuss a contingency plan should anything happen.  I'll try and answer the questions in order.

1.  I'm assuming that my son and I survived together.  I wouldn't necessarily look for survivors beyond my own family.  My sister and her fiance live about 20 mins walk away from me, so I'd head over there when it was safe to do so.  This is depending on what kind of disaster befell the earth and what kind of creatures were left standing (I Am Legend, Day of the Dead, 28 Days Later or just something like the Black Plague with a 90% mortality rate etc). 

2.  I would stay where I am, I think, although I would move to higher ground.  I'm on top of a hill right now, so I would probably take over an apartment on the top floor of the building so I could have a wider view of the world.  However, across the valley from me on the opposite hillside is a huge old timber home, what they call "Queenslanders" in this part of the world.  And it has a verandah around the whole house.  So I might move there instead.

3.  I'd scavenge for a generator to at least supply power.  We have a temperate climate, so I don't have to worry about snowy winters or anything like that.  But I do enjoy the comforts of a refrigerator and microwave for cooking food.  It would be safer than having to light fires all the time and attract attention.

I'd definitely be raiding KMart and the like for veggie seeds to start a garden.  You can only eat canned food for so long and it does go bad.  I'd probably find a 4WD or truck of some kind and fortify it in case I need to venture out in the world.  A motorbike or moped are good for quick trips.  I'd also figure out where I need to go on a regular basis (eg shopping malls, etc) and make up safe houses with supplies in each in case I get stranded by killer zombies and have to hide away for a few days.  Weapons - guns, knives, bows and arrows, traps, walkie talkies, etc would also have to be collected.  Although in our non-gun culture, I'd have the devil of a time actually trying to find a gun store.

4.  Mode of travel.  Kit out a few different types of vehicles with food supplies, first aid kits, emergency repair kits etc, depending on where I need to go.  Dressing up in safety gear, crash helmets, knee and elbow pads, biker boots, thick motorcyle jackets etc would be standard clothing any time I ventured out.  And a fully prepared backpack with weapons.  Of course, it's not possible to prepare for every emergency, but you can try.

5.  Taking refuge on the road wouldn't be an issue if I decided to stay in town.  I wouldn't need to move from my city because there's enough supplies to last me for the rest of my life.

6.  In my city, I would put huge hand painted signs in various places giving them the address of where I am.  Anyone who is mentally and physically in tact would be able to find their way to me.  Also, the constant radio broadcast like on 28 Days Later and I Am Legend is a good idea.

7.  Food.  Canned, of course.  Endless bottles of water for drinking and cooking, plus some kind of water filtration system for bathing.    But supplies like baby wipes, etc would do for basic personal hygiene for a while.  We don't get heaps of rain, like Seattle or London do, so in the middle of summer it might be a problem.  But nearly every house here has a water tank because of the drought we had in the last few years.  So that would work for watering a garden.  Plus with no more pollution, I think the world would revert to regular downpours pretty quickly, say, within a year.  I'd start a garden for food and we'd have to become vegetarians, which wouldn't bother me, but my son would be unhappy  *lol*  Imagine, no more KFC!

I wouldn't hunt.  There's nothing around here anyway and I don't like the thought of having to kill a live animal and then skin it with all that blood.  It's easier to be a vego.

8.  I would raid all the bookstores I could find, especially the Borders in the city.  I'd be especially interested in natural gardening books, permaculture and companion planting, etc.  Also books on how to build survival shelters, rig up generators, food canning, etc.  I'd be a little upset that I wouldn't be able to get all the books I want, once the internet and postal service become obsolete.  But I think with the stores and the public library, I'd have heaps to read.  I'd also raid the craft stores to buy more fabric for making clothes and knitting for making extra afghans and sweaters etc.  This would come in handy if any other survivors came around and had nothing.  Then there's a walkman with batteries for CDs.  So Tori Amos's legacy wouldn't disappear completely off the face of the earth.

9.  I wouldn't seek out a pet.  They are just a drain on resources and you can't control them.  I wouldn't want my dog to inadvertenly lead any of the undead back to my place.  Also, I'm assuming that no disaster is 100% fatal, so I wouldn't be the only one alive.  There is always someone else out there, even if it's not family.

10.  I would have no trouble enforcing my own brand of law:  things like maiming, killing, raping, torture etc is not acceptable.  I'd have no trouble shooting dead any bastard that tried to do that to me.  Also, anyone who gets infected gets a bullet to the brain straight away.  Good manners and civility must continue if more than 2 people are to live together in harmony.  A strict set of rules to be agreed upon with multiple people as well:  no stupid risks taken.  All safety and security rules to be followed at all times.  Nobody goes anywhere alone - ever.  Loaded weapons and survival kits to be on your person at all times.  And it would have to be survival of the fittest:  anyone really old and slow or infirm, physically disabled people, the very young who don't understand what "be quiet!" means would have to be abandoned.  It's a harsh law, but one that needs to be followed for everyone to survive.  You can't run from a zombie if you're blind or a paraplegic.

Can I assume that Anne Hathaway might also survive said apocalypse, and need a protector?

You may assume that and you may also assume she'll be at Camp Cheezeflixz post-apocalyptic Compound for Unemployed Starlets and Nudist Colony.

I'm going to be realistic.  There is no chance for my survival past a week, if even that.

I would be dead within 3-7 days of dehydration or starvation.

Dang, Trumped again!!!  Karma for Cheeze!

Well, Ok I guess it could be worth hanging around a bit for some of you.  :bouncegiggle:


Depending on the circumstances Akiratubo might be closer to things if you made it past the first day. May God have mercy.

I live in Southern New Jersey near the cape and our chances of escape are zero. If a asteroid hit or a nuclear bomb(s) went off in the Northeast we couldn't get out. There are only about 5 or 6 bridges out of New Jersey that are East of us between Delaware and Trenton. South Jersey is a death zone. We are kinda down wind from Washington and Philadelphia. Going towards Philadelphia with it's population is out of the question. To the North we would have millions fleeing the New York City region. The only chance by land would be a road that goes through the pine barrens towards Trenton, but you wouldn't know what you might encounter in Trenton, but you could go up the Delaware River farther North if there was a problem where you might have a chance. This would take hours. Might work if you brought your own gasoline.

Other than that I would need a good boat and use the Atlantic Ocean as transportation going to South America or maybe even to Europe if you had that kind of fuel capacity. If the boat was stocked with good bait there might still be abundant sea life for food. Chances might be better at sea if you go down the coast you could have access to seafood and pick your landings on the shore, so as to avoid people.

It depends on the disaster. Living near or on the coast being dangerous if there was a meteor strike. We would be underwater and it would be over. You wouldn't get to a boat and even if you did it would overwhelm your ocean craft. If you had an inflatable raft in your home you might be able to ride out the mother of tsunami's by hanging on tight till the waters settled. That's if the waters weren't boiling. Then again if a meteorite hit the earth life on earth might be very clouded and prolonged death would be harsher.

As a survivalist it would be part of the challenge to survive that keeps you going. 

It's said that you can produce enough food for 1 year in a 10x10 foot plot with method of preservation. Multiply that by the number of people in your company. You might be able to find a good place to hide out where hordes of desperate people couldn't find you.

This is one of the very few benefits of living in BFE, no real targets around here and a thin population. I'd say surviving some apocalyptic event depending on exactly what it is might be a little better than in the densely populated urban centers where more people are dependent on services than self reliances. Many of my big city friends wouldn't last long if they had to resort to hunt and gather as opposed to shop and charge.
A buddy of mine from Chicago came down to go fishing for the first time in his life and he was in his 40's. No idea how to bait a hook, tie a line or cast. I asked him what on earth would you do if you had to survive on your own? And he replied rather straight faced ... "I guess die."

Where is BFE?

In the U.S. I often thought New Mexico would be the best state to live in the case of mega disasters.

EDIT: Base Flood Elevation. Thanks.

Bum F**k Egypt ... aka the middle of nowhere. In my case very far western KY.

Yea, I saw that on my BFE search.  :bouncegiggle:

The reason I picked New Mexico (most noteably Norther part) instead of Pacific Northwest or Wyoming is that Yellowstone National Park is a massive mega volcano and the Cascade Mountain Range are very volatile. New Mexico would be out of the wind pattern for that kind of disaster. Maybe not far enough, but you might have a better chance. The only problem with New Mexico is that is that it has the largest nuclear stock pile in the U.S. and whether they use them or not it could pose a problem with massive earth changes.

 :hot:

Southern California there are just to many people and the Southern California desert East of the the L.A. and San Diego are harsh landscapes for survival.

So, my ultimate pick for now is East of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range. Wouldn't mind trying the area just East of the the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. Between the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Nevada border within California. Like Owens Valley. We drove through it two Summers ago. Remote enough in the case of emergency and lots of wildlife. The only problem there is it might become a refuge for the millions from the West coast. 

Wouldn't mind living in my original home town of Elmira, New York as there are enough small roads to head Westward, Southwest-ward, or even head to Canada. Also lot of wildlife, lakes, and water in that area. Hopefully far enough from hordes from New York City, but probably not. Don't want to go to far North though because of the cold in the Winter. Then again it may become cold everywhere if a major nuclear or meteoric event happens to the planet blocking out the sun.

Kentucky is good. You could have good escape routes, elevation, wildlife, or stay put because you know the area so well and it's up-wind sort of speak from Washington D.C.. Pre-survival prep could work in Kentucky if you decided to stay.

Marines speak in a different language at times.  I usually try to avoid doing that in reviews, unless I can provide enough context for someone to figure out what I mean.  Saying, "The monster squashed his freakin' grape!" without context just gets me emails asking, "What do you mean, 'grape?'"

 :bouncegiggle:

"The monster squashed his freakin' grape!" What does that mean?

I'd somehow find Milla Jovovich, become her love slave and let her deal with it all.  Maybe we'd settle down in Barter Town.

Smashed his head.

'Grape' = 'head' but 'Head' = 'Bathroom'

What sucks is when you have the screamin' demons and the head is a click away. So then have to go with the bears.

And people don't understand this? Pretty obvious to me, and I'm about as non-military as they come (well, short of hippies). But then, I do well with figurative language, particularly potty analogies (it's a gift). One question, though: Why do you have to be exorcised along with the police just because the toilet is online? (I kid, I kid).

 :question:   Could you repeat that? Who's the monster?

Anne Hathaway jokes aside, I have a nice 20 acre spread here in East Texas and a nice solid 100 year old farm house.  I could easily throw a gate across my drive.  I raise goats, so meat and milk are available.  Neighbors on either side have horses and cows, so there's transportation and steak.  Good soil for veggies, pecan and pear trees for fruit and nuts.  Near enough to a sizeable town that I could plunder Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Hasting's for food and entertainment and supplies.

Of course, if most of mankind disappeared, one of my first priorities would be to go arrowhead hunting on some of the lakes that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hasn't allowed us to collect on in the last 15 years.  No Rangers to bug me, no other collectors to snag the good ones first!!! Can you say paradise??!!! :cheers:

Of course, if Anne were to come around, that would only enhance the scenario . . . . :wink:

Just a monster, Andrew said as in a review, so any kind of monster smashes someones grape (head, skull) But maybe just maybe his grape wouldn't get cracked if he had a brain bucket or pot. (that is a helmet)

What's your elevation IndianaSmith? A gate sounds wonderful.  :bouncegiggle:

I'm taking East of the Sierra Nevada Mountains off my list of good places. Because nuclear fallout and refuges from L.A. and San Francisco might make it unlivable. Guess I just wanted a better scenic view from my cave.

Seriously, I think Kentucky and Tennesse might be the best overall places to live in the U.S. for most Apocalyptic senarios.

Nothern Vermont might be ok also. You could stay there or depending on the senario you could cross over into Canada. Wait there till you can get a better picture of what's going on.

I'd pick the Northern Rockies, but just to add to the Yellowstone Caldera senario. A large enough meteor hitting the earth could set it off. They say if that ever blew it would take out the entire Mid-West for 1,000 miles. Mostly due to the direction of the wind. 


So if you wear a helmet Godzilla can't smash your head.  Ok, I think I have it now. Thanks.

It has to be a really good helmet.


I've always thought so, 100+ miles from any metro area, no real military target out of Ft Campbell 100 miles east of here. Aside from a few hydroelectric dams nothing to attack. A thin population would insure you had your share of resources and pick of a good survival location. There is coal near by so you could have fuel, plenty of fresh water, rich bottom land, tons of timber, building stone, etc. These area I'm in would be my choice.

Yea, and land is probably cheap right now. Hmmm interesting....................Hey neighbor.  :teddyr:

Tillable land $2500-$3500 acre. Hilly or timbered land, $1500-$2500 acre.

Now if you buy lake front you're looking at $20,000-$50,000+ acre.

Here you go ...
click me click me (http://www.unitedcountry.com/search06/AA_SearchViewProperty.asp?SID=58081382&Item=584443&Lcnt=&Page=1&Office=16053&No=16053-00010&AU=N&FT=P)

That's right. CheezeFlixz works with property. Ooooo Fresh water.  :thumbup:

The cost of land here in the New Jersey death zone is about on average $100,000 an acre. That's just for the land without even having built on it yet.

Maybe my next vacation will be to Kentucky.  :teddyr:

Yep property is my bag baby, the good thing about this area is there never is a property bubble to burst, new construction,  existing home sale, remodels and refrubs are at the same pace they were prior to the sub prime fiasco. It's the tortoise and the hare, slow and steady wins the race.

I live in a very rural area of Tennessee about 40 miles east of Nashville so we're not a even a blip on anyone's attack map - even if we're invaded by Alabama. I just hope Oak Ridge, which is about 100 miles away, still isn't a target!

(http://www.amse.org/images/Programs1.jpg)

With gas, air fares, and travel so expensive now days I was considering a little trip to Ohio. Maybe a side trip to Kentucky could be a one day detour if we decided on a driving trip this year in that general direction.



Yea, Tennessee sounds good. Was also thinking about the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas.

Yea, that's at the other end of the state from here over in hill country, I'm down deep in swamp land ... think Southern Comfort. LOL

(http://www.mudphotos.com/new/media/prodrive/photos/reel/photos/photo29.jpg)

Does it get humid?

In the case of an apocalypse, I would first find William Shatner, and add him to my party.

In the event of a threat (ie, zombies, looters, big-tittied freaks in Jason masks driving nitro-fueled trucks and demanding my "juice"), I would simply have The Shat sing.

At the first lurching strains of "Mr. Tambourine Man," the undead would flee, the lawless would cower and drop their weapons.  The weaker among them would simply die, and then I'd take their stuff.

The non-hearing threats would be cowed by his bloated-ness, and by his great Toupee.

Any of you surviving would hear The Shat and would say, "hey, Zap made it through!  We can band together!" and then if we just found a hydroelectric source of power and a DVD player, and a food source, we'd be all set.  =)


Seriously, though.

In an apocalypse, I'd try to join a stable group of people if I could.  Fortunately my skill set would be in demand, although medicine is harder to practice without good tools and at least some basic drugs.

It's a dry heat ...

See how that photo gets hazy in to the background? The humidity here is about pretty thick. My family that comes to visit from Arizona about die when come here. The humidity right now as I type this is 92% and it's not summer yet. Actually I love it, it doesn't bother me, but some folks can take it.


Big tittied freaks are not a threat in my world. LOL

There are several 'back-to-nature' hippy communities around here that live waaay back in the hills, where the folks basically live in tents, yurts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yurt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yurt), and cabins. They grow organic vegetables, raise goats, and make organic moonshine. I've met many of these folks and they're really nice people - so I'll throw my lot in with them.

With my worldly ways maybe I could even be the Post-Apocalyptic King of the Hippies!



P.S. Bwaa Haa Haa Haa!

The problem with these post-apocalyptic movies is that they always seem to miss at least a few points of reality here and there, such as how long technology lasts without maintenance and what kinds of basic products and services would be in short supply. Let's work with the initial premise.


If space aliens had conquered our planet, the obvious thing to do would be to leech off of their civilization while attempting to rebuild ours. Extraterrestrial invasion being a good bit more unlikely than any of the other kinds of disasters for a good many reasons (i.e. we don't even know whether any extraterrestrials exist, or how they'd manage to get across the enormous distances between their solar system and ours) let's presume the virus scenario, which would probably play out something like the Black Death in medieval Europe except with a higher mortality rate. Such a scenario, though improbable, is at least plausible in view of drug-resistant "superbugs" and the fact that we have seen such plagues in some places in the past. At the same time, it's likely at least a few people would have some immunity or develop it, so there would definitely be survivors.


My own survival would tend to depend on finding other survivors to help rebuild civilization, so I probably would go looking. At the same time, I'd be seeking out the most defensible structures, both in hopes of living in them myself in the long term and because this would improve my chances of finding and recruiting other survivors out doing the same thing.


Since I live in the country at present, I probably would stay put in the short term; my house is fairly defensible against the odd lone wolf bandit and we country folks do have some supplies stored away for just this kind of emergency. In the long term, though, my house probably wouldn't be quite as defensible against large bands of marauding bandits, so I'd be seeking out a better position.

The city, for its part, would be best to avoid: most of the marauding bands would probably get their start there, since our cities are already infested with predatory street gangs. The only reason I would go to the city would be to seek for salvage in the ruins, and only if the plague had hit the cities hard enough to leave virtually no survivors.


My family and I already have a good store of food and weapons in our emergency supplies, so obviously I'd be able to live a good while without gathering anything. However, I'd probably be out gathering various perishable hygienic products from the other various abandoned structures around me, since no one's going to be making any more of them for a while. (Shampoo and deodorant would increasingly be considered luxury items.) The same is true of a great many other common objects I'd be gathering, such as office supplies, contraceptives, cookware, and cutlery. As for building things, I wouldn't be doing that until much later; there should be plenty of abandoned structures available for my use in the short term.


Since I live out in horse country, the obvious way to avoid some of these problems would be to save my gasoline for the generator in my home and go out on horseback instead. (My family and I don't own any horses or ranch land, but our hypothetically soon-to-be-deceased neighbors do.) I might drive a car or truck in the early stages while out scavenging goods, but live transportation is better for the long term; with civilization gone to seed, the supply of gasoline would be in sharp decline, whereas the biomass that serves as horse fuel (among other things) could only be increasing.


If necessary, I might stay overnight in one of the abandoned structures I'd have all around me, but I probably wouldn't be out on the road any more than I absolutely had to.


The city I would avoid altogether, as mentioned earlier. As for dealing with other survivors, I would always be trying to see them before they see me; first strike capacity is always good to have when dealing with the unknown. Of course, if they're potentially beneficial to me in any way (i.e. have something to trade or might be willing to join forces with me), I'd hail them from a safe distance. One thing I would certainly do soon after the plague blew through would be to go look up every old acquaintance in the area to see if any of them have survived, since these would be the most likely candidates for setting up a new civilization with me and there is a certain safety in numbers when one is out scavenging for goods.


Canned supplies and my family's personal cache of food would last a good long time in the short term, but for the long term I'd probably be busy gathering whatever food could be gotten in whatever way. Hunting and handling the meat are indeed complicated tasks, but some of my fellow survivors would surely know how to do these things, being rural as we are, and the population of game to be hunted would be surging even more than it already is in lieu of our civilization's extermination of most of the natural predators and the plague's extermination of most of us. The only real difficulty would lie in finding enough containers and storage space for all the food; I'd also have to brush up my cooking skills, which are a bit rusty at present.


My father is a major bibliophile, so my family and I have pretty much got a library of our own already. In fact, we've got more books than we can handle at present. I might well raid some of the local libraries for any good books we don't already have while out scavenging, but that certainly wouldn't be a very high priority on my to-do list. If anything, I'd probably be looking for ways to dispose of some of our books!

Fortunately, an efficient solution is ready at hand: my home has a wood-burning stove and not much wood to put in it. Some of the most worthless books we have are also some of the thickest and largest, so come Winter, into the fire they go. Before we even get to those, however, we've got reams and reams of Dad's worthless documents from the office (which should be even more worthless after civilization collapses). They'll be very useful for kindling and feeding the fire as well. If we ever start running short of kindling, well, those libraries will still have plenty of worthless books in them after all the good ones are taken.


We already have several pet dogs; after the plague, I might not have a hard enough heart to go killing them off, but I certainly wouldn't let them breed anymore. I might keep one of our watchdogs for security purposes, however, or possibly find a more aggressive breed of dog to be my traveling companion and serve as a little extra security when I'm out on scavenging runs. Herding dogs will probably be in demand as well with all the livestock out here, as will any pet that can do anything useful.

Cats probably won't be as much in demand, but most of them will probably go feral and live off the land anyway, so we won't have to do much with them. (We might keep a few on hand to keep down a burgeoning rodent population, however.) How well our domesticated animals will do in the aftermath of a plague depends on whether any of them are susceptible to the plague, and what their deceased masters did with them while still alive; there might be packs of vicious dogs out roaming the streets in addition to those other marauders. We survivors might also run across the grizzly sight of pets living off of their former masters' corpses while we're out scavenging.


My personal moral code would be much like that of the Old Testament patriarchs: that while might may not always make right, you'd best acquire some might of your own, or else seek the favor of the mighty. (Father Abraham had God's special favor; realistically, God probably won't grant very many of even the most faithful among us the same protections.) Asocial as I am, I would still be seeking the comforts of safety in numbers and authority in banding together with other survivors. If my girlfriend still happened to be alive, I'd definitely be getting married to her, and if not, I'd be seeking out a wife from among the surviving women.

Certainly the old rules and laws would be--for the most part--swept away: no more income taxes, compulsory schooling laws, zoning ordinances, copyrights, and other noisome regulations from no-longer-existing government bureaucracies need apply. At the same time, however, new rules and regulations would replace the old ones as survivors band together. While no one would take the state's age-of-consent laws half so seriously as they do today, for instance, survivors would doubtless enforce their own customized versions of these laws with their shotguns.

(Of course, as demonstrated by the children in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, these laws would still be a lot laxer. On the other hand, anyone who lives to see puberty in a post-apocalyptic world would have to be at least as mature and independent as anyone who's lived to the age of consent these days. In other words, that thirteen-year-old gal with the shotgun might be willing to put out for you, but not until you bring her a ring and sign a wedding contract she drew up for herself with a little help from her tribe's minister. The stepfather her tribe assigned to her will probably have something to say on the subject too.)


Well, if I were really THAT much alone, I'd probably enjoy going around vandalizing buildings that used to house certain elements of society that really ticked me off back in the old civilized days, i.e. "testing" a Molotov Cocktail on the former headquarters of the city's main "news" rag and using a now-deserted Planned Parenthood office for target practice with a scavenged bazooka. ("Ha ha ha! I'm free to choose gun rights! See you in Hell, Patricia Ireland!") Society's done enough evil in my time that I certainly wouldn't miss such a golden opportunity to have a big laugh over its demise.

Again, though, if even one tenth of one percent of the population were to survive this plague, I wouldn't be going to the city in the first place.

Inyarear, I give you karma for how seriously you obviously thought that out, If a disease does wipe out humanity, and you live through that portion of it, it looks like you'll do all right.

Those are both some pretty big ifs, but I thank you.

What would everyone do for water? The pipes will no longer work. Bottled water will be scarce. not everyone has access to or knows how to dig a well - digging a well is dangerous.

Back in the day people got all kinds of diseases and sicknesses from drinking river water.

We have the water problem licked. There are three springs on the property - and they're full of watercress, salamanders, and crawdads for snacking, too.

My family's got a water purifying filtering device, and if that ever gave out, I could still always try boiling the stuff furiously the way people did in the old days. Yeah, our ancestors did suffer a lot from all the nasty stuff that's in the water, but that was mostly because they didn't know it was there. Once they found out about germs, they started boiling the water to cleanse it. Drinking only rainwater might help lower one's chances of getting diseases too, although a few airborne pathogens might get into that stuff. (Pollution gets into it too, but that would of course be less of a problem with most of the population dead.)

Well to collect a sufficient amount of rainwater for drinking or hygeine you'd have to get rain barrels and then you're getting into a whole new ballgame of learning how to collect and store water properly..lol

I figure what's left of the population will probably die off from either stupidity or ignorance (being that we really have no real survival skills).  Look at those folks on Survivor, they have lots of fish and resources on those islands but they rely on the show to provide them with freshwater and rice in order to keep from looking like some of the castaways in the earlier seasons who were emaciated. It's sort of ironic that our survival skills got us this far and yet if we were without our technology and supermarkets our civilization would die off so damn fast..

Susan, believe me that there are a number of people I have met over the years who could probably survive in almost any situation if it was physically possible.  They are out there.  Some of my skills are a bit rusty, but I remember that many things are possible - just not always the specifics.  They'd come back with some trying.  The key would be if I had the time for the limited trial and error I'd need.  You don't always get that in extreme conditions.

Also, humans learn quite well from "monkey see, monkey do."  All you need is one person who knows something (or figures it out) for everyone to learn it.

I have doubts that many of the people you see on "Survivor" have much experience actually surviving.  They also seem to get distracted from certain tasks, like establishing snares, nets, or traps, building shelters, or exploring for alternative food sources or shelter by the challenges that they have to do for the show.

Lots of people these days are quite squeamish about what they eat, but there are a lot of plants and animals that are edible if the person gets past the "I can't eat that" factor. 

Yeah, Survivor is a pretty stupid show anyway; as with so many other "reality" shows, there isn't much that's realistic about it. A realistic survival show would probably be some kind of backwoods militia infomercial on the local public access station that nobody watches.

Part of what's nice about the particular scenario involving surviving a plague is how much room it would generally leave for trial and error of the kind Andrew mentions. When civilizations collapse, nature reclaims every place civilization is no longer maintaining. Hence, the forests of Europe expanded quite a bit after Rome collapsed, and wild animal populations exploded after the Black Death wiped out so many of the Europeans in the Middle Ages. This resurgence of nature usually brings a surplus of food and biomass that's beneficial to the survivors, though not always: the Sahara Desert currently covers most of what used to be Rome's Carthaginian bread basket, the sand dunes being the form of nature that was expanding the most there at the time.

In our civilization's case, modern technology has killed off all but a very few predators; the deer population in the USA is already exploding right here in the middle of civilization, leading to numerous automobile accidents involving deer where I live. Imagine what the deer population would do if there were fewer people driving cars around to cull the herd! Survivors would almost have a moral duty to go around shooting the deer until their predators could make a long overdue comeback, since the deer's numbers would soon be so numerous that the forests would be overgrazed and they would be in danger of starving.  The only downside to this for humans would be that we'd have to do something about the gamey taste of the meat while we're learning to preserve it. Still, as Andrew says, that taste might not bother us so much when we're hungry enough for the meat.

For all the dangers of the resurgent wilderness, the greatest danger most of us would face in any post-apocalyptic scenario would still be coming from our fellow survivors. As noted in the earliest chapters of the Bible and confirmed even by the likes of hardened skeptics such as Hobbes, we're all inherently evil and civilization is an all-too-fragile veneer of authority that just barely manages to restrain our worst impulses enough that we don't die out. As death camps and other organized persecutions demonstrate, civilization quite often merely serves to refine our worst impulses and make us more efficient murderers anyway. In a post-apocalyptic scenario, we'd be back to being the individually atrocious predators we were before we got civilized.

Among the greatest benefits of a plague over all other apocalyptic scenarios, in other words, is that it wouldn't leave quite so many of our fellow ravening beasts alive to prey upon us. Other scenarios that kill massive numbers of people, such as nuclear war, would tend to wipe out our resources along with them. The worst scenarios for us all would be the ones that strip away our civilization and its resources but leave most people alive, such as an E-bomb attack; what would determine our individual survival in this case would be how ruthless and efficient we could be in dealing with our fellow survivors with most of them now turned into our enemies.

An E-bomb attack, in case you haven't heard of it, works this way: if Iran or North Korea were to detonate a reasonably large nuclear weapon high above the middle of the U.S. instead of down in one of our cities, the massive electromagnetic pulse this would produce (yes, something like the weapon Neo and Trinity were shown using in The Matrix) would destroy most of our electronic appliances within an enormous radius possibly covering parts of Canada and Mexico as well. Computers being complex and particularly sensitive to such bursts, our internet would be hit particularly hard. The only surviving electronic equipment, in fact, would be stuff that happened to be sufficiently shielded by metallic walls or fences acting as Faraday cages.

Aside from a few luckless people dying from having their pacemakers fried, most of us would survive the pulse. I can't be very optimistic about how well our civilization would hold up with so much of its machinery broken, however. I'm not so sure how well I'd fare against my fellow survivors either. Still, that's one reason my family keeps guns and ammunition among our emergency supplies: we need a fighting chance. That's also a good reason to keep guns even if you're not some radical libertarian or activist for the NRA and you don't live in a high-crime neighborhood. You'll probably keep them tucked away much as we do and hope this kind of thing never happens, but just in case...

Funny you mentioned reality shows as I just finish over 300+ minutes of FRONTIER HOUSE which showed on PBS. Later I'll be doing a post on this series. I'll just mention that they put 3 families back in 1880's Montana for 5 months. They had to build their own shelters, grow food, live stock, etc. It's a pretty good example of how far we have come from our basic survival skills.


Without God we only follow our own impulses. Unfortunately many times people also follow their own impulse under the supposed name of God.


That has always fascinated me. The Sahara Desert once being green. Though this isn't the cause of that North African phenomenon another thing to consider is a polar shift happening in the future.


Been watching the quite developement of the E-Bomb for about 10 years now. It would be amazing to see what happened in the cause of such a weapon being used on a world-wide scale even though in may only be used regionally. One bomb would fry all electronics for a thousand miles with all people and buildings remaining intact. As you mentioned above I think gunpowder would rule the day after that.

Another senario is a world goverment creating a mind control machine. A machine that would eliminate your own thoughts. (not that it isn't being done already.) . How would you defend against this besides wearing a tin foil cap.  :smile:

We already have very effective microwave and sonic weapons that aren't being talked about much by anyone in the news.

 

It's not just a matter of our attenuated survival skills: a lot of our civilization's infrastructure is laid out in a way that only works well with modern conveniences. Take away the cars (or the gasoline--it'll probably be going up to $10 a gallon soon), and suburbs become a difficult place to live and do business. If we run out of ground water or the capacity to drill for it, Las Vegas, Tucson, and Phoenix are all going to be depopulated rapidly and we'll have millions of refugees headed quite literally for greener pastures. Cut off the electricity, and our skyscrapers in the city can't be inhabited: without air conditioning, they heat up to unbearable levels even during the winter. Our conveniences are no longer merely nice things to have, but necessities for the survival of many.


Faith is another important matter: God restrains our impulses only when we actually believe what He says and act accordingly. Today's vague spirituality leaves people little else but the name of God, and--as Nietzsche noticed in his time--when people no longer worship God in substance, all that remains for them is to cross out the name, since a mere name certainly won't restrain them from indulging in any of their worst impulses.

Then too, God being quite real, we do well to pay a bit of attention to those passages in Scripture that speak of God's judgments and punishments, since we can expect to see at least some of them visited on our own countries in the times to come.


If such a shift were to take place, chances are it would be relatively gradual by our standards, and therefore not much of a factor in an apocalypse. Still, just as global cooling had the Vikings packing up and leaving Greenland, such shifts might contribute to the waning of our own civilization. California, in particular, has had an unusually temperate climate this last century or so. Most of our data from past centuries suggests this condition is an anomaly and will not last, so we Americans had probably better start growing our fresh fruit somewhere else soon.


We do have more sophisticated weapons in development that are designed to be E-bombs, but nuclear weapons are already effective this way for someone looking to destroy the entire nation. The reason this problem never came under much consideration before is that back during the Cold War, we would all have been too busy being smashed into subatomic particles in a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union to be worried about the effects of the electromagnetic pulses on our appliances. When a rogue regime such as North Korea doesn't have enough nukes to destroy everybody on the ground, however, exploding the nuke much higher up and wiping out our electronics instead becomes much more worthwhile.


We already have those; they're called public schools. Good luck blocking out THOSE mind rays!


They've had successful test runs anyway, yes. These more sophisticated weapons are useful to us for our wiping out our enemies and their equipment in precision strikes. The cruder weapons of yesteryear are more useful to our enemies for terrorizing whole populations.

Oil can cause Apocalyptic social crisis with our current populations. Here's a news report.

http://green.yahoo.com/news/ap/20080524/ap_on_re_us/environmental_survivalists.html (http://green.yahoo.com/news/ap/20080524/ap_on_re_us/environmental_survivalists.html)

I found this to be a very realistic scenario....!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3s1WLOzmPM

 (I happen to have a copy of that old HORROR MONSTERS mag the kid was reading!  :bouncegiggle:)

Actually....this really IS what might happen....chaos....starvation...cannaibalism! YIKES!!!

 

OOH! THE FALLOUT!

All of our Leggo houses destroyed!

Of course, the problem with them eating that first guy is an hour later they'll be hungry again . . .

Thank you, ladies and germs! I'll be appearing here all week!

HAHAHAHAH!  :bouncegiggle:

That one gets the Last Man Laffing Prize!

(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l79/RCMerchant/LAUGHING-VINNIE.gif)

The best way to survive is to keep to yourself.  If your immediate family has survived too, then you won't be starved for company.  But larger groups tend to have the most brutal person take charge and  beat the others into submission.  I look around me now and I see that it wouldn't take much for the predator instinct to take over some people.

So I would head away from where larger numbers of people are grouped.  In a plague situation, there wouldn't be many left anyway, so that semil-solitude wouldn't be a problem.

As for wildlife, I'd be concerned more about domestic pets going feral and preying on me than the actual Aussie wildlife.  Kangaroos are pretty harmless and generally head the other way if they see you coming.  Snakes and spiders and such kill you even without a disaster scenario happening. And I don't think I'd be in mortal danger of a possum  *lol*