Post Apocalypse Survival Guide: Food and Water
Posted: September 24, 2012 Filed under: misc, post apocalypse 6 Comments |
| Grabbing some neccessities! |
Food and Water
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| Well stocked survival shelter! |
The first problem with the most obvious plan is that everyone else will have thought of it, too. Wal Mart, Krogers and Target are going to be busier than they have been on any black Friday, and it’s not going to be polite shoppers respecting the one-to-a-customer and first-come-first-served rules. It’s going to be a bloodbath, and, if the Zero-day scenario we are thinking of involves infection or zombification or rage virus, the middle of a crowd of angry and possibly infected shoppers is the last place you want to be. Anyone else remember “The Day After” movie from 1983? This film followed a handful of people around Lawrence, Kansas just before, during and after the bombs drop. The one scene that sticks out in my mind as unintentionally hilarious was the part where people are frantically shopping at the local grocery store and the cashiers and baggers ringing up and bagging as fast as they could as people buy up all the batteries and Frankenberry. I don’t know about you, but if I was a teen age grocery bagger, I would tell Mr. Whipple to fuck himself and start looting the liquor aisle. When you see people trampling a store employee to death during a ‘Black Friday’ Christmas sale, it’s doubtful that they are going to patiently wait in line when they think bombs are going to start dropping.
Hopefully you have enough shit at home to can get you through the first few days or weeks and don’t even have to set foot in the stores on Zero day. I don’t think bottled water goes bad; buy a couple of cases RIGHT NOW and stash them somewhere where you won’t be tempted to deplete your chances of survival every time you come back thirsty from a jog or a bike ride. Maybe put up some canned food and other shit as well. And aren’t all Mormons supposed to keep a stash of emergency food at home? Mitt and his pals are going to be sitting pretty when zero-day happens.
OK, but what happens when the canned food runs out or those who have control of the existing stockpiles refuse to share? I suppose you could go all ‘Fallout 3’ on their asses and grab your hunting rifle and Pip boy and try to pick-em-off one by one — good luck with that idea. Here are some alternatives, presented in no particular order:
1) Gretel the Dog: I have a dog that has (no shit) killed about 100+ squirrels over the course of a couple of years. She’s a fast and fierce Chow/Retriever mix who, at 80 lbs, is all muscle. Her secret is that she will chase the squirrel into an isolated tree and then just bark at it with her really loud, hoarse bark and the squirrels (usually) lose their shit and decide to try to jump to another tree rather than just waiting the dog out. When they miss their jump because they are scared shitless over the strength and volume of her bark, she grabs them with the jaws of death and it is game over. One morning, the ‘squirrel killer’ joyfully practiced her deadly trade in full view of our neighbors who were trying to enjoy a brunch with some elderly relatives, so we decided to end the ‘dog versus squirrel’ gladiator show. Now we let the slow dog out first. The slow dog chases the squirrels away before killer can come out.
4) Canada Geese: They are all over the place. You can probably hunt them with your car if you don’t have a shotgun. We also get a few wild turkeys in my part of the state, although both the turkeys and the geese are MEAN. Some of the turkeys took out a dude who was jogging in the woods near my house. The turkeys flew at his face, claws extended, and he went down and broke his arm. Had this been a real post apocalyptic situation, he would have been coyote food in a few days.
5) Foraging: I know a couple of plants that are edible, but I don’t know how long I would live eating only boiled nettles, gooseberries, purslain, wild onions and cattails. In our foodless future, the national parks will probably be littered with the corpses of amature foragers who couldn’t tell the difference between morels and fly agaric. I’d suggest getting a good book with good illustrations, but I took one of these ‘natural food guides’ out on the trail and then looked at the mushrooms growing along the side of the path, carefully comparing them to the pictures and descriptions and still had no idea if the fungus I was looking at was going to be delicious with butter OR was going to kill me in less than 30 minutes if I ate it… so I went back home and opened a can of Cambell’s Cream of Mushroom soup.
6) Poor Man’s Lobster: I’m talking ‘Arthropods!’ Beetles, grasshoppers, crickets and similar bugs may be disgusting to you now, but just wait till you are hungry enough! True story: I once met a guy from South Africa who told me that he was really grossed out by the sight of people eating lobsters and shrimp… even though, back in the homeland, he and his family ate termites. I asked him why the shrimp and the lobster grossed him out, and he replied, “They look like bugs!” I replied that termites looked like bugs, too, and he aswered that he knew his disgust was illogical, but he had never seen anyone eat lobster or shrimp until he was in his late teens and old enough to travel, whereas he had been eating termites all his life… so termites were the bugs he was used to eating, whereas lobsters were just gross — especially when he saw them scuttling around in the tanks at the grocery store. How long will it take hungry Americans to look forward to a meal of beetles or grubs?
“One morning, the ‘squirrel killer’ joyfully practiced her deadly trade in full view of our neighbors who were trying to enjoy a brunch with some elderly relatives”
This image made me laugh out loud! Thanks from someone who has just rediscovered that he's a sick fuck.
I'll have to add a picture of the dog when I get home because she looks really cute… which makes the squirrel killing (which usually involves lots of shaking and screaming from the squirrel) all the more horrible. If Gretel the dog actually looked like a killer, it wouldn't seem so incongruous. Children see her and they just want to pet her… she looks like a big teddy bear… and she is just so fucking happy whenever she kills a squirrel or a woodchuck… although she usually doesn't want to put them down because I always take them away from her and chuck them into the swamp where (I hope) the racoons eat them. She usually looks disspointed when I throw the dead squirrel into the swamp, as if to say, “Hey… that was mine…” but once she kills it she has no idea how to eat it… she just carries it around.
Gotta love dogs. Especially cute ones named Gretel who are bloodthirsty killers! I just pictured elderly folk sitting there having eggs benedict and suddenly screaming at the sight of a dog mutilating a squirrel…heh heh.
It was probably made more comical by me chasing the dog around the yard in my bathrobe and she thought this was a very fun new game. I saw them inside, behind their picture window, and they did not look as if they found the show appetizing.
Updated to add picture of Gretel the Scourge of Squirrel-kind. She looks really fluffy (and has very soft, thick fur) but is all muscle under the fluff.
According to “Aquariums of Pyongyang” zero to eating bugs is a couple months. Korean zek crews would leave their work areas denuded of all animal life.