Monday, November 22, 2010

Apocalypse Preparedness

This morning your neighbor hit some sort of animal with his car... but when he screeched to a stop in front of you, the body on the pavement was human. Emergency Services took hours to arrive; they're overwhelmed and understaffed. Too many of their people are out sick, or simply missing. Now your neighbor is missing, too.

In the city, people are vanishing by the hundreds - maybe by the thousands, nobody seems to be sure. The normal background hum of traffic is all but silent. Reports of strange happenings are all over the news: a funeral was interrupted when the deceased suddenly sat up and greeted her family; a window-washer was mauled by some sort of giant bird; a father went to wake his children and found himself already in there, helping them dress. Out in the country, the animals are acting strangely and people have glimpsed strange things in the fields and woodlots. The world hasn't ended yet, but there's no shortage of omens and portents.

What are you doing while all this is going on? Are you praying, panicking, packing? Do you gather supplies, or sit quietly at home and watch the news? Or are you at the missing neighbor's house, taking advantage of his home theater setup? Calling friends and family to see if they're okay? Gathering at your church (or synagogue, or mosque)? Do you go to work and wait nervously for things to go back to normal?

What do you do?

11 comments:

  1. Not attending any funerals, for one thing. Probably go to the grocery store and max out a credit card on non-perishables and fresh water. If there's time, also a trip to the hardware store for boards, nails, a chainsaw, and a lot of duct tape.

    Are there giant mechas walking around shooting at cars?

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  2. No Mechas. At least, not that you've seen so far.

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  3. I'd probably think nothing of it, putting it down to my meds not working. Bizarre stuff like that doesn't seem to phase me; I'd say to myself, "I know it's a hallucination, because something this wacked out ain't real" and then just kick back and enjoy the weirdness.

    I like to brag that people spend good money on drugs to see crap my brain naturally produces for free.

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  4. {g} That's a unique perspective, all right. Thanks for adding it.

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  5. I would probably be somewhat panicking in my head and packing to go somewhere, but where I don't know. Calling my family to see if they are ok or possessed by whatever is going on. This is very interesting. I'm interested to see how people answer.

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  6. I'd probably be freaking out and trying to figure out how to get out of the major metropolitan area in which I live. I don't know why, but it seems like whatever's going on in the woods is slightly less scary than whatever's going to be going on here with bad things in the woods and lots and lots and lots of people, some of them armed. But maybe that's just because I've read SM Stirling's Change series too many times.

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  7. I think my instinct would be to try to stay in my normal routine for as long as I could, because if something seriously weird (the end times, merging with another cosmic brane, whatever...) was happening, I'd feel happier trying to deal with it in familiar surroundings as far as possible.

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  8. I'd be inventorying: counting out how much food I had, making sure I had my passport handy, running the wash to make sure I had enough clean underwear. I like to think I'm better than those people who mob the grocery stores to stock up on canned food before the storm hits, so pride would prevent me from joining them. Meanwhile, obsessively checking facebook and twitter.

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  9. I'd be double- and triple-checking to see if my perception of reality was correct or if grad school had suddenly made me slip round the bend- then if I seemed to still be living in the real world which had suddenly gotten more surreal, I'd do the stock-car-with-gas-and-food-and-weapons thing and try to get over to my husband ASAP. Depending on the variety of Apocalypse, one might be able to survive- but I'm sure as hell not looking at it without him.

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  10. Thanks to everyone who answered this. I promise not to use the information for Eeeeevil... muwahaha.... er, ahem. Pardon that.

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  11. I think you may have just written the first act of a Stephen King novel.

    It particulary reminds me of the Mist. By the way, if you haven't seen the movie version of the Mist that seems like precisely the sort of thing you would love.

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