I used to play the apocalypse game with friends all the time. In 2020, the game lost a bit of its entertainment value due to…well, at times it seemed like it was no longer a game. The year 2021 brought with it the arctic snow-maggedon for Texas and neighboring states. All of a sudden, a game that used to be for kicks and giggles seems to be taking on a more practical purpose. You know, like, perhaps we should be preparing for these catastrophes.
In my neck of the woods, we got everything from hardcore preppers with mountain compounds to the more garden variety preppers with what we respectfully label “Mormon rooms” full of canned goods, bottled water, and buckets of grain. My household falls into the prepper spectrum somewhere around “sloppy cautious.” Our Mormon room is mostly canned jalapeños, salsa, and homemade wine. You know, the basics. But we got a bucket or two of grain, some beans of the black and green varieties, and I’m sure a jug or two of libations that aren’t fermented.
Would we survive the perfect apocalyptic storm? On a scale of 0 to 10 (with zero being certain death and 10 being king of the thunderdome), my family scores a middlin 5.
In case you’re interested in scoring yourself, here’s how the game works. First, devise the worst possible, hand-crafted apocalypse for your region. In my latest scenario, I went with a 7.6 earthquake hitting Boise, Idaho. (We had a 6.5 last year with an epicenter a few hours away.)
Next, you have to paint a quick picture of the results of this hand-crafted disaster. In my scenario, the earthquake results in the power grid going down and the Lucky Peak Damn giving way. This floods half of Boise and kills a few thousand instantly. Fires break out. Buildings collapse. Hoarding runs rampant. And since there are more guns than people in Idaho, and our state slogan is something like, “If you’re anything less than fifth generation Idahoan, you suck,” you can imagine the gunplay that ensues.
At this point in the game, you gotta assess your assets and liabilities in order to deduce your final score. The scoring categories are: 1.) practical skills 2.) survival stores 3.) food stores 4.) shelter 5.) preparedness 6.) connections
In practical skills, my family scores better than most. Between the wife and I, we know how to cook, how to farm/garden, how to build, how to fix stuff, and how to ferment booze. In the more immediate skills, I know how to not blow up or burn down my house while staying warm. And I’m a pretty good marksman.
As far as survival stores, we got garden tools, knives, and a couple of compound bows. Unfortunately, I’ve left all my guns back in Texas. As for food, well, we can eat jalapeños for months, and I’ve got enough bottles of red wine to keep the neighbors happy for a long while. (All the Nazarenes and Mormons just leaves more for me.) Our shelter scores us a bonus in this scenario. It’s a single family dwelling not made of brick. So in an earthquake, we come out pretty well. We have to shut off the gas, and we’ve got no power. But we’ve got mostly intact shelter. Our preparedness is mostly a negative, but I’ve got a friend or two with enough reserves and guns to bring my family along for the ride.
The end score: 5. As long as we don’t get swept up in the initial wave of fires and chaos, we have a decent chance of surviving the roving hordes of militarized rednecks due to the fact that I still speak enough of their language, and I can barter booze for bullets.
There you have it. What would your hand-crafted, regional disaster be? Escaped radioactive chimps? Zombie virus? Hurricane? Blizzard? EMP? Forest Fires? Killer bees? Covid-22? How do you score on the survival spectrum? After you’re done figuring all that, make sure you don’t forget to pour yourself a drink and spend some time being grateful for the time we’ve still got.
At the Desk This Week
Back into the groove this week. I’ve actually started doing some very early thinking about my next project, after wrapping up season 3 of The Green Ones. I’m not ready to talk about the next project yet. It’s still way too early, but I’m enjoying the mind mapping process so far.
I’m trying to find the sweet spot between my current projects, and where my mental space has been taking me over these last several months, while still being able to find an intersection with commercial fiction. In other words, I want to write for y’all. I want to write for myself. And I want to make money while I’m doing it. When I find the right intersection of those three things, I’ll know I’ve got a winner.
I’ve also gotten some good words done on The Green Ones. Episode Five is coming along well. I finished the action scene I was working on and have progressed the plot pretty close to the next big action scene. Hopefully I’ll get that one written next week.
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