Apocalyst, Now

It is November, and I am forced to accept that Winter has gone from "looming" to "fast approaching". I have a half dozen huge, daunting projects that I have been doing constant battle with and am hoping to finish in the next 6 weeks or so. If I fail, these projects will very seriously impede my plans for surviving the dark months ahead. (Plans that include not much more than finding the perfect recipe for chai and watching the television series Lost in its entirety.)

In my battle-rummaging I came across what I believe to be the third draft of my “Apocalyst”. I would estimate this document was created during the Winter of 2006. It is, as the name suggests, a list of a wide variety of preparations to be made in order to better survive the potential apocalypse.

Highlights include:

• put solar panels on our house
• learn to turn the heel while knitting a sock
• learn bicycle maintenance
• canning (learn it and do it)
• research general butchery

All in all it is a fairly absurd list, and obviously most of it falls apart under much probing. For example, on this particular version of my list I have written a handful of sub-lists and points of attention revolving around ensuring that we would have ample ammunition for our various firearms, which is clearly a bad plan from the onset. Ammunition runs out, and at any rate I prefer close range combat in a fight. In my defense, this was before I realized that one of my long term goals in life is to be a master swordswoman (or as close as I can be in this time and place). 

Maybe my list is just my way of mourning the loss of a more practical collective knowledge. Despite what my bookshelf may have to say on the subject, I am no survivalist. I don't long for the apocalypse, but I do believe that humanity has grown soft and careless. And truth be told, I consider the chance of societal collapse to be so remote that discussing it seriously makes me feel a bit silly. However, I really don't want to be left for dead because I was too lazy to learn what amounts to ancient technology during my salad days. I don't know what's going to happen with this crew when the going gets rough, but somebody needs to know how to maintain a reasonable standard of hygiene without disposable everythings.

If I've learned anything from the Sims franchise, it is that it is very difficult to truly perfect more than a few skills. A person can spread their personal resources developing a broad arsenal of skills, but great things generally require great effort.


This is a difficult concept for me to absorb, as I generally am unable to resist any bit of process, method, or detail accidentally dropped in my path. For a long time I have had fiends such as Robert Heinlein giving me overly brilliant heroes. Unstoppable polymaths who spout things like “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.”

I haven't yet sorted out if my Apocalyst is simply an example of my yearning to reach this fictional ideal or a perfectly reasonable attitude for a positive but realistic homemaker. I don't know if spending an afternoon researching safe canning procedures would be an afternoon well spent, or if it is another in a long series of distractions from the business of getting things done.


This list was something I felt pretty strongly about, just after my daughter was born nearly 6 years ago. I truly felt that this list was a solid focal point for my mental and physical energies, so I feel like it should be incorporated into my training regiment somehow. I'm confident that I can spend a few hours developing a system of feats or ranks for future levels of Warrior Training, but that would be yet another pleasant distraction.

 

For now I will let the list rest, storing up potential energy for a time when I have the focus to devour the items on it wholly and completely. I may let the ideas bounce around for awhile until they mature into something a bit more useful. If, in the near future, my kids are running around a powerless, lawless landscape in ill fitted woolen socks, hopefully social convention will prevent them from being mocked too harshly.