When I talk to people about my fascination of all things zombie or zombie-related, I often neglect to mention that what I really mean is how fascinated I am with human beings and their response(s) to any situation they either put themselves in or get put into through disasters and the like. As I like to say to anyone who will listen and even a few who won't, every time you see the word "zombie" think "ill-prepared suburbanite" and the context will instantaneously become that much more frightening. Why? Well that's the easy part actually: zombies don't fucking exist!
But, you neighbor, who goes from his air-conditioned house (that he can't afford the ARM adjusting payments on) in his air-conditioned leased BMW (see "house" above) to his air-conditioned office where he downloads pornography and sports scores all day while intermittently typing numbers into a spreadsheet that no one will ever use DOES exist. And, he doesn't just exist, he's real and he's real fucking angry when he can't get his Marlboro's and Natty Light from the 7-11 before the "big game" starts. Imagine how he'll be when the real shit hits the fan, that is beyond minor inconvenience to severe deprivation. Sure, why worry though, he's a good Christian/Jewish/Muslim/Buddhist man, right?
Maybe. But are you going to rely upon the thin layer of humanity and civility that invented color photography and the flame thrower prior to WW2? "Hey, there's someone over there that I really want to set on fire, but I don't want to have to get that close...hey, Bob, did you get that shot? The orange in the fire ball as it cooks this guy alive is really spectacular!" (RIP George Carlin)
My point is that preparedness is its own reward. Get educated. Get healthy. Learn a trade. If you already know one, learn another that is completely or even somewhat alternatively related. If you are able, legally and otherwise, buy a gun and learn how to use it for self-defense. Having a $2,000 Bushmaster AR-15 with laser sighting and night optics on it won't help you at all if you've never fired the thing in the dark! LOL WUT?!? In fact, you're actually more of a threat dead than if you had just died unarmed because now I have to also deal with the SOB that has your fancy rifle and can probably use it. If you own it, use it and use it regularly. That $40 a month gym membership that your chubby ass ain't using could be better spent on 2 hours of range time (which you should be biking or walking to,) 200 rounds of your favorite pistol ammo, 5 pounds of rice, 5 pounds of beans, and 6 10 oz cans of chicken or tuna.
You take your average urbanite or suburbanite and get him excessively cold, wet, tired, hungry and/or thirsty and take away his television, beer, drugs, and other pacifiers, and you will soon seen the savage within. It is like peeling the skin of an onion—remove a couple of layers and it gets very smelly.
Here is a mental exercise: Put yourself in the mind set of Mr. Joe Sixpack, Suburbanite. (Visualize him in or near a big city near where you live.) He is unprepared. He has less than one week’s food on hand, he has a 12 gauge pump action shotgun that he hasn’t fired in years, and just half a tank of gas in his minivan and maybe a gallon or two in a can that he keeps on hand for his lawn mower. Then TEOTWAWKI hits (the end of the world as we know it, Thanks Michael Stipe!) The power grid is down, his job is history, the toilet doesn't flush, and water no longer magically comes cascading from the tap. There are riots beginning in his city. The local service stations have run out of gas. The banks have closed. Now he is suddenly desperate. Where will he go? What will he do?
Odds are, Joe will think: “I’ve gotta go find a vacation cabin somewhere, up in the mountains, where some rich dude only goes a few weeks out of each year.” So vacation destinations like Lake Tahoe, Lake Arrowhead, and Squaw Valley, California; Prescott and Sedona, Arizona; Hot Springs, Arkansas; Vail and Steamboat Springs, Colorado; and the other various rural ski, spa, Great Lakes, and coastal resort areas will get swarmed. Or, he will think: “I’ve got to go to where they grow food.” So places like the Imperial Valley, the Willamette Valley, and the Red River Valley will similarly get overrun.
There will be so many desperate Joe Sixpacks arriving all at once that these areas will degenerate into free-fire zones. It will be an intensely ugly situation and will not be safe for anyone. In some places the locals may be so vastly outnumbered that they won’t survive. But some of the Joe Sixpacks will survive, and then the more ruthless among them will begin to fight amongst themselves for the few remaining resources. They will form ad hoc gangs of perhaps 6 to 30 people. Once the Golden Horde has been thinned (and honed to ferocity) and they’ve cleaned out an area, the thugs at the pinnacle of ruthlessness will comprise the most formidable rover packs imaginable. They will move on to an adjoining region, and then another. But the inverse square law will work in your favor: Imagine that you take a jar of marbles turn it upside down on a wooden floor and then lift the jar suddenly upward. The marbles will spread out semi-randomly. But the farther from the mouth of the jar, the lighter the density of marbles.
Hence, the rover packs will attenuate themselves into a huge rural expanse that is peopled with well-armed country folks. By the time the looters work their way out 150 miles from the big cities, they will be thinned out considerably. The rover pack is your primary threat in a total collapse, no matter how remote your retreat. Here are your potential adversaries: A squad to company size force (12 to 60 individuals), highly mobile, moderately well armed with a motley assortment of weapons and vehicles, and imbued with absolute ruthlessness. Be prepared.
Put succinctly: Power - water - food distribution - law and order - arson fires - full scale looting
Yeah! That makes me want to get up and go to work to support a bailout for billionaires!
