Out of Pod Experience

Alright, so my pc is down for a few days while it's getting a overhaul, which has left me with a laptop to do any computer related activities on. It doesn't have many games on it so I decided to visit one of my now favorite comedy websites last night.
I was perusing through their videos and they had one particular that caught my interest. It was brought up that everybody out there has a zombie survival guide, but nobody ever mentions a guide for any other apocalypse. I was like 'that's an excellent point' so I thought I would present this issue to the members of OOPE and stea......get their ideas on what they would do. But now that I've slept on it I have an even better idea, we're going to play Armageddon Roulette.

The rules are simple, below will be a list of different Armageddon scenarios. Each scenario will have a brief description. Now you, the players, will roll a dice (or use this link if you aren't a geek like me) and give us a brief description of what you would expect to see in this scenario and what your plan would be to survive in it. You can roll as many times as you like or you could just do them all if you are ambitious enough.

Scenarios:

1. Nuclear Holocaust - The day has finally come. Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed and decided they are just going to **** everyone's world up today. The bombs have fallen. Cities are either wrecked shells or giant craters. The threat of a nuclear winter is upon us. You won't get to see that blockbuster hit now.

2. Ice Age - This is the Day after Tomorrow type of Ice Age, where one minute you are on your back porch enjoying the sun and then the weathers all like Bam ************! Everything is frozen instataniously; buildings, cars, people.... You aren't sure exactly what the extent of the damage really is.

3. Four Horsemen - The world is turning into a giant desert. Each year more crops dry up and more livestock die off. Food becomes scarce. Disease starts to hit populated area's like the plague it is. Territories start declaring wars to control the few area's capable of sustaining life still. Your boss takes your last turkey on rye.

4. Leprechlamediastosis - A new disease appears and it spreads like a wild fire that just can not be contained. Skin is melting off, boils are bursting mucky fluid all over the place, delirium sets in. Victims wander around in incoherent sheer agony for over week before falling to the ground dead. It is not yet known if it is airborne but skin contact is pretty much a sure fire way to contract it. You appear to either be really lucky so far or you're one of the 10% who is naturally immune. What you do know is that your military is taking no chances and they are burning everything with fire.....

5. Rise of the Machine - That's right, the automated arms in the car factory have started rolling out HK's. The internet has taken on a life of its own and has decided to ban all humans from existence. Much like the nuclear holocaust above, you survived the initial onslaught and now you really are playing a game of thermal nuclear war against W.O.P.R. He feels nothing, nor does he hunger, or sleep. He calculates strategies based on predictions and he designs new ways to remove you from the planet. You shoot them down but they get rebuilt and keep coming.

6. George Carlin Special - One day the power turns off, it goes away. Anything that required an electrical charge no longer works. All attempts to bring it back have failed. Your flashlight, car, refrigerator, alarm clock.....all rendered useless. Oil refineries can no longer refine, sewage treatment plants no longer treat, water purification no longer purifies, and the prisons no longer hold inmates. You are back in the Dark Ages, now complete with guns. And unlike all of the other scenarios there has been no thinning of the numbers. You probably shouldn't take too much stock in law enforcement keeping watch, they will most likely be guarding their own family at this point.

Sorry, suffering flashbacks from listening to the audiobook of Larry Niven's Lucifer's Hammer.

Will need to give this a thought or two.

Only six options? Darn, I wanted an excuse to get out my d20. Anyway, rolled a six, so Carlin Special for me.

My faith in humanity is almost nomexistant, so I would expect total societal collapse within a month, groups of people fending for themselves at the expense of others, and general chaos (I could be proven wrong, but it's best to plan for the worst). With said possibility of sudden chaos, the best course of action would probably be to retreat into the woods and live like a hermit, which wouldn't be terribly difficult given the abundant wildlife in Minnesota.

My first course of action would be mostly dependant on the season, if it was winter or autumn, I would have to hole up in m house and gather supplies while waiting out the general chaos, and beginning to travel north once spring arrives. If the apocalypse occurs in spring or summer, then I would begin travelling as soon as possible, scavenging on the way while avoiding contact with others as much as possible.

Assuming I could make it my final destination at a deer hunting cabin, I would spend the rest of my days as a hermit, living off the land and becoming a wise yoda like figure, eventually becoming the enigmatic mentor for some young hero on a quest to restore power to the land/save his doomed hometown/insert generic post-apocalyptic rpg plotline here.

Going to cheat and do 6. George Carlin Special because we had just this situation with Hurricane Sandy last Fall. No electrical power, everything just collapses. Internet and TV is down, so you don't have information on what's going on from those sources. But you remember some preschooler toy of your kid's that had a cheap radio. Or an alarm clock radio you have. Tune into a radio station, there are probably some up. Maybe they have backup generators? Listen to what the non-disaster-trained DJs are saying. Realize that they're just repeating a bunch of rumors, hearsay, and exaggerations. Take it all with a grain of salt.

If you're in an urban area, start working on an evacuation plan. That is, unless you're an extremely aggressive and ruthless sociopathic arsehat who doesn't mind ignoring the line and cutting to the front and dumping people out of wheechairs to get what you want. Even then, there's probably somebody out there who's a more alpha aggressive **** than you are, whether he/she is male, female, rich or poor. (Here's my rough estimate on this: In a disaster, about 20% of people will take an "f*** you, I'm getting mine" attitude and cut your throat for a Snickers bar. They create a problem for everybody and make cooperation and reasonable sharing completely impossible. 60% semi-adapt psychologically and just soldier along, taking it minute by minute, with some complaining and whining. Maybe 20% of people "rise to the occasion" and become calm, positive, and helpful to each other). Unless you're extremely cold-blooded ruthless, have no shame at all, and skilled at aggressive/intimidating body language, you're going to want to get to a kinder and gentler area.

So check your vehicle's gas tank and estimate how many miles you can drive without a refill. Because there aren't going to be any refills. The pumps can't run without electricity. And you couldn't pay for the gas anyway, because the banking/electronic payment grid is down.

Now, get your road trip gear together. Water, food, blankets, towels, flashlights, batteries, lighters/matches, candles, your best utility knife, firearms and ammo, heavy coats, hats, a change of underwear and clothes for everyone. One or two small pans, a camp stove, fuel. Durable cups, bowls, forks and spoons. A bucket. A printed road atlas. Cell phones, a laptop, and your car charger (just in case electricity and communication do come back on). A hammer, screwdriver, adjustable wrench, and a pair of pliers. Instant coffee. (Coffee doesn't seem essential, but it is. Hot coffee in the morning will help keep the stressed out adults sane, and therefore functioning). Hopefully you have room in your vehicle for all that stuff, after you've loaded your passengers.

Get some sleep until about the first 3:00 AM after the power went down. By that time, most of the panicked crazies ought to be off of the road and worn-out at home. Load up your passengers. Stuff any empty spaces in the vehicle with as much more food, clothing and stove fuel as you can. Have a firearm or other weapon handy near your driver's seat. Who knows what might happen at the choke points out of town (the bridges and tunnels where I am). Not that it's likely that anybody would attack you. But people are under stress, the roads might be clogged and people aren't letting each other in to change lanes, so there might be intensified road rage lunacy. So just in case, you might need a deterent. Or in the worst case, you might even have to enforce your right of way.

Start driving toward your objective, which is a place you picked within your fuel range that: a) is agrarian, and hopefully has meat on the hoof around for a semi-extended food supply; and b) has nice people with moral consciences, such as religious people of any sect or denomination. Because you're going to have to rely on the kindness of strangers, and hope you can get accepted into a community that still kind of knows how to grow its own food. With luck, you'll find those 20% or so who are calm, positive and sensible, and willing to help each other out. Form a community with them, contribute your labor, resources, firepower and ideas, and see what happens.

That is, unless you're one of the 20% most ruthless and aggressive people. Then you can stay in the urban area and fight it out with the rest of your cohort, until there's nothing left to loot from the supermarkets. Which will probably be the very first day the looting starts, because the human hoarding reflex is mighty strong). Meanwhile, if you do have food, you can be taking your chances on when the drinking water supply becomes contaminated with invisible, odorless microbes. People have still been flushing toilets this whole time, after all.

The good news, though, is you don't have to call in to work. There's no way to phone in anyway. Derive satisfaction from the fact that your bosses right now are probably stressing about how many useless dollars they're losing per minute.

Anyway, have a nice day!

Yep, that's the advantage of rural or small town living. You've got nature resources and clean water around, plus community. But even here around NYC, where of Looking Out for #1 is the long-standing culture, maybe 1/5th of the people were real gems during the Sandy mess. In a smaller community, you'd probably have a higher percentage of actual human beings.