The Non-Dudebro's Guide to the Apocalypse

I grew up in school juuuust this side of the end of the cold war and developed an extremely specific phobia that eventually developed into a very strange special interest topic :D

ETA: Related, among my other skills I do have the basics of decon for people, soil and water down lmao.

 

re: nuclear disasters, this is pretty cool (and a lil rough, but still cool)

i, uh, used it a lot when i was living in grand forks, and was hella depressed, and hated north dakota, so i would plug in the biggest numbers it allowed and wipe ND off the map.
.....anyway

 

I remember being assigned really dreary nuclear war survivor dystopia fiction a lot in English class in the 80s -- anyone else get that? A constant diet of the stuff.

 

man, my english class was
1984, brave new world, ethan frome (NO), and.......something else. clearly i put a lot of work into it to have such a detailed memory.

the current english classes i'm working in are doing: part-time indian, raisin in the sun, & the odyssey so far

 

my english class is about doomed romances

Spoiler: so far

romeo and juliet, shakespeare in love, hunchback of notre dame, body heat, harold and maude, and cabaret

 

*de-lurks* apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stuff is really interesting to me, despite the fact that i fear that if the apocalypse were actually to occur i'd die right away--mostly b/c i doubt my own ability to be any good at survival.

skills: i'm pretty good at organizing things and i'm very good at making very detailed schedules (if not sticking to them myself). i also have experience working in a library, so if there were a library made up from books that were salvaged, i could potentially organize them. i could also probably keep track of who had what book.

my penmanship is also not terrible if i have enough time to write/am not rushed.

i'm also creatively inclined, so i'd be happy to learn how to make things, since if someone takes the time to show me how to do something and i do it enough times, i usually remember it. i'd also probably try to keep a log of each day if i could find a pen and paper.

....come to think of it i've made paper before, and i might be able to relearn how to do that (*puts on list of things to learn*)

kryptonite: paranoia about Things Going Wrong that might be made worse when i run out of meds, no sense of direction, sort of sensitive to light+loud noises, hard to wake up if i don't get enough sleep, some minor issues with texture

 

apocalypse librarian sounds like an awesome job.

 

Z FOR ZACHARIAH

Panorama programmes in what to do if a nuclear bomb drops

And When The Wind Blows on Channel 4 which I recognised as super depressing even as a kiddo.

 

So you guys all know by now how flaky I am with forum RP, but this all might be really cool to play as a kind of practice simulation thing?

Also shit lets all live in America

 

that would be fun!

 

I guess it's like the post-apocalyptic AU of Kintsugi In Space.

 

and kintsugi commune is realistic au

 

If we're gonna go for an apocalypse, I vote - sudden and complete crude oil depletion. Like, it just doesn't exist any more, no-one knows where it's gone. Most cars are suddenly obsolete, and those that can go without are more highly prized than gold. Eventually, the power will run out.

You'll find me raiding a pharmacy (Overwatch has ruined my spelling of that) with a light recurve bow and a quiver over one shoulder, and a giant-fuckoff back pack on the other (I went to a sports warehouse first, the instant I heard the news. Turns out a couple of old woodchopping axes are useful when you're not interested in the big guns.) If you're not gonna take my insulin and joint tape and you're willing to trade for the painkillers and bandages, then we be cool XD OH, and no Katniss jokes XD

(Where would we start? I assume while the fallout is still happening and we just gather together being relatively sane?) I'll like as not have one of those hiking sticks, since they're harder-wearing than my usual cane.

 

Oh man, like 80% of my dreams are apocalypse based. (I don't even class them as nightmares anymore because I've gotten used to it)

Nuclear war/nuclear apocalypse is a sort of horrific obsession for me. I can't tell you how many times I've watched Threads. Every house I go in to I do a quick check to see where the best place would be in case of a nuke attack. I've settled on the cupboard under the stairs for my current flat. I also have a hench Amazon wishlist entitled 'Bug Out Bag' which is rapidly approaching 90 items. If I ever win the lottery I'm building a bunker.

 

Some electricity sources would become obsolete in this situation, but not all, so I don't think a system wide failure immediate apocalypse is what would happen in such a situation. I live in an area that's absolutely over abundant in hydro and wind electric (hi hi Washington, why do you have so many dams). Solar and nuclear would likely ramp up to round it out. Cars would be obsolete but Spokane is the prefect size for getting around via bike (or horse, because people around here have plenty of those still), and it's surrounded by market produce farms, so we'd likely just adjust and adapt without much hiccup. Larger cities with bigger urban sprawl would have more problems in this I imagine. I foresee less apocalypse, and more a reduction in community sizes. People will exodus from cities that have to import everything (no more wide scale shipping, higher cost to import) and return to the pre 50's era agricultural lifestyle. More of an impact would be lack of natural gas heating (assuming methane is also gone) and lack of plastics production. We'd shift back to primarily glass and metal for most things. Hopefully we would continue researching better heat sources than coal because I would not want to see a return to that. We would likely see a resurgence in steam power.

People forget how recently in our history things like gas and plastic became a thing. It's so ever present and persistent in our lives we think a loss of it would doom humanity and over throw society. Really it would just cause a little hiccup while we sort out how to get back to business as usual. Hardly an apocalypse.

Now, hard mode scenario: changing climate has shifted and disrupted weather patterns globally. The last few years rain fall and snow pack has been waning. Suddenly global water shortage. Where are you this time?

 

Because there are so many rivers!

 

if i remember correctly before water was considered safe to drink people just drank beer. usable water has not always been a steadfast constant.

though in this situation it feels like it'd be very much "survival of the richest", the people who can afford water will be able to access water. or, on the other end i could see people from places like flint doing fine, because water shortage isn't really a new thing and they'd be able to adapt quicker.

 

You still need water to make beer. The alcohol is a sterilizing agent that'll get rid of some of the nasty bugs, making it a safer drink than untreated water. But if you do not have access to freshwater, then you're basically screwed.

 

But do we really need to dam all of them??? REALLY?

The problem with a large scale water shortage is not the individual impact of potable drinking water (though that would be there and it would suck). It would be the fact that everything living on earth needs water to survive. Everything. Including our livestock and produce. It's less an issue of "drink beer!" and more that of "Oh god, we have no hops for beer".

 

Soooo who's with me for a hostile takeover of a spring?