“I’m beginning to think peace is something we made up to keep us from being satisfied with all this luscious chaos.” – Brian Andreus, the Story People
How prepared are you for the end of the world — an annihilating meteor shower, a nuclear blast from some developing country run by a lunatic, or the zombie apocalypse?
Not very prepared, is my answer, not very prepared at all. Partly it’s because the few shreds of optimism I keep close to my heart tell me not to believe bad things will happen, at least not on a catastrophic scale. I’m also too lazy to spend time and money amassing the things on those emergency checklists.
And even if I did get it together to gather those things, when the time came to use them, my batteries would probably be dead and my medicines expired — that’s just how “preparedness” has always gone for me.
There are people who embrace and excel at preparing for the worst. I heard one of them on NPR recently. He’s Sam Sheridan and he’s written a book called Disaster Diaries: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse.
Sheridan believes there are four things one ought to be prepared to do, once the bomb hits or the zombies strike. Building a fire “from scratch,” as in not even using flint, is the first; there are details about his technique in the book. Ensuring transportation is another post-apocalyptic skill. In Sheridan’s case, this involves knowing how to steal a car using a Craftsman 41584 screwdriver to pop the ignition casing off and start the car. (This only works on older cars, so there will be no joy-riding after the apocalypse…)
Knowledge of basic first aid and medical supplies will also be needed; Sheridan outlines those, as well. Lastly, mental health is going to be an issue, since everyone left will be suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD,) so he includes some tips on how to hold it together.
Basically, as Sheridan says, “It’d be a shame to survive the initial meteor, or whatever it is, and then not be able to start a fire.” (His techniques are also useful in the aftermath of a major storm, as being able to “camp out” in one’s home for a couple of weeks might come in handy.)
While all this sounds pretty good, I probably won’t buy Sheridan’s book. I know myself well enough to know that after the disaster dust settles, my eight pets and I are gonna’ be ill-equipped to make it, no matter how many fires we start without flint. We’re a high-maintenance bunch, sorely lacking in weapons, stored food and upper body strength; those “prepared” folks will always beat us to the punch.
One of my favorite Disney cartoons tells Aesop’s story about the ants and the grasshopper. (Google it, the 1934 version.) All summer long, while the ants toil, storing food and preparing for winter, the grasshopper plays his fiddle and dances and sings.
“Oh, the world owes me a livin’…” is his happy song.
Then, when winter hits, the hungry, frozen, nearly dead grasshopper barely manages to make his way to the ants’ door and, with his last bit of strength, knocks. The ants bring him in, feed him and warm him by the fire; then their queen appears.
“With ants, just those who work may stay, so take your fiddle…(big suspense-filled pause...) and play!” she says.
And, play that grasshopper does, singing, “I owe the world a livin’. I’ve been a fool a whole year long and now I’m singing a different song. You were right; I was wrong!”
In the world of grasshoppers and ants, I am not an ant. So, how to offer the ants something of enough value that they will let me in, as the winds howl and the zombies bang on the doors outside?
Mr. Clark does computer stuff for a living and he said what I need is a Chaos Monkey.
“Google it,” he said. “We use it at work; it’s very useful.”
It turns out Chaos Monkey is a tool Netflix “designed to cause failure so you can make a stronger cloud.” They go on to say, ““Failures happen and they inevitably happen when least desired or expected. We have found that the best defense against major unexpected failures is to fail often. By frequently causing failures, we force ourselves to be built in a way that is more resilient.”
Wait a minute! Doesn’t that sound like the grasshopper way of life? Failing often, yet seeking with each failure to be more resilient?
Apparently, Chaos Monkey is part of a “Simian Army” made up of services/Monkeys who live in the cloud and generate all kinds of failures. Janitor Monkey is also in this army. I’m much more interested in him, as his job is to “keep your environment tidy and your costs down.” That sounds like a Monkey a grasshopper could use to impress the ants.
The point is, Spring is no time to plan for gloom and doom. The daffodils are blooming; birds are building nests; and, my garden seedlings are looking very strong this year. While the world most certainly does not owe me a livin,’ there’s no reason I can’t sing and dance, as I find my grasshopper way.
Lorin Sinn-Clark is a writer for the Barrow Journal. She can be reached at lorin@barrowjournal.com
