Life's little comforts (that I cannot live without)
I’ve been reading a lot of post-apocalyptic books lately (stay tuned for my upcoming reviews of The Eleventh Plague and Ashes, Ashes) and it’s really got me thinking about how well I would fair in a post-apocalyptic world. Assuming I even made it that far. I’d like to pretend that I’d be fine in a post-apocalyptic world. But the truth is, I think I would struggle with the apocalypse part and most likely not even make it to the post-apocalyptic part.
Recently I’ve been thrown into a lot of situations which have revealed my ability to deal with the unexpected, or rather, my inability.
Case 1: No power
If you recall, about 3 weeks ago I was thrust into a 3-day power outage. And I was completely lost. My phone wasn’t charged, my kindle was running low on power and forget about my computer. And then, of course, there was the whole lack of internet. And the cold water (I have no shame admitting that I went 2.5 days without a shower). It became very clear to me just how much I rely on power. I couldn’t cook, I couldn’t clean, I couldn’t do laundry, and, since most of my books are electronic, I couldn’t even read. Since I’m pretty sure the apocalypse usually wipes out power, I’d probably be struggling to keep myself from having a mental breakdown from the get-go.
Case 2: No bed
There comes a point in every apocalypse where you have to make the hard choice to leave your home. This decision came pretty quickly to Alex in Ashfall, but a bit more slowly to Lucy in Ashes, Ashes. I think I’d probably be more along the lines of Lucy. And one of the top reasons would be that I need a bed. I spent the past week and a half sleeping on an air mattress and I was MISERABLE. I couldn’t sleep, I was irritable, my head hurt, and that was better by far than sleeping on the ground, which seems to be a common post-apocalyptic sleeping situation. And then, of course, my home has my things, and this leads to the third point.
Case 3: Materialism
OK, I know this is super un-PC, but I have come to terms with the fact that I am 100% materialistic. When the boxes of my things finally arrived and I found myself in an apartment surrounded by my stuff, I felt much more at ease than I had prior to my things arriving. As awful as it makes me sound, I think I would be really upset having to leave behind everything I have to wander around a destroyed world.
Assuming I did make it out of the apocalypse and into the post-apocalyptic world, I’d probably be alright. I know how to start a fire and I will eat pretty much anything and I have a variety of survival skills. But those only really help me if I can get over the no power, no bed, and no personal items. So let’s keep our fingers crossed that there’s no apocalypse. Otherwise I might be in for a bit of trouble.
What about you? Do you think you could make it through the apocalypse? Would you be able to survive in a post-apocalyptic world?
