Because We Carry the Fire

Most cows will be gone in a year or less. The majority in 90 days. You have to think a out the millions of people who live in cities who are going to evacuate and eat or destroy everything in their wake. We have more people than food and when that production and delivery system grinds to a halt, that's it. It's war from that point forward until the population and the food supply hit an equilibrium. Both coasts are done. The smart move would be to blow the MS river bridges and focus on the strip between the river and the Rockies.

 

I have no doubt that you are on point but also consider that most city folk wouldn't know where to find a cow or what to do with it nor would they make it to the country before doing us country bumpkins the favor of dying. There technically is more food supply than people to feed but only when butchered or processed efficiently. Best bet would be to release those animals as quickly as possible so that they have a chance for survival when people stop feeding them. (there is a 30,000 cow dairy about an hour or two away from me that is next to another 10,000+/- head dairy).

I agree with your suggestion as to focusing on the plains. Wide open spaces fewer human bodies.

 

I don't know if I'd make a rush for the woods or wait it out in the city. Minnesota has a lot of land and lakes I could survive on (for however long that lasts) but I'm in the middle of the Twin Cities and getting out would be hell. There's pros and cons to both. Either way I'm well armed and can make weapons with simple means so I think I could defend myself now and in the future.

 

You could render the fat to make candles and soap too. Like Fight Club in survival mode.

 

As a deterrence my house exterior will be exclusively decorated with skulls, surrounded by a flaming moat loaded with fire-retardant sharks. How we can get the draw bridge to stop catching fire is anybody's guess.

 

Ah the annual hillbilly circlejerk. "If the staggering mountain of skills, knowledge and experience that I lack suddenly became useless, I'd win!"

Guys, you're adults. It's time to stop resenting that big city teacher who tried to teach you math that one time.

 

Agreed.

Because, he would be easy prey and delicious.

 

I'm imagining that, after the apocalypse, Brooklyn will become a place where the atisinal DIY movement will really blow up - twenty and thirtysomethings will be forced to abandon their dreams or high-ranking corporate jobs due to the collapse of society and the economy as we know it and will focus their attention on making their own jam, brewing their own beer, pickling their own vegetables, growing vegetables on their roof, raising chickens to gather their eggs, raising bees to make their own honey, and crafting their own cheese as well as sewing their own clothes, building their own furniture, making their own paper, and crafting their own all-organic personal hygiene products. I think I'll open up a store in Cobble Hill that sells Mason jars, quirky fabric, hops, and memorabilia from The Old Way like empty craft beer bottles and iPod Minis. It will do very well. I'll also consolidate my power by taking over the Park Slope Food Co-op, making the residents of the surrounding neighborhoods complete putty in my hands. My now-famous store, rise to power and fame, knowledge, and wit, will draw the attention of a strapping young gentlemen and we will fall in love and take over an abandoned townhouse in Brooklyn Heights, which we'll spend our free time renovating. I'll fill it with several stolen Picassos and Van Goghs from the Met. I'll adopt a few of the misplaced zoo animals - maybe a leopard and a lion - as guards and companions. They'll drop off half-eaten prey on my doormat as a sign of their love, and we'll be thankful for the break from our vegetarianism. Soon, our value as leaders of the community will be recognized and it will be unanimously decided that we should be Leaders of the New World Order and Brooklyn will rise again.

 

I like to pretend I'd be ok, but I would be raped and dead within a couple days for sure. I've got my shitty earthquake survival kit (basically just water, a flashlight, and socks. I had toilet paper, but I kept dipping into it whenever I ran out), no actual survival skills whatsoever, a pocket knife, and a very low pain threshold. Oh, and I sunburn really easily.

 

I'm taking dibs on the hippy commune that is now Brooklyn because they are all sitting ducks with no sort of defenses and a plethora of homemade jelly.

 

I like to eat animals, but I don't want to hurt them while they're all luvable and cuddly and shit. So, I'd stay home and do women's work with the women while the other men go out hunting. They'd come in from their extended hunting expedition with the kill for me and the women to dress, look at me, be like "Ha, look at you in that apron TJMax, you faggot!" I'd then say, "NTTAWWT if it were the case and all, but: I'm the faggot? I'm plowing your wives in between scrubbing floors and changing diapers, while you're out there in the bush horny, no one else around, what happens on the hunt stays on the..." Then they'll break down, "Shut up man, JUST SHUT UP!" and run away crying. Next hunt, I've got my pick of the pussy again.

tl;dr: Do women's work, get laid.

 

It will spawn a new sport called "Hipster Hunting."

 

The city will kill itself when the roads rot, collapse into the monstrous subway system and basically, but inevitably, implode.

 

This will become the mass grave for the hipsters. We can then collect all of the free shit and move along.

 

Whew, it's a good thing understanding subtlety won't be a valued skill after the apocalypse.

 

This is a subject I've thought about for a long time; I've always loved post apocalyptic stories (Mad Max, The Stand, The Road, Battletruck, etc.)
The number 1 luxury that I'd need is a vehicle. Car or boat. I'd loot a Snap-On truck and some auto parts stores, and with my mechanical skills, I could keep them running for a long time.
Something no one on this thread has mentioned is a seaside life. I don't live very far away from the ocean, so I'd get Li'l Bandit and my friends together, steal some diesel* speed boats and some jetskis and become pirates; think of the Smokers on "Waterworld."
The ocean has plenty of food in it, and because you can't just walk up to the fish like you could a cow, you would have less competition and less chance of depleting your resources. Hell, without commercial fisheries going, marine life would probably increase.
We would build a community on South Padre Island, and I'd live like a king in the penthouse suite of one of the hotels.

*Diesel, that way you can brew up your own fuel.

Oh, and about cannibalism: I would totally do that.

 

"Do you think that your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledger book? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground."

I thought this was the place to quote The Road. My bad?

"From daydreams on the road there was no walking. He plodded on. He could remember everything of her save her scent. Seated in a theater with her beside him leaning forward listening to the music. Gold scrollwork and sconces and the tall columnar folds of the drapes at either side of the stage. She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stockings through the thin stuff of her summer dress. Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned."

For the record, I'll just turn my annoying neighbors into jerky. They're soft, coddled. They'll never expect me and my drunk friends leaping from the darkness like salivating beasts brandishing machetes stolen from their own sheds. We can combine both of these threads into one epic bloodlust fantasy.

 

It would be totally retro, man. It would probably attract even more hipsters after it collapsed because of the ultra-retro coolness of it.