this is the apocalypse

While monitoring the ziploc bag situation in the area of the garage which hosts the storage shelving unit, I noted we are officially at a point where we can call that area inventory and by my count, we're about two toilet paper rolls, one deep freeze filled with deer meat, and a small arsenal away from being listed on a survivalist watch list and people saying that we were quiet and kept to ourselves.

This is not, I repeat, not a dream of mine, but at this point, it may be a future reality I have to deal with. Also noted:

1.) Ungodly number of zip ties.
2.) More hand and power tools than I think anyone not building their own secret bunker could possibly need.
3.) Two shovels, which only tells me that the future bunker digging is gonna be a bitch.
4.) Extra wood furniture in the attic, I suppose for the coming of nuclear winter?
5.) A disturbing number of AA and AAA batteries.
6.) A lifetime supply of scissors in more sizes than I thought existed.
7.) A toolbox that cannot be opened by any conventional means.
8.) A stunning variety of Cup O'Noodles (delicious) in both chicken (awesome), beef (not bad), and shrimp (an abomination unto God).
9.) Uncountable Ramen secreted in various places throughout the house (I don't know why an unopened package of Ramen was under my bed, and dude, I am not stupid enough to ask.)
10.) A giant stuffed animal who may or may not have shown up on Sesame Street.
11.) Box of unused yarn, horrific colors.

Put together....well, I don't know what this means. I just feel that under the circumstances, it should make me nervous because I'm going to be honest, not really a survivor myself. I'm of the weak who will perish during the survival of the fittest when I lose access to Amazon.com and DW and have a psychotic fit when AO3 breathes its last. I'm saying this won't end well for me.

Not only that--I can shoot. I'm from Texas, and what wasn't passed in my bloodstream was taught early on. I can shoot, but not well. I can hit something, but I can't guarantee what it will be or where, and the answer is as likely to be 'my own foot or some appendage' as anything. I can fish, but that assumes the fish are proactive about biting and the bait very, very still. And someone else is holding the fishing pole. I am strangely--almost surreally, to be honest--better with an actual longbow, which literally makes no sense to anyone living, except for the fact that the first time I tried it was with a hot guy watching and weirdly enough, I am that shallow. And I paid for that shit for days, since I didn't have my arm guard on right and oh my God, gritting my teeth through the pain in a fit of vanity was such a mistake.

Yet, I do not see a post-nuclear-fallout world that is going to need a lot of bowwomen, especially since my requirements will be "and send a hot male along with me for eyecandy purposes". I mean, by then, humanity will be so mutated, if I don't have a taste for face-tentacles and superfluous arms, well--I don't, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. I suppose if we can find a costume store that's survived, I could request he wear some kind of mask a la Phantom of the Opera, but if they don't have any in black, well, there goes that idea.

In other news, Dean the phone has been replaced and is being cared for and coddled beside me while I tell him he's a very, very good boy. Our love is pure.

Comments

[eponymousanon]

Growing up, but that ideal inventory including the freezer with wild meat was my childhood. Except replace deer with elk, ramen and cup o'noodle with surplus-bought MREs, and the arsenal was in a utility room safely locked away (though when I tell my friends I learned to shoot at age 9, and got my first pocket knife at 8, they give me the side-eye). I think I'd prefer a crossbow over a longbow, though, based on my affection for my Nerf bow as a child.

I kind of miss knowing that I could survive the zombie apocalypse (or the Big One, whichever came first).

[seperis]

...so I know who to email before the internet crashes!

[green_grrl]

I'm so big on survival, either. I'm pretty much hoping the nuclear blast just takes me right out. Because radiation fallout, nuclear winter, dudes with face tentacles, and eventually having to reinvent agriculture in a world with no sun and poisoned soil to avoid slow death by starvation? My survivalist kit would pretty much be a giant bottle of pills that mean sayonara, folks.

[seperis]

See, none of that looks fun to me either. I mean, I know food comes from dirt--I've seen it!--but the entire process is a mystery to me.

[nagasvoice]

*gentle cough* It's not entirely a mystery to me, but possibly I know a little too much for my own good. I know enough to bewail my ignorance. You can never learn everything, just a helluva lot, judging by the expert gardeners I know who have been growing things for 60 years. No kidding. Oh, and I'd be depressed about the practicalities where a younger, more ignorant person would just cheerfully wade into it, and probably do just fine.
Until the cabbage loopers showed up, of course...
Like everything else, a great deal of the growing green stuff will be location, location, location. While the well-planned retreat to the rocky crag on the cliff over the sea, adorned with beautifully-built masonry walls and turrets courtesy of some nutty deceased (ewww, all over the wall??) billionaire will be useful against the zombie hordes, you still have to spread out somewhere with actual dirt to grow any food. Sun helps too, which you won't get much of on that sea cliff, although I'd bet the mussels and clamming might be pretty good, and the artichokes love it, and every little bit helps. Um, gee, you only get artichokes in the spring. Hey, you can live on pickled artichokes all year! *beams happily*
But then you have the pests wiping out all that hard work digging things up and grubbing out weeds that will take over, and viruses and fungal blights are often beyond help, and then there's the varmints. (For which I think a bow-woman will be *extremely* useful, especially if she likes staying up all night. Besides, who doesn't mind coonskin caps after zombies ate all those poor vegetarians trying to peacefully till their celery and lettuce? And then the coyotes nearly got all the chickens, too.) You think farmers whine, but really, they really don't talk much about all the *other* things who love to eat the same crops we do. The cabbage family alone has enough pests to supply an unfussy eater's protein needs for months, emphasis on "not picky". And oh yes, of course you eat the silkworms from the boiled coccoons after you fed them all those mulberry leaves you picked fresh twice daily. Only thing those trees are good for. And where's all the water for it coming from?
Um, I could go on...
So, raiding collapsed WalMart stores for canned goods is maybe starting to sound pretty good?

[amireal]

Physically I'd never be able to keep up, hence my ability to make clothes and my plans to learn to tan leather. I can't catch it, but I can do stuff with it after!!! TAKE CARE OF ME AND I WILL TELL STORIES DAMNIT!

[seperis]

Oooh, well thought!

[zee]

♥ ____ ♥

*pokes the inside of your head, fascinated*

[seperis]

I worry about these things sometimes.

[zee]

But you worry in such an entertaining way.

[azurelunatic]

It sounds like an entirely reasonable Alaskan pantry.

(I don't know why shrimp cup o'needles exist.)

[seperis]

Shrimp cup o'noodles--there's jus tsomething wrong with that.

[ratcreature]

Does your inventory have a soap stockpile? "You should hoard some decent soap in the good times." was the one familial advice about black market trading when things go pear-shaped that was passed onto me, and apparently served well both post-WWI, in the inflationary crisis in the 1920s and in WWII and aftermath. Everybody needs soap for semi-comfortable life, yet fat is a commodity likely to be rationed for food eventually or becomes scarce, yet unlike food soap keeps well, and unlike precious metals and such you won't loose most of the value when forced to trade it (like once things are bad nobody is going to give you what you paid for your orient carpet or the family jewels no matter how valuable), you can trade with it in small units against other items, and you can stock up on it without bankrupting yourself.

[seperis]

...I am tempted to tell my mother about this, just to see what happens.

[ratcreature]

Well, at worst you end up with a shelf of soap, like my father kept. Though by the time he died it was much reduced, because he couldn't shop himself anymore, and when I shopped for him the last years I just didn't buy some bars of extra soap with every trip to the drug store, so slowly the existing soap was used up. We still had to distribute some measure of soap among us once he'd died...

[reginagiraffe]

Soap... and spices. Especially "hard" ones like peppercorns, whole nutmeg and seeds. And salt.