You’re preparing for the apocalypse all wrong

The first thing you need to do is consider which kinds of apocalypses you want to prepare for

The first thing you need to do is consider which kinds of apocalypses you want to prepare for

Even before the last two chaotic years (a pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the electricity crisis, petrol prices, and whatever is going on with lettuce), I have spent a lot of my life thinking about how to survive the end of civilisation as we know it.

There are a few reasons for this: it’s a popular topic for action films, post-apocalyptic video games are awesome, and I grew up in an apocalypse prepper bunker built into the side of a mountain. No, really: battlements, escape tunnels, bomb shelter; the works.

My dad’s uncle was a spy, which always seems to lead to families getting a bit weird about security, and the original family home burnt down in the Ash Wednesday bushfires, so dad wanted to build something secure (and he hadn’t met my mum yet, so there was no one to dissuade him).

Now that we’ve had a couple of years of preparing for the worst, I thought I might share some insights about what everyone gets wrong when it comes to prepping.

The first thing you need to do is consider which kinds of apocalypses you want to prepare for. War, nuclear winter, zombies, famine, flood, pestilence, sinkhole, long-term blackout, the collapse of civilisation, and anarchy have different requirements. Do you want to prepare for a long or short-term disruption to society?

American movies push the narrative that you need to hoard guns and canned goods for all occasions, but that’s not going to last you very long. Canned food doesn’t last forever, and a diet consisting solely of whichever animals you can hunt will eventually lead to scurvy.

Supermarket raid in Station Eleven.

No, if you’re trying to prepare for something that will last longer than a few weeks, you need to go back to classic skills. How’s your vegetable garden? You’re going to need to know how to keep a wide variety of plants alive to use for food and medicine.

Also, are you well versed in the textile arts? If you’re planning on re-establishing civilisation, you’re going to need to know how to weave your fabric and master a range of sewing techniques for both fabric and flesh. Clothes and fabrics do not last forever, and there are only going to be so many department stores you and the other survivors can raid.

How are you handling sanitation in your post-apocalyptic fantasy? Hanging out, unwashed, in a caravan might work for the characters in movies, but unless you know how to make lotions for jock itch and cure cholera, you might want to ensure you’re keeping things clean.

Transport is another consideration. As we’ve seen from the petrol shortages, there really won’t be enough petrol for all those cross-country drives we see in zombie movies. No one is working at the refinery while their neighbours hunger for brains, and keeping a large stockpile is both an explosion risk and not a long-term solution. Bikes with a cache of spare innertubes should last you about a decade, but after that, you’re going to need horses or good running legs.

Entertainment is another consideration. A bored makeshift militia/band of misfits brought together by circumstances beyond their control as they grow into a found family is a group ripe for mutiny and discord. You’ll need paper books, a couple of hardy board games, and a working knowledge of charades.

Those are just the main considerations. You’ll also need to recognise which animals and plants will kill you and which are delicious. You'll need to know how to read the weather, how to start a fire once you’ve run out of matches, build a basic shelter, and how to preserve food.

"I have made fire!" Tom Hanks in Castaway (2000)

A lot of people imagine themselves in a ragtag group, blasting away against aliens or a tyrannical government with a massive army. But, as we’ve seen, most major societal disruptions are ones where you can’t fight, you can only survive and take care of your community.

Whatever the rest of this seemingly cursed decade has in store for us, at least we now have the motivation to take up a variety of weird but helpful hobbies.