How Long Would You Last in an Apocalypse? (w/quiz)

In keeping with the longstanding ATS policy of "pics or it didn't happen", here is a screencap of my results:



I cheated, of course, which is an outstanding survival trait. The cheat in question involved having NO idea who that Mears cat was. I assumed that he was someone like Bear Grills for purposes of the answer. In a survival situation, I would eat Bear Grills. without salt and pepper, if I couldn't find them at the moment, but WITH a side order of grubs, grasshoppers, and tree bark for the vitamins. You get your protein where you can find it.

40 years, lord knows how, probably the run a marathon answer, though in reality it would be more like a half-assed jog the whole way.

Needless to say in most apocalyptic scenarios, the best place to be is as far away from any city as possible. Friendly little rural villages surrounded by hills, lakes and woodland, with enough agriculture and wild game to feed everyone, you wouldn't need much in the way of survival skills.

FlyersFan
The dirty little secret that survivalists don't talk about ... no one will survive an all out apocalypse.
Nuclear power plants around the world will melt down. The entire planet will be Fukashima.

We plan ahead for a semi-break down of society.
But as far as an all out apocalypse goes ... there will be no survivors.

Pshaw!

I eat radioactive waste for supper so that I don't need a flashlight to find my way to the bathroom at night.

I'm not sure what sort of "apocalypse" you envision that would cause nuclear power plants to explode. They have failsafes in the event that no one is around to run them. A worldwide tsunami might damage a few of them, though. Protip: stay away from nuke plants near coastlines.

Chrisfishenstein

FlyersFan
The dirty little secret that survivalists don't talk about ... no one will survive an all out apocalypse.
Nuclear power plants around the world will melt down. The entire planet will be Fukashima.

We plan ahead for a semi-break down of society.
But as far as an all out apocalypse goes ... there will be no survivors.

Even if you could survive, who would want to? If you couldn't even go to the surface or find clean water....Who in their right mind would plot out a survival plan to stay alive?

Wow, some people just love the idea of living in absolute poverty alone....Just as long as you live, right??

Survival instincts will get you a lot farther than survival skills will. You have no survival instinct, it appears. You will be on the menu. Carry parsley in your pocket.

i got 40 years.. haha.. how the heck is this test based on?!!
i honestly thought i wouldn't last more than 10 years if an apocalypse is to happen..
40 years is a bit too long, but its better i suppose.

being a tribal god deceiving others to help me in my own personal survival.. maybe that's how it'll pan out.

reply to post by crazyewok


You treat the humans, I'll stick with the animals thanks...... On the plus side in the event of an apocalypse my currently cheap medications would sure go up in value.

WilsonWilson
reply to post by AndyMayhew

 

did you fight the looters or run?
i ran i'm wondering if it made me weaker?

No.

"He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day".

I got 50 years hard time, and ran away from the looters. No sense in getting in the way of a bullet for no good reason. That has a very detrimental effect on your survival - especially when there aren't any medics around to patch you back up.

reply to post by ChuckNasty

Ten years and I'm basically Rick Grimes in the Walking Dead apparently.

SimonPeter
Your survival time would depend on so many variables that you never know . One thing is for sure , if the NWO is the reason for the collapse and chaos they will be intent on suppressing the survivalist to be sure . A survivalist could recruit anti establishment members to delay peoples submission to the provisional government . Predator drones would be deployed to locate pockets of people not accounted for living in rural areas . IR detection could easily find you .

Predator drones?

I have only one question:

How do I cook the ones I bring down?

Here's a hint for you: Don't leave an IR signature laying around out in the open to begin with. problem solved.

You beard a lion in his own lair - not wait for him to come looking for you. He never expects that kind of audacity in his own crib. After all, he thinks he's a LION! Who would mess with that?

I'd live a year apparently. And that's a push.

SOMEONE TAKE ME WITH YOU.

WilsonWilson
reply to post by ChuckNasty

 

Shouldnt it have started 2000 years ago then, when Christians were being persecuted for being Christian?

Huh?

Nah.

They said only that Christians had to be persecuted first... they didn't say how far ahead of the scheduled end that persecution would be. They just got that little detail out f the way far ahead of time, so it could come at any time.

aorAki
reply to post by AFewGoodWomen

 

As a kiwi, it may be difficult getting across the Pacific.

Maybe I'll find other Kiwis and we can send out an expeditionary force as in Huxley's 'Ape and Essence'.

You take a step, then come up for air. take another step, come up for another breath. Wash, rinse, repeat until you see little birds flying around Capistrano.

Then sit and rest a minute. We'll find YOU.

Funny I got 20 years and I'm not a survivalist, I'm Mad Max LOL

reply to post by ChuckNasty


Yay! i got twenty years

diggindirt

I've never been sure what an "apocalypse" is---a meteor strike---nuclear war---electromagnetic pulse attack---volcanic eruption---solar flare---just too many possibilities.

In all of the "natural disaster" scenarios, survival, at least initially, is mostly a matter of dumb luck, just not happening to be where the worst effects are at the time they happen. Assuming that your luck allows you to survive that, then preparations for a general "zombie apocalypse" ought to see you through, since the majority of the danger after that point comes from "zombie hordes", which is what panicky people become when they have no other recourse or skills to fall back upon. Not really "zombies", but the closest thing you'll ever find outside the movies. Preparation for a "zombie apocalypse" IS preparation against the vagaries of what humanity becomes when left to it's own most basic devices - even though those people become real, LIVE panicky killers, rather than animated, brain eating corpses.

General hints would include avoiding people, avoiding roads (they are just "game trails" for predatory people to ambush gazelle types of people on), and being really good at hiding - surviving like a rabbit, rather than trying to survive like a lion. There are only so many lion slots to go around, and all of those are predatory. Surviving like a predator always leaves the door open for your next "victim" to kick you in the chops, break your jaw, and generally prevent you from eating whatever you manage to catch with the predation thing. In other words, surviving by violence leave you wide open to be the recipient of violence - not a good survival strategy.

For all of the folks hoping to survive in "communities", good luck to you. I personally prefer presenting a smaller target, and one that is more mobile than your average community. Communities are the "watering holes" of the new post-apocalyptic reality. We all know what sometimes happens to the gazelles at the watering holes, because the lions know exactly where to find them.

babybunnies

Any sort of nuclear war or extended power outage issue would be a major catastrophy, and pretty much everyone would be wiped out in a few days, weeks, or months. NO ONE is going to last YEARS.

Can I have your stuff when you give in and die so quickly? I've had a real problem, all my life, with just laying down and dying simply because someone else said I had to, or that it was "inevitable". That bad attitude has brought me this far - I reckon it can carry me through the next 50 years, too.

But if I can have your stuff when YOU die, that would make it so much more comfortable...

SimonPeter
All I have heard is ( I ) will survive so many years . How selfish ! How many of you calculated you parents who may not have prepared or brothers or sisters into the equation .

Who do you think taught ME how to survive?

They'll be just fine, Jack.

How about your starving kin folk or your significant other .

I won't have any starving kin - like I said, THEY taught ME how to survive to begin with! My significant other is probably better at basic surviving than I am... and she's a DAMN sight better at dealing with this alleged "civilization" we've got going on at the moment. See, she thinks of things like "how are folks gonna carry all those bullets around to feed that gun for YEARS?", while I find alternatives, like making bows and arrows from what's around me. Yes, I've done that, and yes, they will X out stuff that you want to eat, or stuff that wants to eat YOU.

Oops ! Back to the drawing board . Certainly you all aren't single .

Food for thought

That's the spirit! You're thinking about FOOD!

Viesczy
I got this:

"The results are in! You'd survive for
fifty years
after the apocalypse.

You'll be around until civilisation rebuilds itself. There'll be legends told about your name.

You're basically the dog in Independence Day."

The time doesn't surprise, but there was a dog in Independence Day?

Derek

That's what I thought, too... so I'm gonna have to watch Independence Day again and pay more attention.

On the other hand, nondescript "invisibility" is a fairly useful survival trait. They can't kill what they can't see, and they can't see what they don't notice.

Maybe that's why the dog was such a survivor!

JohnnySasaki

crazyewok

JohnnySasaki
I'm not going to be throwing anything but bullets, lol. What's more, they're going to be coming at you with a very high

Well your flat out dead. Unless you have a group with you. If not flight is better than fight.

JohnnySasaki
frequency, and every single one is going to hit it's mark.

Yeah Macho talk wont get you anywhere if its a large group of equaly armed looters.

I'm not going to be fighting looters unless they're looting from me, and I'm quite the shot actually. I could post a group if you'd like. I understand that means nothing in the heat of battle, but honestly, I rarely miss. You'd better be unbelievable if you're coming at me.

Just a couple of thoughts here. You alluded in a previous post to having quite the firearms collection. 1) you likely can't shoot more than one at a time, so the point is moot, 2) that collection ties you down, reduces your mobility, and 3) those packs of armed looters are always looking to increase the ranks - safety in numbers and all that. They have to arm the recruits. YOU have a bunch of arms... see where this is going? Those arms basically put big red cross hairs on you as a resupply point.

Now - I believe you when you say you ARE a crack shot, and never ever miss. The problem there is that your gun, it's flawed. It only points in one direction at once, and so only shoots in one direction at a time. What happens when you get flanked on all sides because they have enough numbers to do that?

The looters get resupplied, that's what happens.

crazyeddie68
reply to post by FlyersFan

 

Sad...but true.The worst case scenario would be all out nuke war or asteroid/comet impact.None of those are survivable.

All out nuke war absolutely IS survivable. It was 30 years ago when there were more nukes in the mix, and it still is now that there are fewer. The trick is not to be at ground zero.

For an asteroid impact to be unsurvivable, it would have to be a really REALLY big one - but I reckon that's possible. Ceres could just slip her moorings and come at us, I suppose. Something as tiny as Chixlub? Not a problem. We survived it back then, and we were only tiny, unthinking rodent-like creatures at the time.

Even if it was a virus outbreak,who would take care of the power grid if most of the population is wiped out?

Cool quiz though O.P.

Power grid? WHAT power grid? The same folks that took care of it 150 years ago or more would do the job, I reckon. What's that? We didn't HAVE a power grid back then? However did humanity survive those dark and scary times then? If your own survival is tied to a power grid, you may be doing it wrong...