The door to my room swung open and my dad was standing there in a panic. It was four thirty in the morning and still dark out. He asked if my brother and I were alright and after we responded he told us to stand under our doorway in case of an aftershock. I was barely eight years old and my brother was only five. We had no idea what was going on at the time and didn’t know what to think. We were initially more annoyed than anything at being awake, but slowly as we heard more about what had happened we spent an entire morning scared and standing in a doorway in the dark. Unfortunately for other people that day, our morning had been much easier than theirs.

Officer Clarence W. Dean never saw the collapse. He was on patrol on his motorcycle and crossing a pass from the 14 freeway to the 5, a bridge I have taken all my life that isn’t five miles from my house. Minutes before he arrived at that pass, a section of it had collapsed, as it had in the 1971 Sylmar earthquake. In the early morning darkness, the officer couldn’t stop in time and plummeted off of the missing section, dying instantly. Elsewhere, an entire apartment complex collapsed and several homes slid down mountainsides. That was the first hour of one of the only major crises that has ever directly affected me.

Day one of the aftermath was confusing for a child. The power was out and all I knew was that an earthquake had caused it. My parents were optimistic that, as with any normal turbulence, everything would be fine within a couple of hours. By that night, they had started worrying. Our radio was our only major source of information and reports were gradually worsening. Portions of major freeways and several buildings had collapsed. Millions of dollars worth of damage had already been reported. Three more major aftershocks had already occurred. There were even predictions that the Northridge Earthquake was just a foreshock to a much larger quake to come. By the following day a general air of panic had set in throughout my little world of our hometown. People had bought up all of the water and preservable food from the grocery store. Hand gas pumps had been set up at gas stations, which were subsequently emptied of all of their gasoline by the third day. We were allowed to play with our friends initially, but slowly everyone was starting to expect the worst and were staying in their homes.

We degenerated into a city of families living in bunkers. The crime rate spiked and people ventured into town only during the day, moving from store to store in search of any remaining food or supplies. This was one week after the event. It was a major crisis in my life, but on the grand scale of possible disasters, it barely shows up. This was real life and we had turned into the city from any number of apocalyptic fictional stories in a matter of days. This event happened to have only majorly impacted our city and a handful of others, but events like this happen often enough randomly around the world. What would happen if this occurred on a larger scale? A global scale? What if instead of knocking out power for a week in a few towns, an event changed the face of the world? Do you think you would have the knowledge or the wherewithal to survive?

While most of us can agree that the movies Deep Impact and Armageddon were absolutely worthless, we shouldn’t dismiss their premise as Hollywood fiction. A large majority of leading scientists agree that the globe changing event that killed the dinosaurs was most likely an asteroid impact. Steven Hawking recently stated that asteroid impact is the biggest threat to intelligent life in the universe. But, what about other events? Climate change in either direction could have catastrophic effects, as well as massive volcanic eruptions, or freak occurrences that we have no idea exist yet. Let’s suppose that none of these will happen within the next million years, which we cannot with any degree of certainty say. We find ourselves currently in the second great financial collapse in the past century. Economic problems must be considered world changing events and are the most present model of civilization collapse that we are faced with. If oil runs out, the water of a major area is polluted, or one of a thousand other scenarios happens, that could be the equivalent to any one of these other disasters for our way of life.

Could you survive if you were presented with a situation in which you had to rely solely on your own survival skills? The Northridge Earthquake was the first time I realized that society isn’t permanent. The older I have gotten, the more I’m aware that while somewhat unlikely in our time (we really aren’t unique snowflakes), if something were to happen I would be amazingly unprepared to be self-sufficient. The sad thing to me is that I feel with all certainty that I would be far better off than 90% of everyone I know in that situation and yet I feel absolutely unprepared.

Cormac McCarthy wrote an amazing book called The Road about a father and son dealing with a post-apocalypse world in which almost everything has been burned. The pair must survive on what little they can find while making their way down the road towards the coast, where they hope that they will find an answer to their plight as well as any kind of warmer climate, as they have been freezing to near death for most of their journey. All the while they have to avoid roving bands of men long past morals and society, who will do anything it takes to survive. Even in this desolate world, the father aspires to keep hope and inspire his son to be a good man and keep his humanity. The book has also been turned into a movie that looks like it will be just as amazing. It stars Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron. I will definitely review that movie in detail very soon.

Neil Strauss is a man who has thought about the worst happening and taken action. His book, Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life, is all about his journey to prepare himself in case the financial issues of today turn into a worldwide economic collapse. He spends his time learning survival skills, routes to escape the country (getting his pilot’s license among other things), and getting a second citizenship in case the United States is hit the hardest financially or physically attacked and he needs to get out of the country.

Finally, Discovery has recently started a series called The Colony that puts a group of people into a post-apocalyptic scenario in which they come across an abandoned compound and must figure out how to survive and live in it as shelter. The compound is a large warehouse full of random items that may help them survive. The people come equipped with varied assets and skills to the colony including a scientist, an analyst, a doctor, a handyman, and an ER nurse. The show throws any and all situations at the colonists without directly harming them, including marauders who attempt to break into the compound or steal their supplies, which definitely would occur if you attempted to stay in one place. It also brings about my biggest question for the series: In a world like this, would you really want to live in and subsequently defend a building in a major area? Could it possibly be safer to be a nomad or build a shanty much further from a city center?

My limited experience with crises and the examples above have made me realize that I need to learn some basic survival skills at a minimum. If I’m ever caught out in the wilderness by myself there may as well have been an apocalypse because I will have to rely on myself to survive. When I was younger I learned how to start a fire from nothing, tie a thousand knots, do CPR, swim long distances, improvise a compass, build shelters, and stay warm in snow. A lot of that knowledge has since gone or been glazed over without having used it in a while. I would like to relearn all of these things as well as how to forage for and find food in the forest, desert, and mountains. I hope that other people at some point in their lives gain even a small desire to learn a few of these skills. Hollywood movies are entertaining and hard to imagine actually happening, but who knows when your town will be hit with an earthquake and your power goes out, or worse. I don’t mean to scare people or cause a panic, as the media does that enough, but I would like to see people prepare even the slightest for things to go bad. The hope is that you’ll never need to apply this knowledge. At some point though, knowing CPR or how to swim back to shore might just save lives.

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Filed under: Thoughts by Cory