Several things happened last week that got me thinking about the end of the world. First, I was trapped in Connecticut for four days as the local municipalities realized once again that they are not prepared to handle (increasingly frequent) weather crises. Actually, I felt that Connecticut did a pretty good job of clearing the snow, considering there was three fucking feet of it, and what should we really expect? But I did spend four days trapped with my sister, who is now too old for me to punch in the stomach and send crying to her room (and my mother chasing me with a broom) which is how we resolved all of our childhood disputes.
When I got home, I read about the four thousand passengers stranded on the Carnival Cruise ship Triumph, which lost power in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. It took five days to tow the disabled ship back to Louisiana, and the worst part of the ordeal seemed to be that there were no toilets. Monica Hesse of the Washington Post wrote an interesting piece in their style section, Passengers Ill Suited
for Loss of Cruise Control, which I can say, having taken one cruise in my life, is absolutely spot on. If you created a Venn diagram that included “People who choose to vacation by taking a cruise” and “People who can survive without a functioning toilet” your circles would never intersect.
And CBS’s 26th season of Survivor (Wednesdays, 8/7c) premiered, to (deservedly) dismal ratings.
While I am a fan of Survivor, as readers of Surviving Polyandry already know, the show really isn’t about survival at all, unless life depends on shooting a ball through a hoop while standing in knee-deep tropical water. Similar to parallel parking, one can get along quite well in life without being able to shoot a ball through a hoop, and while I have often wished to possess the mystical ability of parallel parking, I have never come across an instance in my life (yet) where it would have been advantageous to be able to shoot a ball through a hoop.
There’s another television show that really is about survival that I sometimes watch while my husband pulls his hair out and grinds his teeth leaves the room (yes, being married to me is an ordeal similar to living without functioning toilets): National Geographic Channel’s Doomsday Preppers, a show about crazy people preparing for race wars the end of civilization. The show follows some loon, showing the stockpiled food (but mostly guns) at a “bug out” location and then scores the “prepper” on his/her (usually his) “preparedness.” There’s a quiz you can take on the show’s website to determine your own “prepper score” here. My husband is a physician, and that profession is apparently very desirable in the coming race war end of civilization, so he gets bonus points for that. I have a law degree, which I think puts me at the top of the list for being killed and eaten when food runs out.
It took my sister and I two days to dig out her driveway in the aftermath of the snowstorm, while her husband’s snow blower sat idle in the garage after our lone attempt to figure out how it worked almost ended up with me running it through the garage wall with her caught up underneath it. When we reached the street, which would take two more days to be cleared by the State of Connecticut, we saw her widowed neighbor bundled up and armed with a snow shovel, emerging from her garage, ready for action. We debated briefly what to do since the woman had not thanked my sister for a Christmas gift of a can of mixed nuts left on her doorstep, and my sister knows how to hold a grudge.
And then we trudged over and started digging again.
You can watch Doomsday Preppers on the National Geographic Channel every Tuesday at 9/8c and if you’re ever snowed in for four days, I suggest reading The Disaster Diaries: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse.
Royalty free stock photos including some of the images in this post can be found at Stock.XCHNG. The crappy photo of my sister’s deck was taken with my Samsung phone.
You would make a good television-watching companion for my husband. He watches ‘Doomsday Preppers’, too – in front of our children, no less! He’s a computer programmer – how do you think he would rank in the post-apocalyptic world? I’m a homemaker and professional singer, so I think I’ll be the VERY first to get thrown to the ravenous masses after doomsday comes. They won’t get to the lawyers until the prisons are empty…
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Does he just watch it, or has he taken steps to prepare for the apocalypse? It’s a fine line from being an amused bystander to bat-shit crazy, you know . . .
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This annoys my husband to no end, but I often think about (and discuss aloud) what really useful skills I possess. Aside from the law degree, I can type 100+ wpm, and I cook a pretty good chicken piccata. I cannot carry a tune (but that doesn’t stop me from singing, often loudly), and, as your attorney, I think I could mount a spirited defense on your behalf to keep you around as entertainment, and convince the others to eat, say, that weird guy over there who smells like cheese instead.
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My husband – thankfully – has not gone so far as to stock up on so much as an extra water bottle. I appreciate the offer of a spirited defense, and I’m going to hold you to that, if it comes down to it. That weird guy is toast.
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Very funny post! I don’t watch much TV, so I’m well-prepared for post-apocalyptic non-electric entertainment. Some people call them books, but I imagine they’d be called firewood, necessary to cook the sedentary slow-moving people I’d be eating first.
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I was ready to throw myself into traffic when we lost power for three days last summer, so I just don’t see myself faring well in the coming zombie (or whatever) apocalypse. I’d probably volunteer to go into the boiling kettle after a day or two.
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I’d be okay without electricity, but clean water, that’s my breaking point. I’ll be in the boiling kettle too – just to get a hot bath.
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I’m a university advisor. I’m sure I’d be good with a little mustard.
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This is just sad. They can’t eat all of us. Can they? 😉
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Well don’t you have some kind of immunity because you’re married to a doctor? I actually think you’re on to something…
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You know, if it were the end of the world, I’m pretty sure my husband would pretend he didn’t know me so he could go off and hump some chick with bigger boobs.
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Bah, who you kidding? If I were him, i’d hump the chicks with big boobs *and* have you for dinner. You know, for the vitamins…
😉
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