The 3-Month AAR

In some relationships, the parties in the relationship sit down after three months and decide how it’s going, and in what direction. The Single Girl’s Guide to the Impending Apocalypse and I have existed together for three months, so I figured I would do kind of a tying-up-loose-ends post that tracks where we’ve been so far and where we’re headed from here. In the title, AAR stands for “after action report.”

Time is indeed running out. Whether or not the world ends, as the Maya may have predicted, in December 2012, this blog will either cease to exist or revert to its pre-apocalyptic state. I predict that readership will stay about the same. I think it’s fair to break the posts into a few distinct categories: TV/movies, reading, supplies and skills.

On the TV/movies front, I am currently working my way through season 2 of Supernatural at the advice of my family and friends. This show is delicious in its angst and teaches us next to nothing about the apocalypse. If you like scary shows, it’s good for teaching you the (real) history behind some of our society’s treasured urban legends and monster-hunting techniques. I have a great many episodes of Supernatural remaining to be watched, so I don’t plan on switching to/reporting on any apocalyptic TV in the near future. Lucky for us, I’ve reported on some TV about which I was tipped off at the last minute. I found some fun links on buddytv while searching for Supernatural images and then deciding they're probably all copyrighted, including "Which Supernatural Character Are You?" 

As for reading, I’m about halfway through Alas, Babylon. I don’t like to say “original” anything, because as a history teacher I know that there is always something else that came before. Now that I’ve safely set up my disclaimer, I will say that Alas, Babylon MAY be the original American post-apocalypse novel. MAY be. Written at the height of the Cold War, it envisions the trials of one neighborhood of people who are struggling to deal with the destruction of most of the U.S. at the hands of the Commies. It is fabulous. I hope that it is enjoying a sales surge in this, what may be the last year the world exists. After I finish, I plan to read One Second After at the advice of a former co-worker. While reading Alas, Babylon, I am also casually finishing the James Wesley Rawles books as well as Independence days. I stopped reading The Zombie Combat Manual when I got to the part with the workout. I bookmarked the workout, haven’t done it yet, and left the bookmark where it was. I have nothing new to report on the youth or YA fiction fronts.

Like Randy, the protagonist of Alas, Babylon, I’m stocking up, but I’m not sure I’m stocking up on the right stuff. I have a two-month supply of foods like soup, oatmeal, clif bars and protein powder. I also have an obscene number of first aid kits and an outsized supply of Band-Aids. If the apocalypse happens in summer, I will also have a large number of board markers to contribute to the cause. I have enough light to get me to a store where I can loot more light – I probably need to work on the light situation. At least I’ve invested in good food sources instead of Swiss chocolate.

As for skills, I’ll make a bulleted list. I now know how to do the following things which I did not know three months ago:

-          triangulate my position on a map

-          tie a few various knots

-          make 67 rows in a knit stitch

-          get ready to make pointy weapons out of rocks

I may have said it before, and now I will say it again. I wish I would have started preparing for the end of the world a LONG time ago. But I am happy to say that I am starting now, which is better than not having started yet.

On Friday after school, I casually mentioned “zombie apocalypse” as a student I don’t teach was walking by. She said, “That’s stupid. Zombies don’t exist. They never will.”

I said, “You’re right. But the apocalypse WILL come, eventually.”

I hope she takes my words to heart, but she probably won’t. After all, it IS spring break.