Why I Will Survive In a Nuclear Wasteland (and Why You Might Not)

When it starts getting hot, I like to bring out my annual “joke” where I say, “If this were the 1800s, I would be dead already.” Because without my precious air conditioning, how could I survive? Then I think I’m real funny and cute for saying something like that. Sure, I love running up a $400+ electric bill, but the truth is I would thrive in the 1800s. How might I know this given that I was born in 1984?

Look at me. You know I don’t belong in modern society. People always ask me if I’m some Eastern European and I never knew what that meant. It means I look like an old villager.

What confirmed my suspicions was reading Davy Crockett’s autobiography. I realized after reading story after story about all his hardships that I would enjoy his old timey hardship, too. For example, I would much rather be laid up in a forest with some sickness and have an Indian come up and offer me some ripe melon, than have to go to Kaiser Permanente and sit on a bed made-up with wax paper like I’m some human dough. Another example: eating was simplified out on the frontier. You get to choose between some gray stringy meat, a gizzard (I looked it up and I think it’s part of a bird’s rear end), or you just starve. Maybe if you’re lucky you can get your hands on a hatful of corn. Doesn’t that sound nice? You don’t have to plan for a pasta night or a Mexican night. Your kids want to try being picky and you can honestly say, “Okay, you’re fixin’ to die then.” Then you leather them a bit. Once in your lifetime, someone might give you an orange and you’d probably eat the peel, too. Remember during the lockdowns, people were freaking out about how the shelves were bare and yet there was still a ton of food? These clowns would literally post a photo of shelves that were 50% stocked and still write, “They cleared out all the food!” No, it just wasn’t the food you wanted. Oh no, they don’t have the Tabasco-flavored Cheezits, guess you’ll have to die.

One of the great motivators in life is not dying. Some of us forget that we’re going to die and we just surf our phones all day like we have a thousand years ahead of us, but in the 1800s, they didn’t have that luxury. Some bloodied soldier could just wander into your cabin and you’d have to listen to him die for two weeks. Not wanting to die is such a great motivator that it leads people to kill other people. You think you’d never murder someone and then some lunatic tries to kill you or your kinfolk (that’s 1800s speak) and suddenly you’re on a 911 call explaining why you “had to do it.” I almost snuffed out someone’s life, but we’ll save that story for another post.

Anyway, if that was my purpose in life, not dying, I would do it until I was 110. Imagine being off the hook when it comes to self-actualization and feeling good. Or feeling anything. Who needs dreams and goals when you have to feed them hogs in order to live through the winter? Not only are you free from your own ambitions, but you won’t have to give a dadgum rip about other people living their best life or making a name for themselves. Someone wants to talk about their dreams of being ”somebody” and you are well within your rights to get your rifle off the mantel and tell them they got to the count of 10 to get off your property.

I would be one of those 1800s women that lived into the 1900s. No muscle mass or soft tissue left, meaning no where for cancer to grow or viruses to cling to. Whatever keeps McDonald’s French fries from rotting is what you’d find in my cells. My skin would look like I was stitched together with old Ralph’s bags—specifically the reusable bags you won’t bring to the store because you don’t want the bagger to see all the sand and crud at the bottom from your shameful lifestyle. None of my family would want to bring their friends around me because I might say something racist. People would wish I would die already because I was just hard to look at. An alive ghost, you might say. Any time you try to talk to me, I would just go, “eh?” You ever ask an old person a question and you think they didn’t hear you, so you just leave it alone and then they answer the question five minutes later? That would be me. You know that magic hat that brings Frosty the Snowman alive? Well, imagine if they put that hat on a pile of dried tree branches and that’s what I would look like.

Yes, it’s too bad no one will get to witness this side of me. Instead, you get soft Carolyn who just got a letter in the mail from Weight Watchers congratulating me on 5 lbs lost. It’s a tragedy.

But there’s still hope. I came up with a scenario that would allow you to see me in my survivalist prime. Picture this: nuclear war or some equally devastating, worldwide disaster. Just sit and think about it with me. Yes, most people would be dead and life as we know it would be turned upside down, but in that world, I will be so worn out, sunburned, and ugly, people will call me beautiful. I know it sounds like I’m tooting my own horn, but I’m really writing this to help you guys survive as well. In fact, I should probably use the end of this paragraph to transition this into the advice column it was meant* to be.

* There was no initial purpose behind this blog.

Advice 1: Expose Yourself to The Gross

Some might say I’m a gross person living in a sanitary world. They’re wrong. I’m not gross, I’m gross-friendly and you should be, too. Let me use an analogy: some people are Oscar the Grouches. Dirty, gross, anti-social, etc. I would never ask you to be an Oscar. Here’s what I am and what you should be, too: that big orange guy that carries Oscar around. You don’t see him often, but every now and then, he gets to work and carries nasty Oscar down to the other side of Sesame Street, probably to urinate in Big Bird’s nest. Orange Guy’s got his face inches from that filth, he’s frowning, but he knows he’s got a job to do. The state pays him since Oscar is collecting social security disability. Anyway, if you don’t expose yourself to gross stuff every now and then (and not be a big baby about it), you’re gonna panic when the going gets tough. Who’s going to cauterize your friend’s leg nubs after they’ve been blasted off by an enemy drone? Not you. You were too busy saying, “ew.”

Advice 2: Let The Gross Inside

Look, I’m gonna say something that might scare you. If some worldwide tragedy happens and the going got tough (like real tough, not toilet paper running out tough), there’s a specific population of you that are guaranteed to die even if you survive the initial blasts.

Hear me out: if you strictly eat clean or are on any special sort of diet*, you will die.

How do I know? As soon as you have to eat something like an old can of Kroger’s Cream of Mushroom Soup or a toad, you’re gonna get the runs and die. It’s that simple. You will not last being off your diet. If I pour you a bowl of Cheerios and slide it across the table and you act like I just slid a bomb in your direction, you aren’t gonna last.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Let me help you. Friend, as soon as there’s a threat of nuclear war, here’s the first thing you need to do: go to Jack n the Box, get an order or two of tiny tacos, and put them in your refrigerator. Every day for a week, you will take one taco out, heat it up, and eat it. Then you’ll reduce it to every other day, then eventually one a week until nuclear war breaks out. A stomach that is acclimated to Jack n the Box tiny tacos can survive off rats, roaches, and your dog that we will eventually eat.

I told you I was gonna be real.

*Not Weight Watchers.

Advice 3: Show Honor, Like Me

Some of you don’t believe me. That’s fine. I’ll still take the high road and bury you. I’ll pull you out of whatever crawlspace you’re in and drag your body however far I need to go to get you in the ground. When your crispy head falls off, I will bend down and pick it up, and reattach it. But first I’ll jokingly make it say, “Capri Suns are poison, I’d never let my kids have one” in your voice. At this point, it really doesn’t matter if your head is attached or half a mile away, but I reattach it to show you honor. That’s the difference between us.

After I toss you into the mass grave my faction and I spent 16 hours digging (wasting precious ground squirrel calories), I will say a prayer for you even though I know it’s too late. I’ll do it because I like to pretend I’m being filmed for a movie and I’m smiling a bit because I know it’s ridiculous. This is what keeps me sane—little chuckles here and there. Just then, an empty Capri Sun wrapper floats by, its silver packaging glistening in the moonlight, and lands on your body. I climb down into the grave and put your hand on the Capri Sun wrapper. The Egyptians believe that whatever you’re buried with, you get to take into the next life, so even though I know that’s bunk, I chuckle at the image of you walking into the next life and you’ve got a Capri Sun in your hand.

Advice 4: Choose Your Clans Wisely

Some of you are villains or are easily susceptible to joining villain-led clans. I’m good at sniffing out villains before they show their full hand. My husband can vouch for my reputation. “Yeah, yeah… you’re good at it” he’d say while raising his hands just above his shoulders and waving them in a very sarcastic cheer. I saved you, bro.

The short answer for spotting covert villains is to look for people who don’t make sense. Look for the people you’re always making excuses for, learn their weaknesses, because you’ll have to fight them and possibly raid their stash. If you’re still confused, just join whatever clan I join.

An Illustration of How This Is Going to Work

While I have my strengths for surviving in the wasteland, I’m not a leader nor do I want to be. Leaders have to schmooze people in order to get the dummy-crowd from doing low-IQ things. I found a Dale Carnegie book in the little library by my house that teaches you all these tips on how to get people to like you and do whatever you want. Half the tips, I hate when people do them. “Say the person’s name a lot.” You say my name a lot and I know you’re up to something. But a goof hears his name several times and he’s willing to kill for you.

No, I’m not a leader in that sense, but I recognize the talent (evil) in those who are willing to say another man’s name over and over again just to get him to light an enemy’s encampment on fire. I’m the person the leader glances at after he says, “The key to the armory is somewhere in its bowels.”

The leader doesn’t have to say my name—in the wasteland, I have no name—nor does he have to charm me by speaking to my potential and my principles. He already knows I deeply hate the enemy Kai and his clan of brother-men, and when something needs to get done, like swimming through a dead whale’s bowels to get the key to the dead general’s armory in order that we may be equipped to drive Kai’s clan out of the valley, I’M GOING TO DO IT.

But the real question is, what are you gonna do?