Be Ready When the Sh*t Goes Down( A Survival Guide to the Apocalypse)

by Griffin, Forrest

  j. PENCIL IN YOUR OWN ANSWER HERE: If you wrote the word “Amish,” your risk taking paid off big-time! Go ahead and give yourself 25 points. Amish people are the true survivalists. Having renounced all technology, they have learned how to survive without drilling for oil or making major motion pictures. Give them an ax and a bucket, and they’ll make butter, log cabins, and horse-drawn carriages. If you’re hanging with one of these guys, no matter what conditions you may find yourself in, you will most likely do all right. Your life will never progress beyond Little House on the Prairie and time will probably go pretty fucking slowly, but at least you will live! However, if you penciled in anything other than Amish, the results of your IQ test obviously got mixed up with that of someone much smarter than you. Go ahead and subtract 15 points . . . You might also want to think seriously about taking your own life.

  11. What is your favorite magazine?

  a. Fight magazine

  b. Martha Stewart Living

  c. Sports Illustrated

  d. Muscle & Fitness

  e. GQ

  f. Playboy

  g. Hustler or another hard-core porn mag.

  h. Cat Fancy

  ANSWERS

  a. +8 points. A good magazine because I am often in it. Sometimes, they even let me put on my Big Boy pants and write my own articles.

  b. -5 points. You’ve been putting off that gender reassignment operation, but I think it’s about time to open that door.

  c. +0 points. For the most part, this magazine is reserved for fat has-beens dreaming of their high school football days and living vicariously through some millionaire’s numbers. Oh, and by the way, if you collect sports cards, you should burn the cards along with yourself . . . or feed them to your hamster.

  d. -5 points. You might not be full-blown gay, but you are definitely peeking over the fence. I mean, even the chicks in this magazine look like dudes.

  e. -8 points. Not only have you fallen over the fence, but you’ve also rolled down a hill, slipped into a creek, washed out to sea, and swallowed by an overly gay whale.

  f. +0 points. You would think that a magazine with a half-naked chick on the cover would be megamanly, but it is not. Once you open it, all you see is articles and stories and advertisements. And in the few naked pictures it does contain, the women are covering most of their junk. If you want to be a real man, you must look at porn mags that actually offend your girlfriend.

  g. +8 points. Now this is what I am talking about.

  h. -4 points. For the second time, I do not subscribe to Cat Fancy. My wife does.

  ACTUAL RANDOM CONVERSATION IN THE GRIFFIN HOUSE

  JAIME: Forrest, for the tenth time, they are never going to put you on the cover of Cat Fancy.

  FORREST: Sure they will. Don’t they have somewhat famous people on the cover from time to time?

  JAIME: No, they don’t. They just have cats on the cover.

  FORREST: But what if I am holding our cat?

  12. When does cannibalism become okay?

  a. When you are hungry.

  b. When your buddy Joe actually begins looking like a giant pork chop.

  c. Anytime. Even now, before the apocalypse. Might as well get used to the taste.

  d. Never. You should die before you consume human meat.

  ANSWERS

  a. +5 points. I sometimes get hungry between brunch and lunch, so I know how badly it sucks. I will accept this answer.

  b. -5 points. If your buddy starts looking like a giant pork chop, you waited far too long.

  c. -5 points. I am sorry, but I cannot accept this answer. Why eat humans now, when there are so many unwanted dogs and cats?

  d. -8 points. Next thing you’ll tell me is that it is “wrong” to piss in the community pool. Go get a job, you fucking hippie.

  13. From the last question, you learned that it is perfectly okay to eat human meat when you are hungry. However, I must now propose a moral question. At what point is it okay to turn your traveling mate into food?

  a. The instant he dies of natural causes.

  b. When he is looking kinda sick.

  c. Shortly after you poison him.

  d. When he trips or falls.

  e. When he goes to sleep.

  f. Anytime he turns his back.

  ANSWERS

  a. -5 points. Seriously, when have you ever waited for a chicken or cow to die of natural causes before you ate that son of a bitch. Personally, I have no interest in consuming roadkill. We have butchers for a reason.

  b. -2 points. Although this is a better answer than the last, you still probably waited too long. Human meat has an uncanny ability to “turn” quickly.

  c. +8 points. This is an excellent answer, but it is extremely important not to use a type of poison that will linger in his system. So instead of using an actual poison per se, you might want to use some type of club or heavy rock.

  d. +5 points. People become very vulnerable when they trip or fall, making it an excellent time to turn them into food. If you feel guilty about this, just remember that you saved them from having to conjure that fake, awkward laugh people always make when they trip or fall.

  e. +5 points. Killing someone in their sleep is the best because they don’t feel a thing. Or is that when they die naturally? In any case, they won’t put up much of a fight.

  f. +5 points. All survivors know not to turn their back on someone. Chances are, this guy is going to get you killed somewhere down the road. Might as well eat him now.

  TEST RESULTS

  So now I am going to ask you to tally up all your points. If you scored sixty-five points or higher, you are allowed to proceed. Just do so at your own risk. But regardless of score, the following people are not allowed to read my book:

  DICKHEAD REPORTER

  All reporters are not dicks. As a matter of fact, I owe a lot of my success to this hardworking, underpaid group of people who spread the awareness of my awesomeness to others. However, there are a few reporters who need to cram their head in a blender. A perfect example is the reporter who interviewed me a few days after I defeated Quinton Jackson and received the UFC Light Heavyweight title belt. It was the biggest moment of my life, and I felt on top of the world. In an attempt to sink my ship, he said, “What do you say to the people who think Quinton won, that he got robbed?” I replied, “What do you say to someone who has never tried, never bled, never had the guts to really go for something they really wanted? What do I say to those who sit behind a desk and talk into the microphone and criticize the deeds of others? I say . . .” and I hung up. A second later, I did a victory dance for my wife because it was one of those rare times when I had the perfect comeback. Seriously, I now tell this story with more excitement than I do the one about winning the title belt.

  Another time I had a perfect comeback was shortly after I got my ass kicked by Anderson. I was signing autographs at the Olympia, and some muscle head (and I could tell immediately I didn’t like him because his shirt was too tight, he had tattoo sleeves on both of his arms, and he had actually shaven his arms so that you could more clearly see the tattoos and the rippling veins in his biceps). He strutted up to me with his chest puffed out and said, “Yeah, bro, I just got to know, why did you run out of the ring after the Anderson fight?”

  He was a pretty big guy, so I stood up. “That is a good question,” I said, and waved him close as if I were going to tell him a secret. “You see the thing is, your mom—now I’m sure you’ve heard this—gives the best fucking blow jobs, and she was waiting in the locker room to suck my dick. I was so excited, I just had to get back there and get my dick sucked. I mean, your mom is an absolute pro.”

  As the words came out of my mouth, I could see him get physically tense. Instead of waiting around for a rebuttal, I walked past him and went over to sign an autograph for a kid. The meathead just stood there for close to a minute, mad-dogging me, and I just smiled at him. As he walked off, he continued to stare at me. I tried to nail him one last
time by giving him the universal dick-sucking sign, you know, where you motion your hand toward your mouth and stick your tongue into your cheek, but he had already turned around. Anyway, if you’re a douche bag like that reporter or meathead, please do not read my book.

  ARMCHAIR QUARTERBACK

  On almost a daily basis I have someone on the street come up to me and tell me how to fight. Now I realize that people like to get involved in the sport, and I also realize that there are a lot of fighters out there who are probably better than me, but to have someone who couldn’t run twenty meters without vomiting tell me to “keep my hands up” is pretty fucking annoying. It’s good advice, but very, very annoying. If you are the type of person who likes to tell other people more knowledgeable than you how to do their job, please do not read my book. I mean, if I walked into McDonald’s, I wouldn’t tell you how to flip a burger.

  INTERNET WARRIOR

  This is a message to Fraghead237. Fuck you! I know you thought you were so clever romo-shopping me in a tutu and having me dance around a giant dick, but I just wanted to let you know that my private investigator just discovered where you live. I am coming to your house later today to stab you in the neck.

  P.S. I am just kidding because I have the strange feeling that you are my target audience. Well, I am not kidding, but you are still my target audience.

  PEOPLE YOU SHOULD ENCOURAGE TO READ MY BOOK

  LUMBERJACK: There is a reason the Village People didn’t include a lumberjack in their soiree—they are simply too manly. In my book, anyone who swings an ax for a living can automatically read my book. This includes serial killers and mohels who use an ax or an axlike instrument to perform their Brith Milahs.

  WILDERNESS MAN: Anyone who wears a dead animal on their head is allowed to read my book. The only stipulation is that the animal must have some sort of tail. Personally, I don’t think that is too much to ask. You will be hard-pressed to find an animal without a tail. And even if you do find an animal without a tail, you probably won’t want to wear it on your head. This includes frogs, apes, sloths, various sea urchins, and, of course, humans.

  PIRATE: There are many forms of pirates, but not all of them get an automatic thumbs-up to read my book. If you are a pirate and want to skip all the annoying tests, you must carry a sword . . . and the sword must be constructed from steel. Your flesh sword does not count.

  Chapter 1

  Prepare Now, Part I: How to Be Ted Kaczynski Without All That Unabomber Crap

  As you may have learned from my first book, I was once a Webelo—that’s right, not a Boy Scout, but a Webelo. Pretty low on the survival skills totem pole, but at least it was a step up from the Cub Scouts. Anyhow, before I was ejected from this society for chucking a can of soda at my scoutmaster’s head, we went on a few camping trips. These consisted of about twenty of us kids, and five or six parents, all of whom were stupid enough to get duped into taking care of twenty boys in the wilderness. I would like to say that I learned all sorts of practical knowledge on these outings that I could pass on to you, but of course the parents ended up putting up the tent and doing all the merit-badge-worthy tasks we kids were supposed to do. However, I did learn a few lessons from these experiences, the most important being that the wilderness sucks. If you have a house with hot water, you should probably stay there because the wild will do everything in its power to make you absolutely miserable.

  On the second day of one of these little adventures into the great unknown, the parents gathered up all the kids, brought us down to a lukewarm creek, and expected us to bathe. That’s right, twenty half-naked kids, five adults (also half naked), bathing in a creek with bars of soap. Did I mention that it was in a fucking creek? I immediately felt molested. The only cool thing to come out of the mass bathing ritual was that my stepfather, Abe, taught all the kids how to change in nature using a towel. We thought it was the coolest thing, and for the next few days every kid spent at least two hours a day changing and rechanging their shorts (kids are fucking weird).

  The absolute worst part about camping was taking a dump. I was excited when we first got there because there were outhouses, which meant I didn’t have to dig a hole, but when I ventured into one of these portable shit houses, I learned that the words “cleanliness” and “wilderness” do not go together. I made the mistake of looking down into the hole, and it looked like a shit monster had been murdered in there. There was shit everywhere—I mean, how do you get shit on a wall? There was a toilet seat, yet shit somehow ended up on the wall. It was just like that scene from Slumdog Millionaire where they shit off the piers.

  Fearful of getting consumed by the shit monster, most of us kids resorted to pooping in the woods, and with all kids being inherently lazy, we didn’t bother to dig holes. We just shit on the ground and then ran off. So by the end of the three days, everyone had spent seventy-two hours traversing a shit field, and we all stunk like walking death. The entire experience made me realize one thing—I fucking hate the wilderness. If you are like me and spend a good portion of your life trying to avoid all things outdoors, this book will do you well, because, when doomsday comes, the outdoors will be your new home.

  Before I tell you how the world will end, there are some things that you need to do to prepare yourself. Since you are currently reading a book on the apocalypse written by a professional fighter who’s suffered some pretty serious head trauma, I’m assuming that you have some mental impairments of your own. You’re not a full-blown moron, but you have trouble with simple things like walking without tripping, wiping your butt, counting, and, most importantly, reading. I will not judge you because I am well versed in moron, and we’re in this together. However, it is quite possible that it will take you several years to read this book from start to finish, making it important that we start your training before I supply you with the various end-of-the-world scenarios and tell you what to expect. Just trust me that all this stuff will come in handy.

  IS THAT AN ASSAULT RIFLE IN YOUR PANTS? (WELL, IT SHOULD BE)

  Learning how to defend yourself is not something that happens overnight. It takes a lot of practice, which means you must start your training now. While numerous accountants, stockbrokers, housewives, and other regular people will survive the apocalypse by blind luck, the majority of those who dodge death’s bullet will be survivalists who predicted the coming-of-the-end and received the proper training. These people will have at least basic knowledge on how to shoot and kill with their hands, and unless you are on a level playing field, there is a good chance that you will become their future food source.

  To avoid such an outcome, I’ve included some very basic knowledge on how to defend yourself. You don’t have to become an expert marksman or a professional fighter, but at the very least, you must be able to shoot a target at close range and understand how to properly apply a choke hold. Note from the HarperCollins legal team: Keep in mind that the apocalypse hasn’t hit yet. Every state has its own laws about who can legally acquire a gun and how that gun must be carried. I’m not saying you should break any of those laws so that you can buy or use guns, and if you’re not eighteen (or twenty-one in some states), then this section doesn’t even apply to you.

  DICK IN A BOX BY BIGGER JOHN

  Both Forrest and I are firm believers in being armed at all times. Back before I got replaced by a bunch of Vegas douche bags, I used to corner Forrest for his fights. When he went to Sacramento to fight Tito the first time, I went with him. We were hanging outside with all the fighters, and suddenly Tim Sylvia comes up to us and starts making fun of Forrest for the thick leather coat he had on.

  “Dude, what the fuck you wearing that huge jacket for?” he said. “Are you a moron? It’s eighty-five degrees out here.”

  Without batting an eye, Forrest said, “It’s not a jacket, it’s a holster.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said it’s not a jacket, it’s a holster.” And with one quick movement, Forrest pulled the Glock 40 from the ins
ide pocket.

  Now I am not trying to call Tim a pussy or anything, because I honestly think he is one of the toughest heavyweights we’ve seen in the sport of MMA, but you should have seen the look in his eyes when Forrest pulled that gun. Instantly he knew he was dealing with someone on a whole different level of crazy.

  Hating to get left out of anything, I decided to add to the effect and pulled the Glock 40 I had in my belt holster underneath my shirt. Tim immediately tried to grow back his balls by talking about his favorite guns, but I will never forget the look on his face. It was priceless . . . Anyhow, I guess the moral to this story is that you should always remain strapped, even if it requires you to wear a thick leather jacket in eighty-five-degree weather.

  HOW TO STAND WHEN FIRING YOUR GUN IN AN INCREDIBLY SAFE AND RESPONSIBLE WAY