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

by Griffin, Forrest

  While the two stupid dogs are feasting, a huge earthquake shakes the shit out of the entire earth, causing trees and mountains to fall. Unfortunately, the quake breaks the chain that had been holding back another wolf named Loki, who carries the nickname “the Trickster.” What a douche. Sounds like a freakin’ DJ at some lame-ass techno club. “Hi. I’m Loki, but you can just call me DJ Trickster.”

  So now there are three wolves on the loose. Either the Vikings liked wolves a great deal more than they should have, or they just couldn’t think up any more characters for the stories.

  As all this is happening, an insanely giant sea serpent slithers onto dry land. As a matter of fact, this thing isn’t just insanely giant—it is super-insanely giant. So giant that it causes a tsunami to sweep across the globe. This serpent has another one of those jacked-up names—Jormungand. I know, a little much, right? But what do you expect—they were fucking Vikings. (Man, there seems to be a kraken or a krakenlike monster in everything these days.)

  Now, this is where things start to get weird. The giants are another race of creatures in this whole sordid affair, and they have a creepy ship called Naglfar, which is apparently made from the fingernails of dead men. That’s got to be a shit load of fingernails. I mean, can you imagine how gross that fucking ship would smell? Anyway, as these giants come sailing into the picture, the Serpent Jormungand and a great wolf named Fenrir decide they are buddies and join together to form one rank of evil and strife. They march side by side.

  If you look to the north, you can see that Fenrir’s mouth is so gaped that his top jaw scrapes the heavens of our earth while his lower jaw, wrought with jagged teeth, drags across the trembling ground. To the east, DJ Trickster is streaking toward you in a flaming rocket ship made from every condom ever used throughout the history of fucking. (Okay, I made the used-condom-rocket-ship part up, but after the warship made from fingernails, I didn’t feel I was reaching.) Everywhere you look there are monsters and death, but suddenly from the west appears one shining ray of hope, one dream of salvation—the gods. Badass gods. Not only are they super pissed off, but they get their rocks off on beating the asses of supernatural beings. It’s fun for them, and they don’t mind dying in battle. For them, dying in battle is fucking awesome! One god, Heimdall, sounds one of those classic horns to alert the other gods to what is transpiring on earth. And they spring to action.

  FORTUNE COOKIE WISDOM

  Valhalla is the coolest place ever. The realm where dead Vikings battle all day and feast and fuck all night.

  Unfortunately they don’t actually “spring” into action. There ends up being a lull because the gods have to have a meeting to talk about shit. Personally, I hope it is one of those Council of War meetings where everyone sits around a big table and feasts on hunks of bloody meat and drinks from barrels of ale, just like in medieval times. Hopefully it’s not like the usual shit when government officials get together and take forever to make an important decision, and then don’t commit to that decision when it is finally made. I say this because during the meeting, Odin, who’s the head of all gods, gets on his horse, which happens to have eight legs (could be from nuclear radiation, so watch out for the giant spiders), and rides to a magical spring to get advice from Mimnir, which might be a mermaid or some shit (this wasn’t made all that clear in the Cliff’s Notes). She isn’t pleased with his presence. “Get the fuck out of here and go to the battlefield,” she says. “What are you, a little kid? I thought you were king of the damn Aesir gods!”

  Ashamed, he goes and assembles all the other gods (finally), as well as all the dead Vikings that live in Valhalla—the place where good Vikings who die in battle end up so they can die in battle later on with Odin at Ragnarök.

  While all these gods and dead men are waking up and having their coffee, all the bad guys join up. Jormungand, the scaly, poison-spitting schlong; Fenrir, the big bad wolf; a fellow named Surt, who is the sentinel for the Realm of Fire—(when he’s not fighting at Ragnarök, Surt is a part-time bouncer at Club Savage; he enjoys sushi, long walks on the beach, and good conversation)—as well as the Fire Giants and Ice Giants. They all merge into one battalion and start marching to the battlefield, which is called Vigrid. During the hike, they cross Bifröst Bridge. Now, this is a rainbow bridge, which I find a little weird. I mean, either they took a break to star in a Skittles commercial or they were heading to a Nordic Gay Pride parade. Either way, a little out of character for the manliest monsters around.

  Then the action starts. Approximately 432,000 dead Vikings, all wearing golden helmets, along with the gods, meet the Legions of Evil in mortal combat at Vigrid. Although this apocalypse has yet to happen, the ancient texts give us a play-by-play for all the primary characters. Odin, the All-Father and King of the Aesir gods, engages the wolf Fenrir in battle first. Basically, the wolf wins by swallowing him from the get-go. Who the fuck made this pussy king? He’s supposed to kick some major ass, but instead he gets eaten alive by a giant dog. But then again, I guess being a god and all, he is probably as old as dirt, and so it would be like an eighty-five-year-old man dragging his old bones across the junkyard in an attempt to fight a pit bull. Pretty disappointing.

  The next fight on the Ragnarök card is in the bantamweight division—Loki vs. Heimdall. The bout is billed as DJ Trickster versus the Blower of the Magic Horn. For a while it looks like “good” will get the upper hand on “evil” as Heimdall employs his magic horn in sinister ways, but after the two roll around for a while, they end up slapping each other to death. Neither one wins.

  Then Thor, who has my vote for the most badass Viking god, takes on the serpent Jormungand. Thor uses his strength and his giant hammer, and Jormungand uses his serpent fangs. Thor beats the crap out of Jormungand, but our hero ends up dying a few minutes later from the venom he ingests. Come to think of it, this bout sounds a little fishy as well. Thor is said to have a “Great Hammer,” and he fights an extremely large and thick snake who “he has met before.” Then he ends up dying by getting injected with secretions from that snake. And here I was thinking Thor was such a macho guy.

  Just when things begin to look bleak for the forces of good, a true badass emerges—Vidar, Odin’s son. Pissed off that Fenrir ate his father, he steps on the mutt’s lower jaw, grabs his upper jaw, and tears the fucking thing in half. Now that’s what I’m talking ’bout.

  Unfortunately, this victory means very little. In the final throes of battle, the giant flamer Surt rains fire on all nine of the Vikings’ worlds. Pretty much everyone dies—all of mankind, the gods, the giants, and animals. Even the Elves and Dwarves die, meaning there is no hope for Mini-Me, the Keeblers, Time Bandits, or Urijah Faber. This is it. All worlds burn and sink into the seas.

  This kind of begs the question How do I survive when everyone is wiped out? Sorry for the obvious, but you just don’t. If the Viking story of Ragnarök, the great battle between the Aesir gods and the legions of the underworld, does in fact come to pass, we are all pretty much fucked. But if you have any gumption whatsoever, any balls at all, you will fight to the death, because that’s pretty much all you’ll be able to do. After all, it could mean the difference between dying by a blade or being porked to death by a depraved Fire Giant. You get to pick. If you choose the former, I have included some tips below on how to take on one of the more common foes of Ragnarök.

  HOW TO KILL A SUPERNATURAL WOLF

  (Editor’s Note: Delete following section—offensive and homoerotic potty talk. Childish—reader will hate.)

  When Ragnarök comes, you’re gonna want to know how to fight and kill a supernatural wolf. Luckily, the super-badass wolves will already be fighting some of the gods, so you will most likely be pitted against one of the lesser wolves, such as Papsmear and Queernir. Despite being enormous and, for all intents and purposes, mythical, they will act the same as all dumb dogs and charge you. If you follow my step-by-step instructions below, there is a good chance that you will step off the battlefield
victorious. You will die a horrible, fiery death a short while later, but that is inevitable.

  Step 1: As the wolf charges you, dive off to the side to avoid its gaping jaws and stank breath, and then quickly roll underneath it so that you are gazing up at its underbelly. Unless the mutt has been fixed, you should see an engorged set of red balls swinging above your head like bells in a tower.

  Step 2: Remove your rope from your homemade utility belt, lasso that set of nuts, and then climb up the rope. Once you reach the top, cling to the punching-bag-size scrotum and shimmy around to the backside. Do not cling to the front of the scrotum, as the animal will have a tree-trunk-like torpedo whipping around. Ever been hit upside the head with a rubber dildo? No? Yeah . . . uh, me neither. But anyway, supposing you had been hit upside the head with a rubber dildo, this is a thousand times worse.

  Step 3a (option one): Remove a pipe bomb from your homemade utility belt and cram it up the wolf’s anus like a suppository.

  Step 3b (option two): This option comes into play when you are not armed with a pipe bomb. Lacking the option of turning the wolf inside out, you are going to have to kill it using your blade. Luckily, all supernatural wolves have the same weak spot, which is located between the dick and the balls—not the “taint,” which is between the balls and ass. I don’t have a word for the spot you are looking for, and I certainly hope you don’t either, as it would mean you spend far too much time talking about dicks and balls. Unless, of course, you are a woman, and then it’s totally cool.

  Anywho, the wolf’s massive schlong will most likely be guarding this spot, and the only way to gain access to it will be to arouse the wolf to erection. I have no information as to how to do this either. My only advice is to be creative. Once the animal is showing lipstick, the artery will be exposed and ready to slice. Cut deeply and strongly, and you will be victorious.

  Note to Reader: If you actually wasted your time reading multiple paragraphs on how to kill a supernatural wolf, which, I remind you, is a creature that will never exist, I would like to give you a call sometime. Not to be your buddy or pal: I simply want to know if people like you truly exist.

  P.S. Is there even a word for a person who has a wolf genital fetish?

  AIN’T NO CONDOM TO PROTECT YOU FROM THIS:

  THE VIRAL APOCALYPSE

  It starts off as a slight tickle in the throat, a little lump when you swallow, maybe a little soreness. You get congested and your nose begins to run. Sneezing follows shortly thereafter. Within a day, you develop a dry, hacking cough and your breath shortens. The moment you realize you’re in trouble is when playing video games becomes impossible because of the energy required. By the end of the second day, you have severe nausea and are puking and pissing out of your backside, which is blistering sore from the continuous wiping. Your headache turns to fever and you lose all body strength.

  Day three brings the lesions. They start off small, but they get bigger and deeper as you scratch them. Soon they cover your entire body—they’re in your mouth and all over your genitals. You cover yourself in toilet paper and pretend to be one of those lepers from the movies about the Middle Ages or a mummy from ancient Egypt. Either way your prognosis is not good. You lie immobilized in a pool of sweat, blood, and various excretions. Your cough settles deeply in your lungs, and bright green mucus oozes from your encrusted nostrils and stinging eyes. It dries in the back of your cottony throat. Your fever rises and, as you lie there, you swear you can smell your brain cooking in your skull.

  The coughing continues, but it is no longer an upper-respiratory hack. It is deep, and every hack is painful. Golf-ball-size globs of phlegm force themselves out of your lungs, Day-Glo and streaked with red. Sometimes you are unable to spit them up, and so you end up swallowing them. You feel like you could drown in your own fluids at any moment. Just as you think that matters couldn’t get any worse, your skin deteriorates and begins to fall away. Your veins and arteries can be seen through thinning, waxy layers of epidermis, which cling like rice paper to your body.

  There is no remedy. No cure. There is nothing for the pain. In fact no one is coming to help you at all, for you are in quarantine, and there are millions like you—this is more than an epidemic. This is a Viral Apocalypse!

  ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT THE VIRAL APOCALYPSE

  You probably can’t do shit to prevent the viral apocalypse unless you’re a scientist working in an underground bunker doing viral research on monkeys, but you can at least have some common courtesy, which is something most people know absolutely nothing about. You see, microscopic viruses would have a much harder time turning into a global killer if people covered their mouths when they coughed and sneezed. And I’m not talking about covering your mouth with your hand: What good does that do? Sure, you might have not blown your nastiness directly into my face, but you proceeded to touch and infect everything within a ten-meter radius.

  The worst is when people don’t wash their hands thoroughly after taking a dump. When I have friends over at my house, I find myself listening intently after the flush to hear how long the sink runs, just to make sure things are straight. Many of my sick-fuck friends need monitoring, believe me. So, in conclusion, I never want to hear these words come out of your mouth: Oh yeah, I feel like shit. I have a terrible fever, but I’m a real trouper and came to work anyway. Fuck you! If you are sick with the plague, lock yourself in your basement and stay there until you rot.

  Did my description terrify you? Well, unless you actually shit yourself, you are not nearly scared enough. If you actually did shit yourself, then hopefully it’s because you were reading this book in the bathroom, where it’s supposed to be read. If you weren’t reading it in the bathroom and you shit yourself, don’t even think about using the pages to wipe with. This is your mess and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna help clean it up.

  One of the most plausible end-of-the-world scenarios is an incurable viral pandemic. The virus could come about naturally through mutations in the animal world and then get passed to humans, or it could be created accidently by scientists or on purpose by domestic or foreign bioterrorists. Thankfully most of the stuff we catch these days is either curable bacterial strains or viruses that our bodies can fight off and develop immunities to. Currently, just the pathetically weak die from flu viruses. No one gives this much thought because it is usually just the elderly and children, both of whom are pretty much useless in society. But this won’t always be the case.

  Now, we’ve all seen the zombie movies where a virus spreads rapidly through humanity, causing horrible death and then reanimation. Although these movies are ridiculous because the zombies somehow survive with missing limbs, which could never actually happen (I hope), these cinematic masterpieces are very realistic in that it is quite feasible that a man-made, incurable kind of virulence will be released into the general public. What sinister minds could do such a thing? Who are these mad scientists who are laboring to kill us all with the next crushing bug?

  The principal cause of a man-made viral threat lies in the genetic alteration of existing viruses for use in biowarfare. Now, of course I would never suggest that our illustrious government would be involved in something that was declared a violation of international law, but there are plenty of groups and governments that don’t adhere to these agreements—or didn’t, as in the case of the Soviet Union. Remember how I told you that when the USSR fell, a shit-ton of nukes kinda disappeared. Well, so did a crap load of weaponized biowarfare agents. One of these agents was a genetically engineered strain of smallpox, which has been one of the deadliest diseases in the history of man.

  FORREST FACTOID

  Chicken eggs are one of the main incubators for viral research. Who knew? I thought they were just for slinging at passing cars or pasting houses with! But it makes sense when you think about it. Eggs are really just abortions in a candy shell, right? Ever open an egg and find that little black dot floating inside? That means it’s actually been fertilized! Once I cracked ope
n an egg and found blood. Yep, that cured me of eggs for a while. I’ve heard that if you go organic with eggs, you also run the risk of discovering a partially developed chicken fetus. If you ever encounter something as tremendous as this, I suggest you invite some buddies over one night, buy a bunch of beer, make sure everyone gets tore the fuck back, then go out to pick up some burritos for the crew. While driving home, slip that slimy little fetus into one of the burritos, mix them up, and then distribute them to your friends once you get home. As everyone digs in, break out the video camera and pan around slowly for the lucky winner. It’s kind of like Russian roulette, except no one knows they are playing except for you.

  This nasty little viral infection was responsible for killing an estimated 500 million people in the twentieth century, and some experts believe it has been around since approximately 10,000 BC. So this stone-cold killer has been wreaking havoc on humans for thousands of years. How does it do its dirty work? Well, it is caused by a virus called “variola” that is transmitted through inhalation or direct exposure to infected bodily fluids. The virus gets into the nose, throat, and respiratory system, and then heads for the lymph nodes, where it sticks and festers. Open sores pop up on your skin and in your mouth and throat, making drinking orange or grapefruit juice extraordinarily uncomfortable. In some cases, the lesions can combine into large patches that slip off the underlying skin in large peels, much like slippery fruit roll-ups. They can cluster on the soles of your feet and on your palms, making hopscotch, masturbation, fire walking, bitch slapping, and giving foot jobs all but impossible. Did I mention that pus can dribble out of your penis? Yeah, that can happen too.