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

by Griffin, Forrest

  Now that I have shared with you some of my inner feelings about the animal world, I would like you to sit back in your chair and think about what animal you find the sexiest. Is it some kind of tropical bird? Do you find the lioness as she glides across the plains strangely alluring? Or do you find a creature of the sea the most tantalizing? I’m being serious: sit back and give it some deep thought. It is very important to think about this now so that when you spot that animal postapocalypse, you can immediately commence with the fulfillment of your needs . . . no . . . of your desires.

  Serious Note to Reader: Unfortunately for you, I like tests, and this was one of them. If you actually made it through my bit on animal fucking, you failed. I mean, who would keep reading a book that talks about humping animals? I know after the apocalypse there will be no laws against that shit, but come on, where is your pride? You should be ashamed of yourself. Deeply, deeply ashamed. However, you have to admit that deer are kind of sexy. If someone held a gun to my head and insisted that I fuck some type of animal, it would most certainly be a deer. (Erich, I told you to hold that gun to my head . . . just do it and close your eyes; this will only take a second.) I mean, those eyes are so big and glassy. You can get lost in those eyes . . .

  HOW TO PREVENT MUD BUTT (AKA SWAMP ASS)

  Properly wiping your backside shouldn’t be your primary concern when trying to escape town and make it to your safe zone, but if you let matters get too carried away back there, you will develop a condition often referred to as Mud Butt. Trust me, this is very uncomfortable.

  Personally, I have never shit in the actual woods. I’ve shit my pants more than a few times, but according to Erich, this has no bearing on the apocalypse. When it comes to shitting in the woods, he is undoubtedly the expert. He insisted that we include a “shitting” section in the book, which I found a little odd. After listening to a few of his stories, you gotta wonder if his goal is to actually teach people how to shit or simply to make them feel better about themselves because they have not shit all over themselves in the wild. If you are like me20, you will probably agree that Erich has some bizarre fascination with fecal matter. After all, he has German blood. If you were to hack into his computer, there is no doubt that you would find some shizer videos in a secret file. Anyway, here is the section on shit:

  For the longest time, I thought the best way to wipe your ass in the woods was with whatever you could find—leaves, weeds, bark, small animals—but then Erich proceeded to tell me half a dozen of his wilderness shit stories, the worst one being the time he hiked the Machu Picchu trail in Peru. He was up at fourteen thousand feet and decided he had to take a dump. He found a nice field filled with grass, dropped his drawers, made his deposit, and then broke off a handful of grass to wipe his ass. Although the grass was green, it was not as fresh as he’d first thought. It basically turned to dust in his hand.

  Being a dirty, filthy mongrel, he wiped with it anyway, and ended up with shit on his mitt. Not far from the field he heard a small babbling creek, but it was located down a steep embankment of shale. Being a genius, he attempted to scale down the slope and ended up slipping and sliding all the way down. By this point, shit had migrated from his hand to select parts of his torso. He attempted to get at the water, but the stream was completely encased in thornbushes. After a full five minutes tangling with the bush, he gave up. He climbed back up the slope of shale, again slipping and sliding, and by the time he reached the top, he had shit on his torso, legs, and face. With no other option, he was forced to hike another eight miles literally covered in shit and with an ass full of prickly grass particles.

  Learning from his mistakes, I have devised the ultimate way to shit in the wild. All it requires is a single, somewhat healthy leaf:

  Get a leaf.

  Fold leaf once.

  Fold leaf twice.

  Tear semi-circle off corner of leaf.

  Unfold leaf and stick thumb through hole.

  Stick thumb up ass.

  Slide leaf up thumb to remove fecal matter.

  Use severed piece of the leaf you tore off to dig shit out from under fingernail.

  Display your somewhat clean thumb.

  WHY YES, I DO SPEAK SIGN LANGUAGE

  If you are traveling with a group of people, you want to develop hand signals. Although they make you look like a sock puppeteer when you do them alone, they make you look like some type of commando when other people are around, even if the people have no idea what the hand signals mean. But beware, sometimes hand signals have more than one meaning. To prevent you from getting confused, I have included some of the more popular hand signals below and the various meanings they have.

  “Hurry up” or “Fetch me another drink or I will give you the Asian Dart!”.

  “Dog” or “Heavy balls.”

  “Wedge formation” or “Reach around! Who wants a reach around?” .

  “I understand” or “Look at my awesome hand puppet.” .

  “Live long and prosper” or “Hope you die a horrible death.” .

  “Fuck you” or “Wanna spin on my finger?”

  “Gas leak” or “Twist my nipples while I check your oil . . . ohhh, yeah, creamy cheese delight.”

  “Move up” or “Put it in here.”

  “Me” or “Be like this.”

  “Column formation” or “Ssssss goes the snake.”

  “Listen or hear” or “Can you still see the cauliflower?” .

  “Hostage” or “Is that the ghost of David Carradine?”

  Hang Lose = Thumbs up

  THE MOST DANGEROUS PEOPLE OF THE APOCALYPSE

  It is pretty obvious that while making the escape to your safe zone, you want to avoid well-armed, unsavory people. However, there are less obvious people who will pose an equal amount of danger. I have included the list below.

  Note to Reader: Erich predominantly wrote this section. I tell you this not because I am a nice guy or because I don’t want to take credit for the ideas of others—I obviously have no problem with that (see Got Fight?). The reason I tell you this is that I want to absolve myself of the forthcoming ill will directed at hippies. You see, Erich was kidnapped by a clan of nomadic hippies as a small child and was forced to live among them. This explains his lack of hygiene, as well as his passion for “roughing it.” When I met Erich, he was sleeping on a pile of clothes and trash that looked like the pit of a hamster’s nest, in the closet of a million-dollar house. Gallon jugs of urine and water, which he drank from regardless of what they actually contained, surrounded him. I asked him why he lived in such a manner, and he simply replied, “I am preparing.” That is when I knew I had found a writer for my apocalypse book.

  Why does Erich, who seems to despise hippies, choose to live like them? Well, I can only liken it to Hitler hating the Jews but being part Jewish. At heart, Erich wants to be a hippie, but he can’t do it because it is frowned upon in our society. Erich yearns for the apocalypse so he can be freed from these shackles—free to live like a filthy hippie. And I am not talking about the hippies that secretly have money or families with money, and will reach a point where they will quit being hippies and convert to yuppyism. Erich hates those hippies even more than the others—he sees them as fakers hidden under dirty dreads. After the apocalypse, Erich will show the world what being a hippie is really about.

  Hippies

  Hippies themselves are not very dangerous. As a matter of fact, the majority of them will not try to hurt you in any way, even if it means their very survival. This should disgust you, but it is not why you should fear them. Hippies are primarily dangerous because of their hugs. I am not sure why, but hippies seem to love giving hugs. When they approach you, hug ready, you are immediately thrown off by their odd smell, which is a mixture of patchouli and garbage. My guess is they wear patchouli in an attempt to cover up the smell of garbage emanating from their bodies, but it doesn’t work out like that. It simply produces two distinct smells that shatter your senses and leave you t
erribly discombobulated. Like trying to cover the smell of a meaty man-shit with some bathroom spray. While you stand there stunned, they wrap their arms around your body, forcing you to come into contact with their gross body hair.

  Although it is possible to live through such an embrace, the majority of the time one of their hippie buddies will begin playing their terrible music on either an acoustic guitar or bongo drum. When subjected to their smell, hugs, gross body hair, and terrible music all at the same time, a victim is likely to suffer intense seizures. To avoid such an outcome, if you see a hippie approaching you postapocalypse with his arms outstretched, you want to bolt. Luckily, hippies eat only seeds, nuts, and herbs, and this combined with massive amounts of weed smoking makes them very slow runners.

  The other dangerous aspect about hippies is their compassion. They love to go against “the man” and save things. This will be even more common postapocalypse because there will be no one there to dissuade them with billy clubs, tear gas, and, my favorite, rubber bullets. In a matter of days after the shit goes down, the hippies that have survived will gather in massive groups, and after several weeks of odiferous lovemaking, someone in the group will get the bright idea to save something, causing their masses to begin to wander. Within a couple of days, there is a good chance they will find their way into the city zoo. And guess what? They will release all the starving animals, thinking they are doing a good deed. Unlike normal people, the hippies will not just release the cute, cuddly animals. In their world, a pee-bug is just as important as a panda, and all the cages will be flung open with glee. Despite the angry and ravenous state of the wild animals, they will not feed on the hippies because they are too smelly. As the lions and tigers and packs of wolves go stalking down the street in search of less gamy game, the hippie mass will continue to wander.

  Eventually they will find their way into the city prison. Again, they will do this “good deed” of theirs and release all the inmates. And of course the inmates will not kill the hippies because they are simply too smelly. The butt-hungry killers will head out into the streets to find something nonsmelly to fuck and/or kill, and the hippie mass will continue its wandering.

  After a few more days pass, they will stumble into a science laboratory where testing is done on animals. They will do yet another “good deed” and release the starving, genetically altered, Ebola-infected chimpanzees, all of which are crazed and enraged with syphilis and hungry for vengeance and human flesh (this might actually cause the apocalypse—see 28 Days Later). Fortunately, these creatures will be so tortured that there is a good chance they will kill the hippie mass, but the damage will already have been done. If you happen to find yourself on the streets of a city where a hippie mass has been, you have zero chance of survival. As a result, avoid San Francisco and most towns in Oregon.

  Fat People

  Obviously, most fat people cannot move very quickly; thus, most of them will not survive the apocalypse. But there is currently a shit load of fat people, and some will manage to avoid the various pitfalls by blind luck. It will be like the ultimate fat camp—they will learn to survive on nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables for the first time in their lives. After making this switch, they will feel extremely powerful and have amazing energy supplies. Will they realize the errors of their ways and be changed by their newfound diet? Most certainly not. They will be ready to consume anything in sight, including you.

  The majority of overly fat survivors will not last long, but there will undoubtedly be at least a couple who make it past the first few weeks, and they will be very dangerous. Not so much out in the open—fat people are like slow-moving zombies in that they are easy to get away from. The places you must be careful of are confined spaces. Although fat people are extremely large, they are kind of gooey, and they can fit themselves into some pretty tight places, like closets and underneath beds. They are also extremely patient. After all, they are not concerned with what concerns normal-weight people. They care nothing about warmth because all their extra adipose keeps them toasty at night. They can’t see their penises, so sex is out of the question. And all the entertainment they need is wrapped up in a Twinkie. Their sole focus will be to get more food, so they will cram their bodies into tight places and wait for weeks for someone to walk by. If you happen to wander past one of their hiding places, you are pretty much doomed. They will leap out at you, wrap their gelatinous arms around your body, and then drop on top of you and smother you with their colossal boob-belly mass. The worst part is they will not even wait until you are dead to begin feasting. For this reason, avoid all confined spaces. If you absolutely must enter a building, check all the cupboards, cabinets, and broom closets before settling in.

  Children

  Children of the apocalypse must be avoided at all costs. The more innocent a child looks, the more dangerous he or she will be. While adults are scrounging for flashlights, food, and batteries, children will scrounge for candy. After three weeks of eating nothing but Snickers, Kit Kats, and Ho Hos, they will be spun out big-time. They will hit the streets in their Big Wheels looking to dish out some pain, cackling the Mario Brothers’ theme song. Armed with toy military helmets, BB guns, wrist rockets, and pocketknives, they will be like extremely smart and crafty gremlins.

  How much harm could they do? A fucking lot. Remember, these little wrecking machines did not grow up playing with sticks in the backyard. They have been playing Halo and Call of Duty since the day they were born, and they can shoot the ball sack off an eagle soaring two hundred yards overhead. These are not real kids you are dealing with—they are American kids, spoiled rotten and used to getting what they want. If the picture is still blurry, imagine the little tribe of parentless kids from Thunderdome. It will be exactly like that, except the postapocalyptic kids in the real world will not be singing songs and cheering. They will be beating your head in with Tonka toys and screaming at you to give them candy.

  And if for some reason they do not choose to kill you, they will undoubtedly try to talk you into taking care of them. With their upturned eyes, they will play the guilt card and make you share your food, shelter, and clothing. Bear in mind, these are not actually your children. If they are your children, you should probably take care of them . . . probably.

  Surviving on your own is hard enough, but when you add a bunch of hungry mouths into the picture, things get really difficult really quick. If you should encounter a rug rat in the wasteland, you only have one choice: Run! (Note: This form of orphan trickery can also happen pre-apocalypse. If some woman claims that you are the father of her child, she is lying. Screw genetic testing, it is all bullshit. Many of my friends have fallen for this very con.)

  FILTHY FUCKING STREET URCHINS

  The Homeless

  Although you want nothing to do with hippies, fat people, or children, when the world as we know it ends, befriending a homeless person may very well save your life. Why? Because they are survivors, that’s why. I know what you’re thinking: “If 99.8 percent of the human population gets wiped off the face of the planet, there will only be two homeless people left.” Wrong. They will be everywhere. After a lifetime of subsisting on leftovers, they can eat a super-flu for lunch. After sleeping on the winter streets of New York and the summer streets of Vegas, they consider a huge natural disaster only a mild inconvenience. An economic collapse—get the fuck out of here. Looting and rioting is a carnival to homeless people. I’m telling you, every last homeless person will survive the end of the world, and if you manage to convince one to become your traveling mate, you will be as right as rain.

  Your new homeless friend will teach you how to turn week-old cheese into a fantastic new cologne, divulge his secret recipes for cooking rat, and show you how to turn garbage into a fine sorbet. If the two of you get close, he may even demonstrate how to light a cigarette without igniting your breath, give you clues on how to break your phobia about masturbating in public, teach you how to filter coffee using your underwear, and show you
how to build a fort under a bridge, in back alleys, or in the bushes. I’m telling you, homeless people are the ultimate urban warriors. But beware, gaining access to their secret society is not easy, so I recommend starting now. This can be achieved by volunteering down at your local shelter or just being kind and compassionate to those less fortunate. Just think of it as an investment. Personally, I have been volunteering at a shelter here in Las Vegas. Do I care about doing good deeds? Most certainly not. My only goal is to trick the homeless into allowing me into their inner circle when the shit hits the fan.

  HOW TO FIGHT IN THE THUNDERDOME

  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is obviously more than just a movie—it is a guide to know what shit will be like postapocalypse. Based upon this very real depiction of the near future, martial arts and the UFC will continue to grow in popularity. The only difference is that they will undoubtedly add some weapons in the mix and the rules will change. Instead of fighting in the Octagon, you will fight in a Thunderdome-type arena. And instead of striking your opponent with your fists, you will stab each other with swords and spears and shit. You might even have to fight a lion or two (if it was good enough for the Christians, it will be good enough for the apocalypse).