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

by Griffin, Forrest

  The trick now is to dream big. How big? I’m talking castle big. I’m not talking about going out and building yourself a castle. You worked hard all your life, remember, and that would involve far too much work. But just because you can’t build a castle yourself doesn’t mean you won’t get one. Here is what you do:

  STEP 1: Discover a plot of land that will serve as the holy ground of your new utopia. I recommend picking something far away from cities or developed areas in order to limit outside influences. It’s best if this plot of land has some type of structure on it. The structure doesn’t have to be in good shape—it simply has to be large enough to house several hundred people. Some suggestions would be country schoolhouses, warehouses in the middle of nowhere, some type of missile silo, or even a large network of caves. Whichever location you decide upon, the main thing is that there be running water and a food source nearby. Of course, the food source could always be another group of people.

  STEP 2: Rig up a bus into a Vehicle of Death and begin rounding up survivors. By this point, most people will be lonely, scared, and desperate to be a part of some type of society. How you get them to join you is easy: tell them that you have created a safe community where they no longer have to worry about dying on a daily basis. Even if that is not true, people will most likely believe you. Why? Because they want to believe. You will be surprised how many people get on the bus. However, you probably don’t want to force-feed them all matching glasses of Kool-Aid when they first get on, as this will probably freak them out.

  STEP 3: Begin designing your awesome castle. If you are considering moving into a preexisting castle, you are missing my point entirely. In addition to wanting life to be easy, you also want to be remembered through the ages. Create a legacy. When people visit England and Wales, what do they do? They visit castles and talk about how great the creators of those castles were, even though they did no actual work. Erecting a stone castle is perhaps one of the most difficult things to do. If you can somehow convince hundreds of people to dedicate years of their lives to building you a castle, you will be remembered for thousands of years as being totally awesome. Not wanting to be outdone by guys in medieval times, I would recommend building a castle that resembles Hogwarts. In addition to being massive, that place is also filled with all sorts of magic. How cool would that be?

  The one thing to keep in mind is that you do not want your castle to be cooler than my castle. If it is, and you follow my instructions on how to command your followers to build it for you, then I will most likely bring my army over and destroy it. And you will be able to say nothing because I saved your life with the information in this book.

  STEP 4: Start a religion that worships you as some type of god. In the next section, I give detailed instructions how to accomplish this.

  STEP 5: Order your followers to build you a castle. Not wanting to step out of line with the great leaders of the past, you want to make sure not to overpay your workers. If you are truly a great leader, you will not have to pay them at all. However, you may want to be like the Indians of Central America and feed them coca leaves (or, if you like to stay with the times, cocaine or meth), as it does wonders to boost productivity and morale. You might also want to throw them a goat or pig every now and then to ensure they do not starve. After all, a dead worker is an inefficient worker.

  BECOME A DOG (I MEAN GOD. SORRY, MY DYSLEXIA KICKED IN)

  Let me begin by saying that starting your very own religion is not an easy thing to do. There are currently only five commonly recognized world religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—and each of them has its roots buried in thousands upon thousands of years of tradition and development. Back in the day, starting these religions wasn’t all that difficult because the people of the long-long ago were about as smart as the clay-and-stone tablets the laws of their religions were etched upon. Spending their waking hours growing food, preparing food, avoiding the plague, and courting farm animals, the majority of people had no time left over for things as ridiculous as arithmetic or that fancy book learnin’. They might have been able to weather some pretty terrible shit, but they had a serious chink in their armor: anything outside of their dimly lit perspective became a giant mystery.

  Anyone who had ever learned how to read, count, or wash their genitals had a serious leg up, and the peasants viewed this small number of “learned” people as superior. How did the educated wield their power? Well, they used it to interpret, disseminate, and enforce the confusing traditions of religion. Seriously, these guys had it easy. The most educated dude in the mix probably wasn’t half as “Smart as a Fifth” Grader© today, and they were given free rein to write the book on The Truth. And like all people of power should, they used the blind faith of the masses for their own designs. Sure, they used religion as a way to give purpose and meaning to the community, but they also used it to organize and control its members.

  Your goal in creating a new religion is to establish that same type of power, but it won’t be easy. You could always burn all the books and wait for the next generation of brainless followers, but then you would be old, and what’s the point of having power when you are old? You got to take advantage of that shit while you are young enough to enjoy it. The trick will be coming up with a religion that people actually buy. Unfortunately, the mob is a lot more educated than the one that existed in the long-long ago. The amount of knowledge that has been amassed during the past twenty thousand years of human civilization is staggering, and there are currently 750 million people sharing that information on social networks on the Internet. You need to consider that your flock will have some degree of technical familiarity even if there is nothing to be technical about anymore. They will understand the basics of math, science, and reading and writing, which wasn’t the case in ancient times. You must keep this in mind when creating your religion, as you will most likely be asked to explain and defend your system of beliefs to those who challenge your authority.

  Luckily, in a postapocalyptic world people will be looking for a new set of rules. With the old religions obviously having failed them, they will want a new leader, and that is where you casually step into the picture. As long as you are an alpha-type survivor with the skills and the knowledge to maneuver successfully through the devastation, which will be the case since you are the proud owner of this book, it will be easy to rise to the status of leader. Once there, you should be able to use your charisma to get people to follow any somewhat moderate belief system you dream up. I mean, if Scientology can get half of Hollywood allegedly (I had to put that in there because these guys have rocking lawyers) believing their crazy bullshit, you should be just fine.

  Before you get all giddy and begin rounding people up, there are a few things to consider. First, are you going to shoot for the stars or be more realistic in your goals? In other words, are you going to start a religion or a cult?

  The smart theorize that the difference between the two is how they interact with general society. If your system of beliefs teaches its members how to live in the world, along with other people, regardless of your system’s place in society, and it offers them guidelines on how to do so, then you are most likely the proud owner of a religion. If your belief system is intent on separating its members from their social system, and it encourages them to interact only with other members of your system, then you may be the leader of what is commonly referred to as a cult. If you find this confusing, let me simplify. For example, if you take your girlfriend to parties and home for the holidays, and she actually initiates sex with you, then her name is Religion. If your girlfriend lives in the basement, receives sunlight only through specialized tanning bulbs, and a tin bucket in the corner serves as her only toilet, then her name is Cult.

  Before you decide which one to start, there is more to factor in to the equation. Another key difference between a religion and a cult is that religions usually require their members to worship a higher power that is above mankind and its l
imited comprehension. A cult, by definition, will many times ask its members to worship the messenger, as he is seen as either divine or an incarnation of a divine figure. There are of course inherent risks with whichever strategy you decide to pursue. For instance, if you are just the messenger, others will be able to proclaim messages from that source as well, and thus sects or spin-offs can occur and rival yours, even though they use the same basic belief structure that you created. When you leave things up to interpretation, they will eventually get interpreted. Next thing you know, people are attacking your gates and demanding that you release all your serving wenches from captivity—all that hard work straight out the window!

  The only real way to establish a belief system where you are free from external risks is to become the sole appointee and sole messenger of The Truth. This automatically points you in the direction of creating a cult, but that’s pretty much how almost all “religions” started out anyway. (Don’t tell this to the Catholics—they tend to get all bent out of shape over it.)

  Whatever route you take, you will most likely want to be at the center of the action. This can be accomplished by setting yourself up as the sole heir to The Truth from the get-go, which is a lot like trying to get kinky with a chick in bed. If you want her to dress up as the University of Georgia bulldog while you go at her woof-woof style, you got to do that shit within the first few months in the relationship, while things are still new and exciting. If you wait until three years in before exposing your fuzzy-fucker fantasies, she will probably freak out. It is the same with your religion. You’ve got to establish yourself and your intentions from the beginning to give your religion a foundation. That way, if others proclaiming The Truth pop out of the woodwork later on, you have recourse to arguing that your words are the Real Deal.

  However, when establishing yourself as the supreme dispenser or speaker of The Truth, you do run into some risks as well. Many of these are what I call Internal Risks. That is, they are derived from inconsistencies in your actions or weaknesses in your resolve. For instance, if you proclaim that homosexuality and premarital sex are wrong, and then go around screwing all of your altar boys, you’ve just created a contradiction. This is why any religion that preaches abstinence from things such as sex, pursuit of money, desire for material goods, alcohol, and other such “vices” end up having their fair share of hypocrites, which in turn creates dissension and ultimately turns people away from that religion. In the case of a fledgling religion, it is essential for its founder to maintain actions consistent with the beliefs of the system he espouses. Therefore, I suggest that you pick your codes well so you are sure you can stay true to them. In other words, don’t be full of shit.

  It has been said in business that the three most motivating factors in selling a person on something are sex, greed, and fear. When it comes to religion, I would throw guilt into the mix as well. If your goal is to control the masses, you must control and define each of these aspects of human nature. Of course, you must also deliver to your followers a sense of satisfaction through the realization of purpose. Luckily, this will be quite easy in a postapocalyptic world. With everything they ever knew or loved burned to a crisp, it will be very easy to convince people that they were chosen to live for a greater purpose. It is your job to give them that purpose and to enhance their experience and feeling of value within the new community. For all practical purposes, assume the roll of strip club owner, and view your flock as an abused group of eighteen-year-old girls searching for a daddy. Give them the attention and purpose they are searching for. If you blank out on how to accomplish this, just remember the words “You are the chosen ones” goes a long way with smaller groups of people who have been through a lot of trauma.

  The one thing you don’t want to do is make your religion easy to follow. You want to ask your people to give up EVERYTHING. If you design your religion like a four-minute abs video and proclaim it is so easy that anyone can follow it, people will be deterred. For some reason, people like to suffer. They are completely content thinking that in the next life they will get theirs, which does wonders for allowing you to get yours in the here and now. During the three long months I spent working as a personal trainer, I scientifically proved that the more people pay for something, the more perceived value that something has. That is why we were thinking about charging five hundred dollars for this book. If HarperCollins had gone for it, you would have undoubtedly thought that it contained the formula for shitting golden apples. I thought it was a great idea, but at least we managed to con twenty-five bucks out of you for a book worth no more than a half-used pack of butt napkins.

  This is the same thing you want to accomplish with your religion. Don’t underestimate the power of fraternities or of military hazing. You must ask people to give up all their possessions. You must ask them to give you all of their food. Even if you can’t eat that much food, you can always burn it or piss on it and give it back to the hungries worshipping at your feet . . . Yes, definitely go with the cult option now that I think about it.

  Heed my words—do not attempt to create a system that is altruistic, which means it is actually good for the people. There are simply no incentives. If you create a religion totally in your favor, your flock becomes your personal slaves. In addition to doing all the things you hate, such as foraging and farming and going to the bathroom alone, they will bring you free sandwiches and give you regular blow jobs. It is a pretty sweet deal—just take a look back at all the heads of England’s various churches in the long-long ago. Those guys were all fat off eating turkey legs and getting blow jobs (I have no proof for this statement, but it seems right). If you invent a religion that attempts to break the class system and get rich people communicating with poor people, the repercussions for being discovered as a fraud will be the same as for any other fraud—they will torture you to death by making you watch The Hills on mushrooms. Might as well get something out of the whole deal.

  It’s also important to know what your people are thinking, not because you care what they think but because it’s another way to wield power. This can be achieved by adding confession to the rituals and system of your religion. These sessions should be recorded or transcribed and filed away for future reference. People often hold out in confessions, so it is important that all of the clergy in your new cult are also trained hypnotists. Once you have the members’ deepest, darkest secrets, your flock will feel somewhat trapped. They will fear you. It would be like if I told someone about the time I slept with a post-op tranny. I would never tell anyone that. But if I did, you would have something over my head.

  If a member of your group gets uppity, you leak the secrets you have on them to the rest of the group. Eventually, it will get out that that dissension leads to horrible punishment. Of course, if exposing their darkest moments is not enough to keep members from getting uppity, there are other ways to deal with their disobedience.

  Why does any of this matter? The castle, dummy. Remember the castle. If you don’t have a group of blind followers, who in the heck is going to build it for you? I sure as hell ain’t.

  MIX-AND-MATCH RELIGIONATOR CHART

  I’m not gonna lie: starting your own religion is not easy. It takes at least a solid weekend of work with intermittent breaks to fight off the nomadic hordes. If you start to get frustrated and feel like calling it quits, remember that a sage once said, “Don’t be a quitter ’till you hit her in the shitter.” Your new system doesn’t have to be perfect. As a matter of fact, it can be downright insane. Use a mix-and-match Religonator Chart like the one I’ve laid out below—it really is that simple. The religion you end up with might not exactly fit your needs and desires, but at least you will end up in power and have control.

  This chart contains some of the more, how do you say, fantastic beliefs held by a few of the world’s religions, as well as a column for what I like to call the “wild card” beliefs. To build you very own religion, circle one belief from each of the major religions, and to
add that individual touch, top it off with two beliefs from the wild card column. Once you have made your choices, blend them together and create an almost ridiculous story line and a group of laws. Just go nuts with it and have some fun. Next, write the main story line on a really old scroll, scratch each law onto a stone tablet, and deposit both of these items somewhere in the desert. Just make sure to remember where you put them because later you will need to “find” them in the midst of a vision or dream.

  Christian

  • Baby born by virgin.

  • Leader rises from the dead.

  • Walking on water.

  Catholic

  • Consume the body and blood of your fallen leader on a weekly basis.

  • Encourage young boys to hang out with old, asexual men.

  Judaism

  • The parting of entire seas.

  Hinduism

  • Good begets good, bad begets bad.

  • Cows are sacred.

  Scientology

  • Aliens provide purity and clarity to humans. (Or some shit like that. Seriously, if they can get away with this kind of shit nowadays, what with modern technology and plenty of other religious options out there, you can get away with just about anything. Allegedly.)

  Wild card

  • Baby born by man virgin.