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

by Griffin, Forrest

  To give you an idea of how a mostly male, group sex situation should transpire, I will share with you one of my funnier gang bang stories. It involved a nurse and my childhood friend Dustin, who now happens to be a sergeant in the army. Well, anytime Dustin and I tag-teamed a girl, he liked to take the role of director, which was fine by me. So on this particular occasion, we were sitting around the living room, and he says to the nurse, “Why don’t you take off John’s pants.” Sure enough, she takes off my pants. Next he said, “Why don’t you start sucking on John’s cock.” Being the truly wonderful woman she was, she began sucking on my cock. Next thing I hear is, “John, lose the shirt.” Without thinking, I removed my shirt. A second later, I realized that he had not been referring to my shirt, but rather the shirt of the nurse. It was pretty damn funny, but what really blew my mind was that the nurse was actually able to laugh with my cock still in her mouth. She could suck a dick and laugh at the same time. What a talented girl.

  WHO’S THE BOSS

  Once you have effectively set yourself up as the Bringer of the Light and established yourself as the top male of the group, the next step is to create a hierarchy, starting at the bottom floor—your laborers. This job will be filled with the people who have pre-apocalypse skills that are no longer valued postapocalypse. This includes but is not limited to lawyers, writers (yes, Erich will be one of my laborers), bureaucrats, plumbers (buckets will be our new toilets), nuclear engineers, astronauts, pilots, bankers (you will own everything of value), and computer scientists. If you happen to be among this group, sorry, buddy, but you are finally going to have to get your hands dirty. And what the fuck are you doing reading my book—you are smarter than this.

  Ironically, the people who had jobs that were considered menial pre-apocalypse will most likely have skills that are extremely valuable postapocalypse. This includes but is not limited to professional fighters, artists (someone has to build your statues and paint your murals—aka, keep record of your greatness), wilderness guides, archers, gunfighters, farmers, and carpenters. You don’t necessarily have to put these people in a position of power (you want to control as much of it as you can), but you definitely want to make them feel superior to the laborers. This can be accomplished by giving them nicer houses, more food, and perhaps assigning each one their own slave laborer. Could you imagine how good it would make a carpenter feel to have his own rocket scientist as a slave?

  FORREST FACTOID

  I was hanging out with the late Evan Tanner a while back, bitching about how people can be so damn critical. Suddenly Evan gets all quiet, and he says to me, “Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth, did nothing but good, and they crucified him for it.” That was some pretty heavy shit right there. Needless to say, I quit my bitching.

  Your middle class will be made up of people who have skills that neither gained nor lost value postapocalypse. This group will exist solely of strippers and prostitutes.

  Lastly, you want to assemble your group of lieutenants. This is where a lot of leaders go wrong. Instead of picking their most loyal subjects to serve in this role, they pick the most ambitious. Although ambitious people often prove to be excellent advisers and will go to great lengths to corral your people into a tightly knit group, they will almost always attempt to overthrow you when you are at your weakest. And since they have a lot more interaction with the people on a daily basis, they can often raise a fairly decent-size army to help them with their task.

  To avoid such an outcome, assign all ambitious people to horrible jobs such as pig farming or butt wiping, and fill your lieutenant positions with the dumbest members of your lot. (In other words, follow the path of George W. Bush, not Julius Caesar.) They might not be great advisers, but do you really need an adviser? Hell no, you don’t. You also don’t need senators or congressmen or anyone else who tells you what is best for your flock. After all, they are your flock. For all intents and purposes, they are your cattle. Before you found them, they were dirty, scared, and confused. They will of course forget this fact, but whipping them back into shape is easy. All you have to do is stage a famine or crisis or war, or make terrible decisions that lead you to a real famine or crisis or war. Anytime people feel threatened, they tend to come together and place blind faith in their leader. Just look at the faith we placed in George W. Bush after 9/11. Enough said.

  THE ETCHING ON THE STONE TABLET

  One of the nicest aspects about starting your own religion is that it allows you to create laws almost at will. All you have to do is claim that they are of divine origin or suggest that they must exist in order to remain in Divinity’s favor. No matter the absurdity of the law you make, no judge in his right mind will attempt to overrule it or say it is unconstitutional. After all, it would be the same as saying God is unconstitutional, and if you have structured your laws correctly, such a crime is punishable by death.

  I know it might seem like a good idea to have an anarchistic society, but it simply won’t work. Without laws, society cannot function because there is no order. However, I am not saying that you should go crazy with laws. And you especially don’t want to make all the laws in your own favor. You want to create certain laws that help solve issues that commonly arise in the community, such as who is allowed to join your group and who isn’t, and how to deal with those who cause harm or bring disorder. But there have got to be some benefits to sitting at the helm of this whole thing, and my suggestion is to get a little creative. I am not saying you should enact a law as self-fulfilling as making all women visit you in your bedchambers the day they turn sixteen (if you are thinking, “Damn, that would be sweet,” then yes, you are indeed a pedophile), but you definitely want to pass laws that make your life easier or at least less annoying.

  Once you create these laws, no matter how absurd, you must enforce them with an iron fist. Personally, I am not one for hurting others, except perhaps for punching people in the face or trying to break their arms with submission holds . . . oh, and maybe once in a while trying to crack a rib with a solid Thai kick, and then also getting real joy out of delivering a stout punch to the liver so the recipient pisses blood for a week . . . but besides all that, I’m not really a guy who likes to dispatch punishment. However, when creating a society, your new utopia, it is absolutely necessary to create consequences for insubordination. You don’t want to get all crazy with things, like burning someone at the stake for not bowing the proper number of times when worshipping your awesomeness. You must be fair when doling out punishments in order to keep order and faith in your system. In other words, the punishment needs to fit the crime.

  There is always the good old “eye for an eye” type of justice. If someone steals, they get their hands cut off. If someone lies repeatedly, they get their tongues cut out. If someone screws another man’s woman—well, you get the picture.

  Many smaller groups simply ostracize their members, exiling them to a life on their own, and in a postapocalyptic world this would undoubtedly be a scary proposition. (Note: Ostracize means to shun or ignore, not make your people dress up and act like ostriches. Just letting you know as these things can sometimes get confusing.)

  Below I have included some of the laws that I will enact in my postapocalyptic community, as well as the punishment people who break those laws will receive.

  1. LAW: Men can’t dye their hair.

  PUNISHMENT: Public stoning. If you are wondering why not death by hanging, beheading, or crucifixion, let me tell you. First off, stoning seems like a pretty terrible way to go, especially if the people can’t throw that good and it takes them a while to put you out of your misery. Second, it makes everyone the killer. If you kill someone by beheading, the blame lies solely with you and the executioner. If you get everyone to partake in the festivities, they all have blood on their hands.

  2. LAW: Women are not allowed to flirt with men they do not plan to have sex with.

  PUNISHMENT: They must become strippers.

  3. LAW: You must pitch in by yo
ur own free will on community projects, such as building schoolhouses, temples to worship me, and of course my castle.

  PUNISHMENT: While everyone else in the community does man’s work, you have to serve them lemonade in a pink dress and hold the bucket for them when they need to relieve themselves. Oh, and you must eat your meals out of the same bucket.

  4. LAW: Don’t wear white after Labor Day.

  PUNISHMENT: Uppity bitches will make fun of you.

  5. LAW: Stupid people must use condoms. And yes, this includes me.

  PUNISHMENT: They have babies they have to take care of.

  6. LAW: No ostentatious showing of wealth. (I made this law because I just learned the word “ostentatious” and had to use it in a sentence in order to remember it.)

  PUNISHMENT: Have to extirpate all their wealth (not sure if I used “extirpate” correctly).

  7. LAW: No hurting coffee plants in any way.

  PUNISHMENT: Death on the spot. However, stoning is not allowed because it may damage one of the plants.

  8. LAW: Women are not allowed to use their left foot during the full moon. (I would get more into this, but it is very personal.)

  PUNISHMENT: None at all, but I am begging you not to do it. (The begging is a part of it all.)

  9. LAW: Women cannot use words such as “small” or “tiny” or “microscopic” or “babylike” when referring to a man’s genitalia. It hurts a guy’s feelings.

  PUNISHMENT: That man is the only lover you may take for five years.

  10. LAW: All pets must be properly maintained.

  PUNISHMENT: Must spend a week in an animal’s cage, getting treated as you treat your animal.

  11. LAW: No driving and texting at the same time.

  PUNISHMENT: Chances are there will be no working cell phones or vehicles, but you don’t want to mess around with this one anyway. Punishable by stoning.

  12. LAW: No smoking in public places.

  PUNISHMENT: Death by stoning.

  If you have trouble coming up with your own laws, the Ten Commandments are a pretty good place to start. Currently, I follow approximately six and a half of them. In case you have forgotten what they are, let me refresh your memory:

  1. You shall have no other gods before me. In the case of the apocalypse, that God will be me, Forrest Griffin. (Just kidding, real God. Please don’t smite me. It was a joke.)

  2. You shall not make yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. This is the wild card commandment. I’m not quite sure what it means, and I am sure others won’t either. Basically, I will define it to suit my immediate purpose. For example, if I catch someone shitting on my lawn, I will shout, “You shall not make yourself a carved image.”

  3. Remember the Sabbath day. Although the Sabbath is currently every Saturday, I like to sleep in on the weekends. I also feel four times a month is a little extreme. As a result, my Sabbath will be every other Wednesday.

  4. Do not take the Lord’s name in vain. I’m actually a firm believer in this one. Although my last book contained about six thousand swearwords, I didn’t take the Lord’s name in vain once.

  5. Honor your father and mother. Basically, this means honor your father and then, if you have any goodwill left over, throw it to your mother. I never understood this—mothers birth you, feed you from the teat, raise you, shower you with warmth, and do everything in their power to protect you even after you become a filthy adult. Seems a little unfair to me. After all, fathers are the ones you run and hide from when they get home from work.

  6. You shall not murder. This is a good one, but I feel it needs a little more clarity. In my religion, it will strictly state, Do not murder me, Forrest Griffin.

  7. You shall not commit adultery. Everyone should abide by this, unless, of course, the chick is super hot and freaky. Just don’t get caught.

  8. You shall not steal. Again, this one needs to be defined. You will not steal from me, Forrest Griffin. However, you may steal from others and give to me, especially if the thing you stole was a warm cup of coffee.

  9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. I am not quite sure what this one means either, but I assume it has something to do with sleeping in your neighbor’s bathtub, which is not a good idea.

  10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s. Basically, this is most awesome commandment of the lot. It is solely designed to keep the elitists in a position of power. However, it is kind of worded strangely. It seems to get all sexual there with the neighbor’s wife part, but in the same sentence they mention male servants, oxen, and donkeys. Most likely, there were some pretty sick fucks back in the day. I mean, who wants to covet a donkey? A deer, on the other hand . . .

  YOU GUESSED IT’A SERIOUS SECTION IN A DICK-JOKE BOOK

  How did society get to this point? How are all these intelligent people running around, believing in religions that are based on ideas and concepts and beliefs that cannot be proven. I know, I know. You just gotta have faith. I have been hearing that all of my life, but if I have faith that tomorrow morning I will awaken with the athletic endowments of LeBron James, it just ain’t going happen.23 The fact of the matter is that faith cannot make morons into astronauts, so why will it make the concepts of any religion any more true? That’s why when I talk at schools I do not tell the kids that they can do anything. Instead, I say, “If you work really, really hard, perhaps you can be the first one in your family to graduate high school. No, you cannot be an astronaut—sorry, that is not really an option for you. Let’s work on maybe getting a bachelor’s degree or maybe a trade you are really good at. Baby steps, kids.”

  NAKED ETIQUETTE

  Around the time I was working on this section of the book, I got a workout in at the Las Vegas Health Club and then hit the showers. About halfway through, the hairy man showering next to me asked some random guy in the locker room if he would be so kind as to soap up his back. I looked over and saw this hairy man hand a complete stranger a little washcloth and then turn around. You could tell the guy who had been asked to perform this service was in complete shock, and not knowing exactly how to behave, he did as he was ordered. He quickly soaped up the guy’s back, handed the washcloth back, and then scurried out of the locker room. I had to use all my willpower not to scream at the hairy man next to me, “What the fuck are you doing?” It bothered me to such a degree that I felt it was necessary to include a few Naked Etiquette laws.

  Naked Etiquette Law 1: If you are naked in a public place such as a locker room, speaking to other people is strictly forbidden. Do not talk to me, and do not look at me. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes glued to the wall in front of you. However, I will accept talking while in the sauna, even if you are naked. This helps pass the time and has a less “rappish” feeling associated with it.

  Naked Etiquette Law 2: This law is very similar to the first law, but I felt I needed to get very specific just so there was no confusion. Even if you are half naked, which tends to occur when you are at a urinal, talking is strictly forbidden.

  Naked Etiquette Law 3: Shaking hands in any place where urination or defecation commonly takes place is strictly forbidden . . . Come on, people, get your head in the game.

  The thing that gets me is that the people who try to spread religion usually aren’t the smartest among us. Just look at any late-night evangelist—every single one of these guys would get creamed in a third-grade spelling bee. But with all of that said, I too have recently found religion. Does that make me a hypocrite? Yes, probably does, but I have certainly been worse things. I believe in God because when I pray to Him, when I say, “Please take away my fear, my anxiety, my pain,” it seems to happen. So when I think about it, I guess faith is not really that blind after all. There really does seem to be so
mething there. I mean, if I do something good and selfless, it feels good. When I do bad things, it feels bad. Sure that could be programmed into me by society, but it could also be God, so I’m going with that one. Besides, now that I am going to church, I will get to go to heaven. In your face, old, agnostic ways!

  However, I have to admit that being a nonbeliever was a whole lot easier. I used to be a militant agnostic, which is where you think, “I don’t know, and neither do you.” Agnosticism appealed to me because its whole belief system could be summed up in that one statement. And what comeback did people have? Since they were unable to prove any of their beliefs here on earth, it all came back to faith. What helped sell me on religion is Pascal’s Gambit. Now, I have an interesting take on this idea because I learned about it in Sunday school as a kid, and my brain has taken a LOT of abuse since the fifth grade, but I didn’t bother to look it up because I like my personal recollection. Pascal’s Gambit is basically this: if you follow the basic tenets of any moderate religion, you will have a better life, you will be more adjusted to society, and you’ll help move things along for the betterment of all. You will also be happier, and if there is in fact a God and a heaven, you will get to meet Him and go there because you followed the rules.