Tag Archives: apocalypse

John Connor – Our Last Best Hope in the face of the Apocalypse

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Who are you?

I’m John Connor. Voice and leader of the resistance. If you’re reading this, you are part of my cabal of human freedom fighters. My mom was Sarah Connor. She was a great woman. I used to think she was a complete psycho and a “total loser”. Now I understand. She understood the computers were going to take over the world. She taught me how to be tough, how to fight and how to lead people in a military operation. Without her, I would not exist. Without me, the resistance to the machines would have been crushed years ago.

What do you do for fun?

Kill terminators. When I was young, I used to like to play video games and cruise around on my little scooter bike with my buddy Tim. Today, Tim’s dead – killed in the nuclear holocaust that was Judgement Day. In fact, they’re almost all dead. In fact, don’t take this the wrong way, but in the future, when we’re constantly evading hunter-killer terminators and planning offensives against the Skynet, fun just doesn’t seem to exist.

What is your favourite community? Why?

The human communities around the world. The survivors who refuse to go silently into the night. Who chose to find a way to survive and to resist the terrible future of the machines. I love this community and will die fighting to defend it. Why? If you don’t know, then you’re probably a machine and you’ll likely never be able to really understand.

What is your superpower?

An innate ability to kill terminators. I’ve been fighting terminators since I was a kid. Hell, I was at war with them before I was even born. I know what they’re thinking, what they’re planning and I know how to terminate them using everything from MIG fighters to laser rifles to machine guns. In a world overrun by the bastards, my superpower is the best thing our species has got. That may sound a bit arrogant. If you think so, you can go to hell. What are you doing to save the human race?

How do you use it to build community?

It’s simple. The more terminators I kill correspondents directly with the more human communities that will survive. If I can kill them all and destroy Skynet, mankind may once again become the top dog on the planet Earth.

My Three Favourite Things About John Are…

1. He’s scrappy and has a lot of pluck. You see it throughout his life. Be it when he’s a young teen racing through the waterways of LA while being chased by a giant mac truck, dodging military drones when in his late 20s on the eve of Judgement Day or even jumping into the middle of the Pacific Ocean during a horrible storm to swim to submarine in his 40s.

2. His relationship with a machine made me cry when I was a kid. Yup, I don’t get too emotional most of the time. But John’s special relationship with his terminator guardian in T2 is pretty special. That sort of depth of character demonstrates that while he may seem like a arrogant badass based on his comments above, he’s also the same guy that as a kid, taught a machine how to be more human.

3. His pure doggedness. It’s gotta be tough fighting terminators your entire life, especially in the face of such horrible odds. It’s gotta be even tougher knowing you have a destiny and that destiny will likely keep you alone and in danger through your entire life. But John doesn’t give up. His single minded commitment to fighting for our future has made the game of WWJCD (What would John Connor Do?) a popular one in our household.

An Apocalypse Planning Guide

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According to the Mayan calendar, we have 329 days until the end of the world.  If you haven’t started planning yet (nothing like a “DEADline”), I’ve started to put together a planning guide of things to do to get ready for the impending disaster that will ensue.

Check something (if not many things off) your bucket list.
Our time on earth is limited.  We all have lots of things we would like to do someday but it is so easy to let the routine of busy schedules get in the way.  If you don’t have a bucket list of things that you want to do someday, make one, and then prioritize a couple of things that you can do this year.  It will help with the mental preparation for the end of the world if you know that you have a few less things outstanding.

Explore apocalyptic/dystopian scenarios through novels and film.
While the earlier debate in this series of computers vs. zombies may have you convinced of how the end will come, it seems to me that there are lots of other options for how the world could end.  It could be a flood, it could be a nuclear winter, it could be a plague, it could be World War III, or it could just be the end of the world as we know it with corporations, governments, the media, and/or all of humanity changing how we live in terrible, horrific ways.  Thankfully, the human imagination has explored countless scenarios already through the genre of dystopian novels and film, and even has the sub-genre specializing in apocalypse.  Wikipedia has compiled extensive summary, so check out a few to see what we might be in for.

Prepare a community asset map.
When the apocalypse comes, you will not be alone.  You need to look around you to think about how your community will cope.  And this shouldn’t be an exercise in who is the best candidate to be the “Piggy” on your island.  Instead, I would suggest that through your networks and neighbourhood there are many strengths and opportunities that you haven’t yet discovered.  You need to look around you in a positive way to maximize your chances during the apocalypse and work together to leverage the skills, knowledge and resources that are on hand or can be developed.

Develop outdoor skills.
While the world is ending, odds are food, water, energy, transportation and many of the other things that we enjoy in our everyday lives will stop being as readily available to us.  Plus zombies tend to congregate in urban centres. One of the best ways to prepare for this is to head outside and start learning skills like building fires, sleeping outside, purifying water, traveling by human power (hiking, skiing, canoeing), and protecting food stores from wildlife.

Begin a physical training program.
It might come down to survival of the fittest, so a key part of apocalypse preparation should be physical conditioning (as tempting as it might be to live on a diet of beer and cheese the last couple of months).  You might need to doing some outrunning, some climbing, or some squeezing into awkward spaces if you want to survive. So the generally recommended mix of cardio, strength and flexibility training is likely a good baseline for end of the world preparation. Zombies are slow, but persistent, so focus on endurance training.

Pack an apocalypse emergency kit.
Most of us aren’t even ready with a 72 hour emergency kit that the federal government recommends for natural disasters.  So that isn’t a bad place to start and there is already a great Gumboot post on this.  Since we don’t know how it is going to go down, it would likely pay to have the kit remain fairly light weight and portable in case you need to be on the move.  The bonus is that it shouldn’t be prohibitively expensive and if you already have camp gear most of it can play double duty. Thinks about adapting this kit to include tools practical to both dig gardens and for zombie defense.

Have a plan for December 21.
A combination apocalypse and solstice calls for special plans.  Whether it is a grand party or more low key celebration, you should do have something to do that day to keep you busy up until the end, however it might come.  It is a great chance for reflection, celebration, and exploration of the potential if tomorrow does somehow come.  And most importantly, a time to feast and share.

And in the off chance that the Mayans were wrong, by using this list you still have done something you’ve always wanted to do, explored a genre of literature and film, got to know the strengths and potential of your community, are in better shape, explored the great outdoors, have an emergency kit on hand, and had the great party.  Not a bad way to spend 2012.

The Global Toolkit of Skills You Will Need to Survive the Apocalypse

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Since I can’t seem to function at all when I’m hungry, I believe that keeping a happy belly is the #1 skill you will need to survive the apocalypse.

You will need to know how to throw a great dinner party wherever your apocalyptic survival plan takes you. Morale is vital to survival. Pot-lucks are great for morale.

You must know how to hunt, kill and use all parts of an animal for food and supplies. Vegan’s will not survive the apocalypse – another reason to enjoy bacon while you can.

You need to know which foods provide which vitamins. It would be pretty embarrassing to die from gangrene when there are zombies everywhere.

Survival Strategies from Around the World

By: Martin Renauld and Peter Joerdell

Martin says…

Looking back at history, I would guess Argentina would face the apocalypse using class warfare… Until now, argentinean upper class/oligarchy has reacted with force to most attempts to improve lower class living conditions, especially in tough times. Therefore, if food becomes scarce, migrations from neighboring countries start to flow in, zombies appear everywhere or even Jesus coming back to punish us (except Jehovah witnesses of course)… The rich and powerful Argentinean would do as they have done over the past 200 years, just bring a docile dictator and make sure not the share vital resources. Argentina produces a lot a food (for about 7 times its population), which I guess would help getting the rich richer if famine starts spreading around the world.

Peter says…

And welcome to the German perspective on „the Apocalypse“. And to be honest, it’s going to be a bit of a let-down. Because, frankly, us Germans, we’re quite used to the doom & gloom-perspective. I mean, just look at the end of WW2 – we’ve had the shit bombed out of us like no other nation. And ever since then, German Angst has been on the agenda (it’s no miracle that term is recognized and understood, globally). We’ve always had this imminent perdition-thing going: First it was the Cold War, then it was BSE, now the Economic Crisis and the Post-911 terror-craze… And as I said, if you go back to WW2 – everyone has their own family-stories here, to which to relate to when dealing with the apocalypse. In many ways, the final days of WW2 are the blueprint. How Uncle Willy ran away from his post, ditching his uniform and making for home through the woods. How Grandma, right after giving birth to my mum ran through the firestorm of what used to be Remscheid while the city ceased to exist, losing all her family in just one night. How my own dad stared down the gun-barrels of the Red Army as an eleven year old kid. If we’re honest, we’ve seen it all in the 20th century. Hyper-inflation, two world wars, a dictatorship made in hell, being threatened to be the first to go in nuclear holocaust…

The only new component in today’s apocalypse is that the environmental-issue is now also on the menu.

So, what would Germany do? I don’t know. Specific survival strategies have always proven to be difficult to maintain in the face of actual obliteration. Experience dictates that a lot of sheer luck is usually needed to come out alive and unscathed.

Maybe we oughta stick to the positive side: There won’t ever be a speed limit on the Autobahn after the world has ended. We won’t have to bail out Greece with our money. We’ll not be sewing T-Shirts for the Chinese market (as we might well do, according to some pessimists, in 20 years).

The best solution might actually be that of my friend Frank. His daughter was born on December 21st, 2010. He named her Maya. And he’s quite confident that her second birthday won’t be her last.

The Many Horsemen of the Apocalypse

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Terminators and the Apocalypse (vs. Zombies and the Apocalypse)

Scary or awesome or both?

How’s it all going to end? My guess is we’re more likely to end up fighting terminators/computers than we are zombies. Here are my top reasons why we’re more likely to face off against killing machines than the walking dead.

1)      You need only to chart the exponential growth of computer chips or data storage (remember when 1 megabyte was the space for your entire hard-drive?) to get a sense of how quickly computers are being improved. How many more years of exponential growth until AI exists and then becomes “Skynetish” in its intelligence?

2)      The internet, while amazing for humans, is even MORE amazing for computers. It’s like having a mind-meld to all your buddies allowing you to share information and solve problems instantaneously. All the sudden you don’t need to build bigger and bigger computers to get the raw scheming, Machiavellian mind of a super-computer a la Terminator; you can network a whole bunch of little computers and get way more bang for your buck

3)      Our entire society is pretty much reliant on computers. Unlike zombies, which I think we’d all agree we can do without, computers and their accompanying software is pretty much the foundation of the modern information economy. Even if we saw Skynet coming (which we probably won’t) and tried to “turn off” our computers or the internet, it’d be like ripping out your heart to save yourself from a heart attack. Raw deal, no matter what way you cut it.

4)      The US government has already probably built Terminators in some high-tech lab buried under Colorado’s mountains. Yeah, they probably also have developed some sort of killer zombiesque virus too, but that’s a lot less socially acceptable than high-tech “drone” weapons systems that have already made their appearances on the battlefield.

World Enders In Their Own Words

Regardless of what the other gumbooteers here say about the end of the world, I’m convinced it’s going to be triggered by a super villain or evil-doer of note. What’s the best defense against an evil-doer?

Well, some might say a good offence. Fair enough.

How do you build a good offence? Beyond pouring trillions into a military-industrial complex you start with a foundation of intelligence. You paint a picture of your enemy’s motives and monitor their every move. Infiltrate their communications.

Get a leg up on the coming apocalypse by tapping into the thoughts of our some prime suspects.

Victor Von Doom
Why? DOOM – duh – It’s in his name. And while his tweets don’t reveal a lot of detail about his plans for world destruction they do offer a great glimpse into the twisted mind of this super villain.

Cobra Commander
Why? Cobra shares exactly what he’s up to. Half the time it’s destabilizing governmnets and working to undermine society, the other half it’s chasing ladies. Meaning this intel is about 50% gold when it comes to heading off hell-on-earth.

Darth Vader
Why? Literally a world ender. Alderaan was a peaceful planet, so just think of what he might do to a planet like ours if he gets his hands on another fully-functional battle station.

And to follow on that note, @Deathstarpr is working the spin on spinning planets out of orbit

The Terminator
Why? If we’re worried about technology taking over the best place to start is with technology from the possible-future where it already has… that makes sense right?

Editors note – I agree with Michael on this observation that Terminators will likely end the world…

The Apocalypse Project Begins!

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CarlosVanVegas - Mayan Calendar

The world as we know it will end on December 21, 2012. There, I said it. Exactly how this is going to happen is debatable, but planetary alignment is a part of it. And there are a few theories (zombies, more zombies, meteors, robots, God, Mother Nature, nuclear war, aliens, nuclear-zombie-dinosaur-terminators) regarding how we will meet our end. And several “survival guides” and “tip sheets” and “disaster kit lists” are also available for all of your post-apocalyptic-planning needs. And this is why The Daily Gumboot team is excited to bring you The Apocalypse Project. Because such a thorough and comprehensive assessment of how humanity will end, how you can survive, and how you can re-build – or newly build – your post-apocalyptic community ever been written.

Until now.

Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to The Apocalypse Project!

Over the next seven days, our international team of correspondents will answer the following questions:

  • Are you talking about civilization ending or the world ending?
  • How is the world (or civilization or whatever) going to end?
  • Who are these “Mayans”? And where is their “Mayan” country? Can’t we just attack it or something?
  • Are “Mayans” like zombies? Because it seems like zombies are going to be a big problem pretty soon. What are your tips for dealing with a Zombie Apocalypse?
  • What about robots and technology? How are they – or is it – going to rise up and destroy us all?
  • You write about the Sun a lot. Will that have something to do with it?
  • So the world is ending, what skills do I need to survive?
  • What are some good tips for growing food in a post-apocalyptic hellscape? What about Detroit?
  • In the post-apocalyptic world, how can I be a leader of people? Like Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games.
  • Why can’t we all just hop on a plane and go to Earth 2?
  • According to String Theory, we all live in alternate universes at the same time. So, does any of this really matter?
  • When civilization as we know it crumbles into oblivion, will people still be nice to each other?
  • I hear that John Travolta, Richard Branson and Rain (the Korean pop star) all have bunkers. Where are they and how can we infiltrate them?
  • How will your bloggers’ “superpowers” build “community” in this post-apocalyptic world?

Courtesy of ian on Flickr

All these questions (and more) will be answered during the next week. From zombies to terminators to Gaya to supervillains, we will chronicle the Earth’s possible potential probable definite demise. Don’t worry. We’ll also talk about how you and your community can survive and thrive (before, during and after) the apocalypse. Oh, and Kurt is going to interview John Connor (the leader of The Resistance).

Hey, Twitterverse, all I can say is this: you’re welcome.

Enjoy the apocalyptic edutainment!

Emergency Prepared Community

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My partner and I recently put together an emergency kit for our home. Getting organized was fun and we both learned lots through the process. The most important lesson is this: by being prepared, we’ll be better positioned to help.

Shortly after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan earlier this year, I attended a Vancouver Coastal Health public information session about preparing for natural disasters.  The session was eye-opening and I had been meaning to get on it since then. One Sunday night last month, I was going through my neglected in-tray at home and found the emergency preparedness literature. I finally had a proper look through it and started pulling together what we needed to be self-sufficient for 72 hours.

Being prepared for a minimum of three full days without public assistance and without access to utilities, fresh water and communication channels is recommended by our municipal government and provincial health authorities.  It’s a good idea to prepare three-day emergency kits for your home and for your car.  A step further is to build a second kit for your home that includes supplies for an additional four days so you’re covered for a week.

We started with getting a three-day kit together for our home.  We already had most of the stuff we needed, scattered through camping storage bins, first aid kits, and in the garage. That first night, our three-day home kit was assembled into a backpack containing medical basics, flashlights and batteries, duct tape, matches, scissors, rope, plastic bags and a few other odds and ends. We had also created a to-do list of missing items, like work gloves, energy bars, and spare keys.

The best part was talking about our emergency plan.  We assumed that we would not be together, that we would not have cell phone coverage, and that we would be on foot.  Our meeting point is our home and if it’s unsafe to be there, it’s our local community centre.  We’ve stashed a Sharpie, paper and tape in a baggie on our porch so we can leave a note if we do make it home but decide to leave.  Our plan is specific: meet at the NE corner of Ontario and East 33rd Ave.

The second part of our plan is getting to our young daughter.  We assumed that she would be with my parents, who care for her while we’re both at work, and that they will be at their home in North Van.  We plan to ride our bikes over the Second Narrows to gather with the rest of my family.  We also agreed who we would call outside of the city to check-in.  My aunt in Edmonton will be my family’s communication hub so if we can’t get to one another, at least we can let someone know we’re ok.   Deciding upon our emergency plan started our whole family talking about emergency what-ifs.  We all feel better for it.

Before considering emergency preparedness, I guess I just assumed that we would be ok/taken care of when shit goes down.  We often hear of communities pulling together during crisis.  I now realize that being prepared positions us to help our neighbours because our chances of staying healthy are increased.  That sounds like a good plan to me.

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Masthead photo courtesy of Earthworm

Social Media and the Zombie Apocalypse

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Would you turn to the social media community in a crisis?

If the apocalypse landed on your doorstep tomorrow, where’s the first place you would go for information? Would you turn on the TV? Would you locate your home emergency kit and power up your battery-operated radio? Or would you be on Twitter in seconds searching #Armageddon?

The rise of social media as a powerful crisis communications tool has been demonstrated liberally lately – be it the use of ushahidi after the Haitian earthquake, Facebook during the Australian floods or Twitter as a driving force in the Egyptian revolution.

But what is sometimes forgotten is that for emergency organisations, the rise of social media has meant some fundamental changes in the way official sources communicate with the public during a crisis. The time window for communicating emergency information has shrunk considerably, which is a big deal for government organisations used to working at the speed of…well…government.

But it’s not all negative. One of the most game-changing aspects of social media is the ability for emergency organisations to communicate unedited messages to the community during disasters and emergencies. The average grab in a television news bulletin is about nine seconds long, which isn’t a lot of time to get important emergency and community safety information into the public sphere.

One of the most popular social media initiatives adopted by emergency services during the Australian floods earlier this year was uploading full media conferences to Facebook and You Tube. The feedback from the community was overwhelmingly positive – people appreciated being able to act as their own news editors rather than relying on the media to filter the information on their behalf.

The second game-changer is that never before have emergency warnings and information had so much reach. Twitter particularly has moved away from the ‘social’ aspects of social media, and has reshaped as a kind of virtual megaphone for information sharing.

The social media community, in all its glory and horror, is incredibly keen to share. Emergency warnings, evacuation advice, road closures, donation information, shelter locations – social media isn’t just a messenger, it’s an amplifier. This willingness to share information is pretty damn exciting for emergency communicators like myself, whose main goal in life is to disseminate emergency information as far as possible, as quickly as possible.

These initiatives might sound like simple stuff, but in a sector as structured and traditional as emergency management, they are giant steps. Ready or not, social media has found a place in disaster communications.

Can your community survive the end of the world?

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Over the past few weeks my colleagues and I have been chatting on and off about our apocalypse plans.  If the end of the world came, would we be ready?  What would happen to the communities we live in and work in?  The apocalypse is an extreme scenario where lots of things would have to go really, really wrong.  But what if gas prices dramatically increased?  Or the power went out?  Or extreme weather hit?  Or tap water was no longer potable?  Could you still do the things that you normally do? Get to where you needed to go?  And if days turned into weeks or months, how would you adapt to the change?

Governments and communities are starting to chart plans to minimize the impact and bounce back as quickly as possible from a failure in our current system (like fuel, water, food) or a traumatic event (like extreme weather, natural disaster, or, like our neighbours to the south are always fear mongering about, a terrorist attack).  This kind of planning is called Resilience Planning.  It’s a hybrid between traditional emergency planning (that lays out the steps to take in an emergency) and sustainability planning (that is visionary long-term planning that aims to improve and balance our social, cultural, environmental and economic priorities).  Resiliency planning is about not only identifying the potential future threats and getting us ready for specific vulnerabilities we may encounter over the long-term, but also about having communities of people that are better able to face any future threat.  It’s about making sure that we’re flexible enough to handle whatever the future might throw at us by having the skills and tools available in our communities.

On the government side, some of the best examples of resilience planning that I’ve seen are coming from Australia.  And it is driven by necessity.  Australians are already facing the impacts of Climate Change in a way that Canadians still aren’t.  In Melbourne in January 2009 (their summer), record high temperatures caused electrical blackouts, rail systems shutdowns, fires that threatened lives and property, water consumption tripling while storage levels dropped to 1/3, and drops in soil moisture that wiped out part of the urban tree canopy.  Since then, a collaborative study by the City of Melbourne and Victorian Department of Transportation (their state government), talks frankly about balancing the “Australian Dream” with realities like climate change in a way that Canadians aren’t.  They recognize that the way communities are built and connected (because in this study the focus is on transportation and urban design) needs to change to prevent repeats of disasters like they faced in January 2009.  However, what they’ve been building for generations isn’t going to change overnight and a great deal of focus is on how to retrofit what they already have by developing urban corridors and productive suburbs.  While in Canada we’re starting to talk about the resilience of our communities, it lacks the same bluntness and urgency as Australia.  But at least the conversation is starting.

On the community side, a grassroots movement called Transition Towns is spreading to North America from the UK.  They are focused on building a community-led response to the pressures of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and economic contraction.  At the core of their movement is the belief that “if we wait for the governments, it’ll be too little, too late; if we act as individuals, it’ll be too little; but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.”  In addition to the usual public education campaigns and partnerships with existing groups, Transition Towns form groups to look at all key areas of life (food, energy, transport, health, heart & soul, economics & livelihoods, etc.) and how they can adapt to a future that might be quite different from our current reality.  When it comes to resilience, they are teaching the skills that a generation or two most communities had, like growing and preserving food, making clothes, and building with local materials.  While the realities they acknowledge are more negative than a lot of us are used to hearing about, they maintain that a positive vision of the future is a necessity in the face of change.

So am I ready for the end of the world?  I don’t think so.  While I may hoard tomatoes I don’t have stores of water, firewood, guns, etc. that I’d likely need if the apocalypse ever came.  But I also don’t think the odds of a full apocalypse are likely.  Maybe it is just because I’m a hopeful person but I also think that between the baby steps we’re already taking toward resilience and amazing adaptability of humans, we’ll be mostly OK.  We might not be as comfortable as we are now and our lifestyles will have to change, but it won’t be the end of the world.