How will you survive the coming apocalypse?

Lots of people are worried about political disruption or violent riots. But I think we’re heading for something much worse.

If the infrastructure of our civilization breaks down, what will you do?

What with economic turmoil, civil unrest, and contagious diseases, everyone needs to have a plan in place…but especially if you live in a city!

Your best bet is to get out…as soon as possible, perhaps even now! But to do that you need a plan and know what to prepare.

If “bugging out” isn’t on option for your family, fortifying in place is your next best bet.

By educating yourself, you can make the best choice to protect yourself and the ones you love.

Remember: your relationship with God is of more lasting importance than your survival. And nothing (not even a nuke-proof bunker and twelve-years-worth of canned beans) can guarantee continued life.

But you can still be smart about this! Go ahead and make responsible plans…just be realistic about your end goal.

Prepare

That’s what you’re doing now, by the way. Reading posts and books is the first step to knowing your options and making an educated choice.

Assuming you’re not reading this while the rabid mob pounds on your door, you also have time to gather your resources.

Some of those resources should be hard copies of the information you find. If a blog post or article is especially helpful, save it to your device or print it and put the paper where you can find it! The last thing you want is to be counting on a good internet connection while fleeing for your lives.

If the apocalypse happens and chaos erupts, getting out of the city is your best option.

If you have time to move to a rural property, do it. The more open space you have between you and possible rioters and looters, the better.

Finding skills you can learn to provide for yourself will also help you survive in the long-term. Do you know anything about farming? Can you hunt? Maybe get some chickens and goats to provide continuous food.

Remember: canned goods don’t procreate.

If setting up your own personal frontier-homestead is just impossible, at least have a plan for emergency evacuation.

Do you have family, friends, church or school buddies that live out in the country? Make arrangements to stay with them if things hit the fan.

Even if you can’t completely move in with them, have a place where your family can sleep with a roof over their heads…where no one’s going to burn down the house in the night.

If you have elderly neighbors or relatives who live nearby, make plans to take them with you. Just like it’s smart to drill your kids on how to escape the house if there’s a fire, have a drill in place for how you will get out of the city if things get serious. Maybe have it on a printed sheet so everyone can know what’s going on (along with maps you might need).

Many “preppers” recommend packing a “bug-out bag,” which is an emergency pack you can grab on your way out the door if you need to evacuate. (See more later.)

The hard part will be judging when is the right time to leave. When your mayor de-funds the police? When a riot is announced for your neighborhood? When you see the angry mob blocking your neighbor’s driveway and throwing molotov cocktails?

That’s a choice only you can make…but hopefully, with enough thought ahead of time and the right resources, you will be confident to make the decision that’s best for your family.

Finally, sometimes you have no option but to “shelter in place.”

There are resources for you to do that, too. Depending on where you live, this could work out really well.

For instance, if you have good relationships with all your neighbors, and all of you are committed to protecting and supporting each other, you could make arrangements to share out the duties of a self-sufficient community and provide for each other’s needs when crunch time comes.

Now let’s look at all these options in more detail:

Get Out

In a total breakdown of the social order, lots of things will stop working.

People will stop trusting money. Stores will get tired of stuff being stolen, and stop stocking the shelves. Hungry people will do things they were always too afraid to do before…especially when the police aren’t arresting anyone for it.

All of this won’t affect you as much if you’re away from people!

When the rioters are looking for stuff to steal, they’ll go where it’s convenient. Whether they’re walking, or bring U-Hauls to load, the city has more targets (and Targets) close together. They get more bang for their club, if you like.

If you’re a long walk from anyone else, you’re much more inconvenient to steal from.

If you have time to prepare…

You can set up your own self-sufficient farm!

People don’t survive without food. How will you get it without the mega-industrial farms shipping products to the grocery stores? (Just read my post about 10 things I’ll miss after the apocalypse!)

Where you live (or move to) will determine what grows best and what resources are available to get you set up.

But you can decide what you’re good at…and what you want to become good at!

Now is the time. Get books. Take classes. Dig that garden, plant those heirloom seeds (so they’ll keep coming back year after year!), and decide what skills you want to have when you can’t just order anything on Amazon!

What if you don’t have that time?

Your mayor has deleted your city’s police and the resident angries are drooling over your iPhone.

If you’re looking at days or weeks before these laws go into effect (not months or years), you need a safe place for your kids and loved ones now.

This is where having friends comes in. Chances are you know someone who lives on a farm, or owns a cabin in the woods or something. You might even have a vacation home that’s in a less densely populated area (or even a “quieter” area)!

They might not be excited to have you just move in to their guest room…but lots of things are bearable if there’s an end-goal in mind.

Make those connections, build those relationships, and have a plan in place in case you need to get out right now.

I mentioned a bug-out bag earlier. Some common suggested items are:

• First aid kit
• A change of clothes (for everyone, if you have dependents you’re taking care of)
• Warm clothing, if you live in cold climates…you can’t depend on building or car climate control in a tense situation
• Energy bars (again, if you have to jump in the car and drive to your safe house before dinner, you need to be prepared)
• Diapers and other kid-care items
• Compass, paper maps
• Candles, lighters, flashlights with spare batteries
• Water

If you’ve ever been camping out in the wilderness, think about what you would absolutely need for a back-packing trip. These are short-term supplies to get you to your “safe house.”

Once there, of course, you need to be making other plans. Are you spending the next five years in your mother-in-law’s cabin basement? Or is this just a stepping stone to something more sustainable?

Shelter in Place

If, for whatever reason, you just can’t get to a safe place outside the city, you should be making a plan to survive where you are.

Many preppers encourage you to have so-many canned goods in your basement (three months, six months, whatever). This is great…if you’re sitting out an earthquake, flood, or pandemic.

We’ll ignore the question of whether you packed enough food for all your neighbors as well, and whether you’ll share your precious reserves with everyone who asks you…or start shooting them to keep the canned beans for your own kids.

Quite aside from that is the question: what happens in the spring? You survived the riots, you survived the winter-with-no-grocery-stores…what next?

Will you plant a garden in your backyard? Raid your neighbor’s house to see if he left any canned goods after he died?

If you decide to “shelter in place” – make sure it’s a good place.

If your climate is mild, and your neighbors are friendly, you’ve already dodged two of the bullets that take out apocalypse sufferers: exposure and violence.

But even if you live in a sweet little town where everybody knows everyone else and would never hurt a fly, you have to consider:

• Where will your food come from?
• What medical conditions do you have that might need care?
• What diseases in your area would be highly dangerous without modern medical science?
• What parts of your modern lifestyle (plumbing, cookies, computers) do you like best…and what would you have to do it produce them for yourself?
• What wild animals – like snakes! – in the area would you need to keep out of your stuff (and away from your children)?! For instance, Chicago (the city) has 250 coyotes roaming the streets as part of their rat-control program. Speaking of rats, these vicious little critters are the reason The Pied Piper is a thing…
• Good gravy, I didn’t even mention clean water! Sanitation has been a huge problem throughout history…how will you keep your waste away from your drinking water, and get enough clean water to drink – all without electricity or indoor plumbing?!

Fore-warned is fore-armed.

Make a list now of anything you know of in your area that might threaten your survival. Once you have it in front of you, you can make a plan to deal with it.

Which is another way of saying:

Fortify

How do you survive an apocalypse? By focusing on what is sustainable.

Are you in a good place? Do you have people around that you can depend on? Is there plenty of room to grow your own food and raise your own animals…possibly in cooperation with your neighbors?

Then plant yourself like a tree.

Research the weapons laws in your area, and take classes on self-defense. If the police won’t answer when someone attacks your home, it’s a comfort to know you can protect yourself…

And that your neighbors have your back.

Vigilante patrols have not turned out well in the past, so I don’t think it’s time for that. But what if rioters announce they’re coming to burn your neighborhood, and you all block the in-coming roads with cars?

I’m sure that violates all kinds of traffic laws, so I can’t recommend it. God tells us to “honor the governor” and “those in authority,” after all.

But I am brainstorming what it might look like if the people who live near you have your back…and likewise know that they can depend on you.

Say if you keep chickens, and your next-door neighbor grows melons…it could be an excellent opportunity to take care of each other.

The crucial thing to remember is: don’t depend on AMERICA* to take care of you [*insert your country, city, or organization here].

The only actions you can control are your own. The only people you can depend on are the people around you.

And they depend on you. So study all you can, pray, think, and make the choice that will best protect you and the people you love.

Survival Is Over-rated

Odd thing to say in this kind of post, eh?

But there’s another side to this whole apocalypse thing.

I may be a prepping homesteader who sees the collapse of civilization looming closer every day…but NOTHING (not gold in my mattress, nor solar panels on my roof) will GUARANTEE the preservation of my lifestyle.

God is the one Who holds my life… Any number of things could throw a monkey wrench in my plans: like martial law, a tornado, or even scarlet fever!

That’s why I say, “Survival isn’t everything”:

Because there are more important things than the preservation of my lifestyle.

Say, for instance, to “act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God.”

And even if I stuff 100 years’ worth of canned vegetables in my bedroom and manage to survive all the bloodshed and starvation and disease that is coming on Western society…I will one day face my Maker, and He will ask me a very simple question:

“What did you do with My Son, Jesus?”

He will ask you the same thing when you face Him. Every single person on this planet will one day be judged for everything they’ve done…but most of all for their response to Jesus.

I believe the cities that are burning in America and the people getting murdered are the prelude to the judgement of God (a nation can’t hum along merrily slaughtering its babies as we have done without facing consequences).

But I also believe that anything that happens here is nothing compared to an eternity of punishment, separated from God.

And let me never forget that, with all the thousands that will die in a civil war, and the millions more that will waste away in starvation and disease, Jesus the Anointed God-Man bled and died for every last one of them.

I don’t know who will win the election. And part of me doesn’t care. God never gets out of office. He’s King-of-the-Universe-for-Ever-for-Life.

So while you pack your bags, and plant your garden, and learn how to sew clothes or make medicine or whatever…don’t forget the poor souls who stayed behind.

Keep reminding them that Jesus loves them, which is why we love them, and that He wants them to survive the much worse judgement at the end of the world…they just have to trust Him and believe in Him. That’s it.

Thing is, the end of their world might be when a protester drives over them…or when two groups of rioters get in a firefight.

Or when the local pharmacy won’t stock insulin because people steal it too fast, and their diabetes kills them.

Let’s get to them, first!

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Kimia Wood was raised by an aspiring author, so spinning words and weaving plots is in her blood.

She currently lives somewhere in the American Midwest, bracing for the collapse of society by knitting, baking, writing, hobby-farming, and reading as much Twitter as possible before the web goes dark.

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