My 10-Day Crash Course on Surviving the Apocalypse

The survival I came to know on this trip was about something completely different. It was, above all, about letting yourself be affected by the changing world around you. Not just riding it out, but adapting, molting. Not succumbing to the luxury of despair, but keeping a foothold in possibility. Not blocking the world out, but letting it in.

Doomerism can be seductive: It allows for the security of a foregone conclusion, and beneath its faith that the end is inevitable lies a subtle note of satisfaction.

The world “apocalypse” is born of the Greek apokálypsis , meaning revelation, or hidden knowledge. The etymology suggests a divinely ordered retribution, a punitive conclusion, a Judgment Day when all will be revealed. It carries the idea that some mighty righteousness will organize our madness and impose justice on all the awful things we witness ... See more

Whom to trust, whom to build community with, whom not to — these were the factors most likely to determine whether you could make it through the end of days.

I was still reconciling our brutality against the animal as a fair trade for my needs. But the truth was that every second of my existence cost something precious, at the expense of something else equally precious. The difference is that in my modern city life, it’s usually concealed from view.

We practiced sight fishing — looking for light ripples on the surface that indicate activity below. (Rodríguez called it “nervous water.”)

Rodríguez talked a lot about survival math — being mindful not to expend more energy than you would consume.

The movies condition us to imagine survival as a response to a singular, calamitous event: a pandemic virus, a zombie invasion, a plane crash, aliens, government collapse. But it’s more realistic to imagine that we are already living in the midst of a slowly unfurling cataclysm whose effects we encounter in succession, like the waves of an ocean. P... See more

An analysis of FEMA data recently suggested that around 20 million Americans identify as “preppers.”