kestrel

kestrel
2019-08-13 21:47:58 (UTC)

Prompt 037: Descent Into Chaos

37. The world has descended into chaos! How has this come about? How do you survive in this dystopian future?

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"Go big or go home," as per usual with these hypothetical questions. I also think it's interesting that the author presupposes I'd want to struggle to stay alive in such a future. But I digress. Let me just play along.

How did the chaos begin? Food riots. Overpopulation. Social breakdown and imposition of martial law and internment camps after economic collapse and complete lack of faith in the government's capability to fix anything.

I'd have to become the biggest badass imaginable. Leading up to this total collapse, I'd have transformed myself into a physical powerhouse: one-handed pushups, running miles a day, tougher than Chuck Norris, with the scars to prove it. I'd know at least three different martial arts, able to kill a man with my bare hands, trained to ignore emotion and compassion.

Every other human is either breeding material, or an adversary. In fact, I would embrace cannibalism, since at least at the outset there would still be a handful of humans running around trying to take All That Is Mine. I'd have no mercy for these potential thieves and bandits. I would shoot first and ask questions later. Oh, and I almost forgot! I'd have a bunch of weapons, ammunition, and body armour. I'd store it all in my subterranean shelter with my 10 year supply of beans and beef jerky, and 5,000 gallon filtered water tank.

I would just imagine myself as a survivor in the -Fallout- series of video games. Voraciously striving for survival, grabbing every scrap of everything that has any conceivable value, however marginal. I would spend my days hunting for food and loot, and my nights either having sex with my sex slaves or tinkering in the workshop to make ever-more-efficient killing tools.

I'd imagine myself the reborn Noah of myth. The rest of the human race is nearly wiped out, so I would take on the responsibility of re-breeding it back into existence. Survival by any means necessary: rape the women, castrate and/or kill the men I don't like.

I mean, that's what it all boils down to when it comes to survival, doesn't it? Preserve your tribe, and to hell with everything and everyone else. If you're not with me, you're against me. Human existence no longer even considers life on the second or higher rungs of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Humans become viruses or amoebae, with the ability to use tools and a wealth of leftover technology at their disposal. It would be my job to make sure only people I like are left alive to breed and "bring humanity back from the precipice of extinction."

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Personally, I'd rather just starve to death. Let me wander out in the woods, maybe shoot myself in the head or poison myself while I'm lying in a trench. As long as I ensure I take a lethal dose of whatever I have on hand, then I don't mind killing myself an an "end times" scenario.

So, contrary to the prompt, I'd prefer to go out with a whimper. I just wouldn't care enough.




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