Surprising Ways To Survive The Apocalypse | Unveiled

Surprising Ways to Survive the Apocalypse

We all know the basic rules of survival - eat what you can, drink enough water to stay hydrated, and seek shelter ahead of time. But there are other, lesser known ways to survive the end of the world… more unique ways that’ll keep you well nourished, clean, and most importantly, safe.

This is Unveiled, and today we’re uncovering the surprising ways to survive the apocalypse!

When you think of the apocalypse, what’s the first concern on your mind? Most would worry about where the next meal comes from, but there are actually a few solutions. Watch any apocalypse movie and the first course of action is to stock up on canned foods - and be prepared to eat them cold! However, the conveniently long-life of tinned grub comes from the fact that they’re often loaded with unhealthy chemicals. Under ordinary circumstances, there aren’t many diets that recommend 100% canned food, which could become an issue in the long run. Spam, Jell-O, and Twinkies would certainly serve their purpose for staving off starvation, but perhaps they shouldn’t be your top priority when gathering food for the long haul.

Instead, your best option is to seek out seeds. Assuming we don’t find ourselves in a volcanic winter (where we block out the sun) seeds allow you to grow food but also to generate more seeds to keep the cycle going. With just a few peppers or tomatoes, you have an infinite supply of those products - to the point where a forward-thinking post-apocalyptic landscape could be dotted with multiple “mini farms”, with survivors supplying other survivors. The rebuild of society would be on! By contrast, despite them being long-lasting, canned foods don’t last forever… And so, as they’d become an increasingly rare commodity, they’d more likely become something that survivors would fight over rather than share.

The problem of variety (and the lack of it) would still be there, though. So how would you mix the menu up a bit? Well, as boiling water to kill bacteria would quickly become a life-saving routine, why not add plants to make tea? We’re talking nettles, dandelions, pine needles… More than just offering a different taste, they’d carry many more nutrients into your body to help heal wounds and to just generally make you feel better about life. Acorns are widely noted as a particularly good, alternative food source. Thanks to their hard shells, they’d be less likely to be affected by the conditions of whichever apocalypse we found ourselves in… plus, were you to boil and mash them into a paste, then you’d be able to dine on a meal that would otherwise be a rare treat in the post-apocalypse - pancakes! Yes, acorn pancakes are a real thing! Beware, though, that any and all emergency diet changes triggered by the apocalypse may take some time for your body to “get used to”.

Next, it’s just as important to be well equipped for the apocalypse as it is to keep yourself well-fed. Naturally, you’d need a backpack to store things like food, first-aid kits, and tools, but there are other essentials that aren’t always considered… Like condoms, for example - and not just for the reasons you’d expect! As odd as it may seem, condoms can double up as makeshift carriers for water, thanks to their elasticity. Also, thanks to the fact that they should be durable, other uses include tying things together with condoms, making improvised hunting weapons out of condoms, and carrying delicate belongings inside of condoms. For survivalists, there aren’t many things that are more multi-purpose!

General, first-aid kits would be like gold dust post-apocalypse, but in the likelihood that you wouldn’t have one on your person… maintaining your health is going to be much more challenging. You’d need to imagine what should be in a first-aid kit, and then try to find a substitute. And, thankfully, there are a few ways to make life easier. Well...to some capacity. Professor Lewis Dartnell, author of "The Knowledge; How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm", writes that there are two substances in particular that you can use to treat wounds - alcohol and super glue. So, get your hands on those and your chances of living increase. Elsewhere, and with a little more preparation, you could keep yourself relatively clean by boiling animal fat or plant oil to create soap. And anything that increases your levels of personal hygiene is a step in the right direction.

The last thing on your checklist regarding equipment and necessary items would be clothing. Whether we were to end up in a nuclear wasteland, volcanic winter, or in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, the clothing you choose to don would very quickly shift from being a fashion statement to becoming a crucial and practical layer of protection. At the very least you need clothes that are warm, quick to dry and comfortable on your skin. Beyond the basics, though, goggles and a face mask could become crucial bits of kit if there was any kind of contagion or if the air became heavy with toxic fumes. Depending on the event which triggered it, a post-apocalyptic Earth could be unrecognizable to the safe, life-enabling haven you knew before - so it might pay to treat it as though you’re walking on an alien planet. Keep covered up and try to at least filter the air you breathe as best you can.

And, finally, if it just so happened that it was a zombie apocalypse you were dealing with, then even the most ardent pacifist would require an emergency weapon of some kind. In general, you should aim for something that’s light, easy to carry and that would get the job done quickly. The zombie movie stereotype says “sledgehammer”, but do you really want to haul one of those around everywhere? When food is scarce, you’re feeling weak and your bag is already full… probably not! Instead, consider something lighter, and maybe even those condoms will come in handy once more! Survivalists have used them as slingshots before, and they will do it again!

Once you have a semblance of a plan for getting equipment and finding food, your next obstacle is arguably the most significant and potentially terrifying - the world itself! Clearly, exactly what the conditions would be like depends on precisely which apocalypse Earth found itself inflicted with… In general, though, you’d need to take care deciding which places to pass by, which to raid, and which to stay at. Not every house will be safe to scavenge food from, and not every city will have what you need.

In fact, for Lewis Dartnell, apocalypse survivors would be better advised to skip cities altogether! While setting up in a once-thriving urban hot-spot sounds like it’d be a smart way to get within easy reach of supplies, it might not provide a reliable source for clean water. All of that infrastructure that once made the city tick would be crumbling away post-apocalypse, and the buildings themselves would slowly decay and fall down as well.

Even without the dangers posed by dilapidated skyscrapers, though, a city base would be much more vulnerable to attack - by other survivors, wild animals or, dare we say it, zombies. Holing up in a rural location means you can have eyes on the surrounding area as well - ready to cut-off potential intruders. But, in even a city that’s seemingly deserted there’d be all sorts of hidden corners, unseen windows and unexpected threats. Plus, for obvious reasons, if you were dealing with zombies, then anywhere that was once densely populated should certainly be avoided at all costs!

But we of course know that the apocalypse - when and if it does come - is much more likely not to prominently feature a “rise of the undead”. Nevertheless, be it through nuclear war, a climate disaster or some kind of extreme natural disaster, a scenario in which only a small percentage of the human population survives is something that we can imagine happening. At which point, our survival instincts kick in and our primary needs for food, water and shelter take hold. But there are ways that you can stay ahead of the game. Steer clear of cities while everyone else heads straight for them; pack alcohol but don’t drink it; mash acorns into pancakes; and carry lots of condoms. And those are the surprising ways to survive the apocalypse.