For Those that Wish to Prepare

     Unfortunately, I have been a bit lax in maintaining my blog, but since this blog post is going to be about preparing for the apocalypse, I feel like I should devote at least a little bit of space to telling you why I think this is important. I am a religious person, and I believe that someday the world as we know it will come to an end. I am not, however, the kind of person that is planning a bomb shelter in her backyard or preaching in the streets that The End is nigh. But aside from any religious belief, I think that preparing for the apocalypse is something that everyone should do because in my mind the apocalypse can take any number of forms. Take, for instance, the single mom that loses her job; the struggling family whose house is flooded; the college student whose parents are killed in a car crash. Have not all these people experienced a profound, and perhaps lasting, change in their lives? Bad things happen all the time, and while many people may not ever experience a 'personal apocalypse,' others of us certainly will, and I believe it's important to recognize that. Even less acute disasters can cause a significant amount of distress, but with adequate preparation some of that distress can possibly be lessened. I recently read a very interesting article in this same vein from Roanoke.com, the website for The Roanoke Times. It's really short and thought provoking and I strongly recommend reading it, but if you're not interested in reading the whole thing I'll just pass along the first paragraph:

"What would you do if you knew? What if you lived in New Orleans last summer, and you knew through some inexplicable cosmic convergence of education, premonition and intuition, that something big was going to happen, sooner rather than later, lasting rather than temporal, avoidable rather than inevitable? Something that would change everything? Who would you tell and how? Would they believe you and would they prepare? Could you prepare yourself?" [1]

     Now that I have hopefully convinced you that the rest of this post might be worth your time to look at, we can talk about actual apocalypse (or general disaster) preparation tactics. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have actually done most of this part for me; an article was recently posted on their Public Health Matters Blog called Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse [2]. Yes, you just read "CDC" in relation to "zombie apocalypse". Conveniently, the preparations they recommend are useful in other kinds of disaster situations, too. The first thing, of course, is to get an emergency kit together. The CDC recommends that you should have the following things in your emergency kit:

• Water (1 gallon per person per day)
• Food (stock up on non-perishable items that you eat regularly)
• Medications (this includes prescription and non-prescription medications)
• Tools and Supplies (utility knife, duct tape, battery powered radio, etc.)
• Sanitation and Hygiene (household bleach, soap, towels, etc.)
• Clothing and Bedding (a change of clothes for each family member, blankets)
• Important documents (copies of your drivers license, passport, birth certificate, etc.)
• First Aid supplies

This is a list of a few of the things you should have. The blog post notes that for a full list of emergency items you should follow the link to their Emergency page. The next thing that you should do to prepare for an emergency is to come up with an emergency plan with your family or whoever you live with. It would kind of be a waste for me to just quote everything they say though, so instead I will direct you to the link at the bottom of this post, where you can find the blog post in question as well as many other useful and informative blog posts by following their link to their Public Health Matters Blog.

     In addition to the excellent information that the CDC has provided for us, I would like to conclude by adding my own two cents about long-term preparation. It is my belief that preparation is about more than stockpiling food and water or keeping a garage full of tools. Preparation is a mindset that should be adopted and implemented in our daily lives, and there are several aspects of this. Knowledge and learning is one aspect of this mindset and an essential part of being prepared for disaster and for life in general; after all, what good is a garage full of tools if you don't know how to use them? Could you perform basic first-aid if a doctor wasn't available? Could you grow your own food if suddenly food wasn't for sale? It's better to learn some of these things before our life or the lives of our loved ones depend on them. The other mindset aspect I would like to mention is that of common sense and just living intelligently. Is it necessary to go into debt to buy that third car? Is it wise to put off that exercise program if good health can mean the difference between life and death (and not just in disaster situations)? The benefits of being prepared in these ways can extend far beyond simply knowing that you are ready should disaster strike, and I hope that we will all (me included) try to be just a little bit more prepared for whatever life may throw at us.

Works Cited

1. Michael S. Abraham, "What if calamity were predictable?" The Roanoke Times, February 1, 2006,  http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-50748.

2. Ali S. Khan, "Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse," Public Health Matters Blog, May 16, 2011,  http://blogs.cdc.gov/publichealthmatters/2011/05/preparedness-101-zombie-apocalypse/.

A Brief History of the End of the World

People have been speculating about and predicting the End of the World for thousands of years. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists, among many others, all believe in some kind of Judgement Day or end of an age [1], and many also believe that we are nearing that pivotal time when the world will be turned on its head. In this first post, I will provide a little bit of history and background on the many different beliefs held concerning the End of the World and hopefully convince you to pay attention, if only to give food for thought. Probably the most well known end of the world scenario is the one regarding the Mayan calendar and its end on December 21st, 2012. It doesn't have any notes on there explaining what will happen on that day, the calendar simply ends. The reason that this is of interest to so many people is that the Mayan calendar is incredibly accurate, more so than our own, and modern day calculations have predicted that on December 21st, 2012, an extraordinary astronomical phenomenon will occur. Check out this short video from History.com for a little more information on it and for a more general overview on the End of the World.





In Christian eschatology (from the Greek meaning "last" and "study of," for those of you that don't know the definition), the Second Coming of Christ is the main event that basically means the end of the world. Beliefs vary somewhat among Christian denominations as to the signs that are believed will precede the Second Coming, but the Book of Revelation in the Bible is a good place to start if you're that interested. Wikipedia has this to say about the events involved in Christian eschatology: "the return of Jesus, the resurrection of the dead, the Rapture, the Tribulation, and following these things, the Millennium, or thousand years of peace, which has been interpreted both literally and symbolically." It should be noted that these things are believed to happen at the end of this age, not the end of the world, which is something different: "the Last Judgment; the banishment of Death, Hades, and Satan and his followers to the Lake of Fire; and the creation of a new heaven and new earth." Pretty heavy stuff. In Judaism, it is believed that the End of Days will be accompanied by the rule of the Mashiach, or messiah, who will usher in a period of global peace and harmony known as the Messianic Era, similar to the Christian Millennium. According to Wikipedia, Islam "teaches the bodily resurrection of the dead, the fulfillment of a divine plan for creation, and the judgement of the soul; the righteous are rewarded with the pleasures of Jannah "Heaven" while the unrighteous are punished in Jahannam "Hell"." As you can see, it was harder to find information about the end of the world beliefs of Judaism and Islam. Maybe their plans are just less eventful.


The notion of the apocalypse has catapulted itself into popular culture in recent years, particularly in the form of a zombie apocalypse. According to wikia.com, "In a zombie apocalypse, a widespread rise of zombies hostile to human life engages in a general assault on civilization" [2]. The weird thing is that the idea of a zombie actually comes from real live "zombies" in Haiti [3]. Zombies are real! Sort of. Voodoo priests used (and it seems like they still do this) a powder made from puffer fish venom to induce paralysis and a death-like state in victims. Once the victim is essentially a "zombie," they are forced to consume a mind altering substance made from the plant known as Datura stramonium, or jimson weed. This whole process is done with the end goal of creating a perfect slave for the voodoo priest, and consuming the poisons necessary is commonly fatal.


If you haven't heard, the world was actually supposed to end on Saturday, May 21st according to Harold Camping, a religious leader who has now led some of his followers to financial ruin after Saturday's false alarm. Camping previously predicted the end of the world in 1994 and he runs a national Christian radio station based in Oakland, California called Family Radio. He now says that the real doomsday date is October 21st, 2011, and that the "rapture" he predicted for Saturday did in fact take place, but was just a spiritual one [4]. It seems to me that he's either mentally ill or making a lot of money on this scam. Or both.


Works Cited

1. "End Time." Wikipedia.com. Web. Accessed May 24th, 2011.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_time
2. "Zombie Apocalypse." Wikia.com. Web. Accessed May 24th, 2011. http://zombie.wikia.com/wiki/Zombie_Apocalypse
3. Morris, Hamilton, and VBS.TV staff. "Spirit of the dead alive and well in Haiti." CNN.com. October 27th, 2010. Web. Accessed May 24th, 2011. http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/10/26/vbs.haiti.nzambi/index.html
4. Sheridan, Michael. "Harold Camping: May 21 was 'invisible Judgment Day,' the REAL Rapture comes on October 21." NYDailyNews.com. May 24th, 2011. Web. Accessed May 24th, 2011.  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/05/24/2011-05-24_harold_camping_may_21_was_invisible_judgment_day_the_real_rapture_comes_on_octob.html

See Wikipedia's articles on Christian, Jewish, and Islamic eschatology