Lots of people think they could survive an apocalypse, some even delight in coming up with in-depth plans for exactly how they would go about it.
But there are a lot of angles most people don’t consider.
Redditor breathematt asked:
"What is something nobody considers when talking about surviving an apocalypse?"
Out of sight...
"GLASSES!"
"I don’t see a thing without mine, in an apocalypse I would be down right away for sure."
"Imagine being in the middle of an apocalypse and you can’t see a thing because your glasses got fogged?"
krpfc
The Internet Is For...Knowledge
"How much knowledge we'll lose without the Internet. How much knowledge based textbooks will be hoarded and even fought over"
- honeybutterbuscuit
"The sad thing is less and less knowledge and information is going on paper. A lot of people run everything through their phones. Bills online, online pay stubs, online banking. If everything is wiped there probably isn’t a record of it elsewhere."
"A lot of media, music, books, shows, movies don’t even make it to any type of hard copy. It’s just on a site somewhere. And EMP would just destroy everything that’s not on paper or physical."
- User Deleted
"When I moved recently I threw away an entire encyclopedia. I got sad for a min. If there's ever a next Dark Age, Landfills will def be mined for knowledge and resources."
- captainawesome1983
Rats...So Many Rats
"One of the biggest things that very few books and movies touch on is pests."
"In an apocalypse where a disease ravages the world and leaves most people dead, the insects and rodents will have a feast for a fair while and their populations will explode."
"Billions of dead bodies laying unburied will provide them with food for several months. There will be massive swarms of flies. Ant nests will grow to the point where stepping into a building they are in will be a death sentence unless you know they are there and are properly prepared for it.""But the biggest threat would be rats. They breed quickly, grow quickly and can get into damn near anywhere. The bodies will provide them with a readily available food source. A colony of a few thousand rats would quickly grow to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. Nothing remotely edible will remain anywhere near them. Once they are everything in one area, they’d spill over and swarm into the next. There’s no real way to stay safe from the rat swarms that would form in cities."
"In a zombie apocalypse, the rat swarms would be smaller, but they’d still form, and you’d have the added worry of whether or not rats carried the disease."
"In any other form of apocalypse that didn’t involve people being teleported away or the 'earth becomes a video game world' type, a lot of people will still die. It might take longer, and the swarms might be smaller, but they will still be a threat."
"Edit: I just did a quick google and it’s worse than I thought. Rats reach sexual maturity in just 5-6 weeks. A single pair of rats can start a colony that grows to around 1,250 in a single year. That can then grow to 500 million in just three years."
"New York City has an estimated rat population of 2 million. The swarms there after a single year would be mind boggling."
- Jungleman6
Your Own Body Might Kill You
"Medical conditions which are routinely and easily treatable will most likely kill you now. I'm looking at you, Mr. Appendix..."
- KoalaDeluxe
"There’s a scene in The Stand (the book, I don’t remember if this made it into the filmed versions) with this exact situation."
- AMerrickanGirl
"Diarrhea will kill a lot of people"
- hasta-la-cheesta
The Slug Isn't The Only Part Of The Bullet
"Making gunpowder for your gun. You can always melt down lead and make reloads, but where are you gonna get the gunpowder and primers from? Of course, folks will initially hoard ammo, and gunpowder so they can do reloads; but eventually all the gunpowder gets used up."
"Now, of course, you can try and make your own, but if the formula is off just a bit, your velocity can be substantially different than what's desired, or, just blow up in yo face!"
- BinjiC0D3R
No More Immunity
"Any child born will have no vaccinations. Likely, there will be a boom in previously preventable diseases like tetanus and diphtheria."
- captain_chocolate
Cooperation Is Key
"People who can cooperate in small (<150) tribal units will do better. Rugged individualism is and has always been a myth."
"Obviously for a period there will be warlords (looking at you Idaho) , but as fuel, food and ammo runs out these autocratic individuals will fail. Plus the heavily armed survivalist types will likely feud among themselves, thus reducing their numbers relatively quickly."
- noun_verbnoun
"I came to say this. Humans are social animals and 10 people trying to solve a problem together will do better than 20 individuals. Sure, it'll be rough at the start, but we already know the benefits of farming and specialization. Plus, we'll be able to mine/restore existing infrastructure."
- I_Want_an_Elio
You're Not Getting Out
"You're not going to escape your city. The roads will all be clogged up by people who also think they can escape. No one will go anywhere, and you'll all starve together and die of poor sanitation disease."
- Surprise_Corgi
People Will Do Extreme Things In Extreme Situations
"I think it’s considered but not really openly discussed and it’s the fact that no matter how nice or good of a person any of us are most of us would murder other people for supplies. Not a person here would let their kid die while they knew a guy down the road had antibiotics and refused to share or trade."
- JudokaPickle
Even if you think you’ve got your apocalypse survival planned down to the most minute detail, there might still be something you’re forgetting.
