For many, the word “apocalypse” is associated exclusively with science fiction films, where directors destroy various large cities to the ground and force the main characters to survive in extreme conditions. However, today, a natural catastrophe threatens our world, the scale of which may be much greater than in the movies. This is facilitated by global climate change, an increase in the number of strange phenomena in space, as well as the high probability of human use of nuclear weapons. In the event of any global disaster, everyone should know how to behave to survive and adapt to new conditions of existence. We want to tell you this in more detail in our guide.

Preparatory actions

Properly preparing for life in new conditions will be essential in surviving any global disaster. Such preparation should be carried out in three main areas: ensuring safety, collecting a survival kit, and finding a suitable shelter. If you approach each of these processes correctly, your chances of survival will increase significantly.

Security

The apocalypse will radically change the consciousness of all surviving people. Everything that mattered before the disaster will become the past, so the majority will begin to cross the line of what is permitted. Thus, robberies, murders for food and water, and other similar crimes will become more frequent. In this regard, safety will be of paramount importance. You can devise many ways to organize it, from using weapons to building a powerful barrier. Each option has pros and cons, so you should choose one based on the current situation and available resources.

After a global catastrophe, you will need to protect yourself from people and animals. They will also be deprived of their usual life and most food sources, so they will begin to live next to humans. If herbivores are relatively safe, then predators can pose a severe threat to humans. It is best to defend against them with weapons, but fire will be a good alternative if you don’t have them.

A considerable advantage will be given to those survivors who can find their night vision scope. Even without weapons, these devices can provide good visibility in the dark. With their help, you will be able to inspect the surrounding area at night and notice the approach of unfriendly people or animals in advance. Instead of sights, you can use other night optics that you can find after the onset of the apocalypse.

Collecting a survival kit

The second preparatory stage is collecting everything necessary that may be useful for survival. The set being formed should include the most essential items, which will only be possible to live daily. They should be collected in maximum quantities and hidden in a secluded place.

Basic survival kit:

• matches or working lighters;
• canned food and other shelf-stable products;
• water bottles;
• medications;
• hygiene products;
• warm clothes;
• waterproof shoes;
• knife;
• night vision optics or flashlight;
• batteries and accumulators;
• rope;
• scotch tape.

All listed items should be looked for near your current location. If possible, you need to examine your house or its ruins. With a high degree of probability, everyone can find at least 80%-90% of the items from the list. You can also join forces with neighbors, friends, and acquaintances who survived the apocalypse.

Finding a suitable shelter

After the onset of the apocalypse, good shelter will help increase your chances of survival. Ideally, it could be your city apartment or a private country house. However, these buildings are unlikely to withstand most global disasters, so many people must look for other housing. In a ruined city, there is nothing better than an underground shelter. It could be a surviving basement of a building, an underground parking lot, or a metro station. These places can protect you from many troubles, ranging from short-term precipitation to various consequences of a disaster. If the situation is not so bad and you can live normally on the earth’s surface, then even a tent would be a good option.

If the city is destroyed, the chances of survival in it will be minimal. Therefore, it is best to move to places remote from populated areas in such a situation. Ideally, you need to go to a rural area with fresh water. It will give you drinking water and the opportunity to get your own food (fish, small crustaceans, edible algae, etc.). In addition, in such a place, one of the residents’ houses could remain intact after the disaster. It will be an excellent temporary or permanent shelter. If there is no such housing, you must make it yourself. Naturally, you won’t be able to build a full-fledged house quickly, but it is possible to set up some temporary shelter from available scrap materials.

Sometimes, the main problem for a person who has survived the apocalypse may be the search not for housing but its mandatory attributes. So, in the new home, there should be something similar to a bed where you can sleep and gain strength. If you cannot find partially surviving furniture, an alternative can be an ordinary mattress or a self-created bed made from clothes, dry grass, and other soft objects. In addition, you will need a place to safely store personal belongings, food, water, and medicines. It can be a surviving box or a box you assembled from boards. It should be covered or covered with waterproof material that will help protect the contents from the adverse effects of water. Also, where various valuables are stored should be inaccessible to rodents and other tiny pests.

Survival process

After the apocalypse, life on Earth is unlikely to be similar. Therefore, people who survived the disaster must adapt to new conditions. Learning to live without electricity, running water, shops, and medicines is essential to do this. This must be done as quickly as possible. Otherwise, there will be little chance of survival.

Life without electricity

For most people today, learning to live without electricity will be the biggest challenge. In its absence, such things as the Internet, television, and street lighting will remain the same. Also, almost all mechanisms that require much energy will stop working. After the apocalypse, all cities will be plunged into darkness, and people will have to endure it. Total power outages will render dozens of popular gadgets useless and make it impossible to make phone calls. However, the energy reserves of batteries and accumulators will last for a long time if they are used rationally. In this regard, the most popular survival devices will be night vision scopes, binoculars, monoculars, and other similar optics. Without the possibility of using electricity, these devices will be a real salvation, as they will allow you to see in the dark and perform various works.

Modern night optics use battery energy sparingly. It can work in autonomous mode for several tens of hours, enough to survive the night. With the onset of dawn, you must look for ways to recharge the battery. The most effective will be solar panels, which can be easily found even in a destroyed city. They are also found in abundance in small towns. By generating electricity in this way, it will be possible to obtain an inexhaustible source of a small amount of energy, which will be enough to charge the batteries of various night optics and other devices that consume power economically. An ordinary generator can be considered as an alternative energy source. Only fuel is required for its operation, which can be obtained from almost every car.

Life without tap water

One of the most important resources for humans is water. After surviving the apocalypse, it will no longer be supplied to houses and apartments, so the surviving people will have to look for this valuable liquid on their own. This will be more challenging than it seems. In many cities, it is present only in small park ponds and lakes and in rivers flowing through the populated area. At the same time, there is no guarantee that the catastrophe will not dry up various small reservoirs and force the river to change its course. If this happens, precipitation will be the only water source available in the city. They may appear very rarely in some regions, so you hardly need to count on them.

To find a permanent source of fresh water, surviving people must move to places with some water nearby. You will also have to master various methods of water disinfection. The simplest of them is long boiling. It makes it possible to destroy all harmful microorganisms and make the water suitable for drinking. If it is impossible to make a fire, then disinfection can be carried out with the help of the Sun. Our star is a source of ultraviolet radiation that harms most harmful microorganisms. It is enough to pour water from a river or lake into a plastic bottle, place it in an open area, and wait 1-2 days. This time is enough to disinfect and obtain potable water. However, relying entirely on this method is not recommended. The presence of clouds in the sky will significantly reduce the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the ground, which will not make it possible to purify the water from harmful microorganisms completely.

Life without shops

People are accustomed to the fact that they can go into a store at any time and buy everything they need. Therefore, in any global disaster, they must find various valuable items independently.

Places where you can find a lot of valuable things:

1. Broken and abandoned shops. Each city has several hundred or even thousands of stores. Most likely, most of them will be working when the apocalypse arrives. After a disaster, many of them will collapse, and finding anything useful in them will be difficult and life-threatening (for example, due to the risk of collapse of various parts of the building). However, some stores will remain more or less intact. Naturally, they will become the target of attacks by other surviving people, so anyone who wants to find anything useful in them will have to hurry. It is best to go collect everything that stayed at night since there is a risk of meeting with competitors who may be better armed than you during the day. Night vision devices will be an ideal assistant in this matter. They will help you navigate without artificial lighting and find the necessary items.
2. Garbage dumps. One of the creepiest places in any city is a landfill. Even regularly, it is overcrowded with dangerous predators looking for food, animals carrying deadly diseases, and other “guests.” During the apocalypse, people will be added to all living beings. Sometimes, you can find a lot of damaged but usable items in city landfills. Some of them will become a real salvation for someone who survived a disaster. In this regard, everyone living after the apocalypse must overcome their fear and force themselves to go to the landfill.
3. City streets. Many items valuable for survival can be found simply on the city streets. Therefore, a person who has survived a disaster must carefully explore the surrounding areas. At the same time, you need to be as careful as possible to avoid getting injured or running into hostile people. For safety reasons, it is better to go searching after dark, taking with you some night vision device.

Life without drugs

One of the main disadvantages of places remote from civilization is the inability to receive quality medical care. The same problem will be relevant in cities where people survived the apocalypse. After the disaster, a large number of corpses will remain on the streets, which will gradually become a source of contamination of all available water and food. Survivors will experience more frequent cases of various dangerous diseases, for which they will have to treat themselves. In this regard, one of the main tasks will be the collection of medicines that survived the apocalypse, as well as the search for alternative treatments.

Medicines you should always have with you:

• antibiotics;
• antiviral drugs;
• painkillers;
• antihistamines;
• antiseptics;
• antiallergenic drugs.

This list includes only the most essential medications. If possible, you need to collect other medicines that can be found in the city destroyed by the disaster. If drugs are not available at all, then the only correct solution will be to look for alternative medications. They can be various plants that are often used to manufacture medicines. Flowers, leaves, stems, roots, and expensive drugs can heal, but you must know how to use them correctly. Another problem can be collecting plants since only some know their appearance and the most popular growth places.

Today, the apocalypse has become much more likely than many other phenomena. It can happen suddenly, so people must know how to behave in a given situation. With such information, every disaster survivor can adapt to new conditions, no matter how extreme. Nevertheless, I hope that a global catastrophe can be avoided and everything written in the article will become helpful information for everyone.