“Survival was my only hope, success my only revenge.”
Picture this, it’s Friday morning around 9 AM. You’re nursing the last bit of the coffee you made earlier and wondering if you should refill before a fresh Daily Dispatch hits your inbox. You’re trying to cut back on caffeine, so maybe a second cup isn’t the best option, but who are you kidding? You love coffee and you always will. It’s Friday afterall and you deserve a little treat. Maybe instead of a second cup from the coffee pot now, you wait until after lunch and order a latte. Dave Ramsey would say ordering that coffee is what is wrong with your generation; but is saving $7 once a week really going to buy you a house in this market? Your phone buzzes. It’s 2024 so you can tell the different notification buzzes your phone makes. That wasn’t a text buzz. Maybe, just maybe, the notification is the news you’ve been waiting on. News on Nick Sirianni’s future in Philadelphia. Would you rather have Belichick or Vrabel? You find yourself immediately considering the different ways the Eagles can bounce back and win a Super Bowl under either of them in the seconds it takes to get your phone from your pocket.
Philly already has Fangio as our DC, which is a major win, maybe it’s news of us hiring Frank Reich as our OC. You pull out your phone and, unfortunately, it is not news of Sirianni being fired. It’s not even news of him keeping his job. It is something much much worse. The world is ending. Like, for real this time. That’s right everyone; we’re doing a zombie apocalypse issue.
Is this premise played out? You bet. Is this an issue where we are intentionally trying to be silly as we’ve had a run of serious issues recently? What does it matter to you? Are you going to dutifully read this in its entirety like the good and loyal little subscribers you are regardless of the well-trodden premise? Pls do. Can you believe it’s been nearly four years since we thought the world was legitimately ending? We’re finally moving out of survival mode after a global health pandemic that lasted for years and changed the world around it. Might as well dive back into that anxiety and stress for a little fun. Seems like a good idea to me!
Let’s start with a question. What is your top priority? Are you trying to find a weapon? Looking for your hideaway? Are you making sure you are with the right people? Maybe you are trying to gather as many supplies as possible. What is your step one? Here’s the bigger question, does it matter? As for me and my house, I will be bee-lining straight to Niki and my dog Hazel. If I’m going down, I might as well be surrounded by the people I love, trying and failing desperately to protect them. Unfortunately Hazel would not be a Sam from I Am Legend type dog. If anything, she would be a detriment to Niki and I’s survival odds as she likes to perform a loud, attention-drawing bark when she sees any other life: from the safety of between my feet. But I love this dagum dog so let’s just hope for the best. That said, this is where I find her most mornings when I’m up and going and my wife is still asleep. She clearly has a favorite.
Let’s all be perfectly honest with ourselves, how many of us are even mildly prepared for a zombie apocalypse scenario? This is the question that prompted this whole issue. I walked up to the middle of a conversation between some friends at work where they were discussing the likelihood of surviving a doomsday scenario. They made multiple humorous observations about our collective ineptitude. You totally should have been there. It was good stuff… I remember thinking, in a moment of clarity between the laughs at our hopelessness, “I could totally steal this idea for the Daily Dispatch.” That, my friends, is called inspiration. Enough of this sidebar, let’s all be perfectly honest with ourselves, how many of us are even mildly prepared for a zombie apocalypse scenario? Sure we may have watched an episode or two of Doomsday Preppers, but does that make us experts in undead combat, water filtration, resource management, etc? You would think that the more we advance as a society, the more well equipped we are for whatever life throws at us, but I honestly believe it’s the opposite.
Comedian Nate Bargatze discusses time travel in one of my favorite comedy bits of all time. His premise is, given all he knows right now, he doesn’t think he’d make any difference going back in time because he has no valuable information. Watch the brief one minute clip now if you have the time:
I feel very similarly about survival in general. We have reality tv shows where survival is a game. We have every YouTube video known to man. We even have set aside locations for gear and supplies. I would still be hopeless.
Don’t believe me? I know many of you see me as this Jack-of-all-trade-master-of-them-all-too superhuman. Let me be the first to tell you, you’re mistaken. I’ll give you a moment to pick your jaw up off the floor. Here is an anecdote to prove my point. When I last left you all at the end of Issue 39, my buddy Brenden and I were listening to “Take It Easy” by the Eagles and driving alongside the Ocoee towards a cabin in North Carolina. We used to go to that cabin often and test our survival skills. We would take a canoe out to this hidden location known only to us. We would take backpacks with limited supplies, and, if we’re being totally honest, some beer despite being 19 and 20. I know, bad boy alert. But our goal was to construct a camp from our surroundings, build a fire without matches or lighters, and generally survive off the land for as long as possible. We got pretty good at building basic A-frame structures with logs, leaves, and tarps. We even got really good at starting fires with ferro rods and knives.
Despite our multiple practices at survival, the basic instincts clearly weren’t there. We had studied and practiced making basic traps to catch animals for food. We learned how to fish without rods. We knew basic edible weeds. But one fateful trip, we forgot to bring some food in case we couldn’t catch anything (we never did so always ate backup food). We had to ration out the bag of trail mix I happened to still have in my backpack. We had brought our friend Dante with us who got his one pair of socks soaking wet trying to get out of the canoe. He decided to dry them by the fire. They burned up. On another trip, there was rain in the forecast and we were excited to take our skills to the next level when presented with a challenge. We built our A-frame structure and even insulated it pretty well. That said, we didn’t even consider the direction of the wind and rain. By the time we settled in and attempted to go to sleep, the wind and rain picked up and we discovered our structure was built in the middle of a wind tunnel which just funneled cold rain straight into the opening of our structure.
So, the second REI is completely looted, power goes out, and food is limited; how many of us are prepared for a zombie apocalypse really? If we’re being perfectly honest, do we really want to live in a zombie apocalypse? Imagine having to absolutely FIGHT and STRUGGLE for a life without college football Saturdays, Daily Dispatches, or office small talk? Like, imagine working 10 times as hard for a life that is not even half as good as the life you have now. Freaking exhausting. That said, how many of us are the type of people who are just going to lay down and willingly give up? If that’s you, please let me know in advance so I can have all your supplies. I CALL DIBS EVERYONE! You read it here first.
So, what’s the takeaway here? What is the moral? Is it that we should be thankful for the little blessings in our lives right now, knowing how hard things could be? Nah, that’s too on the nose and unoriginal. Here it is folks: try to survive for like a week. Hear me out. Clearly surviving the full thing and helping restart civilization is not in the cards for most of us. That said, we all have at least a bit of a desire to live and are not willing to just give up immediately. So, survive a week or so, wait until a good portion of the world is already gone, and live.it.up. Imagine wandering the streets and finding a cool sports car with some gas still in the tank. Take that bad boy for a joy ride! Loot someone’s house and get all dripped out on cool clothes and jewelry and fire a gun straight up into the air for a while. Why not? You could set up the most intense 18 hole golf course around your abandoned mall or something. The possibilities are endless. The world is your zombie infested oyster.
