SHTF: Worse Case Scenarios - How things turned out

A final chapter to Worse Case Scenario.

Best Case Scenario - Case One - Part One here

Now that you know how things went in the civilized world, you go to your master drawing room and begin making plans for the rest of the world. You take out a map of the United States and start setting boundries for your new nation. Naturally, it will be named after you.

You then draw borders around other areas, smaller than yours of course, and name them for the men in your group. After all, they should get a piece of the pie. Your plan is to conquer one area, yours, before allowing your men to see what their territory holds.

Sitting down with a snifter of brandy from your stores, you imagine the world before you. Stores full of loot. Guns, booze, gold all waiting for your greedy hands. Surely a few people have survived besides your group. To them, you will seem like a savior. That is, until you announce that from henceforth they will be serving you as their master and leader.

It is then you hear the door to your drawing room open quietly. Without turning the large leather chair you are seated in, you shout "I thought I told you I was not to be disturbed!".

"Don't worry, I won't be long" says a cat like voice. You turn and see your wife standing beside the chair. In her hand, a three foot long katana, a samurai sword. As she plunges it into you she whispers "A woman can lead as well as a man."

As your life ebbs away, you watch as she sweeps your map aside to the floor and pulls out a new one and places it on the desk.

Worse case scenario - Case Two - Part one here

Within seconds the two objects fall to the earth. One of two objects, both manufactured over thirty years ago in an eastern land once ruled by the hammer and sickle, fails to detonate but merely lands in an open field and the impact buries it some thirty feet into the soft soil.

The other lands in the heart of downtown and explodes. Within one second, every structure within one half mile is utterly destroyed. Within two seconds, another half miles is heavily damaged and so it goes.

You are still on foot now a few miles from your home. You see your shadow momentarily on the sidewalk before you and stumble by the sight. Unfortunately, your shoes are very worn by this time and you trip over the flapping sole of your $150.00 loafers.

Fate smiled on you as your fall rolls you of the side of the road and into a ditch. Just then the shockwave, greatly diminished due to your distance, but still deadly, passes over your head. The thermal heat is still deadly and a house across the street smolders as the paint catches fire. You don't feel a thing with the exception of the shock as it passes overhead.

You pull your hands and arms over your head and pray for the destruction to end. Within seconds after it starts, the actual detonation is over. After what seems like years, you slowly life your head and look around you. The damage is not that much considering that you are more than 15 miles from ground zero, but it is clear that a bomb of some kind or another has gone off.

You get up from the ditch and quickly start heading towards your house. The loafer is still flapping on your foot, so you kick it off along with the other and run off in your stockinged feet.

Your wife meanwhile, has made it within a block of the children's school when the bomb goes off. She is shielded by a number of buildings and does not directly see the blast but feels the shockwave and heat. She manages to drop behind a retaining wall before any object can hit her though.

When she hits the ground, she hears a shriek nearby. Once the shockwave passes her by, she goes towards the sound and sees your daughter and son crouched behind a stone wall in front of a home.

She grabs both of them in an embrace and says a quick prayer of thanks for their safety. With no time to lose, three head quickly towards their home not knowing where else or what else to do.

In the street in front of their home, the family is reunited. You know you have no car and with nuclear destruction upon you, there is little you can do in your home. Suddenly, your neighbor, that cranky old man and his wife come out of their garage.

They wave you inside and tell you to get inside their old green camper top pickup truck. "There's no time to waste!" the old man implores. "If we get on the road right now we can get far enough away from the fallout!".

Fallout? Get away? It makes no sense but your wife and children are looking at you for guidance. You realize the errors of your ways and turn to your neighbor.

"Thank you. Let me grab some shoes and a change of clothes for everyone and let's get out of here".

In a few moments, you and your family are on the road away from the immediate destruction. Your destination is your neighbor's brother's farm one hundred miles away. He is described as a bit of a kook, having bought forty acres of "junk land" and lived there for the past twenty years. But he is self sufficient and would welcome the extra help.

Life comes at us at odd times and in strange ways. Worse case scenarios can turn into better solutions and vice versa. Get ready, get prepared and look out for those curve balls.