The making of New Year’s resolutions is a time-honored tradition. Every year, we set down on paper (or half-used bar napkins, as the case may be) a list of those things we’d like to do better in the new year.
Some of us will promise ourselves that we’ll lose weight or exercise more. Others will resolve to spend more time with our families or get a job and thereby spend less time with our families. Maybe you will decide that this is the year to take gramps out to pasture, or finally take the DNA test so that annoying woman you slept with on spring break will finally get off your back. Everyone knows you can’t get pregnant the first time!
Or write a book! Or learn to cook! Or finally get rid of the bodies.
Whatever your goals may be, the only tradition as tried and true as making New Year’s resolutions is promptly forgetting them.
However, since every rational person has agreed that this is probably the last year of human existence, this is the year to make resolutions that will determine whether or not you survive the coming collapse of civilization as we know it.
How’s that for motivation to stick to your plan?
Here are some resolutions to survive and thrive in a post-apocalyptic world.
5. “In 2012, I will make a sincere effort to acquire a proper arsenal.”
When society begins to fall apart, whether or not you will survive will certainly be determined by what sort of heat you’re packing.
However, if you think that gun rack on your pick-up full of M16s, which are indispensable for hunting rabbits, is enough to handle the coming storm, then you are in for a big surprise. If 98 percent of your arsenal hasn’t, at some point, been banned by the Geneva convention, then you aren’t ready for the apocalypse. For example, make sure you have mustard gases, depleted uranium shells, lethal white powders, and all the alien technology that the government would’ve never told us about if the world hadn’t fallen apart, just to start. Use your imagination! That’s how wars are won.
Basically, you need to make sure that whatever you’re packing will make those paramilitary white supremacist groups in their Montana compounds shit their army-surplus-store-purchased camouflage cargo pants, because they will be the major competition.
4. “In 2012, I will resolve to be feared and not loved.”
We all know that it’s important to have an arsenal to obliterate all the other people who resolved to amass weapons of war.
But no one person can effectively use all those delightful toys by him (or her) self. It’s important to gather henchmen (or henchwomen). It’s also important that your henchpeople are a desperate, motley bunch with nothing to lose. But how do you keep a mass of angry, desperate people from overpowering you and seizing your arsenal?
Fear! Make a point to randomly kill one or two of your followers. It may seem counter-intuitive, but trust me, it’s really important that everyone thinks that you are the craziest mofo in the bunch and sometimes that means shanking someone. Just make sure to do it when the rest least expect it. And don’t pick the scrawniest in the group, you wimp!
3. “In 2012, I will make sure to expand my territory.”
Before the apocalypse, you used to aspire to someday move out of your parents’ house. However, with the coming of a new world order (or lack of order, as the case may be), make sure to appreciate what you have: a defensible home base. But you can’t let yourself get too comfortable. Your parents’ house is a good starting point, but remember, if you don’t expand into the surrounding suburb, someone else will.
Plus, your henchpeople will need rewards for their hard work, and your annoying neighbors and their lawn ornaments make perfect spoils.
C’mon. Admit it! You always had a crush on the girl next door. Now, she is yours for the taking.
2. “In 2012, I resolve to finally redecorate my personal space to reflect my new, adult lifestyle.”
A warlord’s throne room is a warlord’s home and you should definitely make sure that your throne room (what was, before the world fell apart, your parents’ house) is an expression of who you are as a ruthless, brutal leader of men (and women).
The haphazard speckling of Bob Marley and Matisyahu posters might have helped you sleep with impressionable sorority girls, but it will not do when you hold court in judgment of your enemies as they plead for their lives before your throne of skulls.
Maybe you want to decorate the walls with tapestries made of your enemies’ skins or perhaps a moat of blood around your throne is more your style. It’s possible that you may want a more classic look and put severed heads on spikes around the room. Whatever it is, make sure that you go for a mature, consistent style. It’ll make you feel better and it’ll strike fear into the hearts of your enemies and followers alike.
1. “In 2012, I’ll read more.”
What? Just because the world’s gone to hell doesn’t mean you should let yourself go! Read a book, you uncultured swine!
I wish you all a happy New Year and a merry Ragnarok! I hope you can find some inspiration in my words. Maybe someday, you and I will meet on the field of battle, in the shadows of the ruins of the 405. That day, I hope only that I am more resolved than you are!
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Shouldn’t it be 2012? It’s too late to make those resolutions for 2011.
Hilarious article, except we are now in 2012, not 2011! It defeats the purpose of the whole Mayan Apocalypse thing.