Surviving The Apocalypse When You’re A Girl

The Girl’s Guide To The Apocalypse has an interesting article — well kind of a short fiction peice that I found intriguing.  Since I’ve taken up the promotional cross (and it is like a cross) I’ve discovered more of my fellow post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction writers. Many of these guys are awesome!  So anyway, after reading “Shoot To Kill And Can ‘Em Up” I got to thinking…what really does a girl need to survive the apocalypse?  In my series After The Darkness: Episode One, my main character Nadia is a teenager who has fallen out of grace with the upper-classes. The world is a frozen, dark hell and citizens are controlled by the rich, powerful and well connected. So let’s take a look at what someone like Nadia needs to survive after the world ends as we know it:

1. Smarts. Crappy futures definitely don’t reward the bold, beautiful and dumb. If you’re a girl and you want to survive, you better put your critical thinking cap on and leave the Cover Girl makeup at home. I figure that the smarter you are and less beautiful you are, the more likely you’ll survive when the shit hits the fan.

2. Social skills — the real kind. And you thought your 1million Facebook friends had your back. Don’t count on it.  Any girl wanting to survive the apocalypse will need to build social bonds so that when you’re down to your last can of beans your fellow tribe members won’t start envisioning you on a skewer.

3. Useful skills. If you’re living in a technology void wasteland your C++ programming skills won’t mean diddly squat . Try your hand at something real. Can you grow food, fix stuff, sew, crotchet? I can…well kind of. If you show up to the gates of that closed post-apocalyptic community with no useful skills, you can forget about getting in. A matter of fact, don’t be surprised if you end up on the wrong end of “Look what we’re having for dinner” (see tip #2).

Tags: fiction, post-apocalypse, post-apocalyptic, science fiction