Writing

Dear Tor: I’m an evil unicorn, not a robot!

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Dear Tor: I'm an evil unicorn, not a robot!

Dear Tor,

I am an evil unicorn, not a bot. Love and kisses! G.K. Masterson

I mean, I am an INTJ which, I’ve been told, means I have a sometimes robotic personality but I promise you, I’m a real person.

My mother swears I was actually born in the usual way and not hatched, dropped off by wandering aliens, beamed down as part of a reconnaissance mission, or delivered by a very confused parcel servicebeing operating out of the Corona Borealis supercluster who just took a wrong turn at the Sloan Great Wall. And, given that my niece looks exactly like me, I’m inclined to believe that my mother is telling the truth so I’m definitely human.

I know, I’m a bit disappointed, too, Tor, but we have to deal with reality as it is, not as we which it could be.

Now, I’ve been a pretty avid reader since I was about two and a half years old. And, I’m definitely a geek as these photos will attest.

[wppg_photo_gallery id=”1″]

As you can see, I have quite a few Tor books in my library. Over the years, I’ve massed a sizable collection of Tor books that is worth around about $3000. On average, I purchased about $50 worth of Tor books a month on my Kindle. So, while I’m not going to put much of a dent in Tor’s bottom line by myself, I’ll bet the authors whose books I bought will feel it and they might decide to move to a publisher who doesn’t call their customers neonazis and bots. And, ultimately, if Tor doesn’t have books to publish, they have a problem, don’t they?

— G.K.

We Didn’t Start the Flamewar — Part Three

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We Didn't Start the Flamewar -- Part Three

*dons shades and sits at a table in a kitchen from the 1940s*

Larry Correia, Sarah H., Puppy Sadness, Vox Day
Social Justice, WrongFen Haters, Scalzi’s Twitter Mob

We didn’t start the flamewar
It was always burning
Since the ‘Net’s been churning
We didn’t start the flamewar
No we didn’t light it
But we’ll damned well fight it

Lyrics to be continued

So, this is the first part of the in depth history of the Sad Puppies part of this series (wow, that’s a mouthful). I spent a lot of time yesterday reading up on this. Sad Puppies has been running for three years now and was started by Larry Correia back in January 2013. That means it predates GamerGate by a fair margin (since there have been some accusations that Sad Puppies and GamerGate are the same thing or that GamerGate started the Sad Puppies. The only way that could have happened would have been for the GamerGate movement to have access to 1) a time machine, 2) a DeLorean with a Flux Capacitor and either a Mr. Fusion or Plutonium, or 3) a TARDIS. Since I’m fairly certain none of those three things are true, it’s a safe bet that GamerGate and Sad Puppies are two distinct phenomena which simply have some members in common since people who like video games also tend to enjoy reading and occasionally writing fantasy or sci-fi books).

Like many of us, Larry noticed that there had been a divergence between what was selling well and what was winning the Hugos and had been for some time. He informed his fans that all they had to do in order to nominate a work for the Hugo or the Campbell awards was to purchase a membership to WorldCon. Since the membership for WorldCon is rather small, it doesn’t take many votes to get on the ballot or to win an award. He called his effort to get his own work on the ballot “Sad Puppy” as a tongue-in-cheek commentary against the current tendency to award works that were literary-fic or message-fic instead of works that were selling or well-liked by the entire sci-fi/fantasy audience. It’s not the first time such a gag was used — after all, on various tech forums I hang around, “Think Of The Children” is used in the same sarcastic fashion.

sad-puppy
Won’t someone think of the sad puppies and the children?

In Sad Puppies 1, Larry did suggest his own works because there wasn’t any real organization back then. It was just him on his own. He was soliciting his own fans to nominate him (but he did not buy votes or memberships for anyone) and probably felt it would be a bit strange to ask them to nominate someone else. Additionally, he had a theory about the Hugos that he wanted to test — namely that they were biased, represented the preferences of only one tiny section of the sci-fi/fantasy fandom community, and that authors with the “wrong” political beliefs (meaning politically to the right of Mao and Stalin) who got on the ballot would be attacked, slandered, libeled, made the subject of whisper campaigns, harassed, have Twitter mobs set upon them, have their books given negative reviews, etc etc etc.

Sad Puppies is not about getting Larry himself the Hugo or getting any particular author the award (Sad Puppies 1 actually failed to get Larry nominated at all though it did get some of his preferences listed in other areas). It’s always been about proving that WorldCon is full of crap when they hold themselves out to represent all of fandom, about proving that there is a definite bias that has nothing to do with whether a work is good or not and everything to do with whether or not the author has the right skin color, the right genitalia, and adheres to the proper groupthink. It also has been a test as to whether or not WorldCon is really open to welcoming new members and new writers regardless of their skin’s melanin content, whether their genitals dangle or not, and what their political philosophies are. Based on the current reactions I’d have to say that Correia’s premises have been proven. WorldCon is not open to newbies of any kind who aren’t clones of their current members and the awards are biased to message-fic and it’s pretty clear that the author’s identity is far more important than whether or not their story is well-written and interesting.

So, back in 2013, Larry campaigned on his own behalf throughout January to try to get his own work on the ballot. He was almost successful (missing it by only 17 votes). Overall, there wasn’t much outcry over it and the first effort didn’t have a massive impact. Still, the idea caught on and began to generate buzz which culminated in Sad Puppies 2 which was a Much Bigger Deal and which will be the subject of the next entry in this series so stay tuned!

— G.K.

Sad Puppy image taken from Larry Correia’s site, Monster Hunter Nation

Mega Updates Galore! New chapters now available!

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Mega Updates Galore! New chapters now available!

I’ve been busy not only researching the next entry in the Sad Puppies series but also writing. So, I’m happy to announce that new chapters for all of my serial stories are up for your reading pleasure! Check out what’s new in Risen Ash, In the Shadow of Yggdrasil, The Masterminds, and The Search for the Seven Scepters!




Don’t forget that you can back me on Patreon or support my writing habit by getting a membership here now!

— G.K.

We Didn’t Start the Flamewar — Part Two

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We Didn't Start the Flamewar -- Part Two

So, some of you might be wondering exactly how this whole thing got started. I posted a brief-ish history earlier. I’m not going to rehash all of that now. Instead, I’m going to focus on the three most recent events in this culture war. I’m not going to pretend to be completely unbiased in this but I am going to try to be fairly accurate. There is a lot of he-said-she-said to some of it so feel free to check out other summaries. Just be aware that everyone has their own agenda so take it all with a grain of salt (including this one).

The first of the three events to take place was GamerGate. Know Your Meme has a pretty thorough coverage of it so if you’ve got no clue what it is and want a play-by-play, I’d suggest checking it out. The long and short of it is that the whole thing started over a game developer (Zoe Quinn) who cheated on her boyfriend. Her boyfriend posted an expose of it showing that she’d supposedly slept around to try to get good reviews of her game. It morphed from a movement to improve ethics in gaming journalism to a big thing about feminism and gaming in general. The anti-GamerGater side (populated by Social Justice Warriors or SJWs) tends to think that gaming is sexist and that the tech sector is sexist. They think that the way women are depicted in games is sexist and that games should tell a more “socially just” message. The pro-GamerGater side thinks that games are fine and that if the antis don’t like them, they’re free to make their own games and see which sell better. The antis have, so far, managed to get some of the pro-GG groups like the HoneyBadgerBridage (a group of female gamers and game developers) thrown out of conventions because they “made the [antis] feel threatened.”

That’s the level of maturity we’re dealing with. The antis can’t actually argue anything rationally and can’t be bothered to make their own games with their own message. They want to force current gaming companies to make the games they think should be made and force the rest of us to play them whether we want to or not. And, when we say that’s stupid, we’re told we’re threatening them and harassing them and that we’re being sexist. We also get lumped in with the PUAs like Roosh (who isn’t actually a bad guy — I’ve talked with him and he’s nice in person) and some of the really crazy MRAs who do hate women which would be like us lumping the antis in with groups who want to raise all children as girls and kill or force all males to undergo sex reassignment surgery *eyeroll*

The next big event was ShirtStorm. Back in November, the European Space Agency landed the Philae lander on a comet for the first time in human history. One of the guys on the team was wearing a shirt that a female friend had made for him — the shirt was a bowling shirt that depicted comic-hero women with laser guns and tight outfits. He was interviewed briefly (he wasn’t the spokesman for the team or the team lead — the team lead was a woman, in fact). Rose Eveleth, a journalist for The Atlantic, managed to miss the big news item (the historic comet landing) and, in a stereotypically womanish manner, focus in on what the guy was wearing instead. She made a big deal about the shirt that caused the historic comet landing to be forgotten as everyone on Twitter got the vapors over the women on this guy’s shirt. She later claimed she was “doxxed” (meaning her personal information was posted and she was getting harassed at home) but there was absolutely no evidence this happened (whereas there was plenty of evidence that this happened with anti-GamerGate people). I personally spent the better part of four days checking the usual doxxing sites AND the deepnet/Tornet for any trace of it and there was nada. The only way I could dig up her info was to hit up a contact I have who can get that kind of stuff and all I asked that person was if they could get it. Unsurprisingly, the answer was “yes” but that does not mean Rose Eveleth was doxxed any more than it means that oh, say, the Governor General of Canada’s direct line (bypasses switchboard, bypasses secretary, no voicemail, rings through even if phone is turned off) was “doxxed.”*

ShirtStorm managed to die down with most of us women realizing that some women were never going to get the whole science thing because they just couldn’t be rational. I wrote my long series on ShirtStorm and Women In Science (Feminism Is Dead, Why Don’t Women Go Into Science?, Why Don’t Women Go Into Science? Part II, Women In Science Part III: Can We Force More Women to Become NTs?, Women In Science: Can We Create More Female NTs?) and things seemed to go back to their uneasy truce where the minority of us wondered just when the majority of slavering crazed fems were going to find something to go batcrap crazy over again.

The third event is HugoGate or PuppyGate or whatever you want to call it. That really deserves its own entry — which it is going to get. However, I’m going to give it a quick rundown here anyway so here goes. This year was the third year that Sad Puppies ran a list of people they thought should get nominated for the Hugos. The last two years Larry Correia ran Sad Puppies — this year it was Brad Torgersen. Larry started it because he believed that worthy folks were being ignored or left off the ballot due to the authors’ political beliefs. He said that if any right-wing author got nominated, the Powers That Be with WorldCon (the group that owns and organizes the Hugos) would throw a fit of epic proportions. Thus far, he’s been proven right. The first two years, Sad Puppies wasn’t very successful but this year it was. There’s some argument as to why that is the case and I’m still reading up on it myself. However, the end result has been that Larry and Brad (who are really nice guys and good writers) have been slandered, libeled, threatened, and harassed. A lot of other good authors have been harassed as well just because they were nominated by Sad Puppies and some even felt they had to withdraw from being nominated. The PuppyKickers are threatening to vote No Award in every category where there are Sad Puppy candidates (I think) which would prove Larry’s point completely and would prove that the Hugos are pretty much worthless. The PuppyKickers claim that the Sad Puppies are all a bunch of white, sexist men who nominated nothing but white, sexist men even though SP3 consists of women, Latinos, blacks, Asians, gays (I think?), and people of all political backgrounds and nominated writers of all colors, genders, and backgrounds. Also now, according to the PuppyKickers, those of us who are sympathetic to SP are neonazis.

So you can see why some of us are finally getting a bit fed up with this whole thing.

In the next part I’ll do a more in-depth history of Sad Puppies so stay tuned!

— G.K.

*No, it’s not the Governor General and I’m not going to reveal whether or not it’s a government agency I could get access to or who my friend is or how I know them or what but, suffice it to say that just because this person can get their hands on the information does not mean it’s in the wild. This person once had a pepperoni pizza (paid for by an anonymous BitCoin account) sent to a friend of theirs who was in Israel and that friend, to this day, still has no idea who sent them the pizza. And no, my posting this won’t give the game away because that friend has no clue who I am or that I know this mutual contact.

We Didn’t Start the Flamewar — Part One

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We Didn't Start the Flamewar -- Part One

But it has been burning for a while. I’m going to briefly (for me) outline the history a bit before diving into the most recent battle fronts in this long-running war.

Yes, I’m talking about the current online flamewar going on in the sci-fi/fantasy world. The latest salvo has been over the Hugos with Irene Gallo calling anyone who thinks Sad Puppies has a point a neo-Nazi (thanks, hon! By the by, I was born Catholic and my grandfather was part of the D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach so I’m just thrilled to be called that) but it’s been simmering since at least the 1980s when the geeks and nerds decided to start building their own worlds and lives where they could do their thing without having to put up with the overculture’s bullshit. We went our own way, did our own thing, and left the rest of the world well enough alone.

Then, of course, the stuff we were doing started to catch attention and the rest of the world wanted in on it. We’re tolerant and magnanimous so we said “sure, c’mon. Join the Internet.” We kept doing our own thing, hanging out on our usenet groups, playing MUDs, building early websites, and just generally chilling. We avoided the screeching harpies, the Ivory Tower Intellectuals, the fashionistas, the HR drones, and the hippy-dippy crowds and kept playing video games, reading sci-fi and fantasy, writing, and just generally adopting an outlook of “let everyone do their own thing and just leave us alone.”

And that was fine for a while. We got to show off how awesome our little worlds could be with epic movies like Lord of the Ring, The Matrix and books like Harry Potter, The Wheel of Time, Mistborn, and video games like World of Warcraft, Diablo III, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda, and more. Still, for the most part, we left the rest of the world alone and the rest of the world left us alone. We kept spinning great stories, kept telling them and retelling them, made awesome networks and used the tech that our fore-geeks had built into companies like Amazon to share our culture. We didn’t really care much what the rest of the world was doing because we were too busy wondering who was going to win the X-Prize, building spaceships and space-faring companies, talking about how we could make money mining Near Earth Asteroids, planning out how we’d get to Mars.

After all, the rest of the world had been telling us what we wanted wasn’t important and didn’t matter. We took them at their word and left them do their thing so long as they left us alone to think up things like how to colonize other planets, whether or not you could genetically engineer dragons so they’d be real, and when the Singularity might happen. In our world, we didn’t much care if you were male or female or some variant therein. We didn’t care if you were homo-, hetero-, bi-, or a-sexual. We didn’t care if you wore jeans, Armani suits, had tattoos and piercings, walked around in your pajamas all day, watched porn or thought that Clark was better than Heinlein. All we really cared about was “is your idea cool? Will it work? Can you prove it?”

We weren’t interested in trying to set up elaborate government programs to ensure that every company, game, book, movie, TV show, poem, or military unit was a perfect representation of the rest of the population. We thought that it was a bit silly to try to force people into jobs based on superficial (or superfluous) traits instead of whether or not they were interested, qualified, and could fit in with the rest of their team. We were willing to listen to arguments that perhaps the overculture discouraged certain people from entering our specialized realms (math, science, tech, and engineering). However, we recognized that interest and personality-type were the main drivers and the intelligence played a role in whether or not a person could get into the STEM fields. After all, if you hate math, you’re hardly going to be a great computer scientist. If physics bores you, a career at CERN is probably out. If you’d rather talk about your feelings, you’re probably not destined for the engineering world and if you think video games are for losers, I doubt you’re going to fit in well in a company like Blizzard or BioWare.

So, for the most part, we didn’t care that our subculture had more men than women. The women (like me) who were part of it had absolutely no real place in the overculture. We didn’t face a lot of sexism in the geek realms — the guys are glad to have us and appreciate the way our minds work. True, they can sometimes say something that results in them suffering a brief bit of foot-in-mouth but then, so can we. We know that guys like to look at attractive women (unless they’re gay in which case it’s attractive men).* For the most part, we don’t care. Their desktops and screensavers don’t bother us so long as the women are mostly clothed. After all, they’re not asking us to dress like that. The superficial doesn’t matter much to us — actions do.

At any rate, things were rocking along just fine until three events happened that showed us that no matter how magnanimous and forgiving we were (after all, we’d sighed and gotten over the September That Never Ended, we’d come to grips with the AOLers and Spammers, we’d learned to filter out the overculture and had even — albeit, with difficulty — forgiven them for cancelling Firefly). The first was #GamerGate. The second was #ShirtStorm. And now the last is the HugoSpat.

We didn’t start the flamewar but, bless your overbearing over-culture hearts guys, we think it’s hilarious when you try to flame people who invented fireproof armor, can calculate the burst damage for the best PVP firemage build, and build flamethrowers for fun.

You’re in our world now and here, we make the rules. That is why folks like Irene Gallo and her brethren are going to lose because — at best — we go back to ignoring you and doing our own thing. At worst, we show the rest of the marginalized in the overculture that they don’t have to put up with your shenanigans either. After all, we’ve already showed the RIAA we don’t need them to help us find great music. We showed the big TV companies that we can damned well do without them. The Big Five are learning that we don’t need them to control the book market.

Do you really want to join them on Ye Olde Dustbin of the Dinosaurs?

— G.K.

*Women aren’t as visually-oriented as men but we do like to look at good looking guys (if we’re straight) or gals (if we’re lesbians). However, rarely are we going to plaster the walls and our computers with fine specimens because we’re wired a bit differently when it comes to what we like to look at and display. *shrugs* Men and women are different and that is a Good Thing(TM).

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Updates Galore!

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Updates Galore!

The latest chapters for Risen Ash, The Masterminds, and The Search for the Seven Scepters have all been posted. I’m working hard on all of these serials and will be adding chapters fairly frequently. If you enjoy them, consider backing me on Patreon. And, to those of you who have asked, I am setting up a PayPal subscription option for people who would rather pay a once-monthly flat rate for various levels of access. However, PayPal has been giving me nightmares over the weekend so I’m waiting on them to fix whatever is messed up in their system.

And now, I have to run! I’ve got meetings to go to, yo.



— G.K.

So, couple of announcements…

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So, couple of announcements...

*taps microphone* Is this thing on?

So, as you can see, I’ve been a bit busy in the background completely redesigning this site from the ground up. Don’t get me wrong — I liked the old theme and all but it was getting a little dated and I wanted something more mobile friendly. Also, I decided to tackle a new venture: Patreon.

That’s right. I’m going to be posting my short stories and serials here and over there as well. You can get them here for free (as you have always been able to do with any of my non-published short-form work or my fanfics). But, if you want to go there and back me, you’ll get some pretty cool rewards for doing so. It’s a bit like Kickstarter…only, different.

And, as you can also see, I’ve been working on a lot of new writing projects. I’m just tweaking some layout bugs tonight but tomorrow you guys are going to see some of the stuff I’ve been writing in the background. If I can get enough support via Patreon, I’ll be able to write more frequently and provide more updates. Other writers, comic artists, and musicians have made it work for them so I figure I might as well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

— G.K.

Preparing For the Zombie Apocalypse

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Preparing For the Zombie Apocalypse

The first part of any plan is preparation. This guide assumes that, if you’re reading the “Preparation” chapter, the zombie apocalypse is currently only forecast, not imminent, ongoing, or — God forbid — over. So, you currently have some leisure time to use to preparing for the day when zombies rise up and begin feasting upon humanity’s tasty still-living innards. That means (for the slower amongst you) that you should take the time to purchase necessary gear, make notes, and prepare yourselves mentally for the day when the excrement hits the circular ventilator and the undead horde comes a-growlin’.

Preparation Plans of Vital Importance:
1) This shirt and/or poster from Dinosaur Comics — Buy this shirt and/or poster. Actually, get multiple copies. Like two for each family member. Seriously. Quit looking at me like I’ve gone crazy. The information on these items can act as a very useful reference tool during the zombie apocalypse. It’s a succinct guide to how to cobble together useful modern inventions that you may not be able to find when the local big box stores are looted and/or home to a hungry horde of the undead.


This shirt might save your life. Don’t thank me; thank Ryan North who came up with it (and who I hope won’t be bothered by my borrowing the image)

2) Purchase a composite bow or crossbow — Unless you have access to the materials to make gunpowder, reloading equipment, and knowledge of gunsmithing, chances are that, in time, you’re going to run out of bullets or your gun is going to need repair. After repeated use, guns need to be taken apart and cleaned and you may find that supplies to do so and to keep all of the moving parts oiled are in very short supply. However, a bow and arrows are technology that anyone can learn to maintain. True, today’s composite bows aren’t nearly as durable or easy to maintain as the old English longbows but they are much easier to use and repair. Keep plenty of spare bowstrings with you. Also, learn how to make your own arrows since, during the ZA, you probably won’t be able to stop off at the sporting goods store to pick up extra ones.

A crossbow is great for women since it doesn’t require as much upper-body strength to use. It’s also great for weirdos like me who have to aim out of their left eye but are right handed (meaning we have to use a southpaw bow to have a hope of hitting the target but can’t pull it back because our main arm is the right arm, not the left). It’s also easier to learn to use and aim than a regular bow (though still more difficult than a gun).


Crossbows aren’t just for badasses

3) Store up food reserves — Store non-perishable food like uncooked rice, pasta, boxed macaroni and cheese, Ramen noodles, canned foods (like Spaghetti-oes with meatballs), jerky, salt, and sugar. None of these require refrigeration and they can all be cooked or eaten without needing anything more complicated than an open flame. Keep water on-hand as well — either bottled or in re-usable jugs. You will need to pay attention to expiration dates on the bottles and will need to switch the jugs around every so often. Water doesn’t “spoil” per se but it does become undrinkable after a few weeks/months depending on the atmosphere.

4) Stock up on power reserves — Batteries, solar panels, windmills, waterwheels, and gasoline can all be stored for varying amounts of time. Gasoline with ethanol in it will tend to collect water which, over time, will make it impossible to ignite. You can refine and re-distill it with the appropriate tools and knowledge. You can also use distilled corn whiskey to power a car for a while so you might want to consider adding a still to your list here.


Can double as a fuel-maker in a pinch

5) Gather trade-able hard currency — Paper currency and coins are very quickly going to be worthless for anything other than vending machines. Gold, silver, platinum, and gemstones will wind up acting as de facto currency immediately after the ZA ends while the world is putting itself back together. So, if you can, gather them together and cache them some place. Don’t keep them with you during the ZA — it’s too likely that you’ll either be robbed or unable to trade them for anything useful without losing a lot of value. You might keep some smaller ones with you — just in case.

6) Prepare a safe place to bolt when the SHTF — We’ll go over this in more detail later but, if you’ve been preparing ahead of time, one thing you definitely need is a place to bolt to when things get too bad where you are. This is mostly if you live in the city or in a suburban area near a city. Cities will be the absolute worst places to be during the ZA. You’ll want to be at least an hour from any city larger than 100,000 and two to three hours away from any major urban hubs like Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Austin, Orlando, Miami, Sacramento, Cincinnati, Seattle, Portland, St. Louis, Las Vegas, and Detroit. Getting away from the East Coast and West Coast urban corridors (Boston-NYC-Philadelphia-DC-Baltimore on the East Coast, Los Angeles-San Francisco-San Diego on the West Coast) is absolutely critical. Five hours or more is recommended.

Your safe house should be in an area where you are not easily seen from any high traffic roads. It should either be set in a clear area where you can see at least a half-mile in any direction or, if you are blocked in one or more directions, those areas should be difficult for vehicles or large groups of people to move through undetected. The house should have a basement or storm cellar with a strong ceiling and a single main entrance with a heavy door that locks on both sides. You’ll want to keep plenty of food in the basement in case a horde of the undead or a group of ne’er-do-wells comes through and you need to hide out. Ideally, you’ll have a tunnel hidden in the basement with a second locking door that will allow you to escape to a camouflaged (and locked) entrance some distance away.

This home should have plenty of fields for planting different crops, pastures for cattle, a barn (with a basement), stables for horses, pigs, chicken coops, water, a fruit orchard, vegetable and herb gardens, and should be defensible with a secure perimeter.

7) Learn some basic medical skills and stock up on medical gear and drugs — This includes local botany and a bit of pharmacology. Take course from the local Red Cross for first responders. Study up on how to set broken bones, sew stitches, perform minor surgery, and perform a C-section. You might also want to learn how to remove teeth safely. Anything more than that is probably going to be beyond your ability without access to a blood bank, a sterile environment, and advanced respiratory and cardiac equipment, and a lot of surgical tools. You’ll want to focus on learning about the most common illnesses and treatments for them. You might also want to learn about some of the now-less-common illnesses such as measles, mumps, rubella, typhoid fever, cholera, and the like.

Just because it will come up: no, there is no such plant, herb, or anything that acts as a “natural” birth control pill. There was such a thing but it went extinct during the Roman era.


If someone had known what they were doing, Lori would still be annoying us with her presence

8) Stock up on purification and sterilization equipment — Get some iodine or water purification tablets and equipment. They will let you purify water when you’re on the go.

9) Get basic survival gear and learn some basic skills — Get a good hiking backpack, a small tent, a sleeping bag, canteen, flint and steel, a compass, and learn to use them all. Learn how to make fire in a variety of ways including making a firebow. Learn to track, hunt, and skin game. Learn to live off the land.

10) Consider purchasing a loom and some old-fashioned sewing gear — When there are no clothing stores, you’ll have to make what you have last and you’ll have to learn to re-purpose some items to fit others.


Loom required to make this poncho. Awesomeness required to make the badass wearing it

Once you have made your preparations and gotten your plans in order, you should be ready to weather the zombie apocalypse. At least, physically. Mentally and emotionally is going to wind up being a completely different story.

— G.K.

Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

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Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

So, I’m a Walking Dead fan. As in I drive out of my way to watch it (I don’t have cable — my parents do). I’ve even read some really bad (and some really good) fanfics. Hell, I get story and character ideas from the show and the buzz around it. And yes, Daryl Dixon is my favorite character. No, not because he’s good-looking or a bad boy or any of that but because he understands the value of silence, speaks only when he has something to say, thinks things through, and is ruthlessly competent. He also doesn’t suffer fools and will go his own way if he thinks it’s right. Ask me and those things are so much more important than looks.


If I had something to say, I’d say it. Otherwise, I’mma just be quiet and do useful things.

He kinda reminds me of the guy I married. In good ways, sweetie, I promise.

Anyhow, The Walking Dead isn’t the first zombie apocalypse thing I’ve gotten into. There was Resident Evil when I was in high school, World War Z (the novel, not the crappy movie that only has the title in common with the book), 28 Days Later (Chris Eccleston was great in that)… But, The Walking Dead has gotten me thinking about the ZA (Zombie Apocalypse) in different ways. Not only are a friend of mine and I thinking about getting together and doing a MST3K-style webshow, but I’ve been thinking about the different types of survivors, the different ways they band together, how they’re impacted by the ZA and the collapse of social order, how many of them have no real useful skills for surviving and how those who do (like Rick, Daryl, Hershel, and Glenn) wind up carrying those who don’t.


Better survival strategy than 90% of people

So, in short, this show has gotten all of my little INTJ lights glowing. So many things to think about. Which brings me to my next point: my latest book idea — “How to survive the Zombie Apocalypse (and rebuild the world after)” (yeah, the title’s rough). I’m going to be posting excerpts and sample articles from it here on the site. If you have a particular topic you think I should include, feel free to suggest it and, if I’m not already planning to cover it (and I’m planning to cover a lot), I’ll add it and give you a mention in the Acknowledgements. Keep in mind I’m just looking for topics — not full articles. So, saying something like “how to re-establish communications overseas” is fine — giving me a point-by-point list on how that should happen is not fine.

Anyhow, with that out of the way — keep an eye out here (or on Twitter, Facebook, G+, Tumblr, or even Pinterest) to see the latest in this weird, random, rambling series!

— G.K.