You've got to look at the
basic human needs...
- Excretion
- Eating
- Drinking
- Sleeping
- Shelter
- Warmth
Obviously this list is in alphabetical order, so I'll tackle the points in the order I feel is most sensible. Look at the following points as a sort of 'Day 1' type plan, these are the very first things I would do.
Shelter and Sleeping
The first thing I would look for is shelter. I think for the first few nights I would just find an abandoned house, but over time this would become creepy as normal houses aren't built for the type of lifestyle you would be living from now on. I would need to make sure things like perishable foods were cleared out of the house before they went rotten, and I would also want it to be fairly clean. But as soon as I was settled down with the rest of my arrangements I would look into finding or building a house that suits my needs better. I would want somewhere to sleep that was comfy yet fairly secure.
Drink
I would obviously want to be near a source of clean water, for example a spring or particularly clean river. I would find some kind of camping shop and take all the water purification tablets with me, in fact, if I was near a type of camping shop, a lot of things would be made easier for me. I would have bottled gas, stoves and other necessities available. I could also get clean water by boiling it, which brings us onto the next point.
Warmth
Like I mentioned above, finding a camping shop would help greatly. In the first few days I would probably just use gas stoves, but if this was unavailable I would have to find tools and chop some wood to burn.
Food and Excretion
This is simple for the first few days, I would simply raid a supermarket. I wouldn't have to worry too much about excretion in these first few days...
After I had settled down and living with a degree of stability from these 'borrowed' goods I would move onto finding somewhere better to live. I would want somewhere easy to guard (you never know what's going to happen) and easy-to-guard places are usually fairly high up, yet I would also want somewhere flat and fertile for farming. It would need to be near a reliable river for getting water, and near a forest for wood. It would be best if it was fairly near a town, but not too near, as things would get smelly pretty soon.
An ideal place would be on a hill with flat areas below and a river nearby. This would let me live at the top of the hill and have fields round the bottom, allowing me to use a
crop rotation system to maximise fertility.
The first thing I would do now is look for a large, waterproof storage area. I would probably have to use a ready-made building for this, so I would choose one far away from the town. I would store tents, gas, petrol, tools, cable, hosepipe, light bulbs, candles, basically as many spares of everything I will probably need to use or be able to use as I can. Later on I would find a low-powered laptop or PocketPC and index everything so I could find things as soon as possible. I would also save all broken parts in case I ran out of new ones, so I could fix them or use them as building materials.
I would keep the petrol in a secure tank so I could store it indefinitely, and I would collect as much as I could. The same goes for gas. I would also store seeds in such a way that they last for as long as possible, and I would replenish my supplies every year from my crops.
I would prepare a crate and a method of transportation with essentials in, including tools, seeds, some petrol, a stove, weapons, ammunition, un-perishable food and a generator. This would be, say, in a trailer on the back of a 4x4 that was always ready to go, so if the worst happened, I would be able to get away quickly with all the things I needed.
You may have already noticed that my whole plan so far is about defence and running away. While I would collect some ammunition and guns, defence is probably the best choice in most situations, as if anything comes it's likely to be very big or there will be a lot of them.
So anyway, back to the plan.
Next I would make sure some food will be available in a couple of months time. I would find some seeds and plenty of gardening books and do everything I could to make them grow. Later on I would try to find a greenhouse so I can grow crops in the Winter. I would water my crops every day and possibly, using a catch-tank, make an irrigation system.
If any animals survived the disaster I would want to farm them as well, but I would wait until I was more stable before getting many, as I would have to feed them as well.
I would then travel around with some of the fuel I had and attempt to find solar panels, batteries (like car batteries or larger) and wind turbines, and a lot of them. If I found a place with a good supply I would keep returning, as they will be extremely valuable and you can never have too many spares. I would make a huge array of batteries so they all charged during the day and were available at night for me to use. I would have a separate solar panel and wind turbine powering a radio transmitter to let people know where I will be (like on I am Legend)
My house, when I finally got round to building it, would be very open-plan as I would have no need for privacy any more. I would probably have two rooms. One very large one, and one (hopefully fairly-soundproofed) holding generators and batteries. The generators would have to be under cover because most of them aren't waterproof (I know you can get waterproof ones, but the regular ones will be easier to find), however the generators would only be used when the batteries ran dry.
I would also have to find a place in which to dispose of my excretion. I would want it somewhere far away, but stored and accessible because it is very fertile. I would only use it if I had problems with the fertility of the soil, as it wouldn't smell particularly nice...
And after this I would concentrate on the luxuries, for example making the generators start up when the batteries are nearly dry, a shower, a bath (but I will probably have already rigged one of these up), a water pump to get fresh water to my house up the hill, the unnecessary but still important things. I would collect up electronic entertainment equipment, a TV etc. But it would all have to be low-powered.
I would prepare for the worst by setting up cameras and a very rugged radio transmitter (perhaps embedded into the ground with an aerial far away) connected to some CCTV cameras, so if I had to evacuate, I could still see when it was safe to go back. I would also set up cameras with a powerful zoom on nearby hills which had their own power source for the same reason.
Also, in any spare time I had, I would attempt to move as many of the dead as possible out of the city/town of my choice. It wouldn't be a nice, or easy task, but it would let me go back into the town to take supplies in the future which would be extremely valuable. Maybe using some of my fuel on a bulldozer or forklift truck would help if the bodies were untouchable?
Update: Added about farming animals
Update: Generally updated the whole thing
