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Recently I have been reading S.M. Stirling’s post-apocalyptic science fiction tomes, Dies the Fire and The Protector’s War. My father recommended them to me, knowing well how much I love the post-apocalyse, in all its many and varied forms:

1. Nuclear war
2. Meteor strike
3. Zombies
4. Plague (this is usually my favorite)
5. Slow inexorable human destruction of the environment (cf. Tank Girl)
6. Alien invasion (this can be followed by either enslavement or diaspora; the latter case, as in Titan AE, is probably my second favorite)
7. Abrupt replacement of science with magic
8. Miscellaneous

Stirling’s books seem to fall into this last category, although they combine elements of several–thus far, there has been some cataclysmic event that has caused the basic chemical reactions behind combustion (guns, engines, also electricity, including, like, digital watches) to stop working, but no one knows how or why. Aliens have been speculated about but have not actually appeared. Apparently there is a companion trilogy, already written, in which a chunk of Nantucket disappears and reappears in the 17th century or something, but given that combustion has stopped functioning as we know it in these books, it doesn’t seem like it would be a straightforward case of geographic time wormhole. And while the story does have a strong mythic flavor to it, which I like, no one is casting magic missile or anything.

I don’t really know why I love the post-apocalypse so much, especially given my extremely focused love for the internet* and my deep appreciation for impractical attire that sparkles, but I’ve always had a special place in my heart for it. I suppose as a child I did have some pastoral fantasies, in a gothic kind of way. I wanted to be Robin Hood, or possibly a widely feared forest-dwelling witch.

The latter is probably the best position for my post-apocalyptic skill set, except for the part where I know nothing about herbs–well, except for a bunch of things that are poisonous, which might interest some. I can also read Tarot and act pretty freaky, and I have strong cat lady tendencies.

It might also be good to remove the temptation of human contact, since one thing that would be a really terrible idea for Post-Apocalyptic Me would be pregnancy. Not only do I have a genetic factor that makes it more likely that I would have a blood clot, for which pregnancy is a precipitating factor,** but I have my mother’s non-existent hips. She was in labor with me for like 36 hours before the C-section, an option I imagine would be fantastically dangerous if available at all, in the post-apocalypse.

On the other hand, my clotting disorder is fairly common probably precisely because young women are unlikely to get clots (I am an outlier), and it probably confers a slight advantage from an evolutionary perspective–I’m more prone to blood clots because my blood, in general, is slightly thicker and faster clotting than your average person’s, but this also means that I am less likely to bleed to death from traumatic injury. My genes certainly don’t care if I get a fatal blood clot on my fifth or sixth pregnancy in my mid to late thirties, but if I ignore reproductive survival in favor of the more personal, hey–less likely to bleed to death.

Furthermore, I have some training and experience in fencing. I am not very good by the standards of people who have fenced for any length of time, but we can assume that I’d be better than most members of the drastically reduced post-apocalypse population. I am generally fit–while my low body fat might leave me at a disadvantage in starvation conditions, I am willing to try my hand at beating the shit out of the less fit for their share of the food.*** While not a runner, I have stamina. I could cover long distances, especially with, say, a post-apocalyptic mountain bike.

And finally my hair, even–or perhaps especially–reverted to its natural state, is FEARSOME.

Of course, it’s not like fearsome hair is unwitchy. So it’s hard to decide. Isolated cat-keeping sorceress or bicycle-mounted Amazon? I would hope that as the latter I would attract a few groupies (of the non-pregnancy risk variety), but on the other hand, just because it’s the post-apocalypse doesn’t mean I have to be a NOMAD. I have nesting tendencies.

So where are YOU in the post-apocalypse?

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*Some people might describe this in more pejorative terms, believing it to be unhealthy. Some people think that light sockets are leaking poisonous electricity. I’m just saying. So far it doesn’t seem to be inhibiting my ability to function.

***I would, however, try to avoid cannibalism. You will just get diseased and weaken and die anyway. But if you MUST eat the flesh of other humans, for godsakes, cook it THOROUGHLY.

So today I am wearing underwear that have not fit me in approximately a billion years, and I had to cinch my army pants as far as they would go. Ten months ago I couldn’t cinch them at all.

I have huge quantities of clothing that need to go to charity due to being way too big: mostly pants, but a few tops, too. I’ve definitely noticed that most of my sweaters are fitting a lot looser, but that’s not a huge problem with sweaters. Maybe a couple of them will have to go; we’ll see.

My father has recovered from his data loss over on his blog and photo album, and I discovered this little gem today, a photo of me on New Year’s Eve 1991:

You can’t really tell with the low contrast, but my hair was short and aggressively spiked. I wore a lot of headbands like that to help prop it up, although my typical styling procedure was to slather my wet hair with gel and then blow dry it while hanging upside down over a chair.

Maybe I will get rid of my photo album and just store all my photos in the family one to save space. Dad’s put up lots of old photos, and Hannah is uploading some from Boston, too. I’m in the process of putting up my Japan photos, which of course are already in my photo album, but it’s nice to have everything centralized.

Sophie complains that once you get to 1991, we start looking extremely awkward, which is true, but at least I never had a mullet. Although my mutation could certainly have given me an edge in the Hair Band arena:

My father continues to upload photos from 1985. I continue to be amazed at how damn adorable I was.

My ex-girlfriend once expressed some vaguely hostile envy of my ability to look cool in sunglasses. Obviously, it is an inborn talent.

I don’t know why my parents didn’t just have me wear a hat all the time. As can be seen in the previously posted photo, keeping it cut short (the recommended “treatment” for spun glass hair) didn’t really make me look any less weird. Camouflage was probably the best we could hope for.

Also: do my eyes deceive me, or are those JELLY SHOES on my little 1985 feet? All I remember is begging for them a couple of years later and my mother telling me that my feet were too wide for them.

This is a picture of me, aged 3 5/6 years, on a family outing to Horseshoe Lake soon after moving to Missouri.

I believe this basically continues to be my default facial expression.

Also, you can see why I just dye my hair pink.