Survival of the Fittest

The Mom of No is a huge fan of sci-fi post apocalyptic literature.  You know, Stephen King's "The Stand".  The entire Novels of The Change series by S.M Stirling.  Justin Cronin's "The Passage" and "The Twelve".  Stories where the world ends because of plague, or zombies, or vampires, or nuclear warfare, and only a few survivors are left to hash it out for supremacy in the ruins of the modern world.   And every time I read one of these books, the same thought comes to mind:  If something like that actually happened, I'm a goner, because I have no actual real survival skills. 

The people who survive in these books are people who know how to do things- build an entire archery set from the remains of an automobile, for example, or grow crops, or heal extensive wounds using herbs.  The Mom of No knows a lot of things, like how to use Excel and drive a car in rush hour traffic, but these don't seem like marketable post-apocalyptic skills.

In the ideal post-apocalyptic world, the situation would unfold like this:

Mom of No (approaching the gate of a walled in group of survivors): Let me in!
Survivors:  What skills do you have to offer?
Mom of No:  I am the parent of teenagers.
Survivors (opening gate and bowing low)  Please come in.  We need a leader.

However, it would more likely go like this:

Mom of No: Let me in!
Survivors: What can you offer?
Mom of No: Awesome Powerpoint skills!
Survivors: Go away.

I'm not completely helpless. I know how to cook- using an electric oven, and ingredients obtained at the grocery store.  The Grandma of No taught me to sew, using an electric sewing machine.  I am quite good at unclogging toilets, and I am skilled at writing letters to health insurance companies explaining why they are wrong and I am right.  But I can't see that there is much application here for a world without electricity, plumbing, or health insurance.   In other words, if the zombies come, I'm doomed.  With teenagers in the house, I can't even keep more than a 5 hour supply of food around.

I was explaining this to a friend of mine several months ago, and she pointed out that I do know a little bit about mushrooms.  Yeah, enough to know not to eat anything I find, I said. Eat the wrong one, and you die a painful death.  That's it, she said.  You could be an assassin- stealthily killing evildoers by feeding them poisonous fungi.

Well, there you go.  Hapless middle-aged woman by day, stealthy fungi-wielding assassin by night. I hope I live out my years only reading about the end of the world, not actually living it; I prefer to keep my day job. And electricity and indoor plumbing.