The 15 Lists to Add to Your Apocalypse Bullet Journal
1. Possible sperm donors for repopulating the earth.
2. Locations of running water. You know for drinking, cooking, and maybe a bath if you are lucky.
3. Remember the times you swam in the ocean and how much you miss it. The freedom of drifting on your back, the water both warm and cool, caressing your skin, wondering how the sky could be that blue. You think about why you don’t really look at the sky anymore. You never really had to worry that you could be killed. Sharks are much safer than people.
4. Locations of canned food. You really miss tuna but would eat cat food in a pinch. Don’t eat the expired mayo no matter how much you want to.
5. Possible people you wouldn’t mind surviving the end of the world with. Never include any of your exes. You will never be that desperate.
6. Locations of farm animals. Hopefully, cows, goats, or sheep because you miss milk. A lot.
7. Remember the times you ate all the cheese in one sitting. It happened much more often than you’d like to admit but it’s good to remember, because unless you are making it, you aren’t having cheese for a very long time. Your first live-in boyfriend really loved to make cheese. He had a special fridge for curing you weren’t allowed to open even though cheese was your absolute favorite. He probably left you because you binged a whole wheel of cheddar while watching people react to videos all day.
8. Locations of easy to defend places. Caves are best but watch out for bears. They don’t like to share. No one does these days. Even you.
9. Possible celebrity sightings. Not only normal people would survive. You bet you run into someone famous one day, maybe someone you actually like who doesn’t turn out to be an absolute dickhead you might have to kill if they try to steal your stuff or rape you. Like Tom Hanks. You’d even settle for his son, Colin.
10. Locations of medication. You really miss ibuprofen. You can’t remember what plant aspirin comes from but you’d give anything for pain relief some days.
11. Remember the times you could just roll out of bed and get some pills for whatever ailed you. Ibuprofen for the time your legs swelled so much you thought your skin would pop because you actually got sunstroke. Aleve for the wonderful privilege of being born with female genitalia. Benadryl for the time you wanted to scratch your eyes out of your head because plants decided it was time for sex. Now you are lucky if you don’t have a sneezing fit while you are hiding in your cave waiting for some asshole to pass.
12. Locations of pads, tampons, menstrual cups, underwear. No one ever talks about how to take care of your menstruation during an apocalypse. What’s up with that?
13. Possible books you want to read when you aren’t trying to survive daily. Maybe some post-apocalyptic fiction for inspiration. Might need to re-read One Second After or Children of Men.
14. Locations of weapons. Guns and ammo would be nice but knives or axes would be easier to upkeep than guns. Practice throwing whenever you can. Stealth kills are always better. Maybe you could get a bow.
15. Remember the times you didn’t believe the end of the world would ever happen, sitting, eating, fucking on the futon you refuse to throw away because it was the very first piece of furniture you ever got, a side-of-the-dumpster find, left there for anyone who didn’t care where it had been and what it had been used for. Some days, you really miss it.
Melissa Llanes Brownlee is a Native Hawaiian writer. She received her MFA in Fiction from UNLV. Her work has appeared in Booth: A Journal, The Notre Dame Review, Pleiades, The Citron Review, Waxwing, Milk Candy Review and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the 2018 New American Fiction Prize and the 2019 Brighthorse Prize.