Sunday 22 February 2009

Rant 309 / Child Safety And You (V1.1)

Recent surveys have shown that Singaporean kids rank 54 for Outdoor Survival Skills and Weapons Training. That they are so unprepared for the future they may face in case of a global disaster is highly alarming.

The average kid in the Congo is able to strip an AK-47 in the dark. On the other hand, Singaporean males are only able to take apart a simple M16 in the day after the age of 19. Over 90% of the women can't even do so, and we're not even talking about jungle survival knowledge and etc.

The most obvious reason to worry about this is the inevitable floods due to global warming. As polar ice caps melt, the sea level is going to rise. Much of the island that is Singapore is very close to sea level, making it necessary for the locals to move to higher grounds when the floods begin.
Worse is that this is definitely not the only possibility for our future - there can be a myriad of possible causes for a worldwide apocalypse including an alien invasion,

a zombie infestation,

and even... Godzilla!

For this article, I have done extensive research over a period of 17520 hours on major disasters on a worldwide scale, by watching documentaries such as Mars Attacks, Diary of the Dead and War of the Worlds. In addition, over 2 months were spent on a well-known virtual simulator called "Left 4 Dead" which predicts the probable events during a zombie virus epidemic.

My research has shown that in the average global apocalypse, over 99% of all non-survivors are adults, mostly male Americans. But this does not mean that Asian adults will be left unscathed when disasters strike. In fact, in the 1954 documentary "Gojira", Japanese men were shown to be just as vulnerable to giant lizard feet as any American man.

Women, on the other hand, are somewhat more resistant to certain dangers. For example, in Left 4 Dead every single female patient in Mercy Hospital are immune to the virus, as deduced from the complete and conspicuous absence of female patient zombies. Therefore if virus-induced zombies are the cause of global mayhem, all women who are wearing hospital gowns will somehow survive the onslaught of the undead hordes. However, both genders are equally weak against other dangers, which form 99.99999% of all possibilities.

Therefore the extinction of human adults is more than likely to happen, leaving the children to survive on their own. So what kind of situation would our children be in when every human above 18 (16 in some countries, 21 in others) is dead?

In the virtual simulator, Fallout 3, kids are shown to be able survive by hiding in a deep underground cave, eating moss scraped from rocks and sending adults to their fates in the outside world, who often meet their ends in the most gruesome manner.

However, one must keep in mind that not all caves have moss, nor is all moss edible. Also, Fallout 3 lacks the capabilities to simulate zombie attacks, which would certainly have wiped out such underaged populations quickly.

This means that all minors should be fully equiped with survival skills as soon as they're able to walk so that they will be able to ward off attacks mounted by Martians, zombies and many others. It does not mean our children need only be great marksmen because certain creatures are immune to firearms. The Bear Cavalry would be a great weapon to master because there is little evidence that bears will be harmed when human civilization is utterly destroyed.



Weapons aside, our children must be familiar with the wild in the event that all HDB flats are destroyed. More specifically, they need to learn to compete with the monkeys on Bukit Timah Hill for food and recognize edible fruits and fungi. Monkey-hunting skills are an additional bonus.

To be able to do these, experts recommend that your children:
- be sent to live in a tropical jungle for a few weeks with nothing but a trench knife
- have their own kevlar vests
- get used to the feel of a gun by bringing a simple sawed-off shotgun to school
- train themselves on the various Grand Theft Auto simulator softwares to be familiar with the anarchic behaviour they will encounter during times of mass panic and imminent global destruction.







(Inspired by an Onion news, over 9000 hours spent on MSPaint, edited once on 24th Feb at 5am)

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