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Dreams pose a surrealistic escape from reality that even roleplaying has a hard time keeping up with. They can feel real, and vivid, and are as random as it comes, a strange collection of things you have seen meshed into things you haven't.

I had one such vivid dream last night. It all began with me visiting my friend Tod's house, except it wasn't his house because it was just round the corner from my house.

We decided to go to the 'corner shop' nearby to get some drinks, just me, Tod, and apparantly his lady, Emma. We fetched the drinks and then left... the wrong way, heading around the corner towards where I live, when I saw a silver white shape in the sky where the moon should have been (thaat should have clued me in) in the form, vaguely, of a butterfly. It was crumbling though, and one of the wing shaped parts tore away as the whole mass began to fall to bits. I began singing "Wings of a butterfly" by HIM, when Tod aptly pointed out that it kind of looked like the moon, and when I looked again, there was a giant rock falling from the sky somewhere distant.

My brain immediately clicked into Post-apocalypse-survival-mode.

We had to be indoors where there was a food supply for long enough for the dust to settle, and transportation, however small, at hand. My house then. We made it there, only to find a large clump of my greater family visiting. I started throwing out commands to which nobody would listen until the earthquakes hit. Then everyone started treating me like their commanding officer. For an hour or so, we prepared the house against the dust storm that was surely on its way and set to last a day or two. We covered the car and sealed the Garage and filtered the ventilation with cloth, and we brought in the big freezer from the garage. I had my mother and Cousins catalogue the food, and everyone else boarding up windows on the outside, the pressure wave that would hit shortly could smash them if they weren't covered.

There were many escapades after that, including me raiding the ruined Heathrow airport, cleaning up a jet liner, and flying it to America (which was in a worse state than England it seems) before hunting relentlessly for Michelle. When I found her I took her back to England, and there we began to rebuild what we could of some semblance of society.

There are many kinds of post apocalypse. And usually you just have to hope you aren't at the epicentre of the cause. The epicentre almost invariably means death, like the moon falling scenario. Those living where the moon was going to fall were very much screwed.

Moon fall survival:

When the moon begins to break, the first problem is a new lack of gravity away from earth. It is a fact that people are significantly lighter when the moon is overhead, and the moon's gravity is largely responsible for the creation of tides. This all finishes. Tides will no longer exist, but before that, the new slightly higher pressure from the resting seas will cause tectonic activity.

That's right, before the moon even hits the ground, earthquakes. The moon is a long way away. If it falls apart, it will take a matter of hours to hit earth and do any damage. The first thing to do is prepare for the quakes. Follow normal earthquake procedures, doorways are good, solid tables are good.

Step two is batton down. Get inside an undamaged house. Seal all the windows as close to airtight as you can manage. Heck if you can steal spare windows from neighbours who are out, do it, they're going to die choked by dust anyway, they won't miss it. Keep that glass inside just in case one of your windows breaks. Reinforce doorways, use up every hammer and board you can find, find all sources of ventilation, and muffle them with cloth, lots of cloth. Secure all your food in one place and catalogue it. Make sure you ration for an easy week, the incoming dust storm will last for days. Start pouring water. Find any empty bottles you can. Steal from the deadmeat neighbor's recycling, whatever, just make sure to clean them wuickly, then fill them all with water. You will need drinks, so make use of that running water while you can. Sanitation is important. Steal all your neighbours' buckets and fill them for flushing purposes, fill your bath too, and the sink.

If you have transport (car, motorcycle) cover it, cover it as airtight as you can. Melt a plastic weather cover shut around it. It will be a useful tool once the initial doomsday is over.

Take every penny you have and send someone out to buy cleaing materials and batteries. Send all the credit cards, everything. In a couple hours they will all be useless, so use them to buy out everything important in the shop. Non-perishable food, bottled water, batteries and lots of them, find a hardware store, max out your credit card buying building tools and enough wood to completely fill your garage or any outside storage space. Do not spend more than two hours shopping, if you can find a petrol electric generator, buy it, and buy enough petrol to have it running for a week. You won't leave it running of course, but the petrol is useful.

Next, after the dust storm has past. Fortify. If local survivors discover you have a working house, they will aim to capture it. Use the building tools to set up medieval defences. Send your vehicle out to anywhere you know they sold archaic weaponry, a local museum, a novelty armour shop. Bows are most important, but fetch at least one sword for everyone. Visit the nearest library. Nobody will accuse you of being loud, but finding the right books will be hard with all the dust. Try and find something on medieval siege weapons and perhaps one on fletching, that wood and tools you bought will become very useful.

Everything else is up to you. Do you want to just survive? Then learn about foraging, hunting and stealth. Keep the 'fort' as is, and keep supplying it. Remember the library? Medicine books will be useful, get them all. And raid the nearest pharmacist. Want to rebuild some kind of society? Then find anything in the library with relation to small tribal communities, and research. Offer anyone you find in the world a place at your fort if they can work. Make sure everyone has a job and does it, and keep the fort in constant activity. Eventually, it will grow, take resources from other buildings, bricks, copper, etc. Heck, if you get enough people, fortify the library, it's a useful waypoint.

After that it's up to you where to take society. I suggest dictatorship. Democracy is the mistaken belief that a million fools are better than one wise man. Republic is anarchy in sheep's clothing.

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