Twenty four hours and counting...

It's almost time, folks!  The Apocalypse is only hours away, so it's time for us to start getting our plan ready.

What plan, you ask?

Well, if you've been visiting me for a while you may recall a post I made back in September where I came up with a game plan for the Mayan Apocalypse.  Go on and read it, we'll all wait.

All done?  Good.

So, are we all agreed?  From this point on, we all act like the Apocalypse happened.  The next generation are never going to know it's all a pack of thinly veiled lies, provided we all stick to the game plan.  So in preparation for this, I think it would be a good idea if we all prepared a little.

Come up with your stories before hand, or at least some bullet points you can refer to, so you're ready when sceptical youngsters start to question you about what really happened.  Remember, there's no such thing as too outlandish.  You survived the freaking Apocalypse!  If you want to say you single handedly mowed down fifteen zombies with a hot wired SUV, you go right ahead.

Purposely hurting yourself just for the sake of having battle scars is a bit extreme, but by all means come up with some explanations for the ones you already have.  I've got a scar on the back of my ankle, the result of an unfortunate leg-shaving incident, which I'll be telling people came from a run in with a dismembered zombie who clung to my leg with one hand while dragging his severed lower body with the other.  It's a beautiful image, isn't it.

It probably wouldn't hurt if you started perfecting your PTSD responses now.  Practice your haunted, tortured look in the mirror to get just the right amount of angst showing in your eyes.  Try out expressions like "I tried to get to her, tried to get her out, but I just wasn't fast enough" and "At night I can still hear the screaming".  If that doesn't work for you, just go with something like "Sarah?  I knew a Sarah once ... back before..." then sigh deeply.  You can't go wrong with the classics.

Okay then, I think we're ready!

By the way, don't forget to go enter my Silly Season Giveaway for an e-copy of Xanthe Walter's new novel "Ricochet"!

The end of the world is totally going to happen ... even if it doesn't ...

Today I was meandering around Tumblr (as is my wont) and I stumbled across a little comment that got me thinking.  It was short, only a few lines, but the idea was so genius I couldn't just scroll past it like I do all the other posts of adorable kittens an how cute Benedict Cumberbatch is.  So in true visionary style I've decided to implement their idea, and I'm recruiting you all to help me.

As we all know, the world is supposed to end this year.  It's a bit of a shame, but it's had a good run.  Four and a half billion years is pretty good innings, even for a planet.  But like all of the doomsday/apocalypse/cataclysm predictions, there's always the chance that it'll turn out to be a dud.

How many times have you watched as some religious nut declared that the world was going to come to an end at three seventeen in the morning on the eleventy seventh of the month and then proceed to give away all his worldly goods in preparation for the space ships arriving to take him away?  Yeah, far too many to not take these predictions with a grain of salt.

Still, this one is from the Maya's rather than some weird guy about two weeks overdue for a bath and living in a shack in the middle of nowhere.  That lends it a little more gravitas than the others.  But even so, we all know it probably ain't gonna happen.

But that doesn't mean we can't pretend it did anyway!

Seriously, think about it.  Anyone born after 2012 isn't going to know differently as long as we're all telling the same story, so here's the plan.  As far as we're all concerned, it happened.  The dead rose from the grave, demons attacked, cities were levelled, and in true heroic fashion we defeated them all and came out victorious.  I'll be like Independence Day, but with far less Will Smith ... which can only be a good thing in my books.

But if we're going to make this work, we've got to start planning now.  Come up with our stories of heroism and daring deeds!  That crater in the vacant lot down the road where they started to build a house and then gave up before they'd even laid the foundations?  Now that's where an alien ship landed during the first wave of invasion!  The scar on your leg from falling off a bike when you were twelve?  Now it's from the three zombies you fought off outside the 7-11 while gathering supplies.

And if anyone decides not to play along and tries to tell the future generations the truth, we'll just put it down to post traumatic stress.  Those poor people, suppressing the awful truth.  Seriously, I think if we can just get our stories straight and do a little bit of forward planning, we can do this!

After all, worked for the moon landing.