Get up on the Hill

A city boy’s guide to surviving the apocalypse

Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.

— General "Buck" Turgidson, Dr. Strangelove (1964)

For some strange reason, I’ve been dwelling on the apocalypse lately.

Maybe it’s because my beloved country kicked off the new year by telling the world’s sick, poor, and hungry to fend for themselves. Or maybe it’s the mass layoffs at agencies that keep Americans safer, healthier, more secure, and better prepared for disasters that have me feeling, well, less safe.

On second thought, maybe it's our unscrupulous president declaring himself “king” as he sides with a Russian war criminal against a besieged democratic ally that has me all dysto’. This is Red Scare Inception—somebody please wake me up before I’m trapped in Leningrad Limbo.

Then again, and I’m just spitballing here, maybe it’s his majesty firing nuclear safety workers like a drunk uncle shooting bottle rockets that feels a bit end-timey:

Some, if we feel that, in some cases, they’ll fire people and then they’ll put some people back, not all of them, because a lot of people were let go.

Bada-boom. “Some, if we feel that, in some cases, when’s lunch? There better be fucking yellowcake.” Impulsivity is always reassuring in the nuclear realm. I’m glad they “put some people back.” As a victim of baldness, hair isn’t a concern, but I am trying to not get my emotions mussed. Guess we’ll just hope for decent breaks, eh?

Breaks or no breaks, I have an added theory: being a nerdy product of the 1980s could be exacerbating my atomic anxiety. While we weren’t the duck-and-cover kids, a stockpile of movies kept cataclysmic scenarios front and center for Gen-X cinephiles: The Omega Man, Soylent Green, Mad Max, Escape from New York, Blade Runner, Red Dawn, The Terminator, The Day After, and War Games (the one where AI controls NORAD and almost destroys the world, how silly). Cinema is personal, but that’s my apocalyptic short list.

One dystopian nightmare in particular, George Miller’s The Road Warrior (aka Mad Max 2), is forever etched in my soul. I don’t remember when I first saw the film, but it was too soon. And as I grew older, I watched it repeatedly—cinematic self-flagellation. Set in a postapocalyptic wasteland where you find petrol or you find death, the film follows scavenger Max Rockatansky and his faithful dog, Dog.

On an outback highway to hell, they’re tormented by Lord Humungus, a murderous hulk who runs naked save for some studded leather and a medieval mask. And Max begrudgingly adopts Feral Kid, an actual child of the desert who wields a steel boomerang like a demonic Yoda and chops off the fingers of marauders before back-flipping into his hole in the ground. There are paraplegic mechanics, mohawked psychopaths, gruesome car wrecks, and assorted gang rapes. Holy mother, no wonder I couldn’t sleep. (It’s streaming on Apple, noice.)

In the 90s, I kept my dysto’ close with movies like Signs, Children of Men, Terminator 2, and 12 Monkeys. Always with the damned dirty monkeys, these damned movies.

You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!

— George Taylor, Planet of the Apes (1968)

I grew up in the ‘burbs, catching most of these hopeful movies at cramped theaters in Denver’s sprawling suburb of Aurora. Yes, that Aurora. Another American wasteland where “they're eating the pets of the people that live there.” You might have heard reports from foxy combat journalists that the city no longer exists—scorched to the earth by violent gangs of DEIs. But I’m assured by family and friends that a few survivors remain in the Mile High City. Nonetheless, Red Dawn’s downed Air Force pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Tanner, paints a bleak picture:

You think you're tough for eating beans every day? There's half a million scarecrows in Denver who'd give anything for one mouthful of what you got. They've been under siege for about three months. They live on rats and sawdust bread and sometimes... on each other. At night, the pyres for the dead light up the sky. It's medieval.

I loved Red Dawn and am due for a rewatch. It’s on a lot of all-time lists, including a “Best Conservative Movies” list from National Review. I found this ironic because the film’s fictional World War III starts with the invasion of the United States by a Soviet-led Communist alliance—and all of Europe sits this one out. Can you imagine such a thing? As they say, only in the movies!

Red Dawn’s heroes are rural teens, the scrappy Wolverines, who survive the initial invasion and then conduct guerilla warfare against the foreign invaders. In 1984, I was outside yelling “Wolverines!!!” along with millions of other Americans. But in nonfiction 2025, Ukraine is the Wolverines and they’re in the fight of their life, and we have an American president siding with an autocratic Russian leader? Teenage me couldn’t have dreamed this up. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. I’m getting nauseous, probably too much popcorn.

I had a great childhood in a fun neighborhood. Spielberg’s E.T. reminds me of those days. Ron was my cul-de-sac bestie and we took our Star Wars action figures seriously. Ron’s dad was a respected lieutenant colonel at nearby Buckley Air Force Base. We could see Buckley’s satellite-protecting “golf balls” from our rooftops and fighter jets flew nonstop overhead. Ron’s family would host cadets from the Air Force Academy and I would hang around. I thought those future pilots were gods, like Goose and Mav.

And I’m sure this connection to Colorado Springs (also the home of NORAD) steered the doomsday plan that Ron and I concocted: should Russians invade or bombs start dropping, we agreed to rendezvous at the top of Pikes Peak (a fourteener over 100 miles south of Denver). Don’t ask, we were only kids.

But hey, at least we had a plan, and I’m glad we never had to use it. Would it have helped? As Edna Mode said to Helen Parr (aka Elastigirl), “I don’t know, darling, luck favors the prepared.”

I now live in Grand Junction on Colorado’s Western Slope (Red Dawn was set and filmed in our neck of the woods). We’re about 100 miles from Moab, one of a few cities coined “Uranium Capitols of the World.” Like other parts of America, the Colorado Plateau experienced a uranium boom in the 1950s. We have an atomic legacy museum in town and Santa Fe, where Manhattan Project workers checked in before heading up to Los Alamos, is an easy drive.

Before seeing Oppenheimer in 2023, my wife and I visited Santa Fe. We happened upon Oppie’s old project office, now just a relic marked with a plague in a quaint market downtown. And we drove up to Los Alamos, where we saw the Oppenheimer House and unexpectedly stood on some film sets—hallowed ground for a Christopher Nolan fan. It was an experience I’ll never forget.

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

And now I am become Dysto, the destroyer of words.

I was getting dysto’ recently with two friends (former colleagues on a local atomic legacy contract, of course). We were texting about the dreadful state of our union and they both alluded to some doomsday prepping with the fams: stocking up on staples, mapping escape routes, canning various vegetables, moving to Canada, etc. These are sharp, pragmatic, I dare say normal dudes. So our thread was splitting my atoms: Why am I not prepping? Is this the end of the world as we know it? Is civil war inevitable? Do I need an escape plan... from America? What about my loved ones? Should I go to Sam’s Club? What if the app isn’t working? God, I can’t go in that place.

Hellfire, am I prepared for the apocalypse?

My inner city boy responded in haste: no, no! I’m definitely not prepared—what a terrible question to ask. What the hell’s wrong with these people? When the shit hits the Gadget, I’m the first one to cook. Use me as a blast shield. City boys don’t prepare for much of anything—it’s why we live in the city, jerks. Meal prepping is outside my wheelhouse. I’m an avid indoorsman with a keen eye for the wrong tool. I have a flashlight (somewhere) but no power tools. Will there even be power? Do I even have sunblock? Are flip flops appropriate for an Armageddon?

Shit, I’m screwed.

For a moment, I considered running in the street naked, like Arnold’s electric arrival in The Terminator but less electric (and definitely less sexy). But then I thought: wait a minute, hold your fire-breathing horses, Apocalypto. This is 2025. The Year of the Muskrat. Up isn’t up anymore and there is no right. Imprudence is now prudent. Lying is leadership. Freedom’s been trademarked and corruption is on brand. Our republic is backward, upside down, and illogically multilayered—it’s inverted.

Sweet fission, America has been... Nolanized.

It’s like Memento: tomorrow’s inconceivable headlines actually happened yesterday but—due to the linear nature of storytelling and science things—we’re still moving forward through time.

Or maybe it’s more like Tenet, puzzling red/blue visual motifs and e’thing: we don’t actually read the news anymore; it’s being “pushed” into the cerebral cortex by an evil broligarch with an algorithm from the future and sick turnstiles that invert entropy. As Tenet scientist Barbara says, “Don't try to understand it. Feel it.”

Stay with me if you want to live. What I’m getting at is, in 2025, it seems my lack of qualifications to survive any kind of cataclysm actually makes me the most qualified person to discuss postapocalyptic scenarios. That’s right, I’m pulling a linguistic temporal pincer movement on survivalism. In fact, because I totally debunked the merits of surviving on my podcast, Survival is a Construct, and because I’m the last clown you’d want around on the day after, I should clearly be appointed (and quickly confirmed) as our head of Homeland Survivability. I am become the Protagonist.

Don't try to understand it y’all, just feel it.

There’s technical stuff going on in the background here, but the genesis of my pincer movement is pretty simple: while I was born and raised in “the towns,” a series of fortunate events allowed this city boy to live on a family farm for nearly 20 years. (There’s more to this story but we can’t disrupt the timeline.) In the past, my city-country interchange made zero sense. But now, due to inverted entropy and post-logic mechanics, it’s now evident that my bootless experiences in God’s country are of utmost value to all humanity. I was a secret city boy from the country’s future but didn’t know it—my ignorance was my greatest strength. This is my density. As my Tenet handler Neil explains it:

We’re the people saving the world from what might have been.

I assume this is all clear as radioactive mud? (Email any questions to Barbara at Tenet; she’s really the expert.) We have no time to waste. The end is nigh. The Doomsday Clock reads 89 seconds to midnight (scary, but no clue). So I’m speedily publishing the vital information below for posterity, and before ELON becomes self-aware and laser-boomerangs my fingers off. In other words, echoing The Terminator’s Kyle Reese from both the past and future: come with me if you want to live.

Get up on the hill

Logically, my first piece of apocalyptic advice is to run. Get the hell out of town, amirite? “Yes, but where?” you might be asking. Well, I suggest you “get up on the hill.” A little backstory. One Saturday in rural America, I entered the local hardware store with my customary blank stare and a sales associate delivered a friendly greeting: “There he is, thought you’d be up on the hill?” Nicest guy, but this was clearly his standard greeting, especially for idiots who were down off the hill on such a beautiful weekend. I smiled while surveying the store and it was empty; indeed, the vast majority of his customers were up on the hill.

So what is a “hill”? Duh. It’s anywhere miles away from civilization: a mountain, forest, field, bluff, mesa, karst, jungle, glacier. Doesn’t matter, just get up on it, so to speak. (Note: when the cities burn, you may hear people say “get out in the sticks.” The sticks are essentially the same thing as the hill, although I think it implies flatter, more arid terrain.)

Thought you’d be up on the hill?

— Anonymous

There’s one other option: you could “get out on the pond.” This would be a body of water (lake, pond, reservoir, river, wetland, canal, lagoon). Consider, do you own a boat? Most rural folk own at least one. Boating is way too much work for city boys, but it could be an option for you. I think you’d need a boat, a trailer to put the boat on, a truck to haul the trailer, a cooler of cold‘ns, a thousand various items (including sunblock), and enough gasoline to launch a space shuttle.

Are the birds gonna eat us, Mommy?

The best answer I have for that scared little boy in Hitchcock’s The Birds is that I really don’t know, probably.

When I first moved to the country, I had a similar question: do horses attack people? I asked around and was assured they do not. But years ago, at a family fair in the big city, I saw a mad pony try to escape one of those horrifying low-budget merry-go-rounds. It scared the hell out of me and everyone within kicking distance. As I lie in bed at night, I can still hear those children screaming. Needless to say, I remain unconvinced that horses or horselike creatures don't target humans. There’s just not enough data. And I read recently that medieval warhorses were actually the size of ponies—bingo. Remember Mombasa. Watch your six.

Cows scream bloody murder at night in the country but I can't tell you why. Nobody told me. And during daytime, which commences at around 3 a.m., be prepared to yield to cattle drives, herd runaway cows, and discuss things like beef “hanging fees” (see Appendix B).

You’ll also hear coyotes at night but rarely (if ever) see them. Country folk told me those terrible howling, yipping, and screaming sounds came from coyotes, so I believed them. Out of respect, I suggest you do the same.

I hope you like cats. If you don’t, learn to like them before the Ruination. Up on the hill, almost everyone cohabitates with cats because they are indeed highly efficient mouse assassins. But country life is also very hard on cats. Anecdotally, the cruel blades of a swather deleted our sweet black cat, M. Night Shyamalan. It was tragic and to this day I wonder if he was distracted by dead people (cats see things people don’t, this is written).

Anyway, for your field guide, a swather is an immense implement with what are essentially front-end rotating samurai swords. They are instruments of death but do serve an agricultural purpose: slicing up hay, small grain crops, or cats, and then forming them into windrows for drying. RIP, M. Night.

Behold that the mortal enemies of country cats, country dogs, will appear to be supernatural. They run faster than cheetahs, eat metal, and headbutt moving vehicles. And you’ll probably see them hopping around the backs of flatbed trucks as they barrel down the highway (I think this has something to do with how gravity swallows light). Just look away, these are not your affairs.

And when (not if) you get bit by a mad dog, don’t expect the ACLU to come running—you’re more likely to hear that you “had it comin’” from the dog’s steward. Finally, “leash law” is city-boy jargon so you can leave that nonsense behind. If anyone’s gonna be chained up and beaten after the apocalypse, it’s gonna be you.

They're beasts, Ernesto. You must kill every one of them eventually. It's the same as Afghanistan. They'll never stop.

That’s Red Dawn’s General Bratchenko, dropping mad knowledge about eradicating the Wolverines. Bratchy’s directive aligns with mine for skunks: we must kill every one of them. I believe they are the hinterland’s undead. Before you head up on the hill, prepare for war with these foul beasts. It’s the same as Afghanistan. And pro tip: you can’t kill a skunk with a minivan (yes, I tried, and my family never forgave me).

A word about mice. Before coronavirus there was hantavirus, which is an airborne virus that comes from mouse droppings (don’t shoot the messenger). While I never knew anyone who contracted hantavirus—let alone died from it—you’ll hear it discussed often as an imminent existential threat to humanity; an omnipresent evil, like Satan. From my experience, there is nothing to do about hantavirus other than fear it.

FYSA: You can eradicate mice, but you’ll need patience plus weapons-grade plutonium.

Remember Rambo

Take under advisement that you will not understand meals or meal times out in the sticks. There’s a secret country code around meals, which you will not be briefed on. Dinner may be called supper and sometimes dinner will be served for lunch. Sometimes you will have supper for lunch, but never lunch for supper. On major holidays—if there are such things after the obliteration of all that is decent and good in the world—what is unarguably dinner will be served early in the day, around lunchtime. This special meal may be called lunch, supper, or dinner. (I always suspected these terms were interchangeable but never had the sand to raise the question.)

None of this matters. If you’re alive after the Last Decimation, just be grateful you aren’t starving and don’t complain. Don’t draw first blood.

But it is crucial to remember that John Rambo, another classic cinematic survivalist, is named after a variety of apples. The Rambo apple is also called the Winter Rambo, to avoid any confusion with the Summer Rambo. This intelligence could save your life someday. You’re welcome.

Before you flee the fires, please familiarize yourself with Mason jars, which are hoarded and valued like bars of gold in the villages. I believe people have killed and died for them. Mason jars are used for canning and jarring fruits and vegetables—presumably for the Final Despoliation. A caveat: if you find yourself working with a two-part lid system, you should keep the lid’s metal band (ring) and only discard the sealing gasket. Screw this part up and you will get yelled at (postapocalyptic punishments may be much worse idk).

Finally, if you are asked to help out during humanity’s final hours and “put up” some corn, just nod in agreement and do as you're told. It’s not as hard as it sounds. And I offer similar guidance around prime rib and potatoes: just say you love them, even if you don’t.

Soylent Green is people!

— Detective Robert Thorn, Soylent Green (1973)

I think RFK Jr. said this again recently but I read that on Facebook, which I am so not on anymore omg.

Humans will likely turn to cannibalism after the sun dies. Nobody wants that smoke, but it’s advisable to keep Soylent Green in mind. The 1966 dystopian classic is set in 2022 as elites are taking over, climate change is destroying the planet, and violent protests are erupting worldwide. While bodies are bulldozed into dump trucks, Detective Thorn discovers that the nutritional label on humanity’s last source of food is less than honest. Soylent Green wafers, it turns out, are made from human bodies.

So keep on the sunny side, at least we’re not eating people wafers (yet).

This is America, go buy some guns

If mail-delivery systems remain after the Burials, they’ll be unconventional. It’s likely that plainclothes people will deliver your mail from peculiar unmarked vehicles that look like Jeeps for Lilliputians. Or they may come on horseback, like Kevin “Waterworld” Costner in The Postman. (Mans had gills in the former; shit gets weird after apocalypses.) The little Jeeps have little sirens on top but I never saw one flashing. I’m now wondering if those are tied to doomsday warning systems. We may never know.

Rural highways and roads have very weird names, like 528491 H-Z Road, and the names often change for no apparent reason. But don’t sweat the small stuff. I suspect street names and addresses will quickly become irrelevant when people are eating people.

Be advised that there are few (if any) transportation services in rural areas. I once dialed a number from the phonebook and a guy barely answered: “yello.” Ah, a mystery. Now I was the detective: “You in business? You’re… listed under taxi service.” Heavy machinery backed his response: “haha! not really, but we’re trying!” Fair enough, an A for effort.

Hill people can be quirky, but this goes hand in hand with resourcefulness. We’ll need these folks when acid rain is falling.

I highly recommend 4-wheeler training before the Subjugation. These all-terrain vehicles are rare sightings in the city, but everyone in the countryside owns at least one. They’re essentially mando. While farmers race around on 4-wheelers 24/7 doing critical farm things like “‘changing water”—you may also witness a barefooted 8-year-old girl hauling ass down a state highway. No laws seem to apply and things will probably get wilder as the earth dies. I imagine most children will have standard-issue 4-wheelers and AK-47s.

I can’t offer much guidance on guns. I can only tell you that they’re bunkmates with freedom in the wild west, along with elk symbology and skintight “WAR ON MEN” t-shirts. My post-democracy ordnance plan is aligned with James Cameron as he prepared to film The Terminator:

I knew nothing about guns but then remembered, this is America, I can just go buy them!

The smell of napalm in the morning

Rural folk will talk endlessly about ditches, ditch riders (more guys on 4-wheelers), water pumps, water rights, the quantum mechanics of water, cisterns, sluices, “hauling water,” irrigation and irrigation districts. Let it flow. We’ll need this institutional knowledge during the Water Wars.

You may be asked if your home is a “stick-built”—meaning a house made the old-fashioned way. What they’re digging at is whether you live in a manufactured home (aka trailer). If your house came in two prebuilt pieces on a truck, the answer is yes. This could be a compliment or an insult, depending on which part of the hill you’re on. I think this is apocalypse-relevant information because stick-built homes are probably more resistant to hellfire.

Be forewarned that rural people practice pyrolatry (fire worship). Farmers burn agricultural refuse but everyone burns piles of branches, weeds, leaves, sawdust, boxes, diapers, DVDs, and anything else that’s even partially combustible. This is why trash service is considered elitist in the sticks. I almost called 911 when I first saw the fires, because that’s what you do in the city when things are burning. But before long I was a bonafide Burner, a protected man. I see this as a perk of Armageddon. The action really is the juice.

The action is the juice.

— Michael Cheritto, Heat (1995)

If someone up on the hill is burning a pyre—for the fields or for the dead—let it burn. If they say something’s sharp, it’s razor sharp. And if they tell you a fence is electrified, don’t go over and touch it like an urban idiot—it’s electrified. This is perhaps the most important piece of advice I have for you: simply heed what frontier folk tell you. They know their stuff but aren't big on hand-holding. They’re happy to “learn ya” the hard way or the easy way, H.I.

The bombs that don’t go off

Well, my fellow Wolverines, as they say in the country, “I had her to do and now she’s done, and it’s good enough for who it’s for.” (As in, myself and a half dozen readers.) But I do feel a little better, and I hope you feel a bit more prepared for doomsday.

A second civil war would certainly suck. Andrew Garfield’s 2024 Civil War, which I found very satisfying, gives us a grim idea of what one might look like. I think the normality of people doing horrifying things during wartime is one thing Garfield artfully captured. People talk about the mass grave sequence for good reason—it’s creepy as hell—but the one at the car wash lingered with me longer. Both scenes are in broad daylight (as is Nolan’s jarring opener to The Dark Knight).

For some reason, scary things in broad daylight seem that much scarier. Why is that? Maybe it’s obvious. Maybe it’s because dark things are supposed to happen in the dark. Inversion is disorienting.

I find this analogous to America today. A nuclear war would of course suck, too, but what I think scares me more is people refusing to acknowledge the truth (and liars). AllSides, a company that tracks media bias and misinformation, says “the truth is losing”—referencing an academic study that found “political bias matters more than truth in shaping what people believe, share, and remember.”

Ugh. I get it... maybe? Guess I’m still having a hard time wrapping my thick skull around this concept of post-truth. Is this willful ignorance of the truth or something more subconscious, like in Inception. Is the American dream collapsing around us while we sleep? Or did some of us volunteer for Limbo? Regardless, the truth is losing in America and it’s in broad daylight. Now that’s scary.

I told the boy when you dream about bad things happening, it means you're still fighting and you're still alive. It's when you start to dream about good things that you should start to worry.

— The man, The Road (2009)

See, being a little dysto’ is a survival mechanism. It helps process times like this. We all have our ways. I’ll keep dreaming about bad things happening and I’ll keep writing—it makes me feel alive (or dare I say, awake).

And after all, what’s there to worry about? A bunch of what ifs? Or as drunk uncle yelled in the Oval Office last week: “What if anything? What if a bomb drops on ya head right now?” I gotta give the guy credit, that’s the argument to end all arguments. Apocalyptic rhetoric. Right on theme.

Better call it a night. Tomorrow I’ll try to appreciate, as Tenet’s Neil says, “the bombs that don’t go off.”