Prepping for disaster? Which one? The 4 most likely apocalypse scenarios

Before entering into any dangerous situation, it’s important to have a plan. In tactical or survival settings, developing a thorough plan that allows for alternative approaches as problems arise often means the difference between successfully completing objectives and losing your life—which is why the military has so many acronyms surrounding the concept of planning that we practically need another series of acronyms just to help us remember what they are. We have S.A.L.U.T.E. reports, B.A.M.C.I.S., and a half-dozen more planning tools rammed down our throats throughout training for good reason; planning is the most important action you can take in a life-or-death situation.

So by combining my military-born need to plan for potentially dangerous scenarios that could befall my family and my love for popular culture, I’ve tried to establish a brief list of possible disasters that may warrant your preparation and match them to a movie, television show, or video game that represents the scenario in a fashion that might allow me to use each as a form of shorthand.  Instead of devoting a few thousand words to describing each potential apocalypse themselves, I can say, “Ya know, like in that movie,” and hopefully our collective cultural understanding will leave you with a sense of the dangers therein – or at least with an idea of what to add to your Netflix que.

Despite tying each disaster to a popular culture stand in, the situations I’ll list below are not flights of fancy or purely fictional – they are real possibilities, with real repercussions.  Keeping the tone of this content light doesn’t speak to a lack of potential danger, but rather to my own approach to life and death.  Preparing for the worst ought to be a fun and positive experience whenever it can be, because spending time depressingly ruminating about our own mortality does little to stave it off.  If the end must come from an asteroid falling out of the sky, no amount of prepper breakup poetry scribbled in tears will change that – so we might as well have as many chuckles as we can along the way.