Thirty days.

Statistically speaking, after a natural disaster or a state of emergency, that's when the most destruction occurs. That first month is when the death toll is the highest, the violence the heaviest, and when instability sets in.

When infrastructure shuts down it takes a short amount of time for this to start being apparent. It only takes a few short hours for people to start getting antsy and nervous, becoming more volatile the higher concentration they are in. Those people unsettle others, upset the equilibrium, and then everyone starts pairing off. Some step up to try and corral this, but leadership is up for grabs and most likely it is given to default positions. Where it once went to the national government, it then goes to the local administrations, then to the community leaders, down to the family heads, and finally the individual. Of course, that's a bit of a generalization considering social nuances and minutia along the way. It's made with the assumption that religious institutions are not heavily in play, and that military installments or militias are not around.

Generally speaking, though, that distribution of control and leadership is already up for grabs within hours, maybe days. Even in a stable government system the balance is alway shifting. An emergency is just a catalyst that exacerbates a naturally occurring phenomenon. It's like oxidation; occurring all the time everywhere to everything, but when it happens very quickly, it's called a fucking fire.

After that, with new and unsteady guidance, the securing of necessary resources becomes one of the main focuses, assuming no immediate threats of life. Food, water, and shelter are the big three; they become prioritized. In some countries, this is not so different than everyday life. In others, where such goods are distributed by means of supermarkets and city utilities, this is where things quickly go to shit. Assuming power goes out and for some reason water is not running, even the most civilized person can become hyperagressive as they scramble for them. Hoards are built, groups emerge, hostilities escalate. Cautious people will have filled everything available with water, begin taking inventory, and rationing. Paranoid ones will start defensive or offensive measures in order to keep stocks safe.

Clashes happen.

During this same times period, as things escalate, many will abandon heavily populated areas. An exodus begins, a great migration outward in hopes of more safety. Things get left behind, material goods and items of sentimental value are put aside. Ties are severed with family pets and even those considered burdensome to the group, taking up valuable resources. After the big three have been secured grabs begin for medical supplies and weapons, ways to maintain strength and numbers. Looting sets in quickly, sometimes before power becomes stabilized. People grab what they anticipate they will need, what they crave, what they can.

Uncertainty becomes commonplace. Nobody knows when structure will arrive again, and they sink into survival. The greatest acts of human kindness can take place in this mindset, and some of the greatest atrocities.

A great, great number of people will brag about their ability to survive such hypothetical situation. They will talk about what they will grab, what they will do to maintain loved ones and get through the event. They will boast of theoretical knowledge in things they have never practiced, skills they could have, and plans they will make. Some will say they yearn for the moment, that they are eager for society to fall.

The smart ones realize that it will not be a grandiose dive into glory and grit.

They will recognize that a sinking society means that little luxuries go to the wayside, that no society means no maintenance, roving gangs, limited access to hygiene and medical care. They will recognize that things that were negligible before become deadly, that shitting to death is a feasible way to go after the fall. They will know that cream filled donuts will be memories of the past, placed in nostalgia alongside basic manners and comfortable beds. These people will acknowledge that mandatory manual labor is hard, that there is a reason they had others kill their food for them and build their homes. They will realize that the stench of a person who has bathed in nothing but streams after nine days of activity and no deodorant is offensive and deplorable.

Here's what she was taught;

If you are a woman of any kind, it must sorrily be stated that you are at a higher rate of victimization during these times. If you have friends, gather them, but only if you trust them surely and fully. If you do not, take this time to make a face in the mirror and realize maybe you should have been a little more social. Then rationalize it away because maybe you don't have a group, but that means you are responsible for only yourself.

If you have long hair and cannot bear to cut it, cut it anyway. Barring that, welcome to buns. Braids can be pulled in an altercation, and therefore if you choose such, be aware. Hats and bandanas are also a consideration.

(Her mother's hands are gnarled, several shades darker than her own, and missing a few fingers. But they are steady as they present the red checkered scarf to her daughter. Even at six years old she knows to handle it with care. Now, she wraps it around her head thinking shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves doesn't always take three generations.)

Get yourself a new wardrobe. In hot, wet places with lots of sun, that means light fabric and full cover. In cold, dry places that means bundle and stay dry, because sweat freezes. If you suspect altercations and conflict to be unavoidable, armor up. Leather is favored by bikers for a reason. In's not a great armor, won't stop guns or direct knives, but indirect strikes and scrapes are guarded against. This goes for most motorcycle clothing as well, but if that offends, silks can be layered to similar effect, and heavy denim as well. Just remember that you should be able to move, and all weight adds up after hours spent on foot.

As with any good outfit, pick shoes that match. New boots will take time to break in, cause blisters and aches, but when needs must. Running shoes also work. Regretfully, sandals are out alongside those beautiful heels.

Accessorize a little. Maybe the power has gone out and everything has gone to shit, but there's a cute 550 cord bracelet that matches that jacket, and a good hinge knife with a clip that really accents those cargo pants. Those hair ties and bobby pins are useful for more than just your mane.

Now make a choice- stay or leave. Weigh the options of both. Generalizations can be made, but ultimately the choice is yours.

(Or the groups, but mistakes were made and regrets arise. She should have socialized more. Her fault. Her dad always said she needed to make more friends, but it was never easy for her like it was for him. She remembers him down at the VA chatting people up as they waited. Remembers wondering things like how and why.)

If you stay, fortify. The furniture is lovely, and that coffee table fits perfect over the bay windows. If you ration remember the rule: first in, first out. Food spoils, eat what perishes quickly first. You are now on the world's hardest diet, count those calories, and remember to account for activity levels. Water stagnates and sours, but a tincture of iodine can help -five drops per quart with clear, ten for cloudy.

Hold as long as you can.

Unfortunately, resources get used.

If you choose to go, or when you are forced out, choose your destination.

(She tries to justify her choices with logic. Civilizations have always arisen by water sources because resources are more plentiful there. But it isn't reason she hears in her ears, nor teachers reciting history lessons. It is her mother's voice as she spoke on the crumbling porch, cigarette smoke drifting from her mouth as she looked into the wild without really seeing it.

"People fled to the mountains and rivers. For me it was water. The Mekong became the Bassac. The Bassac flowed out into the sea. The sea carried me farther than they could reach."

The Mississippi runs by the tip of Illinois, and from there it's a straight shot to the coast. Water carried her mother to better lands, maybe it will do the same for her. If not, she will turn east to the nearest mountains.)

Get a map and a compass. Know to how use them. Be aware of your surroundings. Get those bags, fill them with what you have left while keeping weight and space in mind. Arm yourself, whether it be with a chair leg you broke off or a coconut knife. Anything you can wield. Ask yourself if you can really use them if need be. Do not play games. Do not kid yourself, pretending to carry a fortitude you do not actually have. Ask yourself again and again.

Feel the trepidation in your heart, nausea in your stomach, and the overwhelming dread. Acknowledge them. Accept them. Work through them until you are calm again.

(The answer to her question is yes. She makes sure it is.)

Open your door anyway. Take a step. Then another.

Keep going.

Get away from heavy populations. Stay quiet, keep your head down, and again, avoid groups.

("They gathered them up for evil things," her mother said. "For the labor camps. For the Killing Fields."

Maybe the groups aren't Pol Pot's soldiers, but she doesn't join any regardless. Too many memories of the solemnly recounted tales where people were gathered for mass graves and torture. For abuses beyond imagine. )

Move. Keep moving until you reach the city limits. On foot, on a bike- on anything that is quiet, or quick enough that sound does not matter. Keep going until the urban environment bleeds into wild, until you can no longer see cement, pavement, or asphalt.

Food and water will run out quicker than you expect, even when you ration. There are ways to gather these, but when you are on the move it is inadvisable to set snares, and hunting game is often trickier than most give credit for. In the first thirty days, try to gather dried goods. Sugars and protein are the rarest things in nature. Stock up on them. Salt too, if you live in a place where the environment may not provide it readily.

Count the days.

(She spent ten holed up, three traveling as far and fast as she could. She only stopped to scavenge through a heavily looted gas station in the boonies, where she tucked fishing line and hooks into her bag, nabbed herself a mean looking machete from a fly-blown dead man, a nylon hammock in a pouch, a jar of peanut butter, a bag of hard candy, and water bottle from the staff room. She's so tired, but she has to keep going. Has to keep walking. Her checkered scarf sticks to her grimy skin, and she chews gum to keep the thirst at bay. A dog started following her at some point, some Koolie mutt with wary amber eyes and pointed ears.

She graces it with some peanut butter and does not scare it away. It is quiet enough, and if she runs out of food it makes a convenient protein source.)

Take shelter or make it. Either way, make sure you can move fast if you have to. If safety is uncertain, sleep with your shoes on. If you are scared someone might find you on the ground, create a hidey-hole and make escape plans before you rest. Keep your bag close, and your weapons closer. Learn to sleep at the drop of a hat and wake up in half a heart beat.

(There's little instructions on the hammock that tell her not to hang it high up. She does anyway, stretched between the tree boughs twenty feet off the ground, her pack acting as a pillow as the hammock cocoons around her. It feels like a coffin, hot and stuffy beyond reason. She sweats like a pig inside of it. Her skin itches where chiggers have burrowed in, and she has picked god knows how many ticks from her body. It does not help that she hasn't shaved in ten days, though her stink has lessened a bit since she scrubbed in an ice-cold creek. She still smells, but lightly, and of musky algae instead of caked on grime and BO.

She wonders if all the discomfort is worth it until one night footsteps pass beneath her, accompanied by groaning and gnashing teeth. She's still awake hours later when distant screams echo through the trees, just audible above the sounds of cicadas and crickets.

She does not question again.

It has only been seventeen days since the power cut off.)

If one happens to be the owner of a particular set of sexual organs, a time may come during these first thirty days when old aunt flow comes to visit. It will be doubly annoying, doubly inconvenient, and near disgusting without regular bathing and a constant travel. No matter what, remember your calorie counts, drink plenty, and if you so happen to have the chance, raid for supplies. Even if it takes up precious space, stock up. Tampons are individually packaged and are great for packing wounds, crude water filters, cordage- the list goes on. Be on the look-out for basic fever and pain reducers, which may have already been hoarded.

If you are lucky, other things may not have been.

(The bait shop in the woods surprises her, propped up beside an old dirt road. She watches it for a full day, camped out in the cluster of vines and thornbushes adjacent to it. The flies and mosquitoes try to eat her alive, and her cramps ache so bad she feels them in her back. The dog -Meatsack, as she's taken to calling it- wanders around the outside of the store curiously before it disappears again. She wonders how it has survived because she knows damn well she hasn't been feeding it enough.

At the end of her watch, no one has come or gone. She chances it, slipping towards the run down building on quiet, savagely aching feet. Her head spins from the activity, her stomach strangely hollow and hurting.

There is nothing living inside that place. However, the dead that stinks of sepsis and rot, rises to greet her.

Her stolen machete is sharp, and her swing sure. It is still jarring to feel the give of bone beneath her blade, panic giving her the strength to sink it deep into the once-teens skull. The body ragdolls on her and murky fluid washes over her as she breathes heavily through her nose. The stench is incredible, fetid and musky, like roadkill in the hot summer sun only a thousand times worse and spilling on her. She sees a writhing nest of maggots in the soft flesh of its cheek, and the sour stench is all prevailing.

She vomits on herself and the twice-dead corpse on top of her.

The bait shop turns out to be worth bile stained clothes and trauma, an establishment built for some sort of campsite nearby. There are tampons, yes, and more on the shelf of sundries. Multivitamins, plastic packets of aspirin, tiny bottles of soaps for camping, a toothbrush and tiny toothpaste. There's so much. She never realized before now that she could live for weeks out of the supplies here.

She weeps when she discovers the shop is on a well system, and that the bathroom sink still works.

It takes three days for her to work herself up enough to leave, freshly washed in the bathroom sink and shaven for the first time in what feels like forever, her clothes stiff from air drying but scrubbed clean. The backpack that once hung on the wall now sits on her shoulders, capable of holding more and better suited for this than her old bookbag. She feels better than she can remember since this began, and far, far more prepared.

Meatsack joins her after a full day of travel, its merle coat stained red in places. It has multiplied, joined by two other canines. She does not know how, or why. She does not think this is natural dog behavior.

Still, they do not bother her and she returns that respect, going so far as to feed them occasional scraps when she feels so inclined. They are a strange cattle, sometimes there and sometimes not.

It has been twenty-one days.)

At this point, if you have a group, you may have run into struggles in power dynamics already. There are many unspoken rules and tactics to use in this area. Always bear in mind that you are trying to keep yourself safe, to keep yourself alive. Know what you are willing to go through for that, what you may give to keep it. Know your lines. Do not accept them being crossed.

If you are alone, remember this: the effects of isolation are pronounced and very real. It is not just a psychological response either. It is a physiological reaction. If you are on your own too long the body becomes flooded with stress hormones, immune response goes down, and for some reason increased inflammation occurs. This is a proven fact. No matter how strong one thinks their mind is, no matter how much they enjoy voluntary solitude, even a few weeks of isolation take their toll.

(She catches herself mouthing inventory to herself, sometimes. Worse, she catches herself beginning to make soft noises. It's a thoughtless action, a strange thing she doesn't realize she's doing until it's already been done. Mimicry, mostly. Echoing sounds of the forest around her, trying to match tone and pitch just right. It is a game that keeps her mind occupied in the hours and hours of nothingness. How can she contort her lips, throat, and tongue to match a songbirds cry or the sharp bark of a dog?

Meatsack and the meat-pack watch her, sometimes responding with occasional vocalizations of their own.

She tries to be careful because she knows this is a slippery slope.

It has been twenty-three days.)

As the days add up, remember to be aware. If a solid structure shows no signs of cropping back up, if the urban areas and small towns you come across are still lawless and bereft, hold on to their memory. All is not lost. Humans are an incredible species. Forever they have gone through cycles of utter desolation a booming creation. It is not a new thing.

You will make mistakes.

(The Mississippi is wide, strong, and clogged so full of shit that it amazes her. The lowlands are chock full of debris and the dead, and she should have probably thought harder about the sheer population distribution along the edge of the mighty river.

She slinks from river town to river town and they are in terrible, terrible shape. She flits around the borders of them, a sullen watcher brooding on her oversight.

She finds one city that looks promising, though, and sets up a watch on day twenty-six.)

There will be obstacles.

(With sweat beading on her gritty, dirty skin, she hears sharp cracks of gunfire after just a few hours of waiting. It knocks her from her thoughts, and below her Meatsack jerks like its been struck. The roar of an engine hums through the air, and she hasn't heard one in so long the sound legitimately startles her.

Meatsack looks to her hiding place in the high branches of a tree and whines piteously. She spares it a single glance, meeting each of those dogs eyes as the noises slowly get louder.

When the first voices can be heard shouting over the increasingly loud short bursts of fire and the engines, the pack scatters.

The noises draws attention far worse than her own, and corpses gather from the woods she has been hiding in. The dead pass beneath her like a slow moving, infinitely unpleasant smelling herd.)

It will be hard, almost unbearable at times.

(She sees people at one point. Real live people, with haggard faces and guns in their hands. Her heart leaps into her throat at their appearance, and she is almost overwhelmed by the sudden urge to scream and get their attention as they fight their way through the dead. She yearns to hear actual human speech, to socialize with something other than dogs.

She swallows it down. She makes herself wait, makes herself watch.

The group is strong. They survive their battle and make camp at the outskirts of town as the sun sets.

They are not good. Evil things happen at that camp. Simply bearing witness breaks her a little.

She climbs up that tree scared and hungry for company. Two days later, she climbs down and knows three things. She is a coward for not helping, she is turning toward the east, and she is doing so alone.

Twenty-eight days in and she has ingrained the faces of strangers burned into her mind. )

Survive. Fill your needs, learn new skills, plan ahead, and stay safe. Cherish what you can.

(Meatsack tracks her down again, somehow. She should be worried about this skill it has, and the new dog it has brought.

Instead, she sinks her hands into Meatsack's fur and welcomes the new member to her abandoned domestic animal herd as the sun rises on day twenty-nine.)

You can make it. You can do this. Don't lose moral.

("Survival is hard, Maly Smith. It is not comfortable, it is not fun, but doing so let me meet your father. Let me live and have you. Hold onto your hope. Keep going.")

Congratulations. You have made it past the largest die-off period.

Keep going.