A few years back, I got re-aquainted with a college friend. After a successful and lucrative engineering career, he has the funds to pursue his survivalist passion. He believes an apocalypse is soon in the making. He has his cabin and provisions in the woods where he and his family can hide out from the storm.

Both he and I are at the age where some sort of ailment is more common. Death or disability is a bigger possibility than before. I have already had two life-threatening situations that modern medicine cured. Had I been in my “cabin in the woods”, it is doubtful I would have survived.

And if the apocalypse does come, his cabin in the woods will eventually be sieged by mean and desperate people envious of the provisions he has stored. I figure that if he doesn’t learn to form groups of 30 or so quasi-bandits, he will survive six months longer in the woods than I will survive in the city. There doesn’t seem to be real winner in that game.