Battle Post-Apocalyptic Swarms

Rats, feral dogs, carrion birds, cockroaches & flies

After the apocalypse, the ancient battle between civilization and rats assumes a new flavor impossible before. Technically, the rats gain the upper hand when their numbers erupt exponentially from the surplus food supply and the expansion of environment that becomes available to them.

If you’re of a sensitive nature, you shouldn’t read this. It’s gritty, depressing, frightening and extremely disturbing if this is your first time being exposed to these ideas.

I noticed when reading civil defense booklets in Nebraska in the 1970’s that the really scary stuff was only distributed to U.S. government workers and authorized partners in agriculture and law enforcement. There was enough misinformation in popular culture as it was … you didn’t want people finding out the truth … which was far worse than the fantasies depicted at the movies and in most fiction.

When I became a certified radiological officer at 12 years old, I was like a made man in the mob. I got to see all the truly juicy stuff in the offices that civilians never saw in the public racks in the lobby. The lurid, sordid, grotesque truth about survival after an atomic war. I was reading Herman Kahn at the same time and felt I was going gangster on the CD, yo. These poor civilians would be freaking out of their minds and bugging out hysterically and I would be cool as a cucumber. I had learned about these things beforehand and knew panic would never help in those situations.

I’m going to list a summary of the most important rules you will ever hear for going scavenging in the post-apoc environment. Neglecting to adhere to even one of them could spell curtains for you, which is a real shame and ironic if you survived the bomb. Perishing afterwards to the hazards nobody ever told you about is genuinely tragic. It doesn’t cost me anything to pass them on.

It all starts with the food supply for vermin and insects. Once that is nearly unlimited you will see expansions and population explosions that will defy your capacity for comprehension.

Post-nuclear science fiction scenarios always have their protagonists facing off against giant rats. A couple of them. What if you were confronted by a million of them the size of loaves of bread? Which do you think is more dangerous?

If you think that the rats might be more dangerous - what do you think of a wild pack of thousands of feral dogs? Cunning canines who hunt, trap and kill people using collective strategies? Is it possible that both types of vermin would be more dangerous than most of mankind would be?

There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel, however. All these creatures will require you to remain safe when their population explodes due to food supply, ecosystem expansion and lack of controls on their numbers. Be they rats, dogs, flies or snails, their numbers will collapse as rapidly as they grew once they run out of more chaos to plunder. Good survivalists hold out until that day and before you know it, you’ll be lucky to see a single surviving rat, wild dog or even a cockroach.