Several smaller stills would be better. More flexibility. Stock up on barrels for storage and aging. Culture up some key yeast strains. For that matter, learn how to culture and process penicillin.
It just occurred to me–is it ethical to borrow money under such circumstances, given that you have info your lender apparently lacks?
Certainly, they’d do it to you in a heartbeat were the tables somehow turned.
Ethics, schmethics…we’re talking survival here. Besides, I’d borrow it from someplace evil, like Bank of America. 
Oh yeah, I’d immediately stop tax withholding on my paycheck. And get a 2nd mortgage. And as many credit cards as I could. Let them prove it once society falls.
I would convert the impending crisis into the ultimate pick-up line.
Well, that money you borrow from them will be equally useless on F-day whether you borrow it or not, right?
So since you’re not depriving anyone of anything they would have been able to use post F-day, you’re ethically clear.
My answer, with all honesty, depends on whether or not there are zombies left afterwards. If so, are they fast moving type? If so, do they die in thirty days?
I’m pretty good with a sword if I do say so myself, but I’ll need a machete and an axe. I’m ok at fishing, but I could always learn more. I’m going to need a whole bunch of books on farming, and I would move to a farming center. I would also need to learn horse back riding. Hell, if I have time, throw in all the bow and arrowing too.
I would spend the majority of my time (other than learning) trying to build a fort/keep of some kind, preferably on arable land, near a good source of water. I would look to be near the South as to avoid snow, I’m thinking North Carolina, maybe Virginia and I can have access to the Mountains for further shelter if I need it.
I would also find some books on learning on how to rebuild technology until at least the 1960s (start of the modern car era or is that 50’s?) I suppose trying to find gas will be difficult, and since I’m not a miner or a geologist, and more interested in circuitry, I think I’ll add more books on making electric type cars (that’s just for kicks).
I don’t think surviving is the hard part. Do I want to restart civilization? i think so.
Oh, and in the mean time? Write the soon to be most revered book in human history: The world is going to end as we know it on June 1st 2009 because random women don’t sleep with me often enough and only that and a few other things I want, if given to me, enable me to have to power to restore things back to the way they were.
No zombies. Not that I have any special knowledge of Fabulous Creature’s plans or psychology
:: looks around, glaring, as if to dare anyone to say otherwise ::
but I don’t think he has any particular desire to make the undead. I mean, what good do they do him? So there’s no zombie-making artifact in the lair for anybody to accidentally trigger.
You might want to change that to random HOT women. Otherwise you’ll have a disturbing time explaining your refusal to sleep with Ann Coulter.
Any chance we can bring the date forward? I’m ready now.
I’ll hire you on as my editor provided you; A. Don’t rat us out, and B. Figure out a way that we don’t get lynched after a month or two.
well according to Stirling even if there are no zombies there will be hordes of hungry cannibals in the overcrowded cities who may or may not be interested in your brains.
oh nonono it’s not so simple. the same ethical consideration to question borrowing money like that would also require you to inform the rest of the world of the impending doom.
ary
Informing the world? Go ahead – no one will believe it without some overwhelming evidence. If that was available, pretty much everybody would already know without you telling them.
Here is the extent of your ethical dilemna. You apply for a home improvement loan. You can give a partial reason like “finishing your basement”; or do you feel more a more comprehensive reason is necessary like “finishing converting your basement into a bunker for when civilization collapses next year”? Personally, from an ethical standpoint, I don’t feel the latter is necessary.
I buy a quick acting, relatively painless poison and take it just after everything fails. I don’t have the skills to live in a world like that, I don’t think I’ll be able to pick up such skills, and I don’t want to live in a world like that.
Can I have your stuff?
Have 27 acres in Mississippi about paid off, small liveable cabin included.(lived in it, wood heat only, did that, been there fine) Have, in the past decade, concentrated and learned sustainable Ag techniques from the fine local NC educators. Neighbors are all great like-minded folks with a wealth of skills, from basic carpentry, and sustainable Ag, to one who is an acknowledged expert in Third World sustainable water systems.
All those years of poverty in seeing those goals to build on now seem quite sensible.
Fight you for it. 
It sounds like those darned alien space bats are at it again.
First I hook up with the survivalist crowd. They’re already on top of this in terms of planning and organization.
Then I max out on loans to build up some cash.
Then we’re off to New Zealand. I’m not fighting the hordes of city dwellers who’ll be looking for food after the collapse. When we get there, we buy our fortified farmhold, stockpile supplies, and wait for The Day.
That’s one of the two* ways I’m unfairly handicapped. All the survivalist groups I know about are white supremacist. Anybody know a group of survialists who’d be friendly to be and Mrs. Rhymer?
The other way, of course, is the fact that anyone from the Dope who ran into me would be immediately suspicious and probably accuse me of orchestrating the whole thing.