Sewrrandur!

Whilst having lunch with some coworkers today, the topic of apocalyptic wastelands came up. If this seems strange, remember that we’re computer game nerds and lacking sports stories, we talk about zombies, Star Trek and apocalypses.

Anyway, it was pointed out that as life becomes more comfortable, the less we will be able to survive. We get our food from the supermarket, get water and electricity delivered, and generally take for granted comforts that a large percentage of the world does not have.

Basically, in an apocalypse, we’d be screwed. Lacking any survival skills, we’d only hold out as long as we had canned food and Twinkies to sustain us. Once those were gone, we’d be too.

NOTE: We did discuss resorting to cannibalism, but then realized we would have no idea how to prepare a person or even what bits were edible. Plus, we didn’t know what wine went with people or which fork to use.

One of the first things we’d lose, of course, would be proper spelling. None of us can spell without a word processor. I used to be an excellent speller, but Word has made it so easy that I just try to get close and let the computer handle it. All of us had fallen into this particular trap.

So if the end of civilization did come, we’d end up fighting for our lives against marauding bands of leather clad, post-apocalyptic hoodlums who couldn’t spell. It might very well go like this:

The arrow buried itself into the wood with a ‘thunk,’ a thick note tied around its shaft.

A grubby survivor, clad in the remains of a jogging suit and wearing shoulder pads and a hockey mask, pulled it out.

“What’s it say?” asked another, who was clad in a makeshift tunic made from bathmats.

“Umm,” said the first man. “Not sure.” He held up the note.

“Sewrrandur ur tuwankeys,” the other sounded out. “What the hell? Sewrrandur? What’s that mean? And what’s a ‘tuwankey?’

“Turkey?”

“Nah, they know we don’t have any turkeys.”

“Tarantula? Turnip? Turnkey?”

“Oh, give me that!” The bathmat bedecked man snatched the note away and then climbed to the top of the makeshift wall. “Excuse me,” he shouted. “But what’s your note say?”

“Surrender your Twinkies!” someone shouted back.

He looked at the note. “No it doesn’t! It say’s ‘Sewrrandur ur tuwankeys.’

“Oh,” came the voice again. “Sorry. I used Word a lot.”

“Ah, that would explain it.” He glanced back at his comrades. “Then do everyone a favor and go plunder a dictionary. And no, you can’t have our Twinkies.”

Cheers,
-Jason