Catering the Rapture

Special Report -- I think about food too much. I know I do. I acquired the tendency honestly.

When I was a little critter growing up in the compound, my mother elected herself nutritionist for our entire breakaway republic. There's no telling what Mom would have achieved as Dietician-General if our fifty-two member group had seceded from the United States.

She taught me how to jerk groundhog meat, identify which insects are highest in protein and essential oils, and spot ominously bulged canned goods. The ATF may have stormed our crude fortifications and relocated me and my twenty-seven brothers and sisters, but my passion for the culinary arts had only just begun.

A funny thing happens when you've lived the survivalist lifestyle long enough: you have to start eating some of your provisions before their expiration date. A twenty-year shelf life sounded like a long time when I bought those cases of canned baked beans. At today's prices, replacements will cost about $29.00 per fifteen-ounce can. I don't mind. In an uncertain future, comfort food will take on even greater importance.

Canned bacon is as delicious as it sounds. Each smoky-sweet slice is lovingly salted, fried, and spiral-wrapped in parchment. Think of the Dead Sea scrolls as a meaty side dish and you are almost there. Powdered eggs are versatile and yellowish. I also have some military surplus chicken a la king MREs that taste okay as long as you don't mind eating entrees that have the texture of being squeezed through someone's teeth. Concentrated jam is amazing. Two one-inch cubes, thirty gallons of non-potable water, and five purification tablets will yield nearly one cubic yard of artificially colored and flavored condiment.

There's a common misconception that survivalists eat roadkill. Ridiculous. Roadkill is best used as bait to trap scavengers like buzzards and feral cats. Today's fresh catch. I'm aware of a secret militia in the Midwest that renders roadkill broth into a piquant reduction sauce, but communication with that group tends to be awkward. They think everyone wants to steal their recipes, toilet paper, and child-bearing females.

I spend most of my time above ground these days, but that's going to change. One convention down, one to go, and then back to the bunker. I wonder how long it will take the newly elected U.S. president to blow up the world. That is assuming, of course, the present one does not do it first.

Senator Barack Obama will blow up the world through his own inexperience and likely inaction. Senator John McCain will blow up the world at least three times in the first week following his inauguration -- he's that committed to blowing up shit.

There are lots of biblical and scholarly references about when the Apocalypse is going to occur and how we'll know it's happening. Pestilence, famine, war, horsemen, various antichrist characters running around saying diabolical stuff. Good clues, all of them.

I've done my own research, and I also possess ears and eyes and a fully evolved brain. I had an epiphany this morning while eating my breakfast of shredded twine cereal and baked beans.

Maybe Armageddon is happening right now but in a way that is outside the human race's limited field of perception? So slowly that we can't see it, perhaps, or when it does happen it will all go down in a nanosecond. If you walk from the back of a Boeing 777 to the front while it's in flight, will you get to where the plane is going any faster? One thing is for sure: if you sit at the front, you will always arrive first.

I used to tell people, "I don't fly to reach a particular destination. I'm just here because I love the food."