The Coming Metalocalypse

Let's be perfectly honest with ourselves. Over twenty years ago a man, a prophet, a technopath if you will had a dream of how humanity would end. What started with the automation of factories would continue until we had managed to foolishly make ourselves completely obsolete. Since that time there have been other prophets, other's who've seen glimpses of our futures and it's always bleak. Somehow we defy all logic and win but most of these are fairy tail victories that we shouldn't be counting on. We'll start with survival both things you should have set up in advance and things you should be considering for the future.

The advance planning for a Metalocalypse is the same as planning for any other disaster. Which means that if you don't have these things already you should be gathering them. Whether the disaster takes the form of a robot take over of the earth, alien invasion or something mundane like say an earthquake, hurricane or being snowed in it never hurts to have a few gallons of water at the house encase for whatever reason the pipes aren't delivering clean safe drinking water. The same goes for food. Every time you go shopping you should buy up just one of two cans of something that won't go bad and store in the back of a closet somewhere. I personally recommend doubling or tripling down as I have supplies in my house, office and car. I recommend emergency blankets and ponchos as well. You can't depend on the weather to hold and as bad as being shot by a robot would be it would be worse if the Resistance were killed by a cold snap. I'm not going to list everything just what I view to be the vitals.

2 Gallons of water.

3 days worth of food.

Flashlight with extra batteries (I recommend Mag Lights as they double as clubs, hammers and whatever other use you can find for a heavy metal pole)

Pocket Knife

Blanket

These things aren't enough to launch a resistance with, but they are hopefully enough to keep you alive long enough to find said resistance. You and your friends and family would also be wise to have a location, ideally central that you will meet at in the case of an emergency. Remember it is possible that when the robots take over they will cancel our cell phone contracts and still charge us early termination fees on top of that. What this means is that you need to know right now where you are going to meet your wife, mother, friends because you might not be able to arrange it later. I should stress again that even more mundane disasters can destroy repeater towers and knock down phone lines. If you can't find each other then you have a chance.

A Metalocalypse has some unique features to it that set it aside from other disasters. One is that our enemy is intelligent and is actively hunting us down. What this means is that while your first instinct may be to run out into the forest and hope that somehow being off the grid will help it won't. It's much better to stay in the cities where there are tools to use against our enemies and more importantly they will be less inclined to simply carpet bomb the suspected area.

If we are on the offense, or are given a chance we want to take out their power supplies at any costs. The fact is that until we invent robots that can run on beef we've got an advantage. Even solar powered robots would be unable to pursue us without resting to refill, unless you live in the Gobi, then you're just screwed.

Now we should talk about combat tactics. Stay hidden and focus your energy, initially not on destroying the machine but on disarming it. Unlike in the movies where the robots seem to have attended Storm Trooper Shooting School in real life a robot would probably never miss the same target twice. Unlike humans who are unable to visually track their bullets, and have problems like beating hearts and breathing that make each shot slightly different from the one before it robots have no such limitations. They can be as accurate as their weapon is. Running in erratic patterns may confuse their targeting system but I wouldn't trust it in the long term only in desperate situations. The point here is that you must get the guns out of their hands and not necessarily into yours.

As we've learned over twenty years of intense research bullets don't much bother robots. Hell they don't stop modern day tanks and can be stopped reasonably well by many already extant types of human body armor. I would recommend destroying small arms when possible as they can only be effectively used against us. Larger arms of course you want to collect, anything that can kill one you want to keep.

Returning to combat, in the movies they always show the robots as being clearly superior to us in unarmed situations. This however is a fallacy. If we are dealing with light weight robots which is unlikely it may be possible to destroy them by shoving them. More likely though we are talking about five hundred plus pounds of solid steel and that's where the one hundred sixty pound human has some advantages, many of which we would actively seek to improve upon. That fact is that five hundred pounds will break lots of things. Me personally? I'm heading to Louisiana when it happens. I figure there is ample swamp out there to always keep one nearby and robots sink in mud. They also will likely be unable to swim.

Now that we've survived the initial attacks and learned a little bit of what to do if we find ourselves in combat lets talk about what not to do. Don't gather in groups in excess of thirty for any length of time. Minimize the number of people who know where others are hiding. This is all for your safety because the less people who know where to find you the less people can give you away if they are captured and tortured.

Another important thing is to make certain that you both have multiple safe houses and that you never take the same route twice. It doesn't matter where exactly you turn off to make things different each time. What is important is that you cannot be ambushed because nobody is certain where you are going or what direction you will be coming from. It won't keep you safe forever but it will keep you safe for a time.

The final thing that you will absolutely require if you are to survive long enough for a solution to work its way out is a reliable way of communicating with other survivors. Without this you will not be able to get the supplies you need to stay alive, you won't be able to stay a step a head and when the time comes you won't be able to launch an offensive. Unfortunately I'm still working on developing a code that the machines can't crack. The best I've come up with so far is using a rotating system of slang terminology.

Sadly this is all of the knowledge that I have to give you about how to survive the coming Metalocalypse. I hope that it is enough to get enough people through the worst of it, the initial strikes that mankind will be able to survive.