There is nothing in particular which spiked my current curiosity with all things survival and post-apocalyptic but there has been an amalgamation of stimuli which has caused a seemingly immediate and urgent desire to research and prepare myself.

I love watching The Walking Dead and although a Zombie apocalypse is sci-fi nonsense, the program did start me thinking about how I would survive in such a world and what kind of person I would become. Does humanity itself suffer under long-term survival conditions? Do I have what it takes to survive?

The Ebola outbreak did not overly concern me because of the relative difficulty of infection, but imagine the same scenario with an airborne and/or mutated virus. The large death toll from Ebola would pale in comparison and society would have to lock down just to attempt to contain it.

The ongoing IS campaign and general unrest in the Middle East looks like spreading with other extremist organisations around the world pledging their allegiance. Whilst it may not threaten us directly at this time, it does threaten to de-stabilise the whole region and impact our ongoing reliance on oil. Should the extremists ever get hold of any kind of WMD, the repercussions are huge.

Russia trying to show it’s might in Europe is much more on our doorstep and even though Putin is unlikely to ever push it to war, his arrogance and bravado may put him in a corner he will only come out of fighting.

There is a growing feeling that something, almost anything could start a breakdown in the society that we know. There is less cohesion amongst communities, more “them and us” and “we want what you have”. I no longer believe that civil unrest is as far away as most people assume. For example, how many days would the UK power grid need to be down before there was wide-spread looting and violence? Notice I said days, not even weeks?

So I have decided to be more aware of what may come. Not in a depressing, “the end is nigh” kind of way, nor in an obsessive and hoarding way, but in a practical way where life goes on as normal but I am alert to possibilities and I am at least more prepared to deal with the consequences. So I have started When The Fires Burn to collect together my research, ideas and thoughts and I’ve started building a Bug-Out-Bag (although I appreciate it may be more a case of bugging-in, particularly in the UK, but I’ll post more on that and the gear in the bug-out-bag in later articles).

It feels like part of me has woken up to the world and it’s time to be a bit less of a passenger.