How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters

by Andrew Shaffer

  AVOID

  UNLESS YOU’RE WILLING to invest billions of dollars in an infrastructure that generates breathable air, only one place can withstand the Stonehenge Apocalypse: the New Dawn’s hidden pyramid shelter in Maine known as the Primordial Hill. While we’re not saying you should join their cult, at least check out the pyramid’s amenities:

  • Wireless High-speed Internet Access

  • Hair Dryers

  • Cable TV, including HBO and Showtime

  • Room Safes

  • 24-hour Fitness Center

  • Laundry

  • Valet Parking

  • Business Center

  • In-room Dining

  • Concierge Service

  • Complimentary Bottled Water and USA Today

  SURVIVE

  ONCE THE TERRAFORMING process begins, you have two options.

  1. Seek shelter at the Primordial Hill. You did join the New Dawn, right? Good. Then kick back and prepare for the end of the world. If you didn’t join the cult, skip to step two.

  2. Use the Antikythera mechanism to shut Stonehenge down. We’re not sure it works (or even what it looks like), but you can probably find the instructions online.

  Apocalyptic Drinks

  While you’re chilling in the pyramid shelter, you might want to pour out a drink in honor of all your friends and family who didn’t heed your warning about the impending doom. Here are a few apocalyptic shots to drink in their honor.*

  • Four Horsemen. 1 part Jim Beam bourbon whiskey, 1 part Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey, 1 part Johnnie Walker Black Scotch whiskey, and 1 part Jameson Irish whiskey. Mix all four together in a shot glass.

  • Nuclear Rainbow. ½ oz. grenadine syrup, ½ oz. peppermint liqueur, ½ oz. Jägermeister, ½ oz. melon liqueur, ½ oz. Canadian whiskey, ½ oz. 151 rum, ½ oz. almond liqueur. Pour each over a spoon into a shot glass carefully, which will provide the layered “rainbow” effect.

  • Apocalypse Now. 1⁄3 oz. dry vermouth, 1⁄3 oz. Irish cream liqueur, 1⁄3 oz. tequila. Pour vermouth and tequila into a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake well. Strain into shot glass. Top with Irish cream.

  *Even during the end of the world, you must be twenty-one and older to drink in the United States. Drinking ages vary elsewhere. Always designate a driver and drink responsibly.

  SWAMP VOLCANO

  VITALS

  ALSO KNOWN AS: Submarine Supervolcano • FIRST OBSERVED: Gulf of Mexico (2011) • EST. MAX. SPEED: 500 mph • HIGH-RISK GROUPS: DJs, Former Supermodels • LOOK OUT FOR IT IN: Open Saltwater, Coastal Regions • THREAT TO HUMANITY: • RISK OF ENCOUNTER: • FIN’S WTF FACTOR:

  THE FIRST SIGN OF AN ACTIVE SWAMP VOLCANO IS usually an earthquake, indicating an underwater volcanic eruption. The quake is followed closely by a wave of super-heated, skin-melting gas—a “steam tsunami.” The destruction doesn’t stop there. Lava flows swiftly through underground tunnels, making landfall in swampland hundreds of miles from the eruption. Glowing orange lava can reach temperatures of 1,600°F or higher. Even a brief touch is enough to leave a nasty burn. Fall in, and you’ll go up in smoke in seconds.

  STUDY

  ON MAY 23, 2011, an American oil company drilling deep in the Gulf of Mexico inadvertently triggered Swamp Volcano Levin, the first swamp volcano to erupt on American soil.

  “Holter Energy was pumping millions of gallons of heated water deep into the ocean floor—a drilling process known as ‘fracking’,” University of Miami volcanologist Antoinette Vitrini explained to Congress in the subsequent hearings. “This heated the magma in the submarine supervolcano, triggering the eruption. While it may have eventually happened without human interference, Holter undoubtedly added fuel to the fire. No pun intended.”

  The steam tsunami slammed into the coast of southern Florida, killing hundreds. The worst was yet to come. The volcano was connected via prehistoric conduits to Miami—on the opposite side of the state. Mayhem ensued. The Everglades boiled, and lava flooded the streets of Miami. At Vitrini’s suggestion, the military used liquid nitrogen to form a “cold cap” underground. This diverted the lava into Biscayne Bay, effectively ending the threat.

  AVOID

  THE FARTHER INLAND you live, the greater your probability of survival. But if you go too far inland—to, say, Wyoming—all you’ve done is moved from one supervolcanic threat to another (see the sidebar “Volcanoes vs. Supervolcanoes”). Our advice? Stay put. Learn the signs of an eruption, so you can act when the time comes.

  • Is it snowing ash? That’s not a good sign. While it might not be a swamp volcano, something has erupted.

  • Did a steam tsunami melt your face off? Probably a swamp volcano.

  • Is lava flooding out of storm drains? Yep. Swamp volcano.

  Volcanoes vs. Supervolcanoes

  What’s the difference between a volcano and a “supervolcano”? If you said one was from Krypton, you’re wrong. Without getting overly technical, supervolcanoes are just big-ass volcanoes. Lake Toba, the last supervolcano to occur aboveground, erupted about 74,000 years ago in Indonesia, ushering in a 1,000-year-long period of cooled temperature. Here are five others to watch for.

  • Aira Caldera—Kyūshū, Japan

  • Long Valley Caldera—Mono County, California, USA

  • Taupo Caldera—Lake Taupo, North Island, New Zealand

  • Valles Caldera—Sandoval County, New Mexico, USA

  • Yellowstone Caldera—Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA

  SURVIVE

  BECAUSE SWAMP VOLCANOES occur with little warning, they are one of Mother Nature’s most insidious unnatural disasters.

  • If a wall of super-heated gas is shooting toward you, duck underwater until it passes. The steam travels over the surface of the water, not under it. Depending on how long you can hold your breath, you might be able to survive. You might also drown—six of one, half a dozen of the other.

  • Don’t drive through lava. Even if it appears shallow, no amount of lava is safe to drive through. If you’re trapped in a vehicle surrounded by lava, crawl out the windows and onto the roof. Phone emergency services. There’s a (slim) chance the lava could ignite your gas tank while you’re hanging out on the roof. Talk about going out with a bang.

  PART TWO

  MONSTERS

  Death If by Land

  BASILISK

  VITALS

  ALSO KNOWN AS: Serpent King • FIRST OBSERVED: Buffalo Springs, Colorado (2006) • EST. MAX. SPEED: 30 mph • HIGH-RISK GROUPS: Archaeologists, Enemies of the Order of the Sun • LOOK OUT FOR IT IN: Libya • THREAT TO HUMANITY: • RISK OF ENCOUNTER: • FIN’S WTF FACTOR:

  ACCORDING TO LEGEND, THE FIRST BASILISK WAS hatched from a serpent egg by a male chicken. While the story is likely apocryphal, the monster itself is quite real. Its serpentine body is approximately fifteen feet long, with four unusable twig-like arms. Despite being called the “serpent king,” the basilisk’s head more closely resembles that of the long-extinct dragon. If it attacks you, it will first spit paralyzing venom on you. Once you’re incapacitated, it locks eyes with you. It’s not falling in love—it’s turning you to stone. If the basilisk is in a hurry, it’s liable to just snap your head off your body with its enormous jaws.

  STUDY

  “PEOPLE ASSUME BEING an archaeologist is like Indiana Jones,” University of Colorado professor Harry McColl says. “I used to say it’s more rocks, less whips. Until I unearthed the basilisk in Libya, of course.”

  McColl was on a sponsored dig in 2006 when tribal leaders warned them to leave. “Much blood has been spilled here. Yours will be too if you do not leave this place and all you find behind. No man lives here. Only a great evil,” McColl quotes the local emissary as saying. “We thought they were jealous. We’d just uncovered the statue of the basilisk and a five-foot gold-plated scepter topped with the head of a snake and a priceless jewel—the fabled ‘Eye of Medusa.’ An ancient cult—the Order of the Sun—used the scepter to co
ntrol the basilisk.” McColl ignored the warnings.

  While the find was on display at the Buffalo Springs Museum of Natural History in Colorado, the jewel-encrusted scepter refracted light from a solar eclipse onto the basilisk statue—waking the monster within. The “statue” was a tomb meant to keep the dangerous animal locked up. The basilisk roared to life. Dozens were killed.

  The basilisk escaped into the sewers, but not for long. The stage was set for McColl to step into Harrison Ford’s fedora and save the day. He used the scepter to lure the basilisk inside a nuclear power plant. McColl believed the blue glow seen inside nuclear reactors (Cherenkov radiation, a byproduct of nuclear fission) would be enough to simulate another solar eclipse. Sure enough, the Eye of Medusa refracted light from the cooling tanks onto the basilisk, turning the creature back to stone. It’s enough to make you wonder how many other statues are stone crypts housing living creatures. Et tu, President Lincoln?

  AVOID

  SCANS OF THE creature’s body revealed it was pregnant, indicating that another basilisk must have existed at the time of its entombment. McColl and his team of historians are combing through myths, legends, and historical literature for clues to the whereabouts of more basilisks. Since the creature appears in literature throughout Asia and Europe right up until the Middle Ages, they aren’t limiting their search to Libya. In the meantime, do what you can to avoid basilisks by using common sense.

  • Cancel any scheduled archaeological digs in Libya. Just to be on the safe side.

  • Exercise caution around basilisk statues. While we’re sure it’s a lovely city, avoid Basel, Switzerland, at all costs. The basilisk is the town’s heraldic animal. Thirty-odd statues appear around town—possibly ready to come to life at any moment, given the right astronomical conditions.

  WEIRD SCIENCE

  Being turned to stone by a basilisk is nothing like being frozen in carbonite. When a basilisk stares into your eyes, your skin and organs transform into a mixture of limonite and silicate. If someone attempted “chipping you out” of the stone, they would eventually reach bone. Depending upon what you’re wearing and what position you’re in when turned to stone, you might at least make a fetching lawn ornament.

  SURVIVE

  THINK YOU’RE POWERLESS against a creature as fearsome and indestructible as a basilisk? For the most part, that’s true. Still, knowledge is power. Here’s what works, and what doesn’t.

  DO: Avert your eyes. If it doesn’t lock eyes with you, it can’t turn you to stone. Unfortunately, it can still rip you apart between its jaws.

  DON’T: Honk your horn or hold up a mirror. Some myths say that the basilisk can be driven away by loud noises. Others say that if the basilisk sees its own reflection, it will turn to stone like a manticore (see MANTICORE). The Colorado National Guard learned the hard way that neither of these stories holds any truth.

  DO: Try to subdue it with the Eye of Medusa. Not only can the jewel wake the basilisk during an eclipse, it can also return it to its stone slumber under the same conditions. For unknown reasons, the basilisk is drawn to it. “Sometimes, we’re drawn to what causes us pain. We don’t always make rational decisions,” McColl muses. The scepter is currently on display at the Museum of Libya in Tripoli.

  DON’T: Shoot it or try to blow it up. Conventional weapons can’t penetrate the beast’s thick body armor. It survived a fiery inferno inside an exploding building, indicating it is also impervious to high temperatures. It’s either the Eye of Medusa or nothing if you want to stop a basilisk.

  Mythological Monsters

  “History and myth go hand in hand. Witches, ghosts, and legendary creatures are often symbolic representations of mankind’s ongoing quest to offset the ordinary of this world by seeking the extraordinary in another,” McColl says. “I never considered the basilisk was real until the moment it came to life. Now I can’t stop worrying about what mythological creature we’ll see next.” Here are a few that keep him up at night.

  • Chupacabra—These legendary cryptids are allegedly native to the Americas. They feed on livestock by draining their victim’s blood. While most skeptics believe chupacabras are coyotes and other dogs infected with mange, McColl isn’t so sure. “The chupacabra is described as three or four feet tall, with red eyes and a forked tongue,” he says. “That doesn’t sound like any dogs that I know. Maybe a mutant vampire bat. Maybe.”

  • Thunderbird—Reports of large winged reptiles date back hundreds of years in North America. “It’s easy to dismiss these accounts as cases of mistaken identity. But the fact of the matter is, pterosaurs like the pterodactyl are no myth,” McColl says. “They flew through the skies once upon a time. Who’s to say they still don’t?”

  • Unicorn—While generally presented as benign creatures in children’s stories, McColl worries that a real-life encounter with a wild unicorn would be anything but magical. “Horses can be extremely aggressive creatures. There’s no reason to believe unicorns would be any different. In 2010, for instance, two stampeding horses killed one person and hurt twenty-three others at an Iowa parade,” he says. “Imagine the damage they could have done if they had foot-long horns jutting out of their foreheads.”

  BIGFOOT

  VITALS

  ALSO KNOWN AS: Sasquatch • FIRST OBSERVED: Deadwood, South Dakota (2012) • EST. MAX. SPEED: 25 mph • HIGH-RISK GROUPS: Shock Rockers, Partridges, Bradys • LOOK OUT FOR IT IN: US (Black Hills to the Pacific Northwest), Canada • THREAT TO HUMANITY: • RISK OF ENCOUNTER: • FIN’S WTF FACTOR:

  FORGET THE BIGFOOT OF LEGEND. REAL SASQUATCHES are much bigger—over two stories tall, making them the largest of the great apes. They live in mountainous regions of North America, where they subsist on a varied diet of root vegetables and small game. While they are generally docile, zoologists believe that humanity may have finally encroached too far upon their territory. When they attack people, they don’t play around. They’ll either snap your neck or bite your head off.

  STUDY

  INCONTROVERTIBLE PROOF OF the creature’s existence comes to us from a 2012 rock concert in South Dakota, where a sasquatch was caught on film by dozens of attendees. Video from the event makes the classic Patterson film—the shaggy, man-sized beast swinging its arms in the woods—seem downright quaint. One shocking video from Deadwood shows the two-story sasquatch punting rocker Alice Cooper a hundred yards over the heads of fleeing concertgoers. The video has over 100 million views on YouTube.

  “Mother Nature attacked us in self-defense,” pop star–turned–environmental activist Simon Quint told a reporter after the concert. “Ask yourself this: How would you feel if someone bulldozed your living room and set up loudspeakers on your front lawn?”

  The National Guard cornered the monster on top of Mount Rushmore. When conventional weapons failed to slow it, the air force sent in a pair of fighter jets. A barrage of guided missiles killed the sasquatch. Quint, concert promoter Harley Anderson, and Abraham Lincoln’s stoic visage were all obliterated in the explosion.

  AVOID

  IF WE RESPECT sasquatches, they will respect us. When in bigfoot territory, follow these simple steps to avoid a potentially deadly encounter.

  • Don’t take four-wheelers, dirt bikes, and other recreational vehicles into the forest. The sound irritates sasquatches.

  • Keep Fido on a leash. Dogs and wildlife do not mix.

  • Don’t cook at or near your campsite. Sasquatches may smell what you’re cooking and invite themselves over for dinner.

  • Carry bear-defense pepper spray. You can find it at most sporting-goods stores. Popular brands include Counter Assault, Sabre Frontiersman, and Axe Body Spray.

  • Wear a bigfoot T-shirt or carry a stuffed bigfoot toy. There’s nothing wrong with pandering if it saves your life.

  SURVIVE

  MOST ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN sasquatches and humans are accidental. Believe it or not, it’s just as awkward for them as it is for us.

  1. Drop your weapons. T
he air force was called in to put down the sasquatch in South Dakota. Do you think your shotgun will have any effect? Set it down. The sasquatch may see that you mean it no harm, and let you live.

  2. Get a head start. If your peace offering fails, get a good running start by using the one advantage you have over a sasquatch—your brain. Point behind the monster and yell, “Look at that! Holy cow. I never expected to see that.” When it turns to look, take off.

  Bigfoot Legislation

  In 1969, Skamania County, Washington, passed a law declaring that “any willful, wanton slaying of [sasquatches] shall be deemed a felony.” Some believed the ordinance (Ordinance No. 69-01 Prohibiting Wanton Slaying of Ape-Creature and Imposing Penalties) was merely a prank. After all, it was passed on April 1. “This is not an April Fool’s Day joke,” county commissioner Conrad Lundy told the Skamania County Pioneer. “There is reason to believe such an animal exists.” A 1984 amendment officially declared Skamania County a sasquatch refuge. According to county prosecutor Bob Leick, “Sasquatch are at least as important as the spotted owl.” Now that we know the creature is real, it’s only a matter of time before lawmakers elsewhere begin passing similar bills to protect it.

  Source: Pyle, Robert Michael. Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1995.