Surviving an Apocalypse in La Yacata

I don’t consider myself a Prepper per se, but I find that our aims (the Preppers and Me) are often very similar. With that in mind, I’m recommending La Yacata as a Bug-Out Location (a place to go in the event of a disaster). Of course, if I were truly a Prepper, I wouldn’t give you the location of my secret bunker. After all, you might tell the Zombies where I am.

I love living in La Yacata, despite its hardships, but it may seem like a stretch of the imagination for me to say that La Yacata is the place to be in the event of an Apocolypse. Maybe a little venture into word origins is in order.

So what is an Apocalypse?

The term Apocalypse is actually not a scary thing. It comes from the Greek and literally means uncovering or unveiling of knowledge.

Thus, in the bible book of Revelations, otherwise known as the Apocalypse of John, the apostle John records his unveiled knowledge of the end of the known world. In his visions, he saw the ultimate victory of good over evil. Not something that would inspire fear, provided you are on the right side.

In Prepper terminology, this event would be known as TEOTWAKI (The End of the World As we Know It) which doesn’t mean the end of the world, just the end of the known world, implying that there will be something on the other side of the Apocalypse. Going back to the apostle John, his vision included something of what was on the other side of that battle of Armageddon, the beginning of a 1000 reign of Christ and a new heaven and new earth. As for what comes after that thousand year stretch of prosperity, I expect it would be another Apocalypse.

The Aztec also had beliefs about Apocalypses that are similar to the apostle John. They believed that there had been four worlds (called Suns) before the present one. The previous 4 worlds had been created then destroyed by catastrophic events caused by the gods. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the Aztecs were living in what they believed to be the Fifth Sun (world) and in fact, felt they were the chosen people of the Sun God. In order to show all due respect to their god, they sacrificed humans on a massive scale to keep the world from ending. Ironically, in part, it was the excessive sacrificing that caused the internal rifts that made the inhabitants ripe for a revolution which the Spaniards played on in order to gain supporters for their conquest causing the “Aztec Apocalypse” (See La Malinche) So this internal strife, disease brought by the Spanish and ecological collapse caused by excessive exploitation of the natural resources all played a hand in the Aztec demise, but more about those in later posts.

The current mistaken common belief that the end of the world as we know it is the end of THE WORLD has caused all sorts of hysteria. Look at all that hullabaloo about 2012 being the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar. What people didn’t seem to get in their panic is that yes, it was the end of a “world” but it also marked the beginning of another.

The Mayans believed that three previous worlds had been created and destroyed. Humans didn’t arrive on the planet until the current, fourth world. This fourth epoch would end December 21, 2012, or Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0. It didn’t mean that the planet would be destroyed, just that an age was at an end and another ready to begin.

So, endings and beginnings aside, I still believe La Yacata to be the place for the best chance of survival in the event of catastrophic events. And I’ll tell you why.

Just to make it fun, I will be addressing different potential apocalypse-making disasters in alphabetical order this month with the A to Z Blogging Challenge. You’ll be able to see all the links below at the end of the month.

Meanwhile…..