Unfertile territory

I might be the world's worst Doomsday Prepper. Which is odd considering I've made a career in advertising and lived through a thousand doomsdays.

SFX: RIMSHOT. 

Thank you folks, I'll be here all week. Try the veal.

Take the "garden" pictured above, for example.

I planted it a little more than two months ago. Seventy five dollars worth of plants, hand-curated potting and top soil, and a bag of super deluxe citrus and vegetable fertilizer guaranteed to put a cornucopia of legumes, greens and cruciferous goodies in your crisper drawers. By the way it was only recently that I discovered the drawers at the bottom of the fridge were called Crisper drawers. I know where the ice cream and the beer goes, that's the extent of my refrigerator logistics knowledge.

To date, the "garden" has produced two Serrano peppers that were distinctively not hot. Or at least not hot enough for my iron gut. And one tiny tomatillo, that was barely the size of a BB. If the apocalypse happened tomorrow, I'd have the makings for a salsa that would barely feed an entire family of amoebas.

According to the handy dandy veggie markers that came with my overpriced plantings, the Better Boy tomatoes should be revealing themselves any day now. But I'll believe that when I see it.

After all, this is 2020, the year of broken promises. I'm as likely to see big, beefy shiny red tomatoes as I am to see a vaccine for Covid, people wearing masks and the collective recognition of 60 million Red Hats that they've been swindled, hoodwinked and bamboozled by the greatest con man to ever walk the planet.

It wasn't always like this. There were productive years when my wife and I had three raised bed gardens and had more tomatoes, peppers, radishes, and cucumbers then we knew what to do with. One year the cucumber vines were so prodigious they crawled in through an open window and took over the guest bedroom.

Of course, starving will be only one of the many nightmares facing the Siegels in the upcoming dystopian era. I'm woefully unprepared when it comes to energy.

Oh sure, we have flashlights. We're camping people so we have enough flashlights to open a Flashlight Store: Mag lights, headlamp lights, belt buckle lights, you name it, I've got a plastic bin full of them. Also, scattered around the Siegel compound I've got batteries for the multitude of flashlights: A, AA, AAA, AAAA, C, D, 9 volt, etc. And as you might have guessed, they're all in various stages of rigor mortis.

And lastly, perhaps the greatest sin any Doomsday Prepper could commit, I am without weaponry.

I am not unfamiliar with the joy of shooting off a gun.

I'm also not unfamiliar with myself, nor is my wife, and know my hotheadedness can sometimes get the best of me. In a very odd Trumpian way, I have no tolerance for being taken advantage of or in any way victimized, in even the slightest of manners. I suspect growing up in NYC has a lot to do with that. And so, wisely, I do not own a gun. Apart from our camping hatchet and my Leatherman multipurpose knife, we are completely defenseless.

I suppose that's OK. Frankly I have no desire to live in a Mad Max world. Similarly I recently completed Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", and want no part of it. I hope to go out in a blaze of nuclear glory, like the unsuspecting park goers in the Terminator movie.

If post cataclysmic marauders want to raid my house and take my one marble sized radish, they're more than welcome to it.

I'd prefer the Dirt Nap.