“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

-Bible, Book of Matthew chapter 6

The Lord told Noah, “because the ground is filled with violence, the time for the end of all life has come.” Noah then built the ark: humanity’s original bomb shelter.

It was stocked with all they’d need – animals paired two by two, shelves of food, stores of sufficient water. Then the world ended, everyone died, only Noah and his family survived the apocalypse.

Imagine it’s the not-so-distant future and the worst-case scenario has occurred again. Most of humanity lies buried under a thick layer of ash and toppled structures. The sun has been blocked out for three years and those animals still alive have gone into hiding. The nights are dark, the cities are deserted, the land is quiet.

The only ones remaining are those who believed in the humanity’s darkest impulses – the doomsday preppers. Slowly, they emerge from their bunkers to look around at all that remains. The world has been destroyed, but it also offers rich and exciting new possibilities. It is full of potential and they will build it back better this time.

Life will be simpler. Gone are the complications of sharing the planet with billions of other humans. With this opportunity to start afresh surely they will create a better future.

It all sounds logical, except for one tiny flaw – this supposedly bright new world will be built by the most pessimistic segment of society.

For the starry-eyed optimists have perished. They stayed put when the bombs started to drop, continuing to work at mundane and extraordinary tasks alike. Refusing to abandon hope by running for cover they chose to stick around and face what may come.

Those who were intimately woven into the fabric of humanity have perished. The teachers, the nurses, the librarians, they’re all dead. The community leaders are gone, they’d rather be dead than holed up alone in a shelter anyhow. The soccer moms are dead, the leader of the local Boy Scout troop is dead. High School coaches are dead, because the world may end but football never stops.

Anybody with a flicker of hope, an impulse to stick around and see if we can work this thing out will be dead. Only those who were poised to flee will remain alive.

Those without means will also be swept up in the cataclysmic tide. They didn’t get to choose whether to live or die, so there won’t be poor people in the new Earth. The only ones around will be those who had enough for two lives – the old life and the life to come.

The beautiful diversity of humanity will be shattered. God’s extravagance in people will be destroyed. All those people considered of no practical value to the preppers will be left behind: babies, elders, those with disabilities. After all, space on the ark is extremely limited.

***

Noah heard directly from God and the people of the land still said he was crazy to build the ark. But to build your own ark, merely anticipating the flood and not being told about it, takes a deeply embedded arrogance that few could recognize in themselves.

For who are you to increase and multiply? What business have you in being fruitful and filling the whole earth? It is the height of hubris, to believe that when all depart only you should remain. To believe that by stockpiling and hoarding you are somehow doing humanity a favor.

For when the hour of need came you were not willing to die. You falsely believed that more, not less, of you was needed and when it came time to rebuild you’d be the one to do it. And this will be the terrible foundation on which a brave new world – the prepper world – is built.

Prepper World