How would you spend your last minutes?
15So the folks in Hawaii had a horrible experience yesterday morning when they got messages on cell phones, tv, and radio that their world was coming to an abrupt end in about 20 minutes (evidently how long it would take for a nuke to reach them from North Korea). Thankfully it was a false alarm, but a lot of our fellow Americans spent 38 long and terrible minutes yesterday preparing to die. If you got a message like that, how would you choose to spend your final minutes? Guess this is the flip side of the immortality thread.
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I would eat cheesecake, preferably chocolate. And bacon. Separately.
@heartny You’ve got to save time so multitask, bacon cheesecake sounds kinda good.
I’d probably do exactly what many of them spent that time doing. Huddle in an interior room with my husband, kids, and pets, making sure they know they were loved. I’d call my immediate family to say goodbye. Maybe drink an obscene amount in whatever time was left after that.
I’ve lived through a few of these already. If I thought I had the time to clear out, I’d just head north, taking back roads, and traveling light…except that I’m 70, and I’d bet against my survival.
Seriously, I’d do what I’ve done before (Northridge Quake in 1994 was probably the worst). I would just wait, and if it turned out I wasn’t dead, I’d get on with getting life back to normal (it took about six months, and I was a LOT younger).
There were a good ten minutes where we thought it was the end. Turned out that it wasn’t. Whew.
/image northridge quake
@Shrdlu Well I’m very glad you were able to get on with getting on! That looks very scary. Worse than the tornado that went through when I was working at Applebee’s one night. A very surreal experience.
I would like some chocolate cheesecake, though. Maybe some raspberry sauce drizzled across the top?
Must be time to think about dinner…
I would call my family and close friends and say goodbye, make a run for it if I thought I had a chance. If not, I’d go outside, say a prayer or two and then play with my dogs and talk to my horses until I couldn’t.
Sit down. Put my head in between my legs and kiss my ass good bye.
@cranky1950 I’m confused, how are you going to be able to kiss your ass if your head is between your legs? Wait - do you own a donkey?! Even so, it would probably be a lot easier to first kiss the ass goodbye and then put your head between your legs.
On the other hand, these are your last moments and you should spend them any way you’d like, so do you!!!
@elimanningface I’m very flexible.
@elimanningface - If he was riding on his own ass, he’d have to put his head between his legs to kiss it goodbye!
I would chill with my wife and 2 kids. Give them lots of hugs. Probably pull out the ice cream and let them dig in too (they’re young so they would go nuts!)
@luvche21 what if you’re wife and/or 2 kids would prefer that not to happen, would you still spend it the same way? Also, how funny would it be if you have more than two kids (it wouldn’t be funny if there was a very serious reason why you didn’t want to be around them though)?
@elimanningface well the kids are 1 and 3, so they wouldn’t have much say in the matter!
Having lived through nuclear duck and cover drill after drill in elementary school and believing they were real every. single. time. my bat-shit crazy 4th grade teacher visibly cried when she announced “take cover!!!” . . . and having lived through a WHOLE. LOT. OF. LIFE., I don’t get too damn excited about anything.
My level of ‘I don’t give any fucks’ about most things that would truly and deeply scar most anyone else is alarming to all but a handful of psychotherapists. There came a point in my life where I realized I had lived long enough, and that each day, each second lived more, is truly appreciated and I know I am privileged to still be here. I should be dead so many times over I can’t count. I’ve seen and felt people obliterated into mist so near to me that I have had shrapnel from their bones embedded into my flesh. And I have sent a lot of people into that mist myself - ending a lot of worlds.
My perspective on so many things - especially how I view myself, my sense of who I am and what the fuck life is - has changed so much after seeing and doing so many things . . . Many days I just waded through darkly - I dared not open my eyes.
Having lived through that, the bottom line is this: if you are important to me I would have told you long ago what I would say to you if I knew I was going to be vaporized in twenty minutes time. If the shit is coming, don’t expect a phone call from me. I’m probably out looking for a nail rig to hit the five grams of nug run shatter I carry in my pocket especially for ‘end of the world’ scenarios. Or I’m already high as fuck and singing this song:
Love ya, see ya, bye - if humanity makes it through and you’re reading this in the future after the apocalypse: DO BETTER.
Oh, and eat more bacon! Life is too short to worry obsessively about cholesterol.
@Pavlov So you are going to get high and sing. This is different from any other day how???
@MrsPavlov wanna have sex after I get high?
@Pavlov This is different from any other day how??? Ugh.
@Pavlov That is one of my favorite fucking songs of all times!
You can get back to it now, you two!
@MrsPavlov You just made me laugh out loud literally and wake up my dog.
@Pavlov I’m going to take a chance and say thank you for your service. It doesn’t seem like it was pleasant, but it seems to have made you live in the moment. That’s something I would really like to learn…working on it.
That’s funny, I remember doing the drills, but never under any impression it was real; the last time would’ve been 2nd grade. Years later I was with some adventurous souls exploring the school basement (a couple of whom were probably looking for a spot to light up whatever rig they used in those days) and discovered the school’s fallout shelter, obviously untouched for about a decade. All I remember is a large room with a low shelf on side containing canned water and boxes of VERY stale saltines! It’s a good thing there was never a nuclear war.
I just hope I cum before I go.
Obviously sex with @polksaladannie
@Pantheist Yeah, 20 minutes is long enough to get weird with it.
Find a dog to hug!
@benj I do this every single day. Thankfully I have 2 at home, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to hug every dog that I meet.
@Nitewatch I feel the same way. I have five and still get excited to meet new dogs. When I walked home from school I was never alone, every dog on the street would be walking with me. I said when I was young, I would have a pack of dogs, have five now, had nine at one time. My wish came true. Same for cats.
@Calabama We would so get along IRL…that or fight constantly over who is going to pet any dog we meet first. I have six dogs down from eight and I have to stop myself, sometimes physically, from rescuing more. It doesn’t matter where I go…my reputation must proceed me, either that or dogs can just smell the sucker on me because I’m the first one they seek out. I’m also the one everyone says of their animal, dog, cat, horse, bird, wow he likes you, he doesn’t like anyone but us usually.
In prayer.
I love this earth. I’ve seen enough. Not ready to go, but can accept it when it’s time.
@meh427 I don’t know man, @cranky1950 said he is going to put his head between his legs and kiss his own ass goodbye. Whether he meant his own butt or a donkey he owns, I know you will want to stick around a few minutes longer to see that.
Does he have any emergency drills? He could film an asskissy practice run and post it here.
@meh427
@moondrake - all those years of yoga not wasted.
“And though you be done to the death, what then?
If you battled the best you could,
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the Critic will call it good.
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he’s slow or spry,
It isn’t the fact that you’re dead that counts,
But only how did you die?”
-Edmund Vance Cooke (just the last stanza)
Fear accompanies the possibility of death. Calm shepherds its certainty.
-D’Argo (Farscape)
Depends how its coming. An incoming nuke? Evac not possible? Then I’d take storm-prep steps, and EMP prep if possible, then fill the water-bobs, find the rad-pills, do anything I could to make sure my wife is safer than me, without letting her know because she would not have it, then at the very last hold her hand if possible and say a prayer.
You’re not dead until you are dead, no point acting like it too early. But I’ve never been in a crisis of this severity; I might lock up, but hopefully not for too long.
@duodec You kinda awesome!
@mehbee Nyet. Its just talk until it happens. I’d like to think I’ll do as well as I can in such a situation but only people who have already seen the elephant know for sure how they’ll react, how strong their character is.
@duodec Best answer of the day.
I’ve thought about, like, the death bit happening what with working in the heart of DC. Never occurred to me that there might be a warning first. That is horrifying, and I’d prefer the other version, please.
As for an answer to the actual question, I guess the same as anyone else. Send out a few i-love-yous to people who already know it, and then curl up into a ball.
@brhfl I agree, I’d rather not know.
Situation just before unpredictable. Who/what/where/how/why/options all unknown.
Would try to take safety steps if they might make a diff.
Be kind or loving, if that’s available at that moment.
Have a clear head, and a sense of emotional peace, if possible; and have some gratitude and awe at my experiences. And for consciousness itself.
Thanks for the memories …
Even if those have so little time left to exist …
I’d like to spend my last minutes in Hawaii.
I would hope to be 24 meters below in the sea where life is abundant, calm and magical. Diving in warm waters brings me deep inner peace. All is well. All is as it should be. If given a slim few minute warning? Then let it be during an out-of-mind experience, like sex.
I just want to go quietly in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming in terror like the passengers on his bus.
-Will Rogers
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Shit. I’m dead.
@shahnm at least your batteries will live on. You left them in the fridge as your last act.
@shahnm
I think you are somewhat protected perhaps?
I’d like to think that I’d curse the bastards, half heartedly, and then lean back and relax while I waited.
(Don’t get mad, but, just as an aside, the Hawaii thing was hilarious. Who puts the mortal terror button next to the routine clicky button? Find a job you’re good at, I say. I mean damn.)
Get the hubby and cats and get in our sailboat and hope maybe we get far enough away from whatever is happening, which probably wouldn’t work
@moonhat But at least you are together, and sailing.
@moondrake that is a good point, my moon friend.
Porn hub statistics around the time of the warning:
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/after-missile-alert-confirmed-as-false-alarm-this-is-how-hawaii-celebrated/
@RiotDemon
Awesome.
(In the PornHub-kinda meaning of “awesome”.)
A big fat blunt!
Call the kids in NC, call my sister in FL (straight across the Indian River from KSC), then gather the dogs, curl up with them and The Spouse, and enjoy the wait.