Humor/Satire

How To Stay Fresh During The Apocalypse

When things get real, it’s time to grab your tersorium and head for the hills.

Erin King is the author of How To Be Wise AF: A 30-day journalling adventure to your inner Guru.

With the apocalypse at our doorstep, the human race’s deepest obsession has been revealed.

Turns out, we have acartohygieiophobia.

The fear of running out of toilet paper.

If you’re planning for the Rapture, you won’t need this article, but if you’re a sinner like me, you’ll probably be stuck down here lingering in whatever fresh hell we’re hurtling towards.

So to help prepare for Armageddon, I’ve identified the six main problems of the post-apocalyptic powder room and put together some old-school ideas to use when the world (and you) go to shit.

1. Toilet Paper

Everyone now knows the first sign of the breakdown of civilization is the hoarding of bum tickets.

Inevitably though, stockpiles will dwindle and people will wonder what to do about their dingleberries.

If you don’t want to get caught on the crapper when the zombies start banging down your door, get making or collecting these now.

Here are some toilet paper alternatives borrowed from history:

• Sponge on a stick: Yes, you read that right — Ancient Romans used a tersorium, which is just a fancy word for sponge on a stick, and it is just as the name implies. It’s a sea sponge stuck to the end of a stick. They were shared in public bathrooms and cleaned in salt and vinegar. If this is your ass wipe of choice, you might want to make enough so each person in your household gets their own and maybe a few extras for guests.
• Rocks: The TP of choice for stone age man, also used by the Greeks, who carved their enemies’ names on them.
• Sticks: Yes, the unlikely instrument of choice for East Asians of the 700’s was literally a shit stick. It’s thought that the Chinese are the original inventors of toilet paper, which would make sense since scraping your poop off with a stick seems like the perfect motivation for finding something better.
• Corn Cobs, leaves, and straw: the TP of choice for colonial Americans.

For more ideas for post-apocalyptic wiping ideas, check out this article by Toni Tales: This Is The Remarkable History Of Ass Wipes. It was the inspiration for this story.

2. Sanitary protection

For half of us, there’ll be another problem coming up roughly once a month. Ladies, might I suggest grabbing a diva cup or two whilst looting the drugstores. However, if you’re late to the party and miss your chance to grab one, here are some ideas from our ancestors.

• The ancient Egyptians used papyrus, but since you’re probably not located on the Nile, it might be difficult to come by.
• Hippocrates wrote about and wrapping bits of wood with lint as they did in ancient Greece and Rome. Maybe not super comfy, but at least you’d have concrete plans for that dryer lint that’s been piling up.
• From the 5th to the 15th Century, women used rags — hence the delicate term “being on the rag.” So you might want to buy a big bag of old towels from Goodwill and keep them in your basement until needed.
• Native American women seemed to have the best idea of the time and used pads made out of moss and buffalo skin. You might be able to substitute the skin of the squirrels you’ll inevitably be eating eventually.

Ladies, it’s never too early to start thinking about how we’ll address our flow, especially if the zombies are attracted to blood, or other animals start hunting us.

3. Toilets

Eventually, after, zombies eat the public works employees, computers take over and robots destroy the infrastructure, we’ll have to go back to some old-fashioned ways of doing our business.

We take indoor plumbing for granted, but flush toilets were only recently invented (1596). Even then, they took a few hundred years to catch on.

So, people had been getting by for a long time without them.

Since indoor toilets get pretty gross pretty fast without running water, here are some old-school suggestions to keep the waste management in your household under control.

• Outhouses: You know, that thing you hate at someone’s too-rustic cottage. It’s a shack with a toilet outside of your house. The seat can be over a bucket or a pit. They get a bit smelly, so if you don’t have a big backyard, you might not want to do this.
• Chamber pots: This would be good for apartment dwellers, but you’ll have to figure out where to empty them. In the old days, people walked their poop out to a field or forest for dumping. Some information says in crowded cities, they just dumped it out the window for a person called a “muckraker” to clean up. With what we know from modern science, it would probably be a good idea to work with your fellow survivors to dispose of it properly.
• Hole in the ground: If you don’t want to go to the trouble of building a whole outhouse or you’re running for your life, you can just dig a hole and poop into that (don’t forget your shit stick or favorite rock).
• Communal toilets: If you live in a tight-knit community, you could get together and dig out a communal bathroom that links to the sewer system that’s already there.

Be super-prepared by combining these ancient ideas with the information in the articles “How To Pee And Poop Outdoors If Provincial Park Washrooms Are Closed” from Huffpost or “Micro Ventures: How to Pee and Poop Outside” from SheJump

4. Deodorant

The end of times will probably be pretty stinky with the rotting corpses and all, but you might still want to smell fresh since you’ll most likely be trying to repopulate the earth.

In that case, you’ll need a strategy when the deodorant runs out.

For about 2% of people, this won’t apply.

There are a few lucky people among us who have an unusual form of the gene ABCC11, which means their armpits never smell. Those people will probably attract the most mates, so the next incarnation of the human race may evolve without BO.

***Weird side-note: My husband is actually one of these smell-less mutants. No matter how hot it is or how long it is between showers, his pits always smell great. His feet, however, are another matter.***

Here are some ideas for the rest of us mostly courtesy of the ancient Egyptians:

• Egyptians made dense pastes with ostrich eggs, tortoiseshell, and gallnuts scented with cardamom, cassia, cinnamon, lemongrass, lily, myrrh, and rose. They’d spread it on their head, neck, and wrists. So you might want to head over to Bulk Barn and also get in touch with that friend who posts her essential oil business on Facebook before you put your emergency doomsday kit together.
• Egyptians also developed jewelry that incorporated scented materials. I think that friend who sells the oils also sells these.
• Porridge balls also courtesy of the Egyptians: Yes, make oatmeal and then roll it up into a ball with incense and wedge under in your armpit.
• Carob also courtesy of the Egyptians: Crush up the pods and rub them all over your body. Put it on your Bulk Barn list.
• Olive oil: Steep nice smelling roots and things in olive oil and rub it on yourself like the Grecians and Romans.

5. Shampoo

If you still have access to water, you might want to wash your hair, but you might need to drink it instead to stay alive, or you might be out of commercial shampoo.

Taking a page from our ancestors might give us some solutions to this hairy hygiene headache.

• Wigs: The Egyptians shaved their heads and wore wigs. The Georgians also liked their wigs, but they greased their hair and pulled it back.
• Eggs: The Victorians washed their hair with an egg. Just cracked it directly onto the head and lathered it up.
• Lye soap: Romans washed their hair with lye soap, made by combining ashes with lard or other oils and fats.
• Vinegar, rosemary water, nettles, mint, thyme: These are all things people in the middle ages used to wash their hair.

If you want to practice making lye soap, you can start your end-of-the-world side-hustle, by having a peek at this article from Mother Earth News.

6. Oral Hygiene.

Things could get pretty unpleasant if Zombies have killed your dentist. If your teeth fall out, how will you gnaw the meat off rotting carcasses?

Taking care of them might be more important than you think.

Here are a few substitutions for when you run out of Sensodyne, courtesy of our ancestors that anyone crafty could surely make:

• Chewing sticks: used by everyone from the ancient Chinese to the Egyptians and Romans. These were simply twigs that people chewed on. But the Egyptians took it to the next level when they frayed one end and sharpened the other.
• Old school toothbrush: Around the 15th Century, the Chinese made the first toothbrushes by attaching a pig’s neck hair to a handle of bamboo or bone. The Europeans made them with horsehair in the 1700s because the pig hair was too bristly.
• Toothpaste: Makers of toothpaste across the ages use just about anything you can think of, from the obvious choices like mint and ginger to more random stuff like eggshells, ox hooves, charcoal, bark, crushed bones, and oyster shells. The general rule seems to be as long as you can find something abrasive to mix with something tasty, you’ll be okay. One recipe from ancient Egypt combined mint, iris flowers, peppers, and salt. Although it’s thought to be one of history’s most effective recipes, it also caused bleeding gums, so there’s that.
• If you want to whiten your teeth when all of the Whitestrips have gone, you can use urine as the Romans did. If the idea of swishing your pee isn’t appealing, you can do what the Victorians did and use ground charcoal and honey.

Still convinced this is the end of days?

That we’re entering Mad Max/Escape from New York territory?

Then you might want to start planning for your hygiene needs after things go south — you’ll need alternatives.

Get your supply of shit sticks and porridge balls amassed so you can be ahead of the curve when everyone realizes the toilet paper is gone, and it’s not coming back.

Thanks for reading!😊

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