Hello citizens, welcome to Purge night. For the next twelve hours all emergency
services will be suspended, and all crime is legal. Now, it's time to vent all that
rage and frustration you've been storing up over the last year, it's time to purge.
So you're caught up in the modern dystopia that is the New Founding Fathers of America's version
of the good old US of A, and it's March 21st, purge night. How do you survive the purge without
the benefit of high powered military weaponry, as nothing more than a simple, normal, everyday joe?
First, let's recap the history of the purge briefly. Originally started as
a grand social experiment on Staten Island by the ruling political party,
the New Founding Fathers of America, the Purge quickly grew to be a national event,
and now every March 21st all crime is legalized for twelve hours of absolute pandemonium and
mayhem. But it's not just the everyday citizen getting in on the mass murdering,
because in order to keep up casualty figures, purge night is routinely supplemented
by government kill squads who's sole purpose is to murder as many people as possible.
But wait, you thought that purge night was about people venting their criminal anger and
frustrations out, so that the rest of the year you could live a peaceful, law-abiding life? Well, no,
because it turns out that the New Founding Fathers of America are less interested in making American
a great place to live, and more interested in preserving the interests of the rich and powerful.
Purge night's real purpose isn't to help keep American crime down, it's actually to
rid the United States of minorities and poor people, hence the government kill squads.
So how are you going to survive class warfare in its most literal form?
First, you have to have a plan for purge night.
Waltzing into a twelve hour apocalypse is a great way to get yourself killed,
so you'd better have a good plan, with multiple contingencies, to keep you alive.
Your plan should include a place to shelter,
and how to get there in case you are running late on purge night and get caught out in the open.
You should have both multiple avenues of approach to your shelter, as well
as multiple avenues of escape in case your shelter is breached. If sheltering at home,
things like steel plates over windows and thick security doors will help keep out even the most
determined Purgers, but finding alternative, more secure shelter is probably your best bet.
Places like old mine tunnels, abandoned military structures, and even derelict barges
floating off-shore are the perfect purge shelter. An old mine tunnel may be creepy and dark,
but it typically only has one obvious way in with much less obvious escape shafts that could
be hundreds or even thousands of feet away. With a single entryway, anyone wanting to purge you won't
have the advantage of surprise- as long as you took the time to disguise your escape shafts well.
Even better would be places like abandoned military bunkers or
even old decommissioned missile silos- although those might be difficult to get into
and make usable. Offshore structures means that anyone hellbent on purging you is going
to have to go through a whole lot of effort just to get to you, and if you're armed,
which you should be, then they're going to present a very easy target as they make their way to you.
You might simply opt to skip physical shelter altogether, and instead, just take to the sea on
a boat. Twelve hours isn't that long, and unless purgers are incredibly motivated to hunt you down,
taking off for half a day at sea is a great way to stay away from gangs of roving purgers.
Of course, another way to survive the purge is to simply be someone people don't want
to purge in the first place. Odds are as you go throughout the rest of your year, you're at least
a little bit selfish or rude to your neighbors and co-workers. In a world with a yearly purge,
that's a great way of making sure that you have a big, fat target on your back come purge night.
Instead of being rude or selfish, try to be unselfish and helpful. Mow your neighbor's lawn,
let them borrow your car when theirs breaks down, maybe keep your political views to yourself and
off your Facebook. Make yourself likable and come purge night, anyone wanting to hurt or kill you
is going to find that they have a laundry list of people they want to hurt or kill
even more than you. It's only twelve hours after all, so as long as you make sure you're as close
to the bottom of that hurt/kill list as you can possibly get, you'll be fine.
During purge night, gangs of roving psychopaths roam the streets looking for easy victims, so the
best way to defeat these gangs of roving psychos, is to have an even bigger gang of your own.
Round up like-minded individuals in the months leading up to purge night, and form a neighborhood
militia. Even a small group of well disciplined individuals committed to protecting each other
can fend off larger packs of uncoordinated purgers just looking to cause mayhem.
But forming a deadly neighborhood watch to survive purge night is only the first step. In the world
of national security, the best way to ensure that your facility or your VIP isn't targeted for
attack, is to discourage an attack in the first place. This is known as becoming a 'hard target',
and involves taking steps to ensure that when an attacker sizes you up for a possible attack,
they realize that doing so would be too costly, even if successful,
to be worth the effort. On purge night, being a hard target might be so effective
that you wouldn't be targeted in the first place. After all, if you only have twelve
hours to cause mayhem, why waste most of that time going after the neighborhood that's well
defended and equipped to protect itself? Better to prey on weaker, more vulnerable people instead.
So to become a hard target on purge night, forget going solo and round up that posse of
like-minded neighbors like we said. Against undisciplined bands of roving purgers,
just realizing that they'd be going up against a disciplined force
might be enough to discourage an attack in the first place- there's
likely easier picking elsewhere anyways and like we said, the clock is ticking.
But being disciplined is key, you don't want to appear like a group of random rabble. Create a
uniform for your neighborhood protection force, and have every member wear it on purge night.
Uniforms mean solidarity, and for roving purgers, it also lets them know that a well-established
force is present in this area, best to move along and look for more vulnerable targets. Next,
practice basic self-defense drills together, and if you've got access to them- which you absolutely
should in the insane world of The Purge- make sure everyone is armed and knows how to use a firearm.
Next, you'll want to roll out homemade barricades to shut off vehicle access to your neighborhood,
as well as seal off avenues of approach that could be taken on foot. You can do this with
physical barriers or by stationing groups of armed guards. Much like with the defense of a military
installation, you can purposefully leave one very obvious path for attackers to take, and this is
where you would funnel anyone wishing to purge you so they can be easily taken out. Set up defensive
positions for your guards with criss-crossing fields of fire, and anyone wishing to purge your
neighborhood, including government forces, will find the effort's simply not worth it.
But what if you're forced to go solo? Well, your best bet is to hide. Get out of the city,
fleet to the countryside and take to the hills. Park your car somewhere remote, and then take
off on foot pushing deeper and deeper into the wilds. Ideally you would've begun your camping
trip well before purge night, and made sure that your ultimate destination required multiple modes
of travel to get there, like parking your car at the end of a dirt road somewhere,
then taking a boat ride, and then hiking to reach your final destination. The United States has
a great deal of truly wild places, and you can survive purge night by hiding out with bigfoot.
Ofcourse, the best way to survive the purge though is to make sure you aren't purgeable
to begin with. Like we said in our recap of purge history, the entire event is basically an excuse
for rich people to kill off poor people, so to survive purge night, just be rich. The wealthy
and powerful are not just in many cases the most horrific proponents of violence on purge night,
but are basically immune to being purged themselves thanks to their massive resources.
Elite security agents, intruder-proof safe rooms, and homes that double as military
fortresses all make being rich during purge night the best way to stay safe.
Though you'd still have to watch out for your fellow 1%, who love nothing more than to play
their sick, sadistic games of revenge and torture on each other come purge night.
If you're financially challenged, then good news because there's still a chance to make
yourself an untouchable come purge night. The America of The Purge is still sort of a democracy,
so simply run for a high enough government office and you can be classified a level 10
government employee, which is still illegal to kill on purge night. The government still
needs to operate post-purge after all, and if all our political differences could be
settled with mass murder, well, at least Facebook would be a lot quieter place.
Alright, you're not rich, and you're not likable enough to get elected. Matter of fact, you're not
likeable enough to not get purged and you just know that the kid you cut off at the green light
a week ago is definitely going to be looking to get all purge'y on you come purge night.
Your home is kind of indefensible because you can't afford the fancy security systems
other people can, and you don't have access to a whole cache of weapons- what are you going to do?
Often the best place to hide isn't where people won't go looking, but where they don't want to go
looking. We're talking about the worst places you could imagine spending twelve hours in,
places that no human being in their right mind would ever even enter, like a T-mobile store.
Not as good as a T-mobile store, but close, would be a sewage treatment plant, or even a
rancid landfill. These are places people avoid in their normal lives, and for someone to hunt
you down in one of these disgusting locations they're gonna have to be really, extra motivated.
Become one with the filth, dig in deep to a pile of fresh trash, or camp out next to a
large sewage holding pond. These places are going to smell so disgusting, that very few people are
going to even think about looking for victims in a place they themselves would never willingly go.
Of course, you could also opt to wait out the purge in places that are just
incredibly unlikely to be targeted by purgers- places like a local library. Think about it,
what psychopath purger is going to even consider for a second
to check a local library for victims or anything worth stealing? You'll naturally
want to avoid hiding out in places that could attract looters, after all, every crime is
legal come purge night and a bunch of people are just going to be looking for free loot,
but who in the world is going to be breaking into a library looking for things to steal?
The best way to avoid purge night though is to just leave the country altogether.
You don't even have to be rich to do it, just hop in a car and drive either north or south
until you hit the Canadian or Mexican border. It'll take you a couple of tanks
of gas and a day road trip, but you can plan out a long weekend for yourself and
sit in a crappy canadian motel room eating poutine and watching America burn itself
to the ground on the tv- just like the real founding fathers would've wanted.
Odds are, you're still going to end up getting hurt come purge night,
so watch our video How to actually survive getting shot. Or click this other video instead!