Inspired by a TikTok trend where people listed the kinds of individuals they believed would be capable of eating the rest of us to survive an apocalypse, I decided to make my own list. Mine is a little less cannibal-coded and a little more personality-based, but the essence is the same. These are the people I am absolutely convinced would outlive the rest of us if society collapsed.
Starting strong, at the very top of the leaderboard are people who break up with their partners on Valentine’s Day or right before it. You know exactly who I am talking about. The masterminds who conveniently discover “emotional incompatibility” on Feb. 13 at 10:47 p.m. Suddenly, they need to focus on themselves, they are not ready for commitment and the relationship has run its course. These people do anything, absolutely anything, to avoid buying a gift. You might call it cruel, I call it an advanced survival instinct.
These people plan ahead. They anticipate threats to their resources and are willing to make hard, heartless decisions for financial preservation. In the event of an apocalypse, these same instincts will take them far.
Right beside them are the people who enter relationships in late January with the intention of receiving Valentines’ gifts. No long-term plan, no emotional investment, just vibes, roses and maybe a dinner reservation. It may be ruthless, but it is also impressive. To treat romance like a limited-time promotional event requires vision. These are people who understand opportunity windows. In an apocalypse, they would be the first to identify who has supplies, who has shelter and who is useful. They would adapt and pivot when necessary, and when push comes to shove, they would probably disappear into the night with someone else’s emergency kit.
Next on my list are those who proudly announce that they do not watch romance movies or read romance novels. Although they seem strange to the rest of us normal people, these people are not distracted by unrealistic expectations of love. They are grounded, practical and possibly emotionally indestructible. I think if the world were ending, they would not be crying over memories — they would be building fires, reinforcing doors and calculating escape routes.
Finally, we have the impostors — the people who scream breakup songs at the top of their lungs with so much passion, despite having never actually gone through a breakup. As a fellow impostor, I can confirm that dramatically singing breakup songs and channelling all the emotions I have never really experienced is quite fun. But I also think this ability to feel emotions on demand would be useful in an apocalypse because emotions are a way to connect with people and build community. Like Ned Stark said in Game of Thrones, “When the snows fall, and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.”
So this Valentine’s Day, if you run into any of these individuals, just know they might be red flags now, but in an apocalyptic environment they would probably thrive.
