Richard Curtis - How to Prosper in the Coming Apocalypse

Lets face it, my friend, the end of the world is nigh. Where are you going to be when it staggers, totters, and collapses? Underneath the rubble as usual, Schmucko? Or are you going to wise up at last and live out the end in high style?

This is the book that tells you how you can strike it rich while your neighbors, friends, and in-laws are going to hell in a handbasket, the book that will enable you to watch the final convulsions from a well-stuffed rocker on the veranda of your country estate. While all around you are losing their heads in the imminent conflagration, you can be gearing up for windfall profits that will make the oil companies look like mama-and-papa candy stores.

The author, whose last three books (You Can Profit from the Vietnamese War, Cash in on Cambodias Wretched Masses, and I Tripled My Income During the Takeover of the Grand Mosque) accurately predicted profitable opportunities in the miseries of small numbers of people, now tackles the twilight of humanity in one comprehensive volume that not only touches on every aspect of the decline of civilization, but whose high list price will rake in a kings ransom in royalties and swell his Swiss account to almost unmanageable proportions.

This book is organized in such a way that, starting with the first page you come to and turning each page consecutively until you get to the last one and reading all the words on each page, you will have completed it. In the course of which the following questions will be answered:

• What does that funny little on the copyright page mean?
• Precisely when is the world scheduled to end, and will there be enough sanitation men to clean up afterwards?
• Will a six-month Treasury bill paying 14 percent interest yield more than half an hour of looting at Bloomingdales?
• In a prolonged siege of your hoarded food by your neighbors, is it better to fire your semiautomatic at them in short bursts or to empty the clip in one long one?
• Why is a meal consisting of Oreo cookies, Velveeta, and Courvoisier VSOP the best survival diet known to nutritionists?
• What is the most efficient way to stockpile toilet paper: end up, or on its side?
• Who holds the Guinness record for most margins responding to a margin call?
• Who said, Every man over forty is a scoundrel? Its got nothing to do with this book, but its been bothering me all night.
• What kind of interest can you get at a sperm bank? Is there a penalty for early withdrawal?
• Do welfare rolls come with butter, or is it extra?
• Are wage-price controls as counterinflationary as, say, slavery?
• In a rapidly falling bond market, which is easier to liquidate: your municipals or your broker?
• Why is there a thriving black market in prune yogurt?
• Why are your Social Security payments going to support a bunch of old people?
• Does the President have the right to confiscate your Ritz Crackers during a national emergency? To nationalize Wendys? To conscribe women for the Food and Drug Administration Softball team?
• Is it sound fiscal policy to put the firstborn of every family to the sword?
• Is a Meissen figurine a more desirable collectible than a Remington 870 12-gauge riot gun with 2500 rounds of ammo?
• Does the coming collapse of the capitalist system mean no more Baskin-Robbins Rocky Road?

Assessing your personal megadeath potential is simple using this handy map.

Gar Smith, New West magazine

The most important things for you to concern yourself with in the coming bad years is, Whos responsible and how can I get even? It is essential that we find someone to blame and really beat the hell out of him. Sure, the tragedy of the past is that we are condemned to repeat it, but does that make you feel any better? No! Your first task is to find a scapegoat.

It will be recalled that Germany in the 1930s blamed the Jews for its economic woes. Jews are good scapegoats because with their long pointy tails they are easily visible, but they are definitely not to blame for the present recession. True, one memorable bar mitzvah did wreck the economy of Scarsdale in the summer of 1976, but Scarsdales economy had been shaky for some time anyway, what with the inordinate amount of money the town had spent on wall-to-wall carpeting for its sewer system.

Modern Americans are fortunate in having many scapegoats to blame: the Arabs for their oil pricing, the Russians for the arms race, the Japanese for their exports, the Federal Reserve, the bankers, welfare recipients, stockbrokers, Republicans, Democrats, the President, the Governor, the Mayor. Our common sense, however, tells us that none of these can accurately be cited as the source of Americas financial doldrums.

That is because the true source of Americas financial doldrums is the old American Basketball Association. This nation was doing just fine until the merger of the A.B.A. with the National Basketball Association. Our national debt just prior to the merger was a manageable five hundred billion dollars; only ten million people were out of work; and only fifteen million more people on welfare drained the nations lifeblood; murder, rape, burglary, larceny, arson, and vandalism caused untold suffering to no more than one person in every three households.