PlayStation have teamed up with Professor Lewis Dartnell from the University of Westminster, author of The Knowledge: How To Rebuild Our World After An Apocalypse, to explore the future welfare of the planet and civilisation, celebrating the recent release of new game Days Gone.
Their collaboration resulted in a report with some shocking key findings that revealed a global pandemic would actually be the likeliest route to an apocalypse, followed by climate change, coronal mass ejection (the sun 'spitting out' matter), a super-volcano or an asteroid strike.
Delving a little deeper into a potential pandemic, Professor Dartnell says that if 20% of the world's population contracted a lethal illness simultaneous, vital services and infrastructure would be on the brink of collapse, with agriculture and transport amongst those most affected.
With the current growing problem of antibiotic resistance within infections such as pneumonia and tuberculosis, because of antibiotic misuse in agriculture and the over-prescription to patients, we're progressively losing one of the many battles we face against germs.
Climate change is of course still a huge problem however, and could get to a point where it's occuring at such a rate that our infrastructure struggles to adapt to higher temperatures, and a lack of access to fresh water.
Should an apocalypse happen, motorbikes should be your preferred method of transport, due to their fuel efficiencies and manoeuvrability. This was clearly taken to heart by the developers behind Days Gone, as the protagonist travels the post-apocalyptic version of Oregon on his own bike.
In case of an apocalypse, PlayStation and Professor Dartnell have provided their top five tips on how to survive. Check them out below:
- Be wary of strangers: With the evaporation of government, police and courts, there will be no top-down organisation to maintain law and order. People would need to watch their backs very closely and choose carefully who they trust.
- Leave the cities: Modern urbanized areas simply won’t be habitable once the technological bubble that supports them collapse. A coastal region near a large wood will offer you access to a wide range of natural resources, with Formby, Merseyside and the North Norfolk coastline the most well equipped in the UK.
- Travel: After the apocalypse, you’ll need to make your own fuel - rendered animal fat or plant oil reacted with methanol (wood alcohol, distilled from heated timber) and lye (made by reacting soda with quicklime from roasted chalk or limestone) produces biodiesel.
- Fire would be a valuable commodity: Chapstick, Vaseline and hairspray are all great for helping get a fire started.
- Everyday items can help: An tampon also makes an ideal emergency dressing to stop a wound bleeding, which can be disinfected with alcohol such as vodka, and sealed with superglue.
The Professor adds: “An actual apocalypse is thankfully very unlikely, but the notion of the loss of everything that we take for granted today is a really good way of thinking about all we have to be grateful for in our modern lives. And games like Days Gone are a superb way of exploring this.”
Days Gone is available now, exclusive to PlayStation 4.