This is always a mental challenge, because my answer is never settled. It depends.

For years, the answer was selfish. That sounds harsh, but it follows a kind of logic: if there is no more me, then what remains doesn’t concern me much. So I started with the basics—air, food, water, safety.

I leaned into that early. Hitchhiking, backpacking—those years trained me to carry what mattered. The backpacking author Colin Fletcher had already made the case: good shoes are not optional. They’re foundational. So I bought the best I could. I was poor.

And then I climbed mountains in sandals.

When those broke, I stripped a pair of old roller skates down to the leather and walked on that. It took me a while to realize the leather was never meant to meet the ground.

I eventually bought better.

That’s the problem with “important things.” They don’t stay put. They shift under pressure, ignorance, improvisation. What you think matters gets tested by what actually works.

In the mid-1960s, “important” meant surviving nuclear war. We practiced for it—alarms, drills, hiding under desks. No one explained how a wooden desk was supposed to negotiate with radiation.

At eighteen, I returned to the problem with better tools—mobility, logic, a little more awareness. I still wanted the same things: shelter, water, food, safety. But I didn’t have the means to build a bunker.

So I adjusted the plan.

Pay attention. Move fast. Get out of town.

But where?

West meant ocean—limited food and water, no real way to escape what drifted in. Radiation doesn’t respect the shoreline.

So I thought in terms of targets—military sites, population centers—and the wind patterns that would carry what followed.

It got complicated fast.

On balance, the best option seemed to be northeast. Avoid what I could. Move far enough east, then north past Mt. Lassen.

There’s a corner of California that feels like a sanctuary: the Modoc lava lands. Water hidden under rock, natural caves, quieter weather—and, in my thinking at the time, fewer reasons for anything to drift that way.

So I went.

I buried two months of food and some tools. Drew a map. Then went back to my life, knowing there was a place that might be safe.

I suppose it’s still there. Rusted. Useless. Hidden.

And fifty years later—

unimportant.