Former special forces operative shares the one thing you shouldn’t do in an ‘end of the world’ scenario

A former special forces operative has shared some of the places that you should avoid if the world ends.

Many of us may have idly thought about what we might do if civilisation were to completely collapse.

It might be the more outlandish, like coming up with the best zombie plan - in which case it's hard to beat taking up residence in a sea fort, though food, weather, and other humans might be an issue.

Alternatively, there's the more real world scenarios, such as a pandemic, climate catastrophe, artificial intelligence, or nuclear war. In the latter scenario the best option may, rather bleakly, to simply be as close to the bombs as possible and get it over with rather than facing the truly nightmarish reality that comes after.

But let's say it's something that's enough to see the total collapse of civilisation but without the annihilation of a nuclear war, Jack Richland is a former marine who runs the popular YouTube channel Black Scout Survival.

This shares tips on how you can maximise your chances of surviving if the worst happens, assuming you even want to live in that world, of course.

And he told CNN about some places which at first you are going to want to avoid like, well, the plague.

What would you do if the worst happened? (Getty Stock)

"Find out where threats are," he said. "I would not go to the first wave targets, that would be grocery stores, gas stations, and pharmacies, I would stay away from those."

And of course when you think about it, that makes an awful lot of sense.

This is because of the number one threat that Jack shared you would be likely to face if society were to collapse - other people.

Anyone who's played a post-apocalyptic survival game or seen the movies might be able to tell you that - it's not the zombies that end up offing the antihero Joal in The Last of Us, and the truly awful post-nuclear film Threads, the post-nuclear breakdown of society shows up the dangers people pose to each other.

Jack shares survival tips on everything from knife-fighting, something you would hope to not need to use, to lock picking.

And while he has been doing survival coaching for a long time, he shared that in the time since he started, the audience has changed.

How would you survive the apocalypse? (Getty Stock)

"When I started 14 years ago it was more people interested in doomsday prepping," he said. "Now it seems to be more the common person, the guy who works a job at a tech company who wants to take care of his family."

It's perhaps a reflection of the times we live in where seemingly every week brings a new existential threat to the future of humanity.

The past few years have brought a global pandemic, as well as rising global tensions as the established geopolitical order begins to move into a transition from the previous order.

Then of course there is the development of artificial intelligence, including reports of AI models breaking containment.

Finally, there is perhaps the largest threat of all, the breakdown of our climate, throwing into question our very ability to sustain life as our own bodies become polluted with the things we pump into the environment.

Taking all that into consideration, it's perhaps not surprising that more people are feeling the need to take advantage of Jack's survival training services.