When the zombie apocalypse comes, how will I get my coffee? It’s a question of concern to me. I began enjoying coffee at the then-tender age of nineteen. I worked at Clinkerdagger, Bickerstaff, and Petts, affectionately known as Clink’s, which was a theme restaurant in midtown Anchorage. One of our perks was free coffee. Having grown up around the smell of instant Sanka and the like, I was instantly smitten.

People brag about two things: being bad at math and being addicted to coffee. The first boast is particularly endemic, for reasons too deep to plumb here, to educators of the non-math-teacher variety. (Except I will say this: imagine a math teacher saying, “You know, I’m really good at math, but I can barely read.”) The second is practically everybody, my sisters being a notable exception. When I go to Powhatan, I have to plan ahead.

For many years, when I would go home to visit, I would visit a lady who had been a family friend for many decades. One time she offered me coffee. I perked up like a bird dog, and said, “Yes, please! A little cream, no sugar!” What the dear soul gave me, though, was a packet of instant Sanka, circa 1982. I swilled down as much as I could in the name of manners, but soon had to set it down in the name of taste buds. Thereafter, when visiting her, I requested tea. She soon adopted the cheery phrase, “Would you like some coffee or tea? Oh, I remember now, you prefer tea.”

My field research, consisting of drinking lots of coffee and those two times I followed a (very) chipper lady on a guided tour around a Kauai coffee plantation, tells me there are two major varieties of coffee in the world. One, known as Arabica, is the kind we puny Americans like. The other, Robusta, is popular in Europe and Asia. The Vietnamese, apparently, drink Robusta with a concentration more viscous than liquid. The one time I tried it, I thought my face would explode.

In many parts of the world, you can pay a lot extra to have your coffee beans pre-eaten and pooped out by a small arboreal mammal. Maybe it’s like a lobster display case? You look them over, and say, “that one”?

I have tried many coffee substitutes over the years, and they have all been a disappointment. So when society breaks down, how will I keep my supply of the real thing? I’ll let you know after I do some more research.