Yessir. When it comes to the end times, there’s only one distilled alcoholic beverage / irreverent antipodean brand you can rely on to keep you toasty warm as society collapses. That’s yours truly, 42BELOW. So join us as we guide you through the essential skillset required to keep one’s composure in times of rapid and total societal disintegration. Stay frosty peeps, don’t let rampant cosmic catastrophe keep you from living a full life, we’ll guide you through the ins and outs of grace under fire over the next 11 months up until d-day on the 21st December.

Part 1 of The Urban Survivalist’s Guide to Better Living through Vodka in Times of Super-Rapid Urban Decay:

1. ONLY HIGHLY EVOLVED BEINGS ARE SWEATING IT

You don’t see Labradors and Axylotyl’s with crow’s feet, fine lines and wrinkles, or high cholesterol, getting all stressed out about the world ending. They just dribble and smile, or drift around the fish tank looking all cute with their four arms and furry antlers. Take a leaf from their playbook. Dribble more, stress less.

2. FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED.

You’ll certainly need forearms for this crisis. How else will you fend off the inevitable zombie hordes and prepare delicious cocktails in your well stocked bunker? (More to come on bunker stocking in Edition 2.) Don’t remove your forearms.

3. FRUIT. VODKA. CHARISMA.

The beneficial effects of fruit and vegetables are suggested to be related to the presence of antioxidants. The presence of high quality Vodka in your blood stream is anecdotally related to palpable increases in charisma, sexual magnetism, and hilarious anecdotes. Far be it from us to draw conclusions given this limited dataset. But presumably a tastefully prepared Seabreeze or Bloody Mary would better equip one to deal with the coming Apocalypse or to gainfully enjoy the last 11 months of civilization than say, a Glass of Water? Ew, water…

Well there you have it. A light hearted introduction to the impending crisis with a focus on quality vodka and good, solid, New Zealand survival skills. Remember we have bears running wild in our cities, so we know what this stuff is about. Stay tuned for more helpful hints over the coming months, next month we’ll show you how to prepare a quality Vodka survival kit so you can prepare cocktails for your valued guests using just canned fruit and a little bit of love. And how to outsmart wild dogs. Even when you’re not that smart.

Each week fans brought bits of blank paper, buttons or jars and swapped them for delcious 42BELOW cocktails from the Callooh Callay mixology wizards. For each piece of nothing you brought you got a free drink of Nothing™. The Nothing™ in 42Below vodka came from it being distilled right here in New Zealand, one of the least polluted countries on Earth. With nothing in the air and nothing in the water, nothing goes into 42Below but pure vodka. Get it? Brillant, innit?

The state of the economy right now expect plenty more vodka-based trading systems to be on the rise.

But just to take things a step further. The 42BELOW UK team went and resurrected the classic and often overlooked Espresso Martini with their own twist…called the Flat White.

1 part cold New Zealand Espresso,

1 1/2 parts 42BELOW Vodka

1 1/2 parts Kahlua,

1 part white Crème de Cacao

Pour ingredients into shaker filled with ice, shake vigorously and strain into a 42BELOW Coffee Cup. Or whatever you’ve got in the cupboard.

42Below gently lubricated the brains of America’s finest connoisseurs of modern artwork. With the skynet of digital music services, Spotify and the bad-boys (+ girls) of 21st century publishing VICE, we called it Music ♥ Art – Just like Horse & Carriage, Hand & Glove, Vodka & Soda, Hall & Oates, Adam West & Burt Ward. Some things were meant to be together.

It all went down at the Ricochet Lounge on First Avenue.

Over 4 nights we paired big names in the music world with some of the world’s top visual artists for a unique live performance all under the one roof. The insane list of renowned visual artists, performers and  DJs involved included Nas, Theophilus London, TV on the Radio, Rashid Johnson, Kalup Linzy, Penguin Prison, Mark  Farina and the seriously cooking Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings. For all those who couldn’t make it VICE have a web-series – VICE Meets Spotify Live – coming out this month to showcase the extreme coolness of this event. Catch it at VICE.com.

42Below’s always been a fan of mad-level innovation. But we’re not just about the party people. We are also. Serious. Glamour. Kittens.

Here’s a taster but for the full experience  of missing out on the best parties in the world! check out the two galleries he’s posted here and here:

Guests included: Fashionistas Alexander Wang, Philip Lim, G Star, Chris Benz, Colin Cowie, CAA and Tiffany’s plus media, PR and creative gurus Refinery 29, Stylecaster, Harper’s Bazaar, Paper Magazine, NY Post, Isaac Hindin Miller of Isaac Likes, Anna Kendrick, Topher Grace, Mike Vogel.

We also want to give a massive shout out to River East Art Center. Itss a pretty special place as is, even without 42Below and Theophilus London kicking out the jams. Just steps from Navy Pier and downtown Chicago Illinois this huge centre consists of more than ten thousand square feet of event space designed to pay homage to the appreciation of sophisticated fine art. Just the place you’d expect to find a little artwork from downunder, the most awarded Vodka in the world – 42BELOW.

The biggest nights of the week were the opening and closing parties at the legendary Alice Tully Hall and 42Below made our presence felt with some of the classiest cocktails imaginable. Perfectly suited to the glitterati crowd. Seriously, don’t be surprised if next time you see us we’re dating Scarlett Johansson and heading round to a pool party at Jack Nicholson’s. 42Below – sophisticated, artsy and effortlessly mingling with the cinema’s elite. From Hamilton to New York. It was only a matter of time.

After the success of our pop-up bar “Nineteen42″ last year, we had to it again, bigger and better. For 42 nights, the organ grinder played and the party people of Auckland danced and gamboled like marionettes to his jaunty tunes. All the while a handpicked selection of Auckland’s finest bartenders provided delicious vodka-based cocktails for their delectation. Mwah!

Together with the 42BELOW fans of Auckland and enthusiasts from all over the world we partied hard and learnt a variety of important life lessons:

• Candie-floss and facial hair don’t mix
• Dancing Girls are good, a pop-up bar simply cannot have too many of these
• Growing up is for losers, stay weird forever
• Face paint makes people feel anonymous and mysterious, both good
• Stilts and cocktails make ankles angry, don’t combine them
• Tables can take a surprising number of people dancing on them

Relive the good times with photos and comments on facebook or stay up to the minute on all things 42 via twitter @42below.

The beautiful people were out in force for the re-opening of Miami Mega-Club Amnesia. Being really, really ridiculously good-looking is thirsty work damnit! So where do you turn to but the clean refreshing taste of 42BELOW Vodka ɯoɹɟ ǝɥʇ ɹǝɥʇo ǝpıs. And, since we’re hardly the shyest of kiwis, we decided to encourage this healthy process by setting up three hypnotic video loops to play on giant LED screens in this 26,000 sq foot behemoth of a nightclub. Crashing waves, falling water, all flowing in reverse. Makes me thirsty just looking at them. Check ‘em out here on the small screen.