Hurting

I heard something on TV the other night that rang true. I was watching a documentary and one of the participants mentioned that “Hurt people, hurt people”. To put that in context, he was talking about growing up in a family with abusive relations, and he was referring to the fact that most abusers were abused themselves. People who have been hurt tend to hurt others. I'm not going to cover victims of abuse; that's a topic for a professional and would take years to cover properly. If you are one of those victims, please seek help and do what you can to break the cycle.

I know some out there are thinking “What's this got to do with prepping?”, but unless you're stranded on an island with nobody else around, you're going to be dealing with people. In times of crisis, you'll be dealing with people more than most of us do on a daily level, and it will be face-to-face rather than on a phone or computer. Interpersonal communications is one of the casualties of our modern society; the growth of electronic devices has made it easier to communicate, but has taken the “personal” out of the equation. Any of the scenarios that shut down electronic communications (EMP, CME, large-scale disaster, war, etc.) will put the “personal” back, so you need to be ready for it.

I'm old enough to have grown up before the internet. I was in high school when personal computers became available; I've watched the evolution of how people communicate, and it hasn't always been for the better. The anonymity of typing on a keyboard, saying whatever you want to whoever you want, is a recent development. For most of history and in times where those electronic devices aren't available, saying most of the things I see online would and will result in a very personal response. Spout off to the wrong person without a computer screen between you and someone is going to get their ass kicked.

The people that you meet are more than just the face and body that you can see: they have a history that is unknown to you until you start to interact with them. Watch for the “coping mechanisms” like drug/alcohol abuse that many use to dull the pains they've accumulated. Our bodies produce some potent drugs of their own, so the adrenaline junkies and sex addicts are in the same category as the town drunk and the local meth heads.

Humans are animals with a touch of the ability to reason. We can rise above our basic nature, but it takes effort, training, or a belief system that teaches us that we're “above” the animals. Wounded animals are dangerous -- they will lash out at anything near them in their pain -- and wounded humans aren't much different, because pain of any sort can strip away the desire or ability to rise above our basic animal nature. The source of that pain can be physical, emotional, spiritual, or a combination of those, and all of those are common in times of crisis. Some people can recover from injuries, but others can't. Sometimes the injury and the pain is just too deep and they carry it for the rest of their lives. This will affect how they deal with others and is something you need to watch for.

None of this is written as an excuse for bad behavior. I'm not making excuses for assholes; just be aware that some people are the way they are because of things that you're unaware of and probably can't affect. You need to find ways to deal with people of all types in order to get things done after TSHTF, and they're not all going to be easy to deal with.

Start practicing now by getting some experience dealing with people on a personal level. My current job has me interacting with customers 10-20 times a day. I'm in a rural area where everybody knows everybody, so it's easier for me to relate to people on a personal level. Some of my customers are pleasant and courteous, while others are assholes; I deal with them as best I can and try to learn a bit from each of them. Remember that even an asshole is useful; if nothing else, they're a good example of how not to act. 

Prudent Prepping: Sharing the Good News

The dust has settled and the First 72 Hours have passed. Follow along as I build a long term plan via Prudent Prepping.

I’m still going through boxes and I’m not settled in yet, but there appears to be some light at the end of the moving tunnel. My hope is that it’s not a runaway train!

Good News
I’ve been talking to some of my co-workers about prepping, but only after I was asked about all the gear in my lunchbox/ice chest. We've all been in one of “those” conversations involving bunkers, guns and safe rooms before, and I try to avoid getting involved in them if at all possible. Thankfully, I don’t get them with my group; we happen to be older than the average employee for this type of retail business and tend to have a more serious attitude when it comes to caring for our families and ourselves.

So when I'm questioned, it's a genuine request for real information. One man is moving to a fairly rural area soon and had asked about prepping for colder weather -- his property has trees and it seems like he's planning to be reasonably self-sufficient. Unfortunately, the only book he has is the one that seems to be the basis for all the really bad TV shows on prepping. No, I’m not going to mention it or put up a link.

I did give him an off-the-top-of-my-head reading list and the address to this blog, and I gave him the book that I happened to have in my car: Les Stroud's SURVIVE! Essential Skills and Tactics to Get You Out of Anywhere - Alive.

From the back cover: 

https://amzn.to/2D8Vo4X

Stroud offers readers the essential skills and tactics necessary to endure in any corner of the globe, along with a wealth of insider information born of his own experiences in the outdoors and unavailable in any other book. Readers will learn:

• How to make a survival shelter and why a lean-to is largely a waste of time.
• Why survival kits are important, and why you should make your own.
• Where to find water and why drinking contaminated water is sometimes warranted.
• How to locate and trap small animals and why the notion of tracking and hunting large game is largely a pipe dream.

I really like this book for its information on survival in many different climates, even if I’m never going to be in the Amazon or the Sahara. My copy is marked up and has Post-It flags for the chapters I need, and after going over what was marked, my friend appreciated the book. I told him to keep it, but I have a suspicion I’ll get a copy back (if not the one I gave him) soon.

Even More Good News
My friends are with me in preparing for emergencies! I’ve put much of my stored food (still in totes) where everyone can find it, and everyone knows what's inside. I do have some things stored just for me, but the majority is for everyone to share. Lucky for me, what could have been a clash of cultures isn’t a problem -- my friend is Asian, and all of her cooking is absolutely amazing! There have been several attempts to ‘Stump the White Guy’ and serve unknown items, but my tastes are varied and I have only a very small list of foods that I avoid. Nothing I’ve been served over the years is offensive or impossible to eat. I've learned to cook food from several different cultures, and now have learned several different recipes from my ‘Sister’! 

My purchase of the emergency ladder mentioned in last week’s post has been pushed back at least one week and maybe two because some things changed last week here in California. One thing that I don't normally talk about is the subject of armed personal protection, it because California is not very self-protection friendly. That changed last week with a court ruling, making it easier to buy items that could possibly help in self-protection. That ruling only lasted a week, and from hearsay reports potentially millions of these items were ordered and shipped into California! I looked into spending part of my prepping budget and found that most online retailers were sold out and had very long back-order lists! Several gun blogs were asking their readers not to order so that Californians could have first shot (heh!) at the inventory! Quite a good problem to have, if you’re an online retailer.

The Takeaway

• Always be open to answering honest questions. Who knows where the conversation will lead?
• Prepping means having more than food put away. Some ready cash should be available to make emergency purchases!

The Recap

• One copy of Les Stroud's SURVIVE! was given away and needs to be replaced. 
• If you don't have a copy, Amazon has a paperback version available for $8.32 with Prime.

Just a reminder: if you plan on buying anything through Amazon, please consider using our referral link. When you do, a portion of the sale comes back here to help keep this site running!

If you have comments, suggestions or corrections, please post them so we all can learn. And remember, Some Is Always Better Than None!

NOTE: All items tested were purchased by me. No products have been loaned or given in exchange for a favorable review. Any items sent to me for T&E will be listed as such. Suck it Feds.

Play as Prepping

I know we cover a lot of serious issues on this blog, staying alive tends to be a serious thing to most people. Having done my share of doom and gloom posts, it's time to change things up a bit. I do like to have fun once in a while. Here are my thoughts on an unconventional way to improve your prepping skills or at least get a chance to explore possibilities without risking your life. It may even be a way to introduce a non-prepper to the lifestyle.

Video games are popular and most households have a computer or console for playing on. I never caught the PC gaming bug, I prefer to use a dedicated console for recreational gaming (currently an Xbox One S, the Xbox 360 got demoted to Netflix service). There are thousands of games on the market and most of the “survival” themed games involve zombies since it is more palatable to kill undead monsters than realistic human beings. The graphics on the newest consoles are getting close to photograph quality, depending on the artists, so it's an issue that the developers have to consider before going to market. Killing people is still frowned upon outside of combat games so zombies are the default targets.

My personal favorite ZS game is an indie game that got picked up by Microsoft back in 2013. Originally released on the download-only market (Xbox Live Arcade), it got remastered and polished for release on the Xbox One in 2015. The name of the game is “State of Decay” (SoD) and it is not your usual zombie survival (ZS) game. I've played through several ZS games like Dead Island, Dead Rising, Dead Space, and Left 4 Dead and they all focused on combat and super-powered zombies. Willful suspension of disbelief is fine for entertainment, but when I want a mental challenge the game has to be believable. That's where State of Decay shines.

• Supplies don't respawn, so you have to keep looking for food, ammo, and other survivors. Food can be grown but it takes time and a lot of space to grow enough to feed people. Cars and pickups are available, but take damage that requires a mechanic to repair.
• The weapons are common items, no rare or experimental super weapons to tip the balance in your favor. The game developers actually went to a gun range and test-fired several weapons and got training on their use before making the game, so firearms are close to realistic in use. This is a refreshing change from most video games.
• Weapons wear out. Maintaining things becomes very important when you can no longer just go to the store and buy a new one.
• The zombies are basically human, no super-strong exploding screamers that tip the balance towards the zombies. The exceptions are things like police/military in body armor that got infected, they take more fire power to stop. I find that believable, a head shot on a target wearing a Kevlar helmet would take more than a 22LR to be effective.
• Your reputation is used as a form of currency. This makes sense to me, being an ass towards other people is not a survival trait in most situations. There are times when you will run into people you don't want to have around and how you deal with them affects your reputation with various groups, kind of like real life in that respect.
• Death is permanent. If the horde catches you outside your fenced-in compound and makes a meal of your character, there is no respawn point. That character is dead and gone, along with his reputation, and everything he was carrying is left lying on the ground. To continue the game, you need to switch to a different character in your group (something you do to improve their stats anyway). If you run out of people in your group the game ends.
• Community is important. Loners don't last long, so you have to look for and recruit other survivors. Gathering a balanced group that has overlapping skill sets is important to making a viable community, just like forming a tribe in real life.
• Dealing with other groups is an integral part of the game. How you treat other groups, from the family of moonshiners on the hill to the remnants of a city government changes your options for survival. Trading with other groups, large or small, affects your reputation.
• Stealth is important. The zombies in SoD are attracted to noise, so being stealthy will allow you to avoid battles you might not win. Distractions like firecrackers and friends drawing their attention from a distance are also part of the game.

This is a game, but some of the options and decisions are going to be life-like. Being a game, the developers had to balance things like weapons effects and food usage, so expect a measure of “artistic license” in some areas. The main complaint from reviewers was that the game was too difficult, as if surviving a zombie outbreak was supposed to be easy. You play through a “third-person” point of view, which means your “camera” is above and slightly behind the character most of the time.

There are two add-ons for the base game, “Breakdown” is an open-ended sandbox version with no story line or objective other than survival and “Lifeline” is played from the military's point of view and is more defensive and time-based.

The next generation of SoD has been in development since before 2013 (SoD was released as a way to fund the development of the game they really wanted to make) and a 2017 release date will be announced soon. Expect multiplayer and much larger maps for SoD2, but not much else is being released before the E3 expo in mid-June 2017.

Disclaimer:

I have no financial interest in this or any other video game, I just like the way it makes me think about actions and their consequences. I am not being paid to say nice things about this game, nor am I a professional reviewer.

Prep? Me?

Why should “I” prep?

We hear this question often. It seems to be second only to “What do I need?”, and neither question has an easy answer.

Absent a disaster or wide-spread emergency, people need to be prepared for the daily possibilities that can throw them out of their normal routines and could threaten their lives or lifestyle.


Case in Point

Two women were driving several hundred miles to visit family a few states away. On the way back home, they decided to do some sight-seeing through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Since it was late April, winter was over and the weather was cool but normal for the area. As they were sight-seeing, they turned off the main road to see a lighthouse on Lake Superior. Their SUV got stuck in a snow bank far from civilization and it took 13 days for authorities to find them.

I know it may come as a shock to some who live in cities, but there are large swathes of the US that don't have cell phone towers or service. I live within 50 miles of two medium-sized cities, and there is a little town 15 miles from my house that just got a cell phone tower last Fall. Sitting in a deep valley, it was a handy place to go if you wanted to eat lunch/drink beer without the wife/boss being able to call. Those cell phone coverage maps you see in the commercials are always zoomed out to show the entire USA because that hides the pockets of little to no coverage.

It's 2015, and there are still wilderness areas that are not patrolled or even visited on a daily basis. It took an aerial search to find the stuck SUV, and once found it took a helicopter landing almost a mile away to get to them. Rescuers had to hike to where they were, and carried them back to the helicopter for evacuation with the aid of some recreational ATV riders who happened to be in the area.

Back to the two ladies: they were lucky in that they were sisters, in their 50s, and from Midwest states (NE and OK). They grew up without cell phones and GPS, so the lack of them wasn't as big a deal as it would be for someone raised in a city and in their 20s. They knew each other, their needs, and their capabilities. They were experienced with cold weather, so the below-freezing nights weren't foreign experiences.

How Did They Survive?

Water

They melted snow for water by placing it in bottles that they then put on the roof of the SUV to catch the sun. They were a little worried that the warming weather would melt all of the snow, leaving them with nothing to drink, but were rescued before that happened.

• If snow is your main source of drinking water, always melt it before consuming it. 
• Eating snow for moisture takes a lot of body heat, which then has to be replaced with calories from food. 
• Be aware that snow is only about 10% as dense as liquid water. 
• A five gallon bucket of snow will melt into about a half gallon of liquid.

Food

Eight boxes of Girl Scout Cookies, some candy, and some Cheese Puffs: not the most nutritionally balanced menu, but it was enough to keep them alive and not hungry all of the time. 

• It takes a bit longer than two weeks to actually starve to death, and the little amount of food that they had was enough to keep them going. 
• They tried to keep it to at least 500 calories per day, with a multi-vitamin supplement. That's not far from some rather severe diets I've seen people use to lose weight,

Shelter

Use what you have on hand. 

• They were traveling, so they had spare clothing with them. 
• They added layers until they were warm enough. 
• They stayed in their car at night, where their body heat could be conserved (and the bears couldn't get to them.)

Mindset
They knew they would be missed when they didn't show up at the next stop on their itinerary. 

• They stayed with the car. 
• A car makes a bigger target for searchers than a human body does. 
• They didn't waste (too much) energy. They knew that the car was stuck and they couldn't get it out. 
• They did walk during the daylight hours to leave signs where they thought people may see them. 
• They spent the time knitting and reading their Bible. They didn't give up.

Links

• KFAB interview
• OWH article
• Michigan news source

I try to avoid criticizing other people's preps (or lack thereof). What these two ladies went through was tough, and their lack of preparation made it tougher, but they survived. If it's stupid but it works, it's not stupid.

Normalizing Prepping

Picture by KJ Photography

& is used with permission.

It's been my experience that a lot of non-preppers look at us like we're crazy... or at least foolish. Since we preppers want to normalize prepping (If everyone is prepared for a disaster, then no one will be hurt or go hungry when one happens!), I asked a non-prepper friend to ask me a handful of questions to help her understand why I do what I do. She agreed, and this is what happened.

What made you specifically get into prepping?

A number of factors:

1. I live in a state where hurricanes regularly cause evacuations, so prepping for them seems just as natural as wearing my seatbelt when I drive my car. 
2. When you think about it, everyone preps: Smoke alarms are preps against fire. Car insurance is a prep against an accident. Health insurance is... you get the idea. 
3. All the men in my family are Eagle Scouts, so it's in my blood. And the Boy Scouts say "Be Prepared" and society looks at the BSA as a good thing, so why is it bad for me to take it to the next level?
4. It gives me something constructive to do instead of worrying. Proactive preparedness is healthier, both mentally and physically, than reactive worry. 
5. Besides, it's really cool to have just the tool or medicine or solution that someone needs. It's a rockstar moment for me to go "Hey, don't worry, I have just the thing for that in my bag."

Do you really think all this apocalypse talk is real?

Do I think some folks really believe the world will end? Sure. 

But what I think you're asking is, "Do you believe an apocalypse will happen?" And that invites the question of "Well, that depends on what you mean by an apocalypse." I don't think that there's going to be an ebola pandemic, or that the poles will catastrophically shift. 

However, I do think it's possible that some nasty stuff can happen. An electromagnetic pulse, either caused by the sun or by a rogue nation detonating a nuke in our upper atmosphere, is possible if unlikely. The New Madrid fault could go live and mess up the country's infrastructure. 

There are also some disasters that could happen because they've happened before, and if they do there's really nothing we as a species can do about it:

• The Yellowstone Supervolcano could erupt and cover most of the US in volcanic ash. 
• An asteroid, like the one that killed the dinosaurs, could hit the earth. 
• A nearby star could go supernova, emit a gamma-ray burst, and kill us with radiation. 

So yes, I do think an apocalypse is plausible. I don't spend my time worrying about it, though, because 

1. It's unlikely
2. If it happens, I'll likely die immediately. 

Where do you think the safest place to go is if there's an emergency?

The safest place to go in an emergency is wherever there isn't an emergency. I know that sounds flippant, but it's true, and that's a very open question. 

A more specific answer requires a more specific question. Sometimes it's best to get out of town (such as with natural disasters); sometimes it's best to shelter in your house (such as with disease or loss of infrastructure.) This is something you'll need to answer on a case by case basis, as you gain experience with prepping.

How are you different than those crazy people I see on TV with their escape routes and underground bunkers?

For starters, I'm not crazy.  I can't speculate as to the TV folks' mental state (Doomsday Preppers is a show that makes everyone look bad), but I can tell you that I've had my background checked multiple times, both at the state and federal level, and nothing jumped out at them to have them say "Hey, this chick is crazy."

I don't think it's crazy to have an escape route, though. Again, I live in a place where natural disasters happen -- back in 1998, the state was so dry that during the summer every county but one (the Keys) was burning from a wildfire. My family and I escaped the fire by knowing where to go. So why is it crazy to have an escape route?

"Underground bunkers."  I have friends in the Great Plains states (Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, etc) who have underground shelters where they can ride out a tornado and store their survival gear. These locations are called "basements" and are commonly built for houses in that part of the country. 

Now, if you want to make the differentiation between a basement and a $50,000+ bomb shelter for long term habitation -- yeah, that's kinda crazy in the "fiscally irresponsible" sense. But what does it hurt you for them to have one?


Let's say I'm interested in getting started, but on a very small level, like preparing for an emergency situation and not a SHTF kind of thing. What are your top three things you think I should do?

Look at you, using "SHTF" like a prepper!

1. Realize that emergencies can be personal rather than catastrophic: losing your job, having your house burn down, getting in an accident or contracting a long-term illness can be just as devastating. Get that part of your life in order first. 
2. Prepare for the most likely disaster first:  an earthquake if you live in California, a hurricane if you live in an Atlantic or Gulf state, a tornado in the midwest, an ice storm in a state with bad winters, etc. 
3. Read David Blackard's posts on this blog. He started off with having no preps, worked his way up to having 72 hours of supplies, and is now working on longer-term preps. 

I invite any non-prepper reading this blog to ask me further questions; I'm happy to answer them. I also invite my prepper readers to share why they got into prepping.