Survive Infinite Dangers: The Family Survival Guide of 21st Century Dangers (16 page)

During Katrina some police officers (the 50% who reported for duty) were filmed loading televisions and all types of non-survival items into their squad cars. When confronted by media they said they were only taking “survival items” (as one held a DVD player). “Public servants” are people too so that’s not to say many did not do their jobs under very trying circumstances and were true heroes but more than a few were not. When confronted with Armageddon, guess what? They are probably more concerned about the welfare of their own family then they are about you. There are times you have to look after yourself. The many possible scenarios in this book list many of those “you are totally on your own so act accordingly!”

Your new group quickly sets up a defendable location and then fans out looking only for items that can aid in survival; guns, food, water and so on. Find out the skills of those in your new group. Add others as you encounter them. Some will be injured and some very badly injured. Lend comfort and aid as best you can but be prepared to deal with mass casualties. In a city with concrete everywhere you can’t even bury the dead. There are probably too many anyway. As gruesome as it sounds move the dead until you have a defensible area hundreds of feet away from any dead person or animal. Be prepared to move your group. Most likely you’ll be sharing quarters with others. You have to hope your numbers outweigh the advantage those have with guns. If they are “good people” (or just one person) with guns ask (plead!) for them (him or her) to join your group. Even one gun with ammunition raises the odds of survival of your group by many times. Your numbers and group skills will be of great help to the person or persons with a gun (tell them because it is true). Take anything not essential for survival and you become a criminal and “shame on you!” even if it is a $10,000 diamond ring no one could possibly see you take. When this is over you will emerge as you were before; a good law abiding honest person who cares for others. Yes, I know. Others will “loot” what you pass by but that should not matter.

That should cover the unlikely event of you being at the epicenter and being relatively intact and unhurt after the fact.

That’s about the only time when fleeing (at first) makes sense. It makes sense to flee to reach your safe area. It makes sense to flee if where you are is very dangerous for any number of reasons.

Other than that if you are in your safe area along with most of your group then stay there and prepare for a long stay! Set up prepared in advance perimeter defenses. Only leave your safe area if it sustained considerable damage to the point of being unusable and/or dangerous. We’ll assume that is not the case.

Have thoughts of fleeing to the farm country outside your city and “living off the land”? Let’s say you’re in perfect health and were once a Navy SEAL. You spent a week being dropped into a forest wearing only a pair of shorts and you had to live off the land for a week. You passed the test and emerged in great health wearing beaver pelt clothes and you could have spent an entire summer out there. Well, that was then and this is now. You now probably have a wife and a couple of kids. You still think your Navy training will ensure your “back to nature” survival. Unless you were among the first to leave the city the first thing you encounter is – you’re not alone! Many thousands of people had the same idea. Mostly people who keep a few days of food on hand and know absolutely nothing about survival. They have a few containers of water, some food and other essentials in an overnight bag and then drove as far as they could before their gas ran out. Most assumed gas stations would still be working and not a one has anything to siphon gas from other cars. So they’ve taken off on foot. You pass the bodies of those who didn’t know which of the bush and tree berries were poisonous. The good berries are gone too as is virtually all firewood. You can still feed your family as you know how to dig for certain edible roots and other things that live underground. Your wife and kids will refuse to eat worms for a few days until they get hungry enough and you’ve added seasoning to the mush to disguise what it really is.

Since most cars can travel about 300 miles on a full tank of gas you will have to be at least 300 miles from a major city before your Navy SEAL training does you much good. How much of that did you have to travel on foot? You and your family are exhausted but your “flight to safety” has only begun. If the disaster was just regional then you are very lucky. Travel far enough and you do reach safety. Your decision to flee was a wise one. But let’s assume the disaster was more than regional.

You are now 300 miles from home and all the supplies you brought with you are gone. Yes, you can “live off the land” but the other 99% of the people out there with you cannot. Many have one dangerous item – a gun; helpful in most situations but dangerous in this one. The ones with no guns surrender all they have down to their underwear and are left to die or they are shot before they can say a word. The ones with guns turn the woods with the rapidly depleted wild game, farm crops and so forth into Dodge City. As has already been written in almost any disaster other people are your biggest danger. Too late to turn back so your best chance is to join together with others you’ve learned also have skills on your level or close to it. Your new group finds an abandoned small town and sets up a defensive area. Welcome to a real “Mad Max” movie. Welcome to the rest of your life. Now wouldn’t you have been better off remaining in your safe area along with the friends and neighbors who have joined and worked to put together a virtual fortress stocked to survive for a year? I rest my case.

Now that I’ve popped that balloon allow me to do the same to the many financially well off individuals who decided to buy a top of the line Winnebago after the MLK riots or the Los Angeles riots (in the days before our government finally admitted we’ve been under attack by terrorists who were not Russian, Chinese or Vietnamese since the first recorded terrorist attack by the original Al Qaeda in 1928 – you can usually trust government to keep you in the dark “for your own safety”) or the less well off a pop up camper shells loading both with what they believe they’ll need to live in a rural RV park for a few weeks while the National Guard restores civil order back in your home city. That was before terrorism. Maybe you added a few items (like extra fuel) but you think you’ll still be fine no matter what the disaster is. You load your family in the 38 foot motor coach RV or hook the pop up camper to your bumper hitch and hit the road.

The first impediment you encounter is grid-lock. Hopefully, you planned enough to drive a half dozen really, really back roads to where you plan to go (if you plan to just drive with no destination in mind that is suicide in the first degree). By taking back roads and alleys you hit the outer suburbs in five hours. You’re almost out of gas and you’re only 10% to your destination! If you’re among the money is no object RV group you lashed a few hundred gallons of fuel to the top and sides of your vehicle. A rolling bomb that will take only one gun shot to blow you hundreds of feet into the air. More likely you’ll encounter one of the many “bad guy” road blocks who see a luxury van coming and know it is stuffed with survival goods, bricks of gold and rich people they might even be able to hold for ransom! You have plenty of guns so you resist. They point at all the “bombs” strapped onto your RV and you give up. At best you are left by the side of the road watching the caravan of “bad guys” drive off in your RV. At worst – you’re dead. If you spent $200,000 on the RV and another $200,000 on “creature comforts and you are going to drive your RV to “safety” no matter what at least spend another $100,000 to give yourself a fighting chance. There are RV “mod shops” around the country that can do just about anything you want. Check them out carefully as many who were body shops yesterday making a basic living fixing bent bumpers who today have a fancy Web site, service bay guys in tuxedos and wine and cheese in the “closing room”. See some of their past work. Keep in mind many of their customers of bullet proof cars don’t want their identities known.

Be willing to look at the vehicles with license plates covered and talk to the owners by phone. Do you home work or you’ll end up with a few metal plates welded on and out of pocket $100,000. You can spend $10,000 to millions. Some of the most secure government SUV’s and RV’s cost the taxpayer millions apiece. Still want to proceed? Maybe a million dollars is pocket change to you. Great then let’s go further. You’ll require “run flat” tires and bullet proof fuel tanks plus extra tanks welded in protected areas. All windows will have to be bullet proof. All doors double insulated with bullet proof steel. If money truly is no object then use Kevlar to line the frame but not steel. That much steel will grind you down to a few miles a gallon in gas mileage. Consider a super charged engine and have bullet stopping steel on all sides. Then, all the James Bond stuff you see in movies like the oil slicks, guns that fire by remote control and so on. To be truly safe have two vehicles with the other a million dollar Cadillac Escalade with all the same features plus more. Change the price tag from $100,000 to $2 million. You are now set to go to war. You’ll blast through the many road blocks until they’ve radioed ahead to get out of the way. Scale all of this down by 99% for a pop up camper shell but also note your journey ends at the first road block.

Plan to head out in the family sedan or van? The trunk or van stacked with two weeks of water and everything this book says you need to survive. Vans to a gang in a civil emergency where people are known to be fleeing are rolling convenience stores. RV’s are each a Super Walmart! The really dumb people (you are not dumb – you bought this book!) head for the freeway and immediately get into gridlock. Underpasses are the location of choice for gangs. They have stolen semis up above and dozens of armed to the teeth men going car to car collecting wallets, rings, money, water, food and anything of value. Have your trunks open and valuables ready for their convenience. Put up resistance and they’ll shoot you dead. For them, “time is money”. One in three drivers will end up dead anyway. Have a lot of guns and want to “off” a few? Think you can shoot your way out? If I knew I was going to die but had a few shot guns, hand guns and an AR-15 I’d take as many with me as I could before the endless hoards finally got to me. But there would be many dead bad guys. Remember as you walk a city street, except for a civil society and fear of arrest and punishment about one percent of our population is just plain bad. Given the chance they’ll shoot you for almost any reason. They’ll certainly rob you given the chance. A break down in society brings out the worst of society. They’ll go 24 hours a day until their houses and cars are filled with TV’s, microwaves, jewelry and anything else that can be stolen. Watch some of the Rodney King riots on Youtube to see just how inhumane one person can be to another. A truck driver pulled from his truck for no reason and his head smashed in with a tire iron. No reason. “Just because” the guy said when caught. It was taped on camera from a helicopter above so finding the culprit was easy. Not so, the killers of 39 other people who were killed just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Do not underestimate the animalistic tendencies of a very small percentage of mankind. I do animals an injustice by describing such cruelty that way. Animals have to eat. They don’t savage other animals to be cruel. But people do. Jump in the family sedan and “head out” and that’s probably your last day on the face of this earth.

Except for those in the unique situations where they must flee to remain alive have I convinced everyone else to work, work, work on your safe area and your group then be prepared for, as the nursery rhyme goes “a long winter’s nap”? If I haven’t, you are one stubborn person! But good luck!

If I can’t convince you any other way to stay put where you know the problems instead of going to where you don’t know the problems, think of Anne Frank and WW2. She survived for years and almost made it to 1945. If she did it holed up in small hidden room for years surely you can “go stealth” and hide for six months!

WHEN YOU MUST FLEE

Now, after, hopefully, convinced you are facing the bad known only to venture out to the possible even worse unknown, there are circumstances where you have no choice but to flee either on foot or in a vehicle if it still functions. If you have no guns taking a vehicle is a bad idea. You are a moving target and thousands of bad guys covet your transportation. If you travel more than a few miles before being forcibly stopped, you’ll be lucky. Yes, you can carry more but why carry it for a few miles only to have it taken by others who will then have you in the open undefended. Fleeing on foot is almost always the best idea. The exception is, of course, where civil society still exists and you are fleeing a natural disaster where police and fire protection is there to direct your departure.

Go to
www.wikipedia.com
then look up the term “fire storm”. This is a fire so horrendous and huge that it can even produce its own weather. Fire conflagrations such as the Yellowstone Park fire produced tornadoes inside the fire storm. In a heavily wooded large park acres of trees can literally explode and burn within seconds. If there is little wind, fire storms produce wind. It is often impossible to out run a fire storm even in a vehicle so early departure is wise. Often, fire storms are a natural result of a dry summer and a lightning storm often accompanied with no rain. Those of you who live in California are very aware and experienced with this danger. There is probably much you can teach me about fire mitigation. First come the fires intensified by the winds and kept going by the beautiful vegetation (but where there should have been a fire break!) then when the rainy season hits the burnt hill sides slide in huge megatons of mud covering all in its path.