When All Hell Breaks Loose (14 page)

For most urbanites, life can be broken down into a few precious categories of physical needs. They are as follows: clothing, sleep, water, shelter, food, sanitation and hygiene, lighting, first-aid, communications, and transportation. The order of their importance will be dictated by your current and future situation. Pay no mind to the "gods" of survival who preach endlessly about which category is more important than the others. While I myself preach about the virtues of regulating body temperature via clothing and water in an outdoor survival scenario, both take a backseat to first-aid when one realizes they have a tree branch sticking out of their leg. While the contents of this list may look harmless and somewhat simple, the human ego can mess it up in a heartbeat and turn a simple idea into a nightmare of things to buy and events to fear. In the coming pages this book will cover how to deal with all of the above categories, as well as others. You will find the job of preparing your family for the unknown much easier if you first pay attention to what is known about the human body and the priorities required to keep it alive.

The following chart hammers home the importance of your survival priorities. I call it "The Rule of Threes or Fours." Depending on whose survival book you read, the authors will differ on the increments of time involved before you croak. While not completely useless as a teaching tool, much like political promises, the chart is full of errors if taken literally. A person can die in a few hours in the desert from hyperthermia and dehydration from lack of water, among other stupidities, which is in seeming contradiction to the chart to the right. In like fashion, if I tell nicotine-addicted students in my courses that they can't smoke for the next several days, I might see the "fall-apart-as-a-group" statistic go down the tubes in a few hours. What this chart does accomplish, however, is to plainly illustrate what will statistically kill you first. This wisdom allows you to intelligently compile a preparedness checklist for what will befall you, sooner or later, without becoming a slave to another's opinion. Three tons of canned food and ammo stashed in your garage doesn't mean much if you die from hypothermia in your on-the-grid house, featuring electric space heaters, while in the midst of a several-day, mid-January power blackout.

In addition, the chart illustrates the all-important role that psychology plays in all emergency scenarios. Panic—the bane of all—thrust into a survival situation must be dealt with first and throughout your ordeal. How many watts of power your generator puts out is irrelevant if you're too scared stupid to fire it up. Like anything else, training, practice, and proper advance preparation will serve you well in your family's time of need. The very fact that you're still plowing through this book is a testament to your wanting to know more and take the bull by the horns in your family's self-reliance and independence. Notice also how all of the items listed in the chart with the exception of group dynamics, to a greater or lesser extent, involve keeping your body's inner core temperature at 98.6 degrees F (37 degrees C)!

T
he average modern wilderness survival scenario lasts approximately seventy-two hours, or three days, before rescuers find you dead or alive. In contrast, our hypothetical urban survival scenario has no set time limits. Eventually, we're assuming that local, state, and federal emergency management agencies will bail us out of our predicament. . .but the question is, when? In a wilderness survival emergency, only you and the company you keep are screwed. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the grid is up, the power is on, people are commuting to work, and the burgers are sizzling on the grill at the nearest fast-food joint. Nothing has changed, and the ordered chaos we call Urbania chugs along just swell.

Imagine if all of your modern-day niceties "hiccupped" for a short while and failed to function on cue. Better yet, picture the services and conveniences that you take for granted each day coming to a screeching halt for an unknown period of time. It's obvious from past disasters around the world, human caused or otherwise, that local emergency response personnel are hopelessly understaffed. As noble, selfless, and hardworking as those emergency teams are, they always require assistance from other towns, counties, states, and sometimes nations. All of this takes time to accomplish, and time is one commodity that may be in high demand if you don't take care of the simple, basic needs that your family will have
before
the crisis happens.

How much stuff does your family need to store for an emergency and how long will it take until help arrives? The short answer is, how would I know? Once you've decided for your family
what
is required for their survival and comfort, you can progress to the all-important
how much
is required. How much survival stuff you have is directly proportional to what you feel threatens your home, and how long the effects will last. In other words, how much you store is a custom decision that must be made by you and your family. Factors that will help you reach a rational decision are included below. While certainly not all-inclusive, these points detail the lion's share of variables that should influence your decision on how much preparedness gear to have around the house. For the curious or desperate, my boilerplate advice for most urban areas is to have a minimum two- to four-week supply of what's needed to function without outside help of any kind.

Enough is Enough: Determining How Much To Store from the Store

The following points will help you fine-tune how much preparedness gear your tribe might need. Supplement the list with family meetings, facts on the ground about your unique situation, and common sense.

The number of family members in your tribe, including pets
. Obvious enough, yes?

The number of children, elderly, and special-needs members
. The young and the old have different needs. These differences fall into many categories including nutrition, entertainment, healthcare and first-aid, sanitation, and mobility. Specialty items catering to either group can be easily overlooked when buying and storing regular supplies. In most instances, these specialty items can be improvised, yet in some cases, a shortage of needed items may cause your family member's death. Take a serious look at what little Jimmy and Grandpa Joe truly need for their survival and purchase more than what's needed for your worst-case scenario. Likewise, people with disabilities or who use special medications may frequently have their medical needs overlooked.

The proposed duration of your emergency, imagined or otherwise
. My crystal ball broke a long time ago. This is the wild card that no one can escape,
knowing how long the emergency your family must endure will last
. Pay attention to the other points in this list, make an educated guess regarding what types of emergencies could be the most prevalent for your home turf, plan and prepare the best that you can, have faith, and be happy.

Realistic opportunities to resupply your stock
. A common thread in most urban survival scenarios is the limited ability to purchase more goods. In a realm where living off the land means commandeering the 1986 Cutlass Supreme from the supermarket to the discount store, your self-reliance will last as long as the last item on the shelf, or the capacity of your gas tank. Travel may be impossible (not to mention dangerous) due to clogged freeways and streets. Even if your grocery store is located down the street, don't expect to come home with bacon and eggs during an emergency.

Rationing supplies as opposed to continuing your normal, "nonemergency" lifestyle
. Failing or refusing to ration your supplies and switch your family into "conservation mode" will have dire consequences for your stored goods over longer emergencies. Around the globe, case histories regarding survival situations are loaded with examples of people blowing through limited supplies in short order. The reasons for doing so are endless, as are the ways in which the offending parties died.
One of the most famous cases of survival involved the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crash-landed deep within the Andes mountains. Search planes were sent out to locate the missing plane almost immediately. A few days into their ordeal, the survivors spotted a plane overhead that seemed to circle them and acknowledge their location. In celebratory glee, they proceeded to consume all of their known food and drink while putting a serious dent into the group's stash of cigarettes. Days later, on a dying radio, they heard that the rescue mission to locate them had been called off. In fact, the survivors hadn't been seen at all, as the top of their plane was white and had crashed at an elevation in which snow covered the ground year-round. Before their ultimate rescue, the group remained on the mountain for more than two months, forced to eat the bodies of their dead friends and relatives in order to live.

Having a neighborhood support group as opposed to going it alone
. So-called American independence has done damage to our sense of community. Do you know your neighbor? Do you care? The average 1800s American mountain man died when he was between thirty-four to thirty-seven years old. Mountain men were not living off the land without survival tools. They possessed several horses and mules, bags of flour and other dried staples, rifles, knives, traps, fire-starting methods, intimate knowledge of the landscape they were working within, potential friendships with native peoples, guts, determination, and a serious sense of adventure. Do you have any guesses as to why they died so young?
A friend of mine who teaches primitive living skills put together a "primitive living" experiment on her land. Several people, all well versed in the hard skills it takes to live from the land, joined her for the event. For months prior, each prepared what they felt would be required to give them a fighting chance. They dried deer and elk meat, made baskets, buckskin clothing, extra footwear, hunting and fishing implements, pottery cookware, shelters, and on and on the list went. When the experiment finally commenced, more than 75 percent of the people washed out before the first week was over, many due to headaches suffered from caffeine and nicotine withdrawal! My friend ended up alone with her eight-year-old daughter for the next several weeks.
Regardless of her knowledge and the fact that she was on her own turf, she was unable to advance beyond eating and using the stores she had initially prepared for the experiment. She couldn't gather enough new calories to break even with what she started with, let alone store a surplus for the coming weeks. This trial was conducted in late summer in northern Montana, a land where calories were not going to get any easier to find as autumn hit and winter followed.
As she recounted her experience, she stated that the reason she failed to make any progress toward a self-sustaining lifestyle was because she had to do everything herself. In the case of the mountain men, doing everything alone flat wore them out, leaving them more susceptible to the dangers of their daily life. In other words, they died young from the sheer harshness of their solitary lifestyle. For all of you rugged individualists out there, take heart and listen to the wisdom of the tribe. Consider creating a support system with like-minded individuals who live nearby.

Climate and season
. Cold and hot weather each have their variables that tax human survival. Frigid temperatures will cause your body's metabolism to spike and burn through calories like crazy, depleting your food stores more quickly than usual. Hot weather will cause you and your family to suck down your water supply in short order. Be sure to update and rotate certain stored items to meet the challenges of the changing seasons.

The geographical location of your home
. During the summer of 2005, America suffered her largest disaster nightmare to date as Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana and Mississippi, devastating the coastline and completely obliterating entire towns from the landscape. Thousands died and tens of thousands were displaced. Built below sea level, the city of New Orleans, the Big Easy itself, was under several feet of water. On the sixth day of the disaster, countless people, dehydrated, short or out of food, and very scared, were still waiting to be rescued from partially submerged homes and apartments. For God's sake, if you live in or near geographical areas that are especially vulnerable to some kind of unique tragedy, please take the necessary precautions to deal with your area's worst-case scenario. In New Orleans, knowing how to disinfect water for drinking could have literally saved dozens of lives, and it can be done for as little as one dollar, or with trash and know-how for free.

Your ability to improvise your needs directly from your environment
. Many communities are more suburban than urban. Many more are flat-out rural. If you have a creek running through your backyard, hooray for you, provided that you have the ability to disinfect the water when the bodies float by. If wildlife regularly wanders around your home, you have options that others do not. If the back lot of your property is wooded, you have access to supplies valuable to your family's survival; if your kitchen window looks out over a vegetable garden, all the better. After gleaning the necessities for survival from common sense, this book, and other sources, peruse your immediate area to discern which tasks and needs can be improvised directly from your environment. Remember that simplicity and doing more with less are important keys to your family's survival.