When All Hell Breaks Loose (3 page)

Holy Cow

Although Holy Cow has at times been labelled a busy body, her true intentions have simply been misunderstood by our pass-the-buck society. Her penchant for personal responsibility, creative cooperation, thoroughness, and organization are udderly divine. She takes the bull by the horns with great determination and perseverance, and acts as the great recorder and doer of all that needs to be done. Holy Cow is our patron saint of decisive decision-making and fearlessness. Strong and focused, she balances her fiery courage with great gentleness, love, and respect for all who need encouragement and hope. She embodies the ability to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

I
remember watching the countdown on TV. It was East Coast time so we westerners figured the ensuing calamity would give us a few more precious hours to prepare for the inevitable—Y2K, the mother of all endings. Five, four, three, two, ONE! Happy New Year!!! And by God it was.

For months leading up to the supposed megadisaster, I attended town meetings filled with fearful people barraging a hastily assembled panel of "experts" with their questions, comments, and accusations.

"Whudder yew gonna do when my power turns off!" cackled an old lady.

The panel did their best to smooth things over, saying that everything possible was being done to protect our little hamlet from the impending threat of power outages, stock market collapses, and delayed e-mail. Some from the panel of experts had obtained their wisdom fairly recently, like the stock market broker who lectured the town on how to safely "purify" their water supply from a hastily downloaded Web page.

I watched the audience with awe. Never before had I seen such a display of fear all in one place, of people willing to put their personal responsibility into the laps of others, in fact, to demand that they be taken care of, or else! While I was proud of my town for holding the forums to educate the public, it was a psychological soap opera that was unequaled in my experience.

Survival experts sprung up overnight, eager to join the feeding frenzy of fear by selling an incredible array of freeze-dried foods, solar panels, attack dogs, and nutritional supplements. Generators were on back order at all of the hardware stores. All claimed salvation, hope, and mercy through the purchase of consumer goods by the almighty dollar. The classified section of the paper advertised homemade survival kits, assault weapons (pre-ban, of course), and several other items that one might find useful for the coming end of the world. People would buy damn near anything to avoid taking responsibility for their lives. I was personally befriended by several people who haven't talked to me since. . .just in case, I guess.

In the days, weeks, and months that followed an apocalypse gone soft, the world was showered with a plethora of new to barely used survival gear, all at bargain basement prices. After all, the crisis was over. We were all safe now, right? So we might as well unload all of this preparedness stuff to repay back the loans we took out to buy it in the first place. The people that had preached so hard about the end of the world were openly mocked and laughed at. "Urbania," throughout the world, slowly let its guard down, shuffling down the street of complacency and the fact that it wasn't going to happen to us after all. . .right?

At first glance, we seem to be up a creek without a paddle. Even a casual peek at the news can cause one's pulse to quicken. A simple Google search for "fear in America" generates more than 13 million results, and the market is growing. The media on all fronts has and continues to crank up the fear factor and pummel America and the world about impending doom and scandalous "what if?" scenarios. Unfortunately, in recent days there has been much to report.

More than 170,000 people died in a few minutes from a tsunami in Asia, a product of the strongest earthquake ever recorded since the documenting of seismic activity began in 1899. The United States' southern coast reeled from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, possibly the largest natural disaster ever recorded on American soil. Despite promises to the contrary preached by politicians, most of New Orleans still lies in ruins, more than two years after the disaster. Two jetliners intentionally crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, killing more than 2,700 people and bringing pause to the wealthiest nation on Earth, hearkening a new type of warfare based on terror. The so-called "war on terror" is fought in earnest all over the world, oftentimes reaching out to strike a shadow that quickly disappears only to resurface elsewhere. Fear of what has happened, or what could happen, played an integral role in the most important presidential election on Earth.

New and continuing proof of global warming threatens to change the very fabric of our ecosystem. In the eastern United States, record snowfall and ice routinely knock out power, communication, and transportation options for thousands. Two years ago, Florida had one of the most extreme hurricane seasons in recent memory. Multiple storms ripped up homes and brought urban life to a standstill, causing more than $30 billion in property damage and killing 130 people.

In the past few years, America and the world have entered a new era of change and the unknown. Perhaps like no other time in history, our dependence on outside technology as an urban society has become painfully real. Whatever the cause, when the power grid fails, urbanites the world over feel the pinch of their personal, city, state, and/or country's lack of prior preparation. Bogus, fear-based advice for dealing with urban calamities from "experts" (remember the rush on plastic sheeting and duct tape?) further fuels the fires of chaos and powerlessness.

Every day, people become compromised from a breakdown in the greater system that could have been prevented or minimized with advanced preparation and knowledge. From neighborhoods to nations, we believe it can't happen to us, until, to our shock and disbelief, it does.

W
hatever labels you choose to slap on it—urban, suburban, city, or town survival—this book will help you become more self-sufficient during times of turmoil in rural or populated areas. There are several different types of self-reliance survival training available from schools, books, videos, the Internet, and more. Whether your interest lies in learning about modern outdoor survival, long-term survival, primitive living, ocean and water survival, escape and evasion, wilderness living, homesteading skills, urban survival skills, or others, all have certain themes in common.

The first and most obvious survival skill is keeping yourself alive in the face of a life-threatening emergency. Regulating core body temperature, keeping it at 98.6 degrees F (37 degrees C), is a prime concern. In fact, the easiest way to die in the outdoors is by succumbing to "exposure," a generic term the media uses for someone failing to thermoregulate his or her body's inner core temperature. Statistically, one meets their maker through either
hypothermia
, low body temperature, or
hyperthermia
, high body temperature. As a general rule, all short- and long-term survival scenarios, whether in the mountains, the deserts, the oceans, or the city, must deal with combating environmental temperature extremes and their deadly affect(s) on the human body.

One obvious difference in the genres of survival training is an element that is often overlooked by both the survival instructor and the student. This difference is the role or nonrole a third party will play in your game plan to stay alive. This third party is most often a Search and Rescue (SAR) team of some kind. While some of the training these teams receive is similar from country to city, each team will have specialized training depending upon the environment in which they spend most of their time. While a modern outdoor survival plan—such as what to do when the 4×4 breaks down in the mountains—should have signaling for rescue as a major component on what to do, homesteading skills, such as growing a garden and canning the surplus, would have little need for a SAR component.

The term "urban survival" conjures up a number of images. For some it means surviving man-eating zombies, for others, guns, guns, and more guns or a twisted hybrid story smacking of Mad Max, Armageddon, and/or a collision course with Earth by an asteroid.

Many years ago, I trained a group whose "guidance" at the time warned them of planetary devastation from a direct hit by an asteroid. Their training coincided, strangely enough, with the movies
Sudden Impact
and
Armageddon
, whose plots involved this very calamity befalling the Earth. Meeting their needs was a bit tougher than most survival courses, as their intention was to survive an epic pounding of the planet in which more than 90 percent of humans were dead ducks. One enterprising student from this tribe bought a brand new Hummer vehicle for the occasion and had it equipped with extra fuel tanks on the roof. I always wondered how he planned to get the fuel and where he thought he would drive to.

People have very different opinions on what is needed during an urban survival scenario. The Hummer man gave little thought in his planning to water, shelter, food, or anything other than barreling over a scorched-earth wasteland in a 4×4 renowned for getting incredibly crappy gas mileage. And he bought the Hummer after my training, even though I'm most certain I never mentioned the advantages of a Hummer when confronting the end of the world.

This book will focus upon:

1 Identifying and recognizing what human beings truly
need
, physiologically and psychologically, to live during short- and long-term emergencies.

2 What supplies would be needed by your household should you be unable to resupply your family with material goods from a conventional store.

3 How to improvise many of your needs from local surroundings to increase your family's self-reliance and comfort: physically, mentally, and emotionally.

4 Reinforcing intention number one above, freeing your family from their self-limiting, slavelike mind-set to life's endless "wants," thereby complicating your emergency preparedness plan.

Although I offer basic parameters,
exactly what brand of stuff and how much you choose to have on hand is your job
. After reading this book, assess your family's differences with the Joneses across the street, across the nation, and the world, and decide what works best for you. Variables such as the geography, terrain, and climate where your home is located will factor in, as will everything else; the number of people in your family, ages, medical problems, mobility issues, your surrounding support network or the lack thereof, access to potable water, and on and on. I'll address as many of these variables as possible but there is no way to cover them all.

There are books in every genre that have the word "complete" in the title; the complete book of cooking, the complete book of golf, or the complete book of survival, and so on. The thought that any book is a complete reference to anything is, of course, nonsense, and nothing more than wishful thinking by the author, marketing "spin" by the publisher, or both. This book, like any other, is not complete in its solving of every little problem that could threaten your family's welfare. Although I'm giving this book my all in containing information that I think is relevant to your survival, reading and preparing your home based on its advice DOES NOT GUARANTEE YOU'LL LIVE. There are two scenarios that offer up the most variables of anything on the planet. One is human nature, and the other is Mother Nature, both of which will rear their heads during your survival ordeal. There is no amount of instruction in any book, video, or DVD that will guarantee you'll live through a life-threatening emergency. If someone is guaranteeing your safety after buying their product or taking their course, they are lying to you. Variables equal the unknown, and the unknown equals fear. The easiest and cheapest way to reduce the variables in your survival plan (or life) is to keep things simple.

Resist the temptation to copy verbatim from this or anyone else's book or opinion on how they feel things should be done. Giving away your power to anyone else infringes upon the hallmark of a self-reliant mind-set, which in the end will have you mentally on your knees feeling like a dependent victim to your current and future situation. This book is simply meant to provide you with solid details and ideas to strengthen your family's resolve and bottom line during an emergency. It is your job to get your butt out into the world and do what you think needs to be done for the welfare and safety of your loved ones. In short, study this information and then dare to think for yourself. Everyone who is able to walk and talk can take part in the preparation as well, so hopefully the challenge won't completely rest within your hands.