This Week's Prep

A good week for prepping.

My wife and I both work in a city 40 miles from our home. We commute together, which saves us on gas and on wear and tear on the cars. However, it has occurred to me that in an EMP scenario, if the cars are not working, we'd probably have to hike home; or to an alternative location. Or, alternatively, if there were a natural disaster or a nuclear attack on, say, Boston, we'd probably want to head directly to our alternative bug-out location in Vermont.

So in thinking through the scenarios, it occurred to me that a bug-out bag in the car would be pretty high on the list.

I opted for a light, inexpensive backpack, a Jansport Access 40. It is a decent size and price, has pretty good support, and seems pretty well made.

I have a few basics in it, but this list is by no means complete. It currently contains:

Two water bottles.
Two emergency reflective blankets
a Lensatic compass
a half dozen bungee cords.
a magnesium firestarting block
a couple of lighters
a first aid kit
US Army FM 21-76, in a plastic bag
a US Army Ka-bar with sheath

Items I know I need to add are:

Tarps
Water purification tablets
A sleeping pad of some kind
A change of clothes
A pack of smokes in a plastic bag
Food (an MRE or two)
A cooking vessel (probably just an Army canteen/canteen cup.
a 9mm with a couple of magazines and a holster
Fishing line
100 feet of paracord.
Extra money
A large handkerchief/'do-rag

Nevertheless, it's a start. I feel better having a bag in the car that at least has some basics in it.

Book Review: Emergency

Emergency, by Neil Strauss

One thing you have to give Neil Strauss credit for is that he is willing to learn. In Emergency, Strauss becomes convinced that society is falling apart, and so he takes it upon himself to learn things that will help him survive. His political perspective is a little different from most survivalists, who are usually libertarians or conservatives, in that Strauss's fears were triggered by worries about the Bush administration, which in retrospect seems like worrying that President Taft might declare one man rule. But nevertheless, like many survivalists, once the trigger is pulled or the switch is flipped on, he becomes committed to a course of learning.

At first, he focuses on getting a foreign passport, thinking that if the American political system falls apart, he could simply go elsewhere, in his case, to the island of St. Kitts. But as his thoughts on survival evolve, he realizes that if America is screwed, probably everywhere else is, too -- so he begins to study the necessary arts of survival: stockpiling food, learning about weapons, learning how to live in the wild, learning how to raise a goat in the backyard of his Los Angeles apartment. At the same time, he helps his girlfriend, who is paranoid and does not have a driver's license, learn how to drive -- she sees that by him overcoming his fears, she can overcome hers. In the end, Strauss signs up for courses as an EMT in order to learn how to become a person who overcomes disasters, rather than merely fleeing from them.

The book has its high points and low points, but Strauss does hit on an essential part of the Survivalist school of thought -- the idea of Survivalism as a problem of self. Strauss has fears, and so he allays these fears by learning, and finds that as he becomes proficient in different skills, these fears are mitigated. I think this is true to a point -- as I become more proficient and knowledgeable, I also find I am less fearful. The book is more of a personal journey than a survival guide, but as such, it is an interesting read.

Points of Failure In My Home

I am having my chimney guy come over to talk to me about wood stoves.

I live on a very wooded lot, and over the years have had a few hardwood trees removed, which have been aging in a woodpile in my back yard. I have perhaps a cord and a half or two cords of wood, about a third of which I have split. I have a maul for splitting wood which does a pretty good job; it is also good exercise.

Many New England homes today are built around premises which, to our great grandparents, would seem foolish. Although my house is a pretty traditional design, it lacks some of the features a traditional New England home should have -- a root cellar, a well, and a cooking fireplace. All of these things would have been part of the standard equipment a hundred years ago, but homes built in the last fifty years (mine was build in 1972) are premised on a few questionable assumptions:

1. Unlimited municipal water.
2. Unlimited municipal sewerage.
3. Unlimited electricity.
4. Unlimited cheap oil.

I have town water, town sewer, electricity from a distant supplier, and oil heat. My stoves are all electric.

Worse yet, in my case, all of these things are tied to one single point of failure -- the electrical grid, because:

1. I live on a hill, and the water for my neighborhood is pumped to a standpipe. This standpipe relies on electricity to function.
2. I live slightly below the grade of my street, which means my house relies on an electric pump to move material up and into the sewer.
3. My oil burner has an electric starter. When I lose power, I lose heat.

So part of my preparation for a TEOTWAWKI event (I take the EMP scenario very seriously) involves removing this single point of failure and making my heat, water, sewerage, and cooking independent of the grid and of each other.

A wood stove would solve my heat problem somewhat; I have access to a nearby forest that, in a pinch, could keep me in wood for years. If I run it through my chimney, and hang curtains to block off the unnecessary rooms, a wood stove would let my wife and I survive the coldest New England winter. If it is of the right design, I could potentially use it to boil water for cooking.

Combined with my water barrel and emergency storage of potable water, I could do alright for myself for a time. The problem I then have to solve is sewerage. Two potential solutions I see for this:

1. Build a composting box out of wood, and convert my shed to an outhouse. With lime and sawdust, I then have a way of recycling waste, or

2. Dig up my connection to the sewer, unhook it, and build myself a septic system. Using buckets to keep the tanks full, I could then use my toilets.

I do not think my town will let me put in a septic system independent of the town sewerage, but in an end of the world scenario, if I could obtain a sufficient supply of gravel, cement, and PVC pipe, I could build my own rudimentary system.

Superb Book on The Basics

When All Hell Breaks Lose, by Cody Lundin


If you can get through the first 30 or so pages of Cody Lundin's When All Hell Breaks Loose, which has a large amount of new age pop psychology in it, you'll find that the rest of the book has some very valuable information. Lundin runs a wilderness survival school in Arizona, and has a great deal of practical field experience to share with survivors of all environments. I found two sections particularly fascinating -- the section on purifying water and the section on heating homes using passive solar design. Lundin is highly practical when not waxing philosophical -- he takes everyday materials and shows you some practical survival uses for them. But the tips extend to all kinds of things, and he is unafraid to talk about things that other people don't consider or discuss -- practical field sanitation and disposal of human waste, burying the dead, how to cook and serve rat, how to open cans without a can opener -- there are literally hundreds of items in here that could have practical application in a grid down or disaster scenario. The information is presented in a humorous way -- Lundin does not take himself too seriously -- and is full of little illustrations and summaries that make his point. I highly recommend this book. It is like a Boy Scout survival manual that never got edited to remove the controversial content. Well worth the price.

Book Review: Patriots

Patriots, by James Wesley, Rawles

This is probably one of the best modern survival novels, taken for what it is. Rawles has a slightly different focus than William Forstchen -- he concentrates on a small group of 8-10 survivors, there being no coherent community once law and order breaks down. The survivors in Patriots are a band of friends, who have spent years prepping a retreat and training in small unit infantry tactics. This group survives the crash and then form the nucleus of a resistance group that takes on an unlikely power trying to assert control over America -- European troops under U.N. command who are there to prop up an illegal U.S. government. The first half of the book concentrates on surviving the crash, the second half focuses on the guerrilla resistance to the Europeans.

I think there are very many things Rawles has right. His "trigger" for the TEOTWAWKI event is hyperinflation; to me this is a very realistic possibility. He envisions societal unrest in the cities leading to riots and governmental collapse, playing out rather quickly. I wonder if this would happen -- considering Weimar Germany, although there was horrific hyperinflation and the twin demons of Communism and Fascism arose as political movements, there was no general societal collapse. Instead, the people went to a "man on a horse," the genocidal maniac Hitler. I think hyperinflation could well trigger frightening political parties even in America, but I don't know if hyperinflation could cause a complete, overnight collapse. I think it would play out over some years.

Rawles is at his best when he describes the preparations of the survivors -- he details great lists of weaponry, supplies, the contents of the "bug-out bag," preferred post-apocalyptic vehicles, considers the various improvised weapons and tactics the resistance develops (homemade Claymores, improvised thermite grenades, etc.). The book is a great reference for developing and supplying a survival retreat. At times this tendency becomes tedious, the narrative becoming too didactic and less character focused. He is not a great writer, there is none of the poetic beauty or deep irony of Earth Abides or A Canticle for Leibowitz. Patriots isn't literature; it's a survival manual presented in novel form. This is how you ought to read it -- and as such, it is an excellent book.

The book has certainly helped my own preparations, and his approach to the problems of survival is very rational and pragmatic.

Food Storage: The List

Part of my preparations for the upcoming TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It) event includes meditating long and hard on food storage. I have a lot of food in my house, but it is poorly organized. My wife and I both shop, and we often don't go with a prepared list. We walk down the aisles and throw things in the cart that we think we need. This is how we end up with 11 boxes of instant oatmeal in the cellar. At our current rate of oatmeal consumption, we have enough oatmeal to last us for the rest of our natural lives.

Or, at any rate, until the food is no longer safe to eat.

This week, I've been making an Excel spreadsheet that lists all of our food. I'm working my way through the cellar, reorganizing, cleaning, and putting like thing next to like thing, while entering in key data on each item onto a yellow legal pad, which then gets transferred into Excel and printed (so that, in the case of an EMP scenario, I do not lose it). I print a couple of copies, actually. One copy is taped inside our kitchen cupboard as a reference (so if the cupboard is empty, we can see what exists in the cellar already rather than buying the item on our next trip to the store), the other is in my briefcase. This way if my wife and I stop at the store on the way home from work, we have a guide to go buy. The key data I'm recording are:

Category (Dry Goods or Canned Goods)
Item (e.g., Oatmeal, instant)
Description (Low Sugar Apples & Cinnamon)
Brand (Quaker)
Quantity (1)
Unit of Measure (box, 10 1.23 oz. pkg.)
Expiration Date
and Notes (mainly, for now, the location -- which rack it is on).

Using Excel's Data Filters and Sorting, I can quickly arrive at which stuff in my cellar represents a surplus, which stuff needs to be thrown out, and which stuff should be eaten soon. To work on the Great Oatmeal Surplus, I'm taking a couple of packages to work for my lunch every day. As I write this, I'm eating a bowl of Oatmeal that (technically) expired in 2006. The good news is that even with no special storage (I didn't keep it in a plastic food grade barrel filled with nitrogen, a la Rawles), the Oatmeal is still edible. This gives me hope for the future -- if I bought some Oatmeal today, I'd still have something to eat when fighting off the hordes of zombies in 2012, 90 days after the "canister" at Fort Detrick accidentally goes off and the CDC fails to seal off Baltimore ("Damn you, CDC," he snarled, while jamming a shell of double ought buck into his Remington).

My plan is that when the inventory is complete, I'll then start building up the key supplies to give my wife and I a 2-year supply of food. They say the average American eats a ton of food a year. Besides some heavy lifting, this means that I need to store it efficiently and have systems in place to manage it so that food is not wasted.

This Week's Prep

1. Bought 4 more Canadian Maples. Silver hoard is up to 37 oz. in Maples and Eagles.

2. Installed my rain barrel to my downspout. This now gives me a reserve supply of water that is off the grid. I have a Platypus filtration system; combine that with a little bleach and I now have a post-apocalyptic water supply.

3. Went to the range and "patterned" my Remington 870 shotgun. It's very accurate and I had a good time. I'm increasing my supplies of 12 gauge ammo, and now have a range from slugs to #8 birdshot.

Prep Weekend Ahead

Two big prep things for this weekend. First, I'm going to the range to do a little shotgun practice with the Remington 870. It's been quite a few years since I've practiced with a shotgun; I picked up the Remington this spring and this is my first opportunity to use it.

The second, I'm installing a rain barrel to have as an emergency water supply. I've got a Platypus for filtration of it, and along with a little chlorine bleach, it should give me a reserve of water for the summer months. If nothing else, it gives me water for my gardening.

Going to try to pick up some more silver coins today, too. As I outlined earlier, my preferred coins are Canadian Maples, but if my coin dealer is out, I'll pick up some American Eagles. Silver reserves are at 33 oz. currently; I'm going to try to expand this in the coming year.

I'm also thinking long and hard about canned goods. Looking at the shelves in my supermarket, I've figured out that canned goods are good for about 18 months to two years. Assuming very aggressive planting of food and hunting, the 18 month cushion might be sufficient to get a crop in the ground (which reminds me, I'll also want some seeds). To me, the problem with storing a large amount of food is one of data management -- knowing what you have and when it expires. You know the freezer full of meat is going to go bad quickly if the grid comes down. But keeping accurate tabs on all those rusting cans in the cellar is another matter. I'm going to build a spreadsheet to manage it.

In addition, while thoughts turn from firearms and water to food, I'm thinking about buying a pressure cooker/canner. I make my own tomato sauce, and usually store it im mason jars in the freezer, which is OK for now. But if the grid goes down, I'll want to store stuff warm. This means heat and pressure treating the food using a pressure canner. You can't simply heat treat it -- botulism microbes can survive high heat. You need to treat with both. So a canner becomes an essential item, along with a supply of mason jars and lids. And, naturally, a reference book on how to preserve various types of food using canning.

The problem with survivalism is that there's always a next thing, or another thing. Once you secure some firearms and a water supply, you worry about food. And then heat. And then medicine. And so on. The problem is, you need to be able to do all kinds of things that were common a hundred years ago, but are rare skills today. And the basic problems of food supply require a daunting amount of knowledge, if no one is specialized.

I have, for instance, two very useful old-time skills. I can brew beer and I can bake bread. It suggests a simple postapocalyptic role for me. However, with no one in New England (to speak of) growing barley or wheat, the skill is fully a year off until it becomes usable, assuming someone gets a crop of wheat in the ground in the spring after the crash. So I have to survive long enough for those baking and brewing skills to come into play. Which means I need to be a farmer and a hunter, as well. And a guy skilled in firearms.

Survivalism is, in a sense, a problem of self. What can I do, and what do I have? I think a true man is one whom you can drop in the woods with nothing, and in a few years he has recreated his entire culture -- or, at least, that of his great-grandparents. Who of us can do it? If you cannot, the problem then becomes one of learning a lot of old ways. Of becoming useful.

This is a large part of what fascinates me about it.

Review of Lucifer's Hammer

This week I finished Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's contribution to post-apocalyptic literature, Lucifer's Hammer.



Overall, I liked it, but it is a bit dated. It is set in the mid 1970s, in Southern California, and you could easily imagine the characters hanging out in a fern bar before going back to their homes for some white wine and a dip in the hot tub (and some casual sex in "a consequence-free environment," as Austin Powers might say).

It is a "cast of thousands" novel, with about 20 major characters in it, and reminds me of the great 70s disaster productions -- The Towering Inferno, Earthquake, etc. As I read it I kept saying "Lucifer's Hammer -- An Irwin-Allen production." It starts pretty slow, but by the ending, in which our 70s swingers take on an army of cannibals, it has become a pretty good book.

A few points it has in common with Forstchen's One Second After is the concept of the local government setting up roadblocks to keep outsiders out. This is, as I see it, one of the major questions in survivalist literature -- at what size is the "community" organized? In One Second After; Alas, Babylon; and Lucifer's Hammer; the answer seems to be "a small town". In books like Rawles's Patriots, the answer is a retreat of about a dozen people, which Rawles identifies as the smallest unit able to provide its own round the clock security. Earth Abides hits upon a like-sized group -- an extended family of four or five couples (which expands to a tribe over a few generations). In The Road, it is a man and a boy. In A Canticle for Leibowitz, it is a monastery. It is an important question, which I suppose is driven by the likely scenario one encounters. The question is, does local government dissolve when the federal government falls apart? For Rawles the answer is yes, and I suspect he is right. I can't see my local selectman imposing martial law and setting up roadblocks; frankly, I think they'd skedaddle pretty quickly.

A problem I see which is not addressed in any of these books, is what happens if a local police force (or National Guard company) decides to take over a town? Initially, they'd have a certain legitimacy which people -- not trained to think for themselves -- might be inclined to obey. If, after a disaster, the local police went around and knocked on doors and said "Everybody report to the high school, turn in your weapons, and hand over any food you have stored" -- a number of well-prepared people might be inclined to simply obey. Me, I think I'd say "Get off my property." But what if they then came back in force? In Lucifer's Hammer and in One Second After, the major characters have a seat on the town council, and are asked for their opinion. But what if the local constabulary simply seizes power and then rules badly? I think this would be a good topic for a novel -- a character has the foresight to see the collapse, prepares for it, and then has his property and goods seized by the town (with the threat of overwhelming force), and all his preparations go for naught.