Survive Infinite Dangers: The Family Survival Guide of 21st Century Dangers (11 page)

Chapter 9

It SOUNDED Like a Good Idea!

There is really no logical place to put this chapter so let’s just get it over with. We ALL make mistakes. OK? What is done is done so put it behind you. In a few cases of things you bought or things you did THINKING you were properly preparing for life’s dangers including disasters turned out be a waste but you might be able to “turn lemons into lemonade” and make partial use of what you bought or did.

I write this chapter with some reservation as I know writing buying X maybe wasn’t such a good idea will probably cause survivalist stores and Internet Web stores who include some of the items I pan among their wares to not offer my book for sale thinking it may cost them business. I hope not but I owe my allegiance to you, the reader. What can be more serious than properly preparing to increase your chances and that of your family or group to survive a disaster when others who didn’t prepare may die? There are many fine resellers of survivalist products and even products I pan do have their place if the situation is not a total breakdown of civil society. For instance, growing your own food when snipers from roving gangs will pick you off in moments of entering your probably looted vegetable garden does make sense if police, fire and medical emergency personnel are only a phone call away growing your own food, having a noisy generator and other things or activities I am about to write negative comments about could be a good idea. Perhaps civilization is still in place and Armageddon or anarchy has not arrived but perhaps we’ve fallen into a deep and long Depression. You don’t have the money to buy food so grow it! Just be ready to abandon your garden if people begin to steal carrots at gun point! There is a time and place for everything and that includes all of the items I would suggest not buying, making or using in an all-out breakdown of civil society. So do consider the items I’m negative on for temporary situations such as floods, storms and so forth where you’re not having to hide in your safe area for months having armed lookouts 24 hours a day dreading the appearance of, say, an invasion of a large, armed group of people who are bad in normal times and turn into animals if the law disappears. This book is written for such a scenario. You can back down from there for lesser situations. The FEMA booklet “Are You Ready?” downloadable from
www.fema.gov
has excellent chapters on all of the short-term disasters I can think of where you don’t have to hide and you’ll probably be safe although displaced or at least suffer some inconvenience. Among the chapters are preparing for hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes and so forth. Don’t forget to print everything of value you read on the Internet as the information will be of no use to you if you have no electric power and your Internet connection is down. THAT INCLUDES THIS BOOK IF BOUGHT AS AN E-COPY!

Here is a partial list of many of items I’ve known people to purchase or do that are wrong, worthless or just not “optimum thinking”. As I say, if any of these fit you, put it/them behind you! You are NOW on the right track following the information in this book as well as reading information found on Web sites and in books listed in the Information Resources chapter found later in this book. There is so much information on “survival” it usually causes people to throw up their hands being overloaded mentally. Don’t let that happen to you! If you just stick with this book – that’s enough! Although I very much encourage you to methodically expand your survival knowledge in a steady and well thought out manner. Knowing the 152 different types of edible wild berries and plants is just going to confuse you and push out the core of knowledge you MUST know to survive a disaster. The author recommends you put together a library of material that covers such minute subjects. Yes, you may need to know a few of these thousands of bits of information but which ones! Just have books containing the information and keep the books together. THIS book is that core of knowledge you must have. If there is one book over all others I’d recommend you add to your “core” of knowledge, buy a copy of “How to Survive the End of the World as We Now Know It” by James Wesley, Rawles. The book picks up where this book leaves off although the book you are now reading does contain vital information I’ve read nowhere else.

Mr. Rawles’ book is written more for permanent Armageddon where civilization never returns! To follow and do all you’ll read in this book might take you a week working part-time and spending no more than $1,000, to completely duplicate his large (?) ranch built for total Armageddon by reading his book I’d estimate would take five men working full-time many months and at least several hundred thousand dollars (i.e. first move to certain very rural parts of the country). I would guess maintenance and upkeep takes him and others at least a few days a week.

Do you wish to live in a world that is almost lifeless and will never recover? Personally, I do not so I wrote this book to survive at least six months (while millions of other may die who could have lived with some easy, quick and cheap advance preparation). I vote for life but life where civilization returns and we work together to rebuild our world. Follow this book and you stand a very good chance that you and your family will emerge encountering a world with a smaller population in number I’m sorry to say but you will be part of The New Beginning!”

Anyway, here’s a list of the most common “mistakes” I’ve seen people make, buy or do:

1. Bought a generator (for use after a disaster): Everyone says to do it as if having a few hours of 115 volts of AC (alternating current – what comes out of your wall sockets) is going to save you. Having a generator is not necessarily a bad idea. When it is safe to run one having 115 VAC might come in handy. Plus they are very handy for camping trips and the like. Do NOT plan to run your entire house on a generator. A furnace motor usually runs off of 220 VAC to begin with and often requires 5,000 watts of power. And that’s not counting your household appliances such as an electric range and a refrigerator. Obtain heat and light by other means. A generator can be very handy to run hand tools (like a drill) a long distance from commercial power and easier than a 500 foot large wire (the longer the cord the more the voltage will drop so you compensate by using pure copper wire and/or a large wire) extension cord! A generator with an output of 3,000 to 5,000 watts is optimal. A generator that also has 220 VAC and a 12 VDC outputs are very handy and are becoming quite common. Remember, the larger the maximum output the more gasoline it will use whether powering anything or not.

IF you MUST have a BIG generator to power major appliances I recommend a diesel or propane generator (more efficient) and a BURIED diesel or propane fuel tank of at least 5,000 gallons in size. It MUST be properly installed and approved by the city or county you live in. Note: many cities will not allow a buried or above ground fuel tank no matter what so check first! Have a diesel or propane gas supplier deliver on a regular basis. A propane generator is the quietest and also emits almost no fumes. Price out the cost of diesel and propane gas before buying anything. Yes, you can also bury a gas tank and have gasoline delivered just like a gas station does but do price it out before spending major money on a gas powered generator. But I personally don’t recommend large generators – period. Expensive and why do you need it? There are other ways to provide (minimum) heat and (basic) light that are much less expensive, more reliable and cost virtually nothing to run (i.e. solar or wind power). But they are handy in “normal times” so it was not a mistake to buy one as long as you didn’t break the bank doing so on something like a generator capable of powering your entire home. If you have not bought one yet, buy one that can be lifted with one hand and also has a 12 VDC (volts direct current) and 220 VAC (volts alternating current) sockets.

Above all, the generator must emit a regulated voltage that is as steady as possible and as close to a sine wave as possible (Google “sine wave” for a definition). You do not want a generator that emits spikes of voltage for no apparent reason with the voltage drifting between 90 and 140 volts. Instead of a close to sine wave output a poorly designed generator will emit voltage that is closer to a square wave and, as I say, sends out voltage spikes that can damage or destroy whatever it is powering. Unless you have access to an oscilloscope, you have no way of knowing what the output waveform looks like. Just buy a well-known quality brand and try to find technical information on the Internet from people who already own the generator. Plan on buying a generator that is rated for twice the wattage you think you’ll normally use with a short-term peak rating of 50% to 100% over its average rating. I no longer see any new generators for sale that are not protected with circuit breakers. If you are buying a used generator, look for a fuse instead of a circuit breaker. If it is protected by a fuse that shouldn’t stop the purchase but make sure to have lots and lots of spare fuses! A generator with a blown fuse and no spares is worthless.

To test the quality of the output of a generator, it might be easier to borrow a volt meter with an AC RMS (root mean squared) position. That reads out the true AC output as the device you are powering “sees”. Always run a generator with a slight “load”. That can be nothing more than leaving a 100 watt light bulb always plugged in. It’s a good idea to run the output of the generator through a voltage protector line strip. The type that has, say, six jacks, an overload circuit breaker and at least is labeled as having spike protection. The 100 watt light bulb providing a small amount of load stabilizes the voltage and the cycles per second (cps) also called Hertz of the output voltage. Optimum in North America is 60 Hertz. Most of Europe and many other countries instead have 220 VAC 50 Hertz as their standard (what comes out of their wall sockets). For readers in other countries, keep this in mind. By the way, a few Hertz either way will make no difference except clocks will not be accurate (clocks powered plugged into wall sockets keep time by the 60 Hertz of the power as a universal standard as do television sets displaying 60 (actually 120) frames per second. They “synchronize” using the power company’s voltage Hertz as the standard. You just learned a “techie tip” that has nothing to do with survival!

Try not to let a generator run out of gasoline with everything turned on as a sputtering generator slips out of regulation and the resulting varying voltage can damage equipment plugged into it. When the gasoline supply is running low turn everything off (except for the light bulb load) then turns off the generator. Yes, you can refill a generator while it is running but use great care as this can be a dangerous practice for numerous reasons. Refill it with gasoline then let it run for a minute for its motor to stabilize. Then turn on the electrical items you are powering one at a time. But what does happen if you forget and it sputters to a stop? Probably nothing but you are risking burning out devices plugged in as the voltage and the Hertz may wander all over as it runs out of gas.

Now, why was it not a good idea to buy a generator for an interruption in civilization? It is truly a BAD disaster where society breaks down and you want to be as quiet as possible. NOTHING in this book is written to be offensive (as in do damage or injure innocent people). Everything is defensive. Offensive (as opposed to protective militias and roving bands of ruthless mobs) will have to look elsewhere for information. Think of two weeks without power due to a wide-spread EMP disaster. At night, no lights can be seen for miles and miles. The only noise you hear is a pack of coyotes in the distance and a few dogs barking. Gangs of desperate people have begun to form who did no preparation and all they have are some guns. If it was an EMP disaster then they don’t even have vehicles or radios. Yes, some are true criminals who see this as a dream come true. Expect jails to empty if things get really bad. Such people used to doing muggings, robberies or burglaries as a way of life. They will be the most dangerous. However, some will be “normal” law abiding people in “normal times” that have been driven to do the unthinkable if it reaches the point of “your family or theirs”. Such people have probably never broken a law in their life but they are now freezing, starving and haven’t had a drink of safe water in days. They have a family who is depending on them. They are considering suicide.

Then, all of a sudden, in the distance they hear a generator! Salvation! There is life! They think “if they have power they must also have food and many other supplies. Surely they’ll give us just enough to live on. There are only four of us!” Unfortunately, that scene is repeated a thousand times over. A thousand people, maybe more, all run toward the sound. Many have guns.

You offer the first arrivals a few bottles of water and a few days of food but you are then shocked to see, coming over the hill, what looks like an army! ALL intent on taking what you have! They may ask for a few seconds then you and your family will be dead seconds later. Many will die as they fight over your supplies. You generator may keep running until it runs out of gas. Then quiet will return to your safe area (that is no longer safe). You and your family or your group (there is safety in numbers!) will all be dead. YOU MUST BE STEALTH! No visible lights (even a crack around the edge of a window) and no sound! Roaming gangs as they become more desperate will begin home invasions. We’ll cover that in later chapters. At first they’ll walk the streets listening for the slightest sound of life or a glimmer of light.

2. “I bought this really neat seed bank I saw advertised everywhere. I’ll grow my own food and the vegetables germinate so I can keep growing and growing!” Sounds like a good idea. Problem: where is this hidden one-acre garden going to be located? Unless you are truly the last family or group within 20 miles you’ll have plenty of neighbors who also need to be fed not to mention the gangs who are beginning to cluster and forage with no rules other than “we see – we take”. You’ll need an eight foot razor wire top fence and (this is important) someone will have to stand guard 24 hours a day. Do you REALLY want to shoot a neighbor or even a stranger who is reaching in to grab whatever they can grab? You’ll hopefully have night vision goggles but gunfire at 3 AM will rattle everyone even if the dead person is not you. Changing shifts will be a risky time as gates are opened and hundreds yell and plead. Have plenty of body armour! Plan on building a concrete block shelter in the middle of the garden or you will be a sitting duck in your lawn chair with your shotgun in your lap. When someone finally picks you off the bolt cutters will come out and many more will die as the mobs fight over all the fine produce you grew. WHY do all this when for $700 (?) you can buy enough survival food to last a family of four six months. In fact with the food so well planned (and tasting awful!) you’ll lose those twenty pounds you’ve needed to lose for years and after six months you will be healthier than ever (having eaten such a well planned diet consisting of the correct amount of all the right foods. You’ll discover donuts are not an essential food group. I notice the “seed bank” craze is still going on so get yours listed on eBay before many people read this book.