Survive Infinite Dangers: The Family Survival Guide of 21st Century Dangers (15 page)

Buy no foods that require cooking because cooking creates smells. Smells travel a long way in a post-disaster world. Buy sealed foods with expiration dates no earlier than 18 months out and aim for two years, or more. The “food bricks” have a shelf life of five years but that is 20 degrees to 149 degrees. Stored in a dark 60 degree basement (they are already hermetically sealed) I bet they’d be OK out past my life span. What if you run out of water before you run out of food? Stop eating! Why? Foods digest with liquid. No liquid and the foods just sit in your stomach. Give it a week and septic poisoning will occur. Another week and you die a very painful death. At least you’ll be delirious and out of your mind the last few days. Besides bad water (stick to the bottled water and keep the bottles clean!) and bad food what is the #1 killer in such situations (not counting unexpected medical situations – see the Medication chapter)? To be blunt and never mentioned in POW movies and even histories the killers are constipation and diarrhea. Far more POW’s died in WW2 in German and Japanese POW camps and in North Vietnamese and North Korean POW camps of constipation and diarrhea than starving to death usually due to little or no fiber or some other deficiency. This happening to anyone bears looking into the water and food supply then the person’s health. If just one person, they are sick. Quarantining a person in a small area is almost impossible. They should wear an N95 mask 24/7 and wash and gargle every few hours. As you’ll read elsewhere you can never have too much disinfectant and bleach. Keep your safe area like a hospital surgery room. This will take an hour a day but it beats two weeks of non-stop diarrhea for everyone. Remember, “D and C” was the primary killer in POW camps. This has never been said in any survivalist book I’ve read. Why? Maybe they didn’t know. Well, you now know. Have way too much “D and C” medications on hand. Yes, the same stuff you take now and have in your medicine cabinet. Do not run out or you may suffer a very painful death. Worst case, constipation may be rectified by drinking a very little amount of bad water (don’t kill yourself!). Read up on both topics. I’m not a doctor and have never dwelled on either subject. I just have plenty of both medications in my safe area.

Humanitarian: you are bound to be found by some people not packing guns but who are pitiful and starving. You probably overstocked (if you read this book you did!). We owe our fellow man something even the ones who did not prepare. If they try to blast their way in they deserve no mercy (refer to the Physical Defense Security chapter). But for polite, begging and starving people, fix each one a three day bag of food, water and other supplies you can spare and send them on their way with their promise they will tell no one of your location (you have to have some trust). No matter how bad things become we have to remain human and caring. On the other hand taking in hundreds will simply doom your group and everyone to death a few weeks later. Where to draw the line? During your six months (pray it does not last that long) you will do things you can’t imagine you’d ever do and you will certainly see things that will haunt you the rest of your life. So stay human and humane. Even if Armageddon has arrived and you die a few days early, having given away a small amount of food and water you’ll die a more peaceful death.

Chapter 11

Your Safe Area

Most likely an area in your basement (if you have a basement) or if you have unlimited funds you can even buy

a missile silo (missile removed). Visit Web site address:

http://www.missilebases.com/ to read about something you’ll probably never buy but it leaves you a benchmark for the ultimate “Safe Area”! This is true Armageddon type shelter. Read the site as there are some good tips you can use in building or assembling your safe area. Except for a functioning and well protected ex-missile silo, “Safe Area” is a relative term. We all live in different areas, types of residences and so forth. Unless you are building a retreat you believe you can reach easily and VERY quickly no matter what (otherwise you’ll just build a shelter for others who will either thank you if you ever meet or do their best to chase you away if they reach your retreat before you do). A no-trespassing sign will NOT be respected in situations like we’re talking about so think carefully before you convert a log home a few hours away into your retreat. Unless it is your primary residence your work, time and money will all be in vain. You built a retreat for others. Others will thank you! But not let you in.

For most people reading this book their safe area is their residence. You should “harden and prepare” it as much as possible. “Harden and prepare” is different for virtually every structure even if two are identical because they may be in different areas of a city or the country. An apartment in the center of Manhattan is much different than a similar apartment in a relatively small town. What if you don’t have a basement or you live in an upper floor apartment? Make use of every nook and cranny of your living area. Think about all you see around you and hiding places for all of your provisions will be seen everywhere! Under tables, beds, chairs and even inside walls. It should be possible (easy) to stock a small apartment for six months, or more, by using every available area. Think of making walls removable or on hinges and hollow out virtually every item in an apartment carrying things to an extreme (although think before cutting if you rent!). That hard spot on the sofa might be an axe handle! Lack of room is not an excuse. Lack of imagination is an excuse albeit a poor one.

Here is a last minute addition! Watching the horrific earthquake in Japan I overlooked something so basic! What else have I missed? Anyway, I’ve written “gather all of your survival supplies into one safe area”. If you have a basement, that is a first choice. But NOT if you are in a flood prone area! How about if you live in an earthquake prone area? Your entire structure might crumble. How did I overlook something so important! Well, at least I’ve read no other survivalist book that mentions this so I’m not alone. Plan on your safe area being severely damaged or destroyed and have a primary safe area and two or three secondary safe areas. If your group is made up of neighbors the secondary areas will probably be the homes of others. If your primary safe area is in a basement, have a secondary safe area on an upper floor of another structure. A secondary area might be your garage or your office or business if it is nearby. Remember: too far away is probably useless. Identify the absolute must have survival items: food, water, medicine and whatever else you decide your group MUST have to survive. Have 70 to 80% in your primary safe area then divide the remainder between or among your secondary safe areas. Have backups to your safe areas! For the same reason mentioned elsewhere to have multiple GONe (Get Out Now) bags in various locations with what you need to survive for a few days. Just like the author follows the “KISS principle”, he also follows the “always have a Plan B” principle. I overlooked a “plan B” for your safe area! If any reader notices anything else I missed, please tell me. There will be updates to this book.

Safety: there’s the rub. Remaining in a 600 square foot apartment might be possible but difficult and, perhaps, dangerous. You’ll have to decide. If you are fortunate enough to know your neighbors in at least a half dozen apartments and they are willing and able to “throw in” with you to form a several floor group you will be safer than venturing out into the city. Only head for the suburbs if you have made firm arrangements with someone there for them to take you in and get an extra key in case they unwisely decided to leave. Keep in mind even traveling a few miles in a state of anarchy may leave you dead before you hit the one mile mark. Only do this if your urban apartment is not defensible and you can travel in secure transportation (that includes walking in groups) with many guns and many people who know how to use them.

Otherwise, be it anywhere from an urban apartment to a rural farm the safest spot is normally where you live. Once again, if you have unlimited funds there are companies who build “Safe Areas” on your property. Plan on six figures and up. Use Google to find them. Inspect several of their finished units as the state of the world has brought forth a large number of con men who sold phony stock last decade and this decade are selling poorly built equivalents to the fall-out shelters of the 1950’s.

Chapter 12

Flee or Stay?

This is going to be the easiest chapter to write and the easiest to read and comprehend. It may be one you strongly disagree on one or more points. If you elect to not follow my advice due to your “unique” circumstances, take the book along to retrace your steps so as “get back on track” later on using this book unless you discover it is too late.

Ninety-five percent of the time the answer is going to be “stay”. If you are within a long, long walk (run) to your safe area then for heaven’s sake run to reach your safe area! Hopefully, everyone in your group is doing the same thing. If the disaster was EMP you have no physical danger to you except from other people. One percent of people are pure evil and five percent are not honest at heart but usually obey the law unless they think they can get away with a petty crime. You see them all the time. The lady who stuffs a blouse in her sweater when she thinks the cameras aren’t watching or the man at the check-out who “forgets” to mention he has $20 of dog food on the bottom level of the shopping cart “conveniently standing in front of it so the checker may not notice. These people in a complete break down in society just might resort to muggings if you look prosperous plus older and weaker than them. The true career criminals probably have arsenals hidden in their basement and have been waiting for years for this disaster and are already cleaning out jewelry stores and making attempts at bank vaults with dynamite. They have no interest in you. Run (don’t walk) but keep turning around staying aware of people on all sides of you.

If offered a ride by a “safe” looking stranger, take it. Yes, that can be dangerous but not nearly as dangerous as a 20 mile walk with much of it probably in pitch black darkness (what, you don’t always travel with a super long lasting high brightness high-tech LED flashlight?). Some are smaller than a pen, last up to 100 hours and are as bright as a “regular” D cell flashlight popular for the last 70 years. Why do people keep buying these old technology incandescent flashlights that waste 98% of their energy in light not visible to the human eye? Go buy a dozen hi-tech high-brightness LED flashlights and give one, or more, to each person in your family. Each person in my family has one that is a small (less than a half inch) light that works for changing flat tires, reading road maps and so on. They are on our key chains. The battery is the size of a dime shrunk ten times. It may wear out some day but probably not in my lifetime. eBay is an excellent source for cut-rate really good LED flashlights. The number of LED bulbs has nothing to do with how bright the light is. It’s the technology of the LED bulb and the optics. I have a single bulb flashlight with optics that aligns the light into a tight circle of light. The single hi-tech bulb is many times brighter than a “standard” LED with twenty bulbs. The term brighter can mean just that more of its light is concentrated in the spectrum of the light waves that the human eye can see the best. The “spectrum” extends from the lowest audio wave too low for the human ear to hear at say one Hertz (cycles per second) all the way up past radio waves, past light waves, past laser beams and – well there is no limit. In that spectrum is light. Different colors are different frequencies. You know of night vision viewing products. That’s just off the edge of the visible light waves. That is not the same as heat viewing where you “view” the heat of an object. For those mad scientists out there bent on destroying the world, the resonant (look it up) frequency of the earth itself is 7.21 Hertz. Apply enough energy (you could barely hear it since it is a very low pitched tone) to selected spots on the earth and you would set up resonance vibration that would shatter the earth into a mega-trillion pieces. Why do I tell all of you out there who endeavor to destroy earth like a Star Wars movie Darth Vader character? Well, it would require an immense amount of a 7.21 Hertz sound wave but at least a billion mega-trillion (what’s next?) watts to rattle a tea cup. Personally, it is not high on my worry list but something to make you sound techie and smart at the next party you attend when you rattle off the resonant frequency of the earth. Yes, “nerd techie” is “in” these days I understand from those still dating so knowing how to destroy the earth may be just the “chick magnet” you long to be – or not.

Enough of that so let’s get serious. As I wrote, unless you are a long way from your safe area (but it is reachable) then flee to it using all possible caution for personal safety. Read each chapter to learn how to best protect you if in the open. If the disaster was an EMP spike then you need no protection except from bad people. If nuclear then begin taking that bottle of Potassium Iodide (PI) pills you always carry with you. What, you don’t always carry at least a dozen PI pills with you? You really need to read this book multiple times. How about that N95 mask you keep hidden in your purse or one each at various locations (office, in your car and so on)? It (usually) takes radiation from an actual nuclear explosion 12 to 24 hours to begin to fall unless you are in the “near zone”. Even an umbrella will stop a lot of radiation particles, anthrax and so forth. If you were unlucky enough to be at the epicenter of a nuclear blast then there is nothing I can tell you that will help. You were vaporized in a microsecond. This book is for the 99% who were not at the epicenters of whatever the disaster was. Sometimes a blast, say, 100,000 feet overhead mostly blasts sideways and then down. You may discover the least damage for a 100 mile radius to be right where you are! As you “flee” notice the amount of damage. If it keeps getting worse then think seriously think about returning to where you began and try to find other (law abiding) people to band together for mutual protection. You should “loot” only as necessary for survival.