The Solitary Man’s Refuge (25 page)

“Yea, I sort of agree with you there, but I think it will
be sometime way in the future, if at all, they call in the
disaster reserve. It will take all the logistics they got to just
round up and feed the regular emergency responders.
That is IF they report in, let alone worry about us. I am on
it though. Consider me you all’s inside guy if it looks
tempting enough to work for a response agency. I will stay
in the City with my Mom and try to help rebuild, but I have
no idea how or if that’s going to get done in my lifetime. It
all depends on what I see going on, or want to be a part of.
If they suspend the Constitution, it could well be that I will
be forced to make some serious decisions as to my
employability at that time and do the AWOL thing if I don’t
like the options.

Well, I am hoping for the best though and will try to
do my part to revitalize my country and provide for the
common good, rest assured. Meantime we prep for the
best and plan for the worst; it’s what we preppers do.”
Donald said now resolved to work for DHS if called upon
and still torn he couldn’t be at his bugout location trying to
improve conditions there.

“Well guys, it will be your decision about what is fair
treatment for those who did not plan for disaster or who
were displaced even though they were prepared if I am not
around to kick it conversationally with you. It would be nice
to do some networking with the neighbors but it carries a
lot of risks. We need to keep two things in mind if we
decide to try the collaboration approach. When you seek
collaboration through networking, don’t come emptyhanded, and especially not empty-headed. Showing our
hand at this critical time is not in our best interests, but any
length of time that passes before we do or don’t do
something approach wise is against us.” Donald explained
as he got ready to go check on how the girls were coming
along with preparing dinner.

“I am starting to think that all our reserve resources
must be set aside for ourselves to cover what is needed in
the future for a calamity of this size. Donald, you can’t be
thinking of being able to afford to give up anything at this
point, we need it. Grocery stores only keep three-days
worth of food in just-in-time inventory. When a disaster
strikes and there is a run on supply, they can run out in a
hurry as we all know by past experiences with hurricanes...
When distribution is disrupted, the calamity compounds.
The longer the event continues, the worse the
consequences can become as you already know.” Michael
said, taking a sip of his beer before continuing.

“ Hell, I am pretty light on preps myself already and
if you give any of yours away to others, we triple shorten
the time when you might have to think about telling me
your stretched too thin to keep sharing with me. Hard cold
fact might be that we ain’t got shit to share with other folks,
other than possibly some extra garden produce that might
spoil before we use it maybe. We may have to just be
secretive and unwilling to give but a few handouts here
and there if it makes any sense because others are
helping us in someway. Canned food is not barter material
unless you are sitting on a warehouse full of cases and
Bubba we ain’t. Now don’t get me wrong, I bet Donald
would trade in a food for food situation, like I offer a fresh
Deer hind quarter for some rice because he has a surplus
of it, or maybe he will decide he has a bigger need for
meat to change up the diet so he is willing to trade
something else. But he isn’t even going to trade a can of
baked beans for a silver dollar unless he has somewhere
to trade it and can get more food to replace it in barter
situation and then what? You could be as rich as old King
Midas and not have any takers for an ounce of gold
against your last can of beans, or that matter your first one
out of stash of a case of 6, because you know that’s the
only food you have and gold loses its luster if you think
about it on the dinner menu. I ain’t trying to take advantage
of our mutual alliance agreement Donald but it would make
sense security as well as psychologically wise to move at
least my whatever allocation might be you are willing to
contribute and kind enough to donate to my house. Don’t
keep all them eggs in one basket, as they say.”

Janice looked around her kitchen while deciding
what she would have for dinner tonight. The problem
wasn’t food, she had plenty of that. It was how to cook it
and how much that was the big pain that went into the
menu decision process. She was cooking for one tonight
and had her choice of various single burner heating
methods to consider as well as what pot or pans to use.

“Funny” she thought to herself. I got about 6 small
cans of propane and a whole case of denatured alcohol
Don insisted I needed and now I’m wanting to save it all
for a rainy day like it was gold and rather go to the trouble
cook outside because I know I won’t be able to replace it.
Depends what I am having I guess to warrant burning the
fuel, but sticks and twigs ain’t that abundant around here
either to put in the fuel efficient Stove Tec stove.

It had been a long day for Janice. She had been
rearranging her preps into suitable boxes labeled
breakfast, bread making, dinner etc and had put the cast
iron tortilla press, mixes and cans of taco flavored TVP
etc., into mental cook book order so everything would be
handy to create whole meals. Everything still looked like a
big jumble and not knowing if they were going to do a
“bugout” added to her frustration in trying to properly
organize everything.

Donald’s Mom had made some of the chore of
packing up preps look easy at her house, but his Mom
didn’t even come close to dealing with a quarter of the
preps she had on hand that needed to be better organized
and arranged for use.

Janice was really seriously considering just staying
on at her house in familiar surroundings as long as she
could. Leaving her house and possessions to go live in
unfamiliar surroundings didn’t appeal to her at all. Her
friends and family seemed ready to try to stick the city out
for better or worst. She knew she wasn’t sustainable long
term in the city and any number of things could send her
reeling helter skelter looking for the safe haven she hoped
Donald’s farmhouse would be if the city deteriorated as
bad as he predicted it might. However, neither of them had
thought about a less than all or none situation they were
now confronted with as to the option of staying in the cities
where some goods were still coming into. Her biggest
conundrum was not being able to get any news to base a
decision on. Everything was a guess or a second guess at
what might be happening out in the current world. Don had
reminded her many times that if you get too many of them
second guesses wrong; it could be fatal, so live by your
first instinct before you die by your last. It was kind of like
taking a test he said. Your first answer is usually right.
Your first instinct when the doctor spanks your butt is to
breathe and your last will be to quit breathing, If you just
follow your first instinct and don’t worry too much about the
in-between ones then life is simpler and often more
gratifying than with wrong second guesses.

There was just no wrong or right decision to make
at the moment, Janice had decided thoughtfully and tried
to put away her jittery nerves about being a day late and a
dollar short in the future for an event yet to happen or an
unforeseen complication undoing her preps.

Janice finally chose a can of soup and decided the
small amount of propane needed to heat it wasn’t going to
get missed that much later and saved her the trouble of
building and scrounging sticks for a wood fire in the
backyard tonight.

As she waited for the soup to come to a boil she
decided to take stock of some of her medical supplies she
had hanging on an organizer on the back of the hall closet
door. She was the practicing registered nurse in real life
but it was Don who had added the vast majority of the
alternative medicine disaster preps she had on hand in
her Prepper Pharmacy to call upon now.

“ Curcumin? Why do I have so much curcumin herb
stored in here?
Janice said to herself studying the labeled
bottles in the closets door organizers pockets. That’s right
she thought. Don had purchased it for an outbreak of
possible bird flu epidemic but he had printed off some
other sheets of its many uses as well as warnings not to
combine it with some other drugs.

“I had better read over this uses and cautions sheet
more carefully later, she mused and glanced at the
references.

Curcumin, the bioactive anti-inflammatory
compound found in the Indian curry spice turmeric. The
immune system is normally our natural first line of defense
against illness and bad health. However, sometimes
immune systems function abnormally due to deficiencies
and disorders where the body either loses its natural
immunity or else the immune system turns against the
body
Because it’s anti-inflammatory,
curcumin reduces your
immune system’s workload
so it can be ready to
address a flu virus.

Curcumin is also a
powerful antioxidant
, which
reduces free radicals that can make you susceptible to
disease.

Grocery stores usually keep about three-day worth
of food in just-in-time inventory. When a disaster strikes
and there is a run on supply and they sure can run out in a
hurry. When distribution is disrupted, the calamity
compounds. The longer the event continues, the worse the
consequences can become. Janice hadn’t been to a
grocery store since the geomagnetic storm hit, but she
was sure that they were all empty by now if they even had
opened their doors at all.

The idea that most likely the grocery stores would
not have any resupply for quite some time was troubling
enough, but the bits of AM emergency transmitter news
she got now and then and what she could read between
the lines on what she heard from the neighborhood ham
operator who had shielded his radio, was that the whole
world had taken a big hit from the geomagnetic storm but
to varying degrees. Lots of places were harder hit than
others as to the intensity of the storm and its effects.

The Carrington event of 1859 had set Telegraph
offices on fire world wide in 1859 in some places similar
things had happened worldwide this time, but to much
more devastation than could even be imagined.

Raging uncontrolled fires were consuming whole
cities as water pressure was lost from pump failures. Lack
of communications hampered any relief efforts to try to
contain the fires or direct evacuations out of the cities.

Disabled vehicles clogged the roads and lack of
traffic signals compounded the troubles any working fire
trucks had of navigating city streets. The city she lived in
did well fighting the fires that sprung up haphazardly all
over town at first. City and county bulldozers had displaced
many people as their homes were leveled to create fire
lanes in some areas to stop whole neighborhoods from
going up in smoke, but the worst of that threat seemed to
be over for now.

The haze and smog in the city was still noxious but
a heaven sent rain had helped put the fires out and clear
up the skies some.

Janice wondered should she go cover up her rain
barrels, but figured it was too late now do anything about
any ash contamination coming down from the sky. The
food riots would start now soon she guessed. That rain
brought hot sticky humidity and that always seemed to
bring out the worst in people waiting in the food lines if
there were any. They had the displaced people from the
fires bedded down in the Coliseum so that place was most
likely a ticking time bomb to be avoided.

Among the prepper population (one that is at least
four times the membership of the Tea Party); there are
those who are lone wolves... However, the ones that have
the best chance of survival is the organized pack Donald
had repeatedly pointed out. This concept was not lost on
Janice. Thing is who was packing up and where and for
what purpose?

Preppers" are pretty much like Tea Partiers or can
be viewed as to align themselves with the goals of
minimal government social intrusion into our lives, fiscal
responsibility, and upholding the Constitution. They just
take their own personal responsibilities to a higher level.
This Prepper and Patriot fear of radical loss of
Constitutional rights under an unconstitutional Presidential
Emergency Powers Directive are a legitimate concern.

They have not been preparing themselves and their
families, investing in educating themselves in ways to
become more self-reliant so that some Government give
away part of a social welfare scheme or enforcement of
some obscure hoarding law could take things from them.

The nature of a Prepper is that one must not wait to
be educated; rather one must make the effort to educate
oneself. Keyword here is tried to become self-reliant.

Knowing the need now to be more secretive, Janice
was glad that although Donald was very open about being
a Prepper he had decided not to go on a national show
and advertise himself and his preps to the world.

A lot of preppers don’t like to publicize the fact that
they are prepping, a whole lot of preppers try very hard to
keep their prepping to themselves. Janice and Donald had
often wrestled over the need to promote prepping and
create more awareness in other people versus the need
for secrecy and had opted for a tenuous balance of both.
This created opportunities to share knowledge and
network others, but it also allowed a lot opportunity to get
targeted in a situation like this.