Survive Infinite Dangers: The Family Survival Guide of 21st Century Dangers (12 page)

I will throw in one bit of information that might save your investment in seeds. That’s called “sprouting”. Please Google the word as I’m not going to waste ten pages going into great detail on the subject. I did and found far more information than I could possibly ever need. Basically, sprouting is growing small edible plants in-doors. No sunlight needed, just dirt, water and some fertilizer. You won’t be growing rows of corns or fields of wheat but you can grow many types of “greens” to provide fresh salads perhaps once a week and it will give you more to do as you become bored out of your mind by the second month. Web site www.sproutpeople.com specializes in selling organic seeds best for sprouting. On their Web site they claim Vitamins A, B, C, D, E and K Calcium, Carbohydrates, Chlorophyll, Iron, Magnesium, Niacin, Pantothenic Acid, Phosphorus, Potassium, Zinc, All Amino Acids and Trace Elements. For “sprout basics” they list Seed to Sprout in 1-14 Days Yield = 1.5:1 minimum, 8.5:1 maximum Seed to Shelf Life at 70° = 1-10 years Sprout Shelf Life = 1-6 weeks. There are many more Google sites like theirs. This is one that seemed to have a lot of good information on it. As I say, Google the word and do your own research. Let’s not waste space here repeating information you can easily find yourself. For instance, will just any seed work for sprouting? I have no idea. But it’s something I’m going to look into after this book is published. Having a miniature indoor garden providing a bare amount of fresh “greens” sounds good to me! And I won’t get into a single gun fight with a neighbor over a carrot!

3. “I bought some chickens, a cow and a few other animals. We’ll have fresh milk every day, eggs and fried chicken twice a week!” Were you raised on a farm? Only two percent of us were. Do you know anything about tending to animals? I know I don’t. I do know they are a lot of work and they need to be fed too. Do you really want to butcher hogs, pluck a chicken and kill those cute furry bunny rabbits your four year-old has been tending to since someone not thinking bought them as an Easter gift? Have I turned you off enough? Do I need to go on? I’m guessing I didn’t need to write this much. You’ll be buying LOTS of canned meat with a shelf life of at least two years. A few half-day trips to Super Walmart or Costco and some Internet shopping for things like “Emergency Ration Bars” (Amazon) with a shelf life of six years but closer to 20 as long as you store them in a sealed plastic tub in your SA where the temperature never goes above 75 degrees (see the food and water chapter – each bar is solid as a brick so you suck on it all day but each bar contains ALL the human body needs to survive – vitamins and minerals and everything!). Trust me, plan your food and after six months you’ll be as healthy as you have ever been.

Also – don’t forget to exercise – a lot! It will pass the time and remaining healthy and strong is all important in a time when 911 is just numbers and the local hospital is looted of all drugs then burnt to the ground by those mad who showed up too late. Your worries will NOT be food and water. What is your main worry? I keep saying it, OTHER PEOPLE! As the weeks go by those who did not plan will shoot you dead for a candy bar so read about basic wild animal “human nature” like it must have been 100,000 years ago. Except they didn’t have AR-15’s and Smith & Wesson back then! Everything you need is available from Super Walmart, Home Depot and on the Internet. And a gun store if your Walmart doesn’t carry shotguns or you also want pistols (good idea). Spend a day planning then a day buying in stores and on the Internet then have your 15 by 15(?) safe area ready for a LOT of provisions! Also, make your retreat as large as practical. You will be living in tight quarters with the same people for months and depending on each other in life and death situations (you’ll have at least one even if it is a home invasion) so the more “breathing room” the better. You MUST remain friends helping each other survive!

4. I’m a pretty good hunter and “survivalist” already, I have no family so I’ll just carry my backpack and tent like I do each summer for a few weeks into the wilderness and live off the land until the world calms down”. There is “strength in numbers”. What if you break a leg or become ill? Unfortunately, you will not be the only “really good outdoor hunter/woodsman” with your idea. There will be thousands and thousands all leaving urban areas. Plan to hike at least 300 miles from the nearest major city to have a chance of survival. Close to urban areas wild game will be depleted in a few weeks. People not as adept as you will want to “tag along” (meaning “take care of me – I’m a city person”) then after a few months if you’re still alive you’ll encounter gangs picking off individual survivalists for what they have leaving you for dead. Going it alone? Don’t even think about it!

6. “I just bought this neat (lots of “neat” things to buy if do all this too fast and your wallet gets ahead of common sense) rural hideaway 100 miles from my house. I’ve stocked it with all of my provisions and I can live there for a year undisturbed. Even the road to it is a muddy rut. There are plenty of hiding places and I’ve got my gold and silver hidden there so no one can find it. My guns are locked up and it will be a very safe place! OK – if you live there 98% of the time you only stand a two percent chance of finding the place fully occupied and your own guns used on you to keep you out. You hideaway has to be your full-time residence. If you’re only, say, a half mile outside of a town of 1,000 people, that’s a good spot; you are very smart (or just very lucky). I hope you barricaded the windows with iron bars and bullet proof glass plus installed a steel door with truck stopping pylons in front of all doors (like the top few feet of buried painted ten feet reinforced concrete pylons you see in front of banks and many other businesses these days. Those concrete pylons stop the truck “crash and grab” robberies cold. There are few banks, jewelry stores, etc. today that don’t have them. My local grocery store just installed a pair. How crazy is that! Smash into the store and load up on vegetables? I’d like to talk to the person who approved that $10,000 expense to ask “why!”

What is the BEST retreat (besides the moon)? It is probably an earth contact home (where the back end is built into a north hillside and the house faces south. Design it such that there is enough solar heating to not freeze up at even the coldest temperatures. Make it as self-sustaining as possible. There are now builders who specialize in just such houses so you no longer have to spend hundreds of hours learning and doing it on your own (like my brother did – his ANNUAL utility bill is under $100). Today you just pick out the house you want and write the check. They look surprisingly nice and very comfortable. Three sides are ten feet of dirt and the front is concrete reinforced cinder blocks with an exterior veneer to make it look really nice. Have a full basement with a secret escape route and make the basement entrance hidden as well. To everyone but you and the builder the house looks like it was poured on a concrete slab. Have NO vegetation or trees within 50 feet of the house. IF I ever build another house THAT is the house it will be. Pick a small town of 500 to 5,000 people that is about 15 miles from a town of 25,000 people (that has a Walmart) and at least 150 miles from a big urban city (300,000 people or more). Few people on foot after an EMP bomb will make it 150 miles. Build your home on the edge of town on five acres of defensible land. Install security systems with lots of flood lights. Low wattage motion detector systems are amazingly cheap these days. Driveway sensors, wireless cameras powered by solar cells and so on. You can spend all the money you want or not do it at all. I just thought I’d throw in what the perfect survival retreat is. People in places like that will be the ultimate survivors. But to get back to the beginning a locked up cabin that you visit once a month is worthless. Plan on finding it occupied and well guarded by the time you get there. Whoever is there is not going to leave because you own the place! A “KEEP OUT!” sign and a padlock will be honored (not!).

7. I bought CB (Citizen’s Band) radios and walkie-talkies for everyone in my group. We are all set to communicate with each other and the world at large. Refer to the communications chapter for all the reasons “CB radios” are almost worthless. Every time you push the transmit button you send a signal announcing “here I am!” If a bad guy (or guys) are close by they may hear your loud signal and might even have a directional antenna to triangulate your position. They aren’t worth much so you might as well keep them to listen to the mayhem that only CB radio provides on the airways. But will you receive any information of value? If you are so lucky, you should have been buying lottery tickets! You must have radios and the more the better. Refer to the EMP and the Communications chapters to learn what exactly to buy to meet your needs and how they absolutely must be stored to have anything other than a useless piece of electronic junk after a disaster occurs if it involved EMP. Do not depend on a store salesman or what your local electronic techie told you. Don’t turn away qualified help but please trust my 50 years of electronic experience over something of mostly unknown quality.

8. I bought expensive break-apart bicycles that fit in the backs of my two SUV’s. I have each outfitted to carry a lot of stuff. If an EMP explosion happens, my SUV’s will both stop. I’ll just load up my bike and take off! And I’ll hope my spouse is doing the same thing since I’m 20 miles from home and she’s 30 miles away – we now keep in constant contact with our cells and know where we each are at all times so that’s good!. But we’re in opposite directions from home and our safe area. Great idea if the other millions of vehicles disappeared along with the people. Picture you’re both pedaling down I-5 to meet up in probably two hours. Wrong. You have a barricade of stopped vehicles to get around so you’ll be carrying your bicycle many times. And the people – don’t even get me started! You’ll encounter the ones who are just plain evil and, with your bikes, you’ll encounter them before others do. You’re a moving target for the many with guns who covet your smart idea of a bicycle. Then they’ll each ride a mile before the next bad guy picks them off. Even though if you’re more than a few hour walk (run) from home you should find somewhere relatively safe and try to meet some equally nice people as there is safety in numbers. With your GONe bag that hopefully includes a firearm you will be in great demand. People will want to be with and, more importantly, protect you. If you’re, say, 30 miles across an urban jungle from home (and it will be a jungle within a day) I’m not going to tell you not to follow human nature and make a dash for home. Your chances of success are slim but stick to alleys and paths where you’re not seen. The bicycles – don’t sell them as they are a great idea for normal times. Biking ten miles home when you run out of gas is a piece of cake at 2 PM in the afternoon in a safe part of a city with good weather and friendly people out mowing lawns or whatever. Bikes are also great hiking backups if you take your SUV’s off-road 30 miles into the woods or desert. But just after an EMP blast has turned a city into Hell on earth within a matter of hours; well, go back and read this over again.

8. I read all about freeze dried foods as well as buying basic food in bulk. With 50 pound bags of rice, wheat and other basics I can keep sealed then do my own cooking and baking. Do it if you want but it sure sounds like a lot of work to me! Plus you’ll need equipment like hand cranked grinders (i.e. to turn grain into flour) and many additives to make those pastries, corn fritters in the “101 Survival Meals You Can Make From Scratch” book you bought. Freeze dried foods are expensive for what you get and you have to prepare them correctly plus cook them in most instances. Why pay five times the price of what you can buy today at Super Walmart that all have expiration dates of 18 months to ten years? Even the “food bricks” I mentioned are not that expensive and so what if they wouldn’t earn five stars in a gourmet critic’s newspaper column? Your purpose is to survive, not to try out all of those homemade recipes you’ve been dying to try for years. Note the word “dying”. It’s there for a reason. Relegate food and water to providing basic sustenance of the human body while you wait out the civilization storm raging outside your safe area. Every minute spent grinding wheat into flour then cooking for hours on end is time you should have been using to keep you safe area optimized and constantly looking for ways to increase the safety and well being of your group. I’ll take my stash of Super Walmart food for maybe six months then switch to power bars and food bricks for as long as they hold out. But if you insist on being a 19
^th
century grocer with barrels of barley, oats, corn, wheat and so forth, be my guest. But, boy, it sure sounds like a lot of work to me and you will not, I repeat not, save money with bulk or freeze dried food. You’ll probably spend a lot more than if you had spent a day at Super Walmart plus buying emergency ration bars and power energy bars on the Internet.

By the way, learn to read labels. Way too much food we consume today is loaded with what tastes good but leaves much to be desired when it comes to nutrition. Read up on nutrition (there are plenty of nutrition Web sites so let’s not waste time here on the subject) and know what the human body needs to, as they say, “keep body and soul together”. Yes, have the occasional junk food. It will do wonders to keep people sane (especially the kids – a periodic candy bar or something sweet works wonders when you need peace and quiet). Oh yes, cooking creates smoke and smells. Need I say more?

9. What else? I’m going to stop with that. I’m sure I’ve hit at least one sore spot with every reader of this book! I can think of another couple of dozen “what was I thinking!” items but these seem to be the most common ones I hear from others. I’m always interested in reading of others mistakes. I’ve made too many to count! If you’d like to share any you have send to
[email protected]
and I’ll publish it on
www.infinitedangers.com
but will NOT include your name (unless you want me to). Maybe I’ll award a prize to the reader who did the most “what was I thinking!” things after civilization returns and I write a book of first-person stories of all those survivors who bought and followed this book. Just use common sense and think, really think, how the world will be after a disaster occurs. It will be like day and night. What makes sense right now may be a source of constant annoyance at the money you wasted later on (hint: all of those “dumb, dumb” items put them where they won’t remind you that you make mistakes just like every other living person does – don’t be hard on yourself!).