PRACTICAL PREPPING:

NO APOCALYPSE REQUIRED

An Everyday Approach to

Disaster Preparedness

#2 in a Series of 4 – The Basics (Part One)

By Steven Konkoly and Randall S. Powers

Copyright Information

© 2014 Stribling Media. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Stribling Media.

This manuscript, Practical Prepping: No Apocalypse Required, is intended to serve as a general guide for those interested in personal preparedness. Readers are free to interpret this information as they will, and they alone assume total responsibility for any and all resulting decisions and/or actions. Stribling Media assumes no responsibility for the actions of the reader. Nothing in this book is intended as an express or implied validation of the suitability or worthiness of any product or service.

Contents

THE BASICS (Part One)

Chapter 5: FRAMEWORK

Chapter 6: SHELTER

Chapter 7: WATER

Chapter 8: FOOD

Chapter 9: COMMUNICATIONS

Chapter 10: ENERGY

About Steven Konkoly

About Randall S. Powers

THE BASICS (Part One)

Chapter 5: FRAMEWORK

Kate let go of the mop and grabbed her rifle from one of the coat hooks in the mudroom. She slung it over her shoulder and let it hang in the “shoulder-ready” position behind her back, where it was out of the way, but readily accessible. The rifle no longer felt like a cold, alien object. It still caught on furniture and clunked against the walls, but she’d come to terms with the fact that the rifle wasn’t dangerous, unless she released the safety and pulled the trigger.

The kitchen looked spotless, if you could overlook a few structural problems. Split cabinets, cracked backsplash tile, missing chunks of drywall, painted over bloodstains, and bullet peppered furniture to name a few. Still, it was a radical improvement over this morning. She could live with the cosmetic damage, especially if it meant they could stay. The realities of evacuating the house weighed heavily on her mind.

They had designed the compound with resilience and redundancy in mind. “The rule of three’s.” Three sources or layers for each of their basic needs. Water provided by a well, pumped out of the pond or collected in 50 gallon, food grade drums from the gutters during a rainstorm. Food supplied by their garden and fields, supplemented when necessary by the vast stores in the basement, with the year round option of fishing, trapping or hunting. Security had multiple layers. Communications. Heating. Power. Whenever practical, they sought long-term solutions with multiple back ups. If they left Gelder Pond, their survival plan would have to fit into a car—shared by another family.

—From Event Horizon

Steven

I feel like I’ve spent most of my time writing these essays in a confessional booth. I’ve finally committed a cardinal collaborative writing sin—I took an advanced peek at Randy’s essay for this chapter. Eloquently written, succinctly stated, thoroughly explored—and I see he used graphics. Graphics? Come on, I don’t have any graphics! What? This isn’t a contest? Somebody tell Randy this, because he beat me hands down—as I expected.

Framing the survival basics is the bread and butter of Randy’s business, which is why he succeeds and excels as a personal readiness coach. This framework serves as your “readiness lens” to view and navigate the more detailed chapters. Sort of a springboard into the deep end, where you get to explore the different aspects of disaster preparedness without arm floaties. You can still have those if you want! We keep a ready supply by the side of the pool.

The importance of a solid framework can’t be understated. No matter which topic you explore, your approach should be the same. Start with the minimum level of readiness preps you need to endure your SURVIVE WHAT scenario and expand from there, as long as that expansion doesn’t cannibalize another critical area. We cover a lot of ground in the next eleven foundational chapters. Your initial SURVIVE WHAT scenario might not require you to take action in all eleven categories. Mine didn’t. Not even close. But my next scenario required a significant amount of work in ALL categories. I guarantee the next scenario on your disaster preparedness continuum will too.

Building a strong foundation in each of the eleven categories paves the way toward flexibility in your readiness planning. Resilience through redundancy follows. Sounds like the underpinnings of a PhD level “prepper” philosophy course, right? Let me break it down into something Alex Fletcher and Steven Konkoly have understood long before either of them heard the word “prepper.” RULE OF THREES.

The RULE OF THREES boils down to purposeful and useful REDUNDANCY. You see it everywhere in the military, which is why I immediately recognized its usefulness as a readiness tool. Military redundancy serves a distinct purpose. It keeps troops in the fight and saves lives. Sounds like a system tailor-made for disaster preparedness. Let’s take a quick look at a military example. Hold on while I put on my technothriller hat. I love writing about this stuff.

At my first duty station, a frigate homeported in Japan, redundancy spanned the vessel from fore to aft, down to the very structural design of the ship. All of the critical control stations were separated by enough distance to prevent the command and control functions of the ship from being wiped out by a single detonation. The ship’s throttle and steering could be transferred from the bridge to engineering. Steering could be done from the rudder itself. Damage control (fighting hull breaches and fires) could be conducted from one of several stations. Yeah, yeah, closing watertight hatches, sticking wooden plugs in holes and spraying water at fires. What about the weapons, you ask? The epitome of focused redundancy.

The weapons systems formed a layered defense against antiship missiles and other threats. Long-range surface-to-air missiles reached out to forty miles, followed by a 76mm rapid-fire, radar-controlled cannon that took over the fight at five miles, capped by the 20mm Phalanx Close-in-Weapons (CIWS) capable of firing 4,500 rounds per minute at anything that survived the other two systems. I was the fourth layer of defense, firing an M-14 from the bridge wing. That’s not true, but I would have volunteered to do this. Sadly, they rarely let me carry a weapon during my tour of duty—they knew better.

A U.S. warship is a far cry from your home, but the concept of redundancy still applies. Three alternatives. A primary, secondary and emergency means of satisfying each requirement of your plan. Randy takes it a step further and talks about scale within the RULE OF THREES. Redundancy to scale. PhD-level stuff for sure, but easy to understand with my help. Another military example coming right up.

If you take a close look at a U.S. Marine Corps infantryman’s kit, you’ll see the RULE OF THREES, and I’m not talking about the requirement for more than three tattoos. Marines like tattoos—fact. I told you we’d learn something. I spent four years working alongside marines, so I get to make a few jokes at their expense. Beyond the three-tattoo minimum, all of their essential gear is based on redundancy. Nothing demonstrates Randy’s redundancy to scale concept than the load-bearing equipment issued to a marine.

The Family of Improved Load Bearing Equipment (FILBE) consists of three layers:

1. A large, framed Main pack, which holds all of a marine’s field equipment. When a marine goes into the field, they stuff their life into this pack. This usually sits in their tactical vehicle or Forward Operating Base.

2. A smaller, internal frame Assault pack, which is designed to be worn on extended missions. We typically refer to the Assault pack as a 72-hour pack. Marines stuff it with MREs, water, extra ammunition, anything they’ll need to stay alive in a hostile environment. They will typically drop this at a designated point prior to attacking the enemy.

3. The final layer is the tactical rig, which consists of the body armor vest, belt, holster, anything strapped directly to the marine’s body. Attached to the tactical rig, you’ll find most of their ammunition, a water hydration bladder (CamelBak), grenades, Motorola and personal first aid kit. Everything marines need in a firefight. When assaulting an enemy position or patrolling a hostile valley, the tactical rig might be all they carry.

FILBE is a multilayered system designed to accomplish the same mission (carry a marine’s gear) in a variety of environments. It’s no mistake that I use a lot of military-designed equipment in my personal readiness load-out.

There, I added something to the discussion. Not easy to do with Randy on the job.

Randall

Once you have taken an honest measure of where you are, the threats you should be preparing for, and you have weaved your family disaster plan around this framework, it is time to make sure you have what you need to execute your plan. We have established some useful tools to help you sort through the myriad of options you will have to choose from at every level of preparedness.

As we mentioned in the last chapter, you should start at the beginning and focus on you…your situation, your options and your needs. Well, starting at the beginning means starting with the basics. Whether we are talking about your family disaster plan or larger questions like whether you can or should stay at your home during a disaster situation, we have a system that will help bring clarity to your decision-making process.

In disaster preparedness there are certain factors that must be dealt with if you want to affect a positive result for you and your family or group. At Practical Tactical, we know these as the basic tenets of preparedness: shelter, water, food, fire, communications, defense and psychology. If you are going to mitigate the impacts on your team during any disaster situation, each of these basic concepts must be identified and addressed. This is your starting point for determining your preparedness needs from a “big picture” perspective. Taking the time to identify the basic concepts will steer your choices as you narrow your field of focus down to a personal level for you and each member of your family or group later.

Our philosophy on personal preparedness is one of layers, with each layer building another level of resilience into your overall preparedness plan. As you work your way through the process, you will see how all of the pieces (or layers) work together to reinforce your efforts in pursuit of the ultimate goal, which is to keep you and your loved ones safe and mitigate the impacts of any disaster.

Every personal preparedness plan begins with a family disaster plan that will cover what you and every member of your household will do in case of an emergency at your home or a disaster situation in which you will be able to shelter in place. Because disaster does not care about the clock or what is convenient for your schedule, you must be prepared to respond at all times and in all situations. As an acknowledgement to this reality, it is prudent to have a plan of attack should events conspire to force you out of your home. This will require an entirely different set of plans and a corresponding set of adjustments to your kit. If disaster were to strike while you are not at home, you would be forced to transition quickly to a plan that will move you away from the threat and simply make it back to your home to link up with your family or group. This is yet another scenario that requires a different set of plans and gear.

Is your head spinning yet? Well, don’t worry. Everything is about to fall into place. This may all sound like a lot of planning and gear, and you may even wonder if all of that is really necessary. The answer is yes. Regardless of whether you’re building a home disaster kit or a set of mobile gear designed to help you survive a situation that forces you to be on the move, they are all based on the basic tenets of preparedness we laid out earlier. We believe in living by the “Rule of Three,” which states you should have at least three ways to accomplish any goal, and that filters into our thoughts on preparedness as well. Because of this fact, there will be some overlap built into the kits, but how you choose to cover each tenet should be scaled to fit the purpose of that particular kit. For example, you may have a generator, a large flashlight and the ability to make fire in your home disaster kit, but you may carry a pocket-sized light, a headlamp and an emergency glow stick in your mobile kit to lessen the weight or to keep your hands free while on the move. Both setups will provide you with options for a light source should you need one, but the items chosen for each particular kit are based on what provides you the greatest tactical advantage in that situation. By approaching preparedness in this manner, not only are you covering your immediate survival needs, but you are also systematically building redundancy into your gear and resilience into your overall preparedness planning.

Tackling a concept as large and as multifaceted as disaster preparedness, an area with a seemingly endless number of options and choices, can easily become an overwhelming experience. You need clarity to develop a plan of attack that will help you make the best choices for you and your family based on your individual situation. We call this the preparedness prism.

Just as any prism separates the light that pours in from the sun into a brilliant display of color, the Practical Tactical Preparedness Prism helps you bend the glaring and sometimes blinding light that shines from the vast universe of techniques and gear associated with preparedness and separate out the most useful options that best meet the needs of you and your family.

Like a traditional prism, the Practical Tactical Preparedness Prism is made up of three sides…Planning, Purpose of Use and Practice.

We have already discussed developing a disaster preparedness plan. This plan establishes the framework that will guide every decision you make going forward. Now the hard work of figuring out what you need and why you need it to achieve your preparedness goals begins. You should know the purpose of use for every tool, skill and piece of gear you add to any of your disaster kits, and the knowledge of what it is, what it’s for and how you use it should accompany every item in any kit you build. If it does not, you should consider your kit incomplete.

The third side of our preparedness prism is practice. Regardless of whether it is a new plan or a change to an existing one, a new piece of gear or a newly gained skill, you must put it into practice. This is the only verifiable way to determine its practical value.

Taking a look at each preparedness decision through the Practical Tactical Preparedness Prism will lessen the chance of making a bad choice. Because you are doing the great work of planning ahead, you have given yourself the opportunity to reassess and make the right choice before your and your family’s lives depend on it.

Another tool we use to refine our planning and decision-making process is the Practical Tactical Preparedness Cycle. This is a process of education and assessment, developing a personalized preparedness plan and then building your kit to fit your plan as opposed to working things the other way around, followed up with training and evaluation. Once you complete your evaluation of how things are working with your current setup, the process starts over again as you take what you have learned and move forward.

When you look at your situation, develop a plan and start to think about the gear it might take to build out each of your kits, it is going to sound like a lot of stuff, and that can be intimidating. Then there’s the cost of getting the gear you need. If you do not make good choices as you go and are forced to learn by trial and error, resulting in buying the same type of gear again and again, this process can get expensive in a hurry. However, this does not have to be a roadblock to your preparedness. Using tools like the Practical Tactical Preparedness Prism and the Preparedness Cycle, you can better identify your needs and make the best choice for your situation the first time, and that will save you both the anxiety of indecision and worry as well as money.

How much you choose to spend on the gear for each of your disaster kits is up to you, just remember it does not have to be a prohibitive factor when choosing your gear. There is not a magic number that will somehow make your gear any better or more reliable when you need it most. However, that is not to say that price never equates to quality. The important thing to remember is you can get reliable gear at an affordable price that will absolutely meet the needs of your disaster plan without breaking the bank. You have to do your research, and you may have to shop around a bit to find what suits your needs, but you can cover your preparedness and still stick to your budget. Every day, we all have to make choices in our daily lives based on our priorities. The same is true in preparedness. The Preparedness Prism and Cycle will help you set those priorities. With this knowledge, you can confidently go out and get the gear that best fits your plan and your budget. With this in mind, it is helpful to remember that when you pay for quality, you usually only have to pay once, and that is important. Assess your situation, develop a plan based on your circumstances, and then go out and get the highest quality gear that you can afford that suits your needs.

In the United States, a person’s home is usually their greatest investment. More importantly, it is a place of safety where the memories that will be cherished for a lifetime are made. From a preparedness point of view, a person’s primary residence is usually where they keep the majority of their emergency supplies. The idea that we would ever leave our home voluntarily during a disaster is completely foreign to most of us. Most everyone would choose to shelter in place or “bug in” and remain in their homes if given the chance. However, that does not mean we will never face a forced evacuation. Should we ever be forced to pull up stakes and BOLT or “bug out,” we must be ready. Using the basic tenets of preparedness as a guide, viewing the many challenges of crafting an effective plan for survival through the Practical Tactical Preparedness Prism, and then testing those plans with the Practical Tactical Preparedness Cycle, you will develop a multitiered preparedness plan for you and your family or group that is practical, resilient and flexible. This process will allow you to build layers of preparedness into your daily life right now and provide you with options should you ever face a disaster situation in the future.

Chapter 6: SHELTER

Kate aligned the rechargeable screwdriver with the barrel hinge, and drove the three-inch stainless steel screws flush with the hardware. She repeated the process for the remaining three screws, handing the screwdriver to Alex, who was situated across the ply board, on a second ladder. Kate kept the board pushed against the window frame, as he adjusted the right hinge, trying to place it level with the other hinge. Over the past two days, the two of them had managed to construct makeshift hurricane shutters for all of the second story windows, depleting most of the ply board supply.

They grabbed the board near the bottom corners and lifted, swinging the heavy board upward and outward. The hinges didn’t move as they lowered the board back in place. Crude but effective. The board covered the window, but was far from airtight, with half inch to quarter inch spaces lining the sides. Once the weather turned, they’d have to attach some type of commercial weather stripping—anything to block the cold drafts that would pour through these cracks. One step at a time. For now, they needed the ability to keep the rain from pouring directly into the house. They could refine the process later.

—From Event Horizon

Steven

“Mi casa es su casa.” Except during a pandemic. That was the hardline stance taken by Alex Fletcher in The Jakarta Pandemic to protect the most valuable component of his survival plan—the roof and four walls standing between his family and the outside world. He made no exceptions, even opting to take the fight to the enemy in the middle of a blizzard to prevent a breach of his enclave. Smart move on his part—does that mean I’m a genius for writing it? Not really. I didn’t invent Alex’s overriding instinct to protect his home. Humans (and the vast majority of living creatures on planet Earth) have been obsessed with shelter since the dawn of time—for good reason. Shelter satisfies many of our basic human needs. Privacy, security, protection from the elements, comfort and familiarity.

Of course, it’s hard to call shopping for a 2,000-square-foot house in the best school district “seeking shelter,” but the same core needs apply, with a few added “wants.” Most of us live in this world—where we still have the relative luxury of choosing our shelter. It doesn’t matter whether you’re signing a lease for a two-bedroom apartment, two-car garage bi-level, two-acre farmhouse or a two-million-dollar mansion with a view of the ocean; the feeling is still the same. THIS IS HOME. Unfortunately, this feeling can work against you.

I’m not saying you should trade backyard (or balcony) barbeques for a cardboard sign reading, “Homeless by Choice! I didn’t want to get bogged down with the BARRICADE mindset created by investing time, money and emotion in a fixed location.” The light will change to green before they finish reading the sign. What I’m saying is SHELTER is a complicated topic, which bears some examination. Trust me, I’m not giving up my house any time soon, but I do have a plan in case I can’t stay here. RULE OF THREES applies—actually we might be in the RULE OF FIVES because we recognize the critical importance of shelter. I’m going to list some options we’ve considered, hoping they’ll help frame your family discussion about planning for shelter.

1. Regardless of the disaster, we’d LIKE to stay in the home we built (not by hand—we’re not that industrious) and spent the last ten years in as a family. It’s going to take one hell of a crisis to push us out of our comfort zone here at the Casa de Konkoly (Sorry, Hungarian and Spanish words don’t sound right together). We’re right there with 99% of you. When the SHTF, I’d prefer to wipe down the fan and spray some air freshener. Am I being stubborn? No. Why? Let’s go back to the second chapter. SURVIVE WHAT? The most likely disaster scenarios in Maine don’t involve hiking out of my neighborhood or driving west. This is simple economy of effort. I’m putting most of my time, effort and resources toward staying in my house. MOST. Options 2-5 reflect the possibility, however slight, that we might have to go on an unplanned “vacation.”

2. Whether we drive, bicycle or walk out of here, we have a primary destination (more on that later). I have no problem sleeping in a car or a tent, but if I can swing a hotel room for the family, I’ll take that option. I’m just going to assume that cash will be the only form of payment accepted, and make sure we always have enough cash to cover a few hotel stays en route to our “vacation” spot.

3. Most of you know that I own a sailboat. It’s a twenty-eight-footer—just big enough to keep us from killing each other if the weather sours during our weeklong family sailing trips. This may sound crazy, but I feel better about our survival options when the boat launches in June. For the span of four months, I have an unfettered way to escape Maine. No traffic jams, zombie hoards, angry neighbors, just a rolling blue highway to any destination along the East Coast—even another continent. Maybe you have an RV or something similar to consider. Disclaimer: I didn’t just tell you to drive your RV into the ocean.

4. Tenting is fun! Said nobody after the seventh day in a tent, under any circumstances. Hotels won’t always be an option while travelling, and in some cases, you might not want to get close enough to populations centers to make them an option. We keep a larger tent with our “Car Kit” and smaller tents or shelter materials (tarp) within our individual BOLT kits. Tents can serve as temporary shelters on the way to a secondary location, or they might become your semipermanent shelter—in some climate zones they can be used as permanent shelter. Tents give you a ton of flexibility, and guess what? A tent is one of the few major items in your overall survival kit that can be used outside of the apocalypse—to have fun! Camping. All this talk about doom and gloom, and you still get to enjoy yourself. Who would have thought that?

5. Everyone gather around. I have a secret to tell you, and I don’t want the word reaching my brother-in-law—yet. He might get a visit from us if the SHTF. Nothing confirmed. Just thinking out loud. But it sure would be nice to have a place in the mountains, with people I trust, when society collapses. Probably not going to happen, but if it did, we might be headed to Vermont. 188 miles—not that I’ve used Google Maps to measure the distance.

6. Don’t feel like sharing space with the in-laws? Buy your own Bug Out Location (BOL). I put this last on the list, because it’s by far the most expensive and complicated option. Some of you might have a cottage, lake house, rural property, or camp (that’s what they call a summer home in Maine) that can serve as the family BOL. I’m not talking about a cottage on the busiest lake in New Hampshire. You don’t want to trade a busy spot in the suburbs, where people might have their own supplies, for a busy spot on a lake where a two-day supply of Doritos, hot dogs, condiments and toilet paper summarizes most vacationer’s readiness standards (off-season might work). I think we’ll circle back to Bug Out Locations in Chapter 20: Should I Stay or Should I Go.

Randall

As we mentioned in the last chapter, shelter is one of the basic tenets of preparedness. Regardless of the disaster situation you find yourself in, how you take shelter from the elements is a need that must be addressed. If you are fortunate enough to be able to remain in your home or some other place you are intimately familiar with during a disaster, this problem is solved. Every one of us would take this option if it were available to us. Not only is our home where we are most comfortable both physically and psychologically, it is where we have every tactical advantage. Whether it is the availability of supplies or knowledge of the surrounding area and the people in it, when it comes to shelter, you could not be in a more advantageous circumstance for survival.

Given that you have the advantage of being able to shelter at home during a disaster, you have the ability to take extra measures to improve your situation. You can spend the time you would have spent squaring away your shelter on other preparedness considerations like addressing any of the other basic tenets of preparedness, fortifying your home’s defenses or spending some time helping others in your family or group or in your community.

Should disaster strike when you are not at home or if you are forced to evacuate in an emergency situation, the issue of shelter quickly becomes paramount and must be dealt with. Whether it is your BOLT kit, a get-home bag or your everyday carry, each of your mobile kits should have multiple options for emergency shelter built into them depending on the corresponding plan for each kit. For instance, in a BOLT kit you may have a small camping tent, a tarp and an emergency blanket. In a get-home bag, you may have opted for a bivvy (bivouac) sack, a small tarp and a waterproof rain shell, whereas in your everyday carry kit, you carry an emergency blanket, a quality poncho and a few heavy-duty trash bags. Remember to take seasonal weather patterns for your area into consideration when building out your mobile kits and adjust the corresponding gear in each kit as necessary, keeping a wary eye on rapidly changing weather conditions.

Earlier this year, I lived a prime example of an emergency situation developing while you’re away from home and what can happen when you’re not prepared….and what can happen when you are. In late January of 2014 the city of Atlanta, along with much of the Deep South, was brought to its collective knees by a major winter storm. What follows is a post from the Practical Tactical blog that chronicles the events that followed.

FROZEN: The 2014 Atlanta Ice Emergency

I am quite certain you have heard about a small weather situation that has unfolded across the Deep South over the last twenty-four-plus hours or so. What looked like a winter storm that would bring some frozen precipitation to the region as it skirted along the gulf coast and southern third of the eastern seaboard wiggled to the north just a bit and exploded into a nightmare, worst-case scenario, and the “fun” began. Everything came together in a pure symphony of suck to unleash stress, fear and danger on the South’s hospitable population.

Despite the best efforts of our local leadership to convince everyone they had learned the lessons from the 2011 Snowpocalypse that shut down the city of Atlanta for the better part of a week and that all of the appropriate adjustments had been made, this weather event….a full three years hence….laid bare these very dangerous truths:

*There were government failures at every level to assess the threat and properly deploy assets in advance of the storm

*Poor decisions by Georgia DOT resulted in a failure to sufficiently treat roadways prior to the weather event

*Poor transportation infrastructure that has elevated ramps, bridges and inclines everywhere exacerbate any inclement weather issue

Now, some thirty-six hours later, it is clear that the hard lessons taught in the 2011 storm were not learned by this local and state government at all. Even with new plans in place and some new equipment at their disposal, the end result was not better in 2014 than it was in 2011. In fact, in many ways, it was worse.

All of the key players were telling us right up until the snow started to fall that there were plans in place and that this time things would be better. “Don’t worry about anything, John Q. We’ve got it covered. Everything will be fine.” More trucks. New plans. And, by the way, everyone just “stay off the roads.” Well, it quickly became apparent that the only way any of these extra trucks or new plans were going to make any difference at all was if everyone actually did stay off the roads. And that would be impossible. Wait, did I mention that there were no closures of government offices or metro schools in advance of the storm? No? And what about the fact that businesses certainly were not shuttering for the day? No? Oh, well then. Here’s the best part. The same people that were telling everyone to stay off the roads…remember that’s the underlying key to the entire plan…those same people issued a statement just before the inclement weather began telling everyone to get out of downtown, leave work now and go home. In other words, just as the storm was kicking up it was like they said, “Everyone! Get on the roads riiiiiiiiiiiight…NOW!”

And that’s when the apocalypse porn visuals started streaming out of Atlanta.

Unlike the decision makers for the state of Georgia and the city of Atlanta, I, my wife, all my friends and virtually everyone with a weather app on their smartphone or an internet connection or a television or radio knew that the city of Atlanta was going to get hit with about two inches of snow with some ice thrown in for good measure. It didn’t take a meteorologist (by the way, my cousin is a meteorologist) to figure this one out, folks. So, with this info in my back pocket, I set out to get a plan to deal with the issues that I believed were sure to arise since I was scheduled to head to work for an evening shift (in the center of downtown Atlanta) Tuesday afternoon right as the storm was getting started.

I have a forty-five-mile commute to work, so I don’t leave the house without a plan on a perfectly normal day and the gear to fit it. But when there’s a 100% chance of accumulating winter precipitation in a city where that don’t usually happen, you better believe I am coming prepared and loaded for bear. So, I headed into work with everything I would need to spend the night rather than taking the risk of getting back out on what I was quite certain would be a skating rink in the wee hours of the morning. Of course, I had my Every Day Carry (EDC) with me and my Get Home Bag (GHB) in the back of my vehicle as I always do, but on this day I also loaded up the sleep gear I take when I go camping, about three times the normal amount of food I would carry on my person, and I tossed my BOLT kit in the back of the truck just to cover all the bases.

So I hit the road with the flakes a-flyin’, and sure enough, a ride that usually takes me about fifty minutes took three hours. During my travels, I watched as the major interstates and surface streets were already glazing over with ice. I dodged travelers that were spinning out left and right as I made my way to work, finally headed inside to watch the frozen drama unfold.

During the evening, I had several coworkers decide to take their chances with the weather and try for home. Around 7 pm, a friend that travels a route similar to mine decided to strike out for home. Five hours later, he called in to let us know he was sitting on I-85 (only about fifteen miles from our building), stuck in traffic, and that he hadn’t moved at all in about three hours. He had no food, no water, no blankets or anything to keep warm with him in the vehicle and no hope of moving any time soon. Right about now I was feeling awful for my pal, but pretty good about my preparations and my plan to stay put.

At the end of my shift, I posted the following status update on Facebook to let my family and friends know what was going on with me:

“Ah, weekend. Hello again, old friend. I can’t wait to get home and…oh, that’s right. I can’t go anywhere. I’m encased in ice and miles from home. Very thankful right now to know that the homestead is safe and secure in all ways even though I can’t be there. Anyways, tomorrow brings the sun (even with tough temps), and that presents my next opportunity to get home. Take care all.”

I walked out to my vehicle and grabbed my gear for the evening. Even from street level, I could see the city was absolutely crystallized in ice. I paired up with a couple of my coworkers that had also decided to stay, and we settled in for the night, watching television in astonishment as thousands of people were sitting in vehicles on seemingly every major roadway surrounding the city with zero chance of going anywhere any time soon. Not to mention all of the children around the city and across the region that were stuck in schools, where they would have to spend the night, or on the roads in buses that would not be heading home on this bitter night. That part was unimaginable.

Upon waking we learned that the roads were still locked up with some people now approaching twenty-five-plus hours stranded in their vehicles. Parents with young children stuck on the road with no food and no water. How does that happen? I can’t imagine being in that scenario on a perfect day, much less one that everyone should have known was going to turn out like this one had. People running out of gas, ditching vehicles and being forced to walk to safe havens just to escape the brutal weather only to end up sleeping in the aisles of a grocery or convenience store. On the bright side, we did learn that our friend that had been stuck on I-85 had finally made it home safely around 5 am that morning. When I checked my phone for the first time, I saw that my wife had posted this status update on Facebook:

“Anyone that was stranded in Atlanta’s epic fail of 2014, I hope you will be able to make it home soon. If you aren’t prepared to take care of yourself, you are s.o.l. because no one is coming to help you. That seems to be the lesson learned by Atlanta on this day. Don’t laugh at people who prep, they plan for the worst and hope for the best. The worst happened in Atlanta yesterday. Be prepared, people.”

What can I say? That’s awesome.

Even in this awful situation there were some bright spots that make me very proud of the people that live and work in the great state of Georgia and of humanity in general. Stories of people walking right down the middle of six-lane interstates that were eerily at a standstill, handing out water and food to those people that had been stranded for hours, travelers helping one another to get vehicles unstuck and moving once again, and even the glorious news of a child named Grace being born in a stranded vehicle that was stuck in traffic on I-285, the perimeter highway that rings Atlanta.

After packing all my gear and checking to see if I could help any of my coworkers, I headed for home. Because I’m fortunate enough to have people near and far that care about me and pray for my safety that knew I was getting underway, I shared the following status update when I arrived home:

“So, this January’s weather experience has come to a gratifying end for me. I left work at 11:30 this morning and rolled into the house about 12:30 pm, which is really pretty good. Upon arrival I found the homestead warm and welcoming with my loving wife and two adoring pups thrilled to see me, a roaring fire and a pot of hot coffee beckoning. Last night was as good as it could be given the situation, and the company certainly didn’t hurt. The best part of this story is that I didn’t spend one moment in fret or worry, either for myself or Alice, because we had taken the time to plan for the worst eventualities and made the appropriate preparations ahead of the emergency. Although the weather forced us to be apart, she knew I would be okay, and I knew that she would be safe, warm and happy. All of this thanks to a little foresight and taking the action steps necessary to insure such an outcome. Thanks to everyone that offered thoughts or voiced support and wishes of well-being. I appreciate each and every one of those actions and each and every one of you.”

For the second time in a handful of years the city of Atlanta and my beloved home state of Georgia have been in the nation’s spotlight thanks to paralysis due to a winter weather emergency. So much danger, human distress and property damage on display for the world to see, and it really saddens me. It makes me sad because I know that so much of it can be avoided altogether with just a little planning and forethought, both on an individual and a governmental scale. These people don’t have to suffer like they have. All of these lives don’t have to be put at risk. These situations could be mostly prevented if only there were better overall planning put in place by those that are supposed to lead, and each individual made their personal security during the situations their top priority. On the other side of the coin, my experience was as safe, warm and as comfortable as it could have possibly been.

There were those behind the power curve with no plan and no preparations that found themselves caught up in the chaos because they were waiting on someone else to tell them what to do, and then you have the example I try to live out where you get a plan, build a kit to fit, and execute a plan of action to the best of your ability based on sound information you have gleaned ahead of time. Which one would you choose?

It really is so easy to take the necessary steps and get this done so that you and your family won’t be caught in the whirlwind the next time it blows. Here’s hoping you will choose to do so.

Semper Paratus!

How you choose to outfit your various kits is up to you, but don’t lock yourself into one idea of what shelter can be. A useful shelter can be virtually anything as long as it effectively gets you out of the elements. Remembering to keep your options open and remaining flexible is the key, especially with your mobile kits. If you’re on the move, whether trying to get back home or just going from point A to point B, the concept of “mobile shelter” is something that can be advantageous to you. What is “mobile shelter,” you ask? Well, preparedness friends, it’s really straightforward, and I’m betting you’re more familiar with the concept than you may realize. “Mobile shelter” is anything that gives you shelter from the elements that allows you to remain on the move. Umbrella, anyone? I know, I know…and I hear you. You’re trying to make it home during an emergency, not taking a stroll through the park. But the idea is the same. An umbrella isn’t exactly the kind of shelter you might have had in mind, but in a pinch it would get the job done. Other, more “tactical” options are the types of items I mentioned above. A waterproof rain jacket, a heavy poncho, a tarp or an emergency blanket are all things that you could use to shelter yourself and your other gear from the elements that are lightweight, packable and would allow you to continue towards your destination.

If you are attempting to make your way home during an emergency, the first thing you must know is that the landscape you will have to navigate will be wholly different than your normal daily commute. Now I’m not saying there will be a series of checkpoints dotting your usual route home that restricts movement in and out of the city or that you will be dealing with boots on the ground under martial law, but odds are there will be an unsettling chaos bubbling just under the surface, and at the very least your fellow citizens will be just as anxious, possibly frightened, and as on edge as you are. This is a potentially dangerous convergence of circumstances. If self-preservation is an instinct you possess, stealth, avoidance and a general notion to mind your own *@%! business is always a good idea when moving in an emergency situation. You’re on a mission, and you may have people depending on the success of that mission waiting for you at the end of your journey. You cannot afford to take too many chances.

Given the climate of the situation you will be facing, keeping your head down and staying away from crowds will probably be a good idea. This will force you to slow down or possibly take an alternate route, and you could find yourself somewhere between points A and B when the night (or the weather) comes in, and you will need to find shelter. Depending on how you have chosen to build out your kit, you may not have a “traditional” overnight shelter setup with you. You may be able to stay dry, but you should always be looking to improve your situation when it comes to an element of survival as important as shelter. This is where creating a shelter or utilizing a “found” shelter will serve you well. Using the gear you have in your kit, like a cutting tool and cordage, along with items you may be able to scavenge in an urban environment or the surrounding natural resources afforded you in a more rural setting, you can build a more primitive type shelter like a lean-to, a wickiup or a debris shelter to get you through the night. You can also use existing structures as an emergency overnight shelter. Whether it’s an overpass or an overhanging rock ledge, sheltering in locations where the work of creation has already been done for you is always a smart move in a survival situation.

The bottom line is that having a way to shelter in a disaster or emergency situation is a must, regardless of whether you are in your home or on the move. Using the preparedness prism and the kit to fit concept as a guide, you can address one of your basic preparedness needs and build resilience into each of your kits by identifying what you need to accomplish based on your disaster plan, selecting the appropriate gear and scaling that gear up or down to fit the needs of each kit.

In the world of preparedness, it is often said that the time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining, and that is especially true when the preparedness topic of discussion is shelter. Get your shelter setup squared away now while the sun is still shining to make sure that you and your family or group can weather the storm when it comes.

Chapter 7: WATER

“You swam across the Charles at night, with all of this gear?”

“I told you he was a mercenary,” said someone.

“Believe whatever you want. I don’t really give a shit. I’m leaving, and nobody is following. I’ll leave a water filter behind for you. It’s a hand-pumped type, good for five hundred gallons. You can catch rainwater in the trashcans or fetch water from the river. Whatever you do, don’t let anyone see it, or you’ll have a fight on your hands.”

—From Event Horizon

He decided to start at the wall adjacent to the door. The metal storage shelves started there and extended to the front concrete wall of the basement and contained spring water in two-gallon containers. Each four-level shelving unit held thirty of these containers, all on the lowest three shelves. The containers were stacked five in a row, two rows high on each shelf. There were eight shelving units along this wall, together holding nearly five hundred gallons of water.

All of the containers were marked with their date of purchase. Each week, at least one of the oldest containers was removed and placed in the kitchen for consumption. During the weekly grocery run, the container would be replaced, ensuring that the water supply stored in the basement was slowly turned over throughout the course of the year, preventing the inevitable decay of the plastic containers.

—From The Jakarta Pandemic

Randall

When it comes to water, there are no two ways about it. You’ve got to have it. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about your home, your community or society as a whole. Without water, everything simply stops. In the United States access to fresh water has been so effortless for so long that for the general public, it’s like breathing. We use this most precious resource without even thinking about it. We are used to taking long hot showers, sometimes more than once a day, just because it feels good. We would quickly gain a different perspective if we were forced to haul gallons of water up from the lake or river and then purify it simply to complete everyday tasks. Fresh and clean water for drinking, food preparation and hygiene all right at our fingertips, it just flows from the tap like magic. It really is a small miracle.

Because we really don’t have to think about water in America, most people have no idea of how it gets to their tap. Unless operating on a completely gravity-fed system, and there are very few of those across our country, municipalities are forced to pump water through the system. It takes a very complex and interdependent collection of systems to make this small miracle that we know as our municipal water system a reality. It takes electricity to run those pumps and miles and miles of (often aging) pipeline infrastructure to deliver that water to your home. The more complex a system is, the more opportunities there are for it to suffer a critical failure that would leave your home, your neighborhood or your city high and dry. From the intake point at the reservoir or river to the water treatment facility to the sewer system to the faucets in your home, there are a thousand points along the way at which your access to fresh and clean water can be interrupted due to environmental pollution or depletion, infrastructure failure or terrorist threat. It doesn’t even take a disaster to force a disruption in service for your home or community. If major water delivery infrastructure maintenance is required, your entire neighborhood or business district could be left without water for days or weeks.

In parts of the American southwest and from California to Texas, up through the Great Plains region known as America’s Breadbasket, the issue of fresh water is already becoming a daily topic of discussion and concern for many. There are a myriad of reasons for this concern, and each is justified. From years of severe drought to simply having too many “straws in the milkshake” upriver, communities across the region are struggling to meet their water needs. Faced with ever-growing demand, local governments are beginning to take increasingly drastic measures to keep pace. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on new water treatment facilities like the huge desalinization plant under construction in Carlsbad, California. In California’s Orange County, the wastewater treatment facility that recycles sewage and returns it to the community’s drinking supply is expanding production from seventy to one hundred million gallons per day. That’s right, straight from toilet to tap. Similar initiatives are being launched at great expense in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, as well as in Texas. These technological advances will help meet water needs for the local communities, but they also add new layers of complexity to an already complex system, and complex systems are extremely fragile.

Necessity, vulnerability and availability are all hard facts of life that must be addressed when it comes to the way we maintain and deliver clean water in America. Recognizing that clean water is the foundation of our society, that the method of delivery of that water to our expansive communities is extremely fragile and subject to disruption, and that we as members of the global community are facing a water crisis in just a few short years should provide more than enough motivation for you to want to get a better handle on your personal situation when it comes to such a precious resource.

You can get this done a number of different ways, and that process doesn’t have to be a difficult one. At a bare minimum, you should store at least one gallon of water per person per day to cover your basic drinking, cooking and hygiene needs. A normally active person needs at least one gallon of water daily just for drinking, so you may want to consider storing a second gallon per person per day to cover sanitation and other needs. Individual needs vary, depending on age, physical condition, activity, medical conditions, diet and climate, so be certain to factor in all of the variables for your situation.

There are options for water like private wells that are self-contained and have the ability to be completely off the grid with the right setup, but that is not an option for most of us. However, that doesn’t mean we’re up a creek without a paddle.

You can easily store enough water to get you through most disaster situations. Water is heavy, and it takes up a lot of space, but you have several options at your disposal that you can use to meet the requirements of your preparedness plan. Bottled water is always an option. You can buy the prepackaged options or bottle your own for storage, just remember to rotate your stored water regularly. If you choose to bottle your own water from the tap, avoid containers like milk jugs, which are difficult to clean properly, and stick to the hard plastic options like empty soda bottles. Make sure to follow all water treatment protocols when storing your own water.

If you don’t have a lot of room in your home (or even if you do), you may want to consider harvesting water by installing a rain-catchment system outside your home. This is a very efficient way of collecting large amounts of clean water rapidly. Your rain-harvesting system can be as large as you want it to be and can be put together with little effort and at very small cost. This water can then be used for everything from meeting your basic needs to serving as a water source for your animals or any gardening you may be doing. This is a large part of my personal water preparedness plan for my home. We did a little research online and found a couple of used cisterns at a local business. Each cistern is made with food-grade plastic, holds two hundred fifty gallons and has a large and very solid ball valve. I was able to buy these used containers at what I considered to be a steal of a price. After a quick trip to my local home warehouse store and about an hour of installation time, we had built our very own five-hundred-gallon rain-catchment system. To give you an idea of just how efficient this system is for us, given the square footage of the area of my roof that empties into the gutter that flows into our cisterns, it only takes about an inch of rainfall to fill one of the two-hundred-fifty-gallon containers to overflowing. That’s not too bad at all.

You also have options for water storage that you can deploy at the last minute if a possible emergency situation is imminent, such as filling bath tubs and sinks from the tap. Even if you already have stored water in your home, this is still an appealing option that will add to your total water storage. If you choose to build this method of water storage into your plan, you may want to consider that there are bladder options that connect to your faucet and fit inside your bathtub out there that are relatively inexpensive (around $20) and are quite popular. After disaster strikes and water service is disrupted or if there is any risk that your municipal water system has been contaminated and you are forced to shut off the water to your home at the main valve, you can still find clean water in your home by draining the pipes inside your house. The water inside your water heater is also considered a safe source of drinking water. Of course, if you have any reservations as to the quality of water, you should take steps to make it safe before use.

Conservation should always be a top consideration when dealing with water in a disaster situation. This does not mean that you should ration water! People should always be allowed to drink according to their needs. Just take common sense steps like not flushing toilets and taking sponge baths instead of tub baths. Simply taking basic steps like these will save dozens of gallons of water, thus providing you with a tactical preparedness advantage.

If the water stops flowing from your tap, you will need to find another source of water. We’ve already discussed a couple of ways you can utilize stored water to get through a municipal water service disruption, but that should not be the end of your planning. Odds are there is at least one natural water source like a pond, lake or river near your location, and you should know where it is located. Unless it is on your property and very close to your home, you should not count this as your primary water source in a disaster situation simply based on the logistics of transporting that water to your home. However, knowing where this “wild” water source is could prove to be a valuable piece of information should a disaster situation deteriorate and/or turn into a longer term survival scenario. When considering this possibility, it is beneficial to recognize that there are several methods available to you that can be used to locate “wild” water sources or even create your own fresh water such as building a solar still. This is not a bushcraft guide or a primitive survival skills how-to manual so I will not attempt to identify them all or go into the details of each. Just know that this is a set of skills that you can acquire should you choose to add it to your preparedness toolbox.

With that said, there are basic methods of water purification that we absolutely recommend when it comes to dealing with found water that are both practical and can be scaled to meet your needs. You can boil it, you can treat it with chemicals, or you can filter it. Each of these methods will render found water biologically safe. The ability to boil water as a purification technique is a winner because it’s versatile. Whether you’re at home or on the move, if you can build a fire, you can have safe water to drink. When it comes to versatility, treating water chemically is another go-to move. You can add purification tablets or even a small bottle of bleach (use in the appropriate amounts) to any disaster kit, home or mobile, and you will be good to go. A simpler option, although a more costly one, is a quality water filter. Many of us already filter the water that comes into our homes. I have a filter on the back of my refrigerator that filters the water for my ice maker, another mounted to the kitchen faucet and yet another that’s built into a pitcher that lives inside the fridge! None of these purchases forced me to forego my favorite coffee the last time I was at Starbucks, and I’m glad we have them. Speaking of coffee, without water there can be no coffee. Can you imagine trying to survive the end of the world as we know it without good coffee? Now THAT would be a real disaster. There are much larger and more expensive gravity-fed water filtration options available for your home that are very efficient and effective, and they provide an extra layer of protection since they do not require electricity to function, but they come at a much higher cost. Just be sure to do your research before taking the plunge.

We do not live and disaster does not strike in an Etch-A-Sketch world. We can’t always take a straight line from here to there. Having safe water to drink when you’re on the go in an emergency situation is a must, and you just never know where you might find yourself when you’re in need of a sip. That’s why the preparedness universe gave us the backpacker-style water filter. This nifty little invention comes in all shapes, sizes and filtration methods…and price points. Whether you opt for a top-of-the-line backcountry water filter or something as simple as a LifeStraw, having a filtration option that you can count on when you’re away from home can be a life saver….literally. Of course, you can always choose to carry water, but that wouldn’t be my first choice. Bladder systems like CamelBak and others are useful and very good at what they are intended to do. If you’re constantly on the go and need to keep your hands free, bladder systems are great. Canteens and water bottles will certainly get the job done too, but both systems have limits in the bigger picture. For one, water is heavy and cumbersome to carry around. Also, these systems have a limited capacity, which means you will have to refill them eventually anyway, so why not go ahead and cut out the middle man by carrying a water filter. Do you have to? No, but it is a very practical option.

Water is life. When it comes to preparedness, access to clean water is not negotiable. When your world has been thrown into a state of chaos, opening yourself up to the possibility of contracting deadly waterborne diseases such as cholera and diarrhea is not a very appealing option and can be easily avoided. By taking practical steps to strengthen your water resilience today, you won’t have to worry the next time you open your faucet and nothing happens…whatever the reason.

Steven

I drink too much water during the day. That’s a good problem to have. Ever go without water or your favorite beverage for longer than you’re accustomed? In my case that’s a little more than an hour. You start to get a little panicky, or maybe a little testy if it’s a caffeine-based drink. Let’s take it a step further. Have you ever been a situation where you absolutely couldn’t get water or a refreshing Coolatta when you wanted it? You suddenly become the poster child for entitled Westerners. What? You don’t have any more bottled water? What about tap water? Is it filtered? What do you mean I have to buy a bag of chips or a sandwich to get a plastic cup for tap water? %$#& that! Crashing through the door into the sweltering 81-degree heat of Boston’s North End, you wonder how in the hell you’re going to hydrate yourself?

That last vignette was designed to make you smile. It’s ridiculous, but at the same time, we’ve all been there to some degree. I know I have. It’s particularly outlandish because we don’t have a real water crisis in America, regardless of what you hear about California. Water still flows out of the taps. We may be on the way toward an economic crisis caused by declining water tables in the Midwest and Southwest, but nobody envisions a day when the taps stop flowing. Sadly enough, the tap doesn’t flow for nearly 1.2 billion people in the world. I’m willing to bet this group wouldn’t have a problem “hydrating” in one of Boston’s busiest restaurant districts on a day that felt like air-conditioning to them.

Fortunately, we don’t have this problem—YET. Do I know something you don’t know? Of course not, but I do know that water is always one of the most difficult resources to procure in a natural disaster, and we have plenty of natural disasters in the United States. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the lack of available drinking water persisted as a major problem long after the tidal waters receded. Water seems to hide during a crisis, even though we can find it everywhere. We’ve become so reliant on the kitchen sink or backyard garden hose—that many of us don’t know where to get fresh water outside of the house or a store. By the way, does anyone drink out of a garden hose anymore? Case in point.

All right, if you live on a lake or next to a river, I take back what I just said. You’re probably savvy enough to unravel the water mystery, as long as you purify the water first. I don’t care how clean it looks, Bob just went “number two” through the hole he cut in his dock, because he got tired of filling the toilet tank with water from the lake. Never assume water is safe to drink in a disaster, even from the faucet.

For those of us without the luxury of an unlimited supply of “brown water,” I pose this question: Where would you get your water if the something knocked out the public water supply, killed the power to your well pump, or you had to leave your house? It’s a scary thought, especially when you need at least one gallon of water a day, just for consumption. That’s assuming a regular level of activity. If you’re bugging out on foot, that number could double or triple. You can get away with less, but sooner or later, you have to bring water consumption levels up to par.

Whenever our kids push their food around at the dinner table and I tell them to eat because there are starving children in Africa (I like the Africa theme), my wife says the same thing. “Honey, they’re fine. It takes three to four weeks to die of starvation.” That’s a fact I didn’t know, and she’s right. The kids will be fine. They won’t be fine if they stop drinking water. You can die of dehydration within three to five days depending on your health and physical exertion levels. Water is critical, and my family has a layered approach to staying “hydrated” during a disaster. Looks like I’m going the list route again.

1. We keep containers of water in the house, similar to the Fletchers. Mostly the two-gallon rectangular jugs produced by our local purveyor of spring water. This strategy serves two purposes. First, it gives us an immediate, no-hassle source of water, in the event that something knocks out the water distribution system or we suspect the system to be compromised (purification plant sabotaged or maybe Bob decided to take his business to the nearest pump station). Second, it’s portable—sort of. Two gallons weighs sixteen pounds. You’re not hiking out with one in each hand unless you’re crossing the street. I keep eight of these in the garage to throw in the car if we have to make a quick getaway. That’s four days of water. Plenty of time to put other options into play.

2. Another popular option (among preppers) is to rig large, food-grade plastic drums to catch and store rainwater. This is a nice, long-term solution if you can stay at your house. Most of the systems are designed to capture water from rain gutters. It doesn’t get any simpler than this. Just make sure to purify the water. Birds spend a lot of time on your roof, and they aren’t there to admire your landscaping.

3. Before I talk about portable options, here’s one more gem for the house. The “waterBOB.” Look it up online. Don’t laugh. I know we’ve talked about Bob, but this guy is different. For less than $20, you can fill your bathtub or any bin with up to a hundred gallons of water. It’s a BPA-free, FDA-approved plastic bag (with pump) that fills to the shape of the container. You lay the bag in the tub, attach it to the faucet, and your tub is now a fresh water storage tank. It beats filling up 378 reclaimed two-liter soda bottles (same as one hundred gallons)—not that you should leave any containers empty in a major crisis. That’s the moral of this option. Keep plenty of containers on hand to fill with water.

4. If you have to leave the comfort of your “waterBOB” haven, your water-carrying options drastically shrink. Driving gives you the ability to carry the most water, as much as you’re willing to stuff in your car. I can’t imagine loading up more than thirty to forty two-gallon jugs. Maybe you can. I’ll leave this up to you. That’s not a bad supply of water. If your car stays functional, you’re in good shape to reach your destination, unless you’re bugging out to Alaska from Maine.

As a pedestrian, I think you’re limited to one gallon loaded in a combination of hydration bladders. We have a CamelBak for each member of the family. The adults carry the hundred-ounce version (three liters—less than a gallon) and the kids carry the seventy-ouncers (two liters). That’s less water than we’d need in a single day. I have a few extra water bladders, giving us another six liters. Bottom line: We’d need to find water on the first day, bringing me to option 5.

5. Hiking out, you need a way to procure safe water from multiple sources. I don’t recommend knocking on doors to refill your CamelBak or sneaking into backyards to drink out of a hose. If the cooties from the hose don’t kill you, the “double-ought” buckshot from a scared homeowner might. A great solution to this problem is a portable water filter. You can find a filter/purifier made by a trusted name like Katadyn or MSR for less than $100. Replacement filters (for another five hundred gallons of drinkable water) cost $10. Too steep? Water purification tablets ($10-15) by the same companies work fine…just bring a strainer to remove all of the “sinkers and floaters” from the pond.

6. Is a sailboat part of your bug out plan? Or do you live near the ocean and want to go absolutely crazy? You can buy a manual desalinator for $1200. Sounds steep, but imagine a life by the sea. Plenty of fish, seaweed (you can eat most of it) and, for the first time ever on the beach, fresh water. Tempting.

7. What else? Some of you are screaming at me. I have a well! Then you are the big winner, as long as you can keep the pump running without grid electricity or have a way to pump the water out manually.

Last thought: My water discussion is more or less limited to consumption needs. When you add cooking and sanitation to the equation, you add roughly one more gallon per person per day. I pray to the faucet gods every day. Please don’t stop giving me water!

Chapter 8: FOOD

“Where would we go—Charlie’s?”

“I don’t think that would work out,” he whispered.

“I can’t believe someone ransacked all of his stuff,” she said.

“It wouldn’t have made a difference. He had a year’s worth of dehydrated food for four people. We have seventeen mouths to feed. That’s three months of minimal rations. Not that it matters.”

“We can bring enough food to get us through to the summer,” she said.

“Then what? We’d have to start from scratch growing food. It’s taken us three years to get to this point, and it’s not enough to keep us from digging into the reserve supplies by January. Earlier with this many people. We’re barely sustainable for the long run if everyone stays.”

—From Point of Crisis

The bunker resembled an expanded version of Kate and Alex’s Scarborough home. The far western wall, underneath the expanded great room, housed the furnace, hot water tank, oil tanks and electrical system. Sturdy metal shelves lined the rest of the cement foundation, containing enough food and essential supplies to support the Fletchers’ core family for at least five years—well beyond the expiration dates on some of the canned goods rotated through the stockpile.

Supplementing the vast selection of canned, pickled and dry goods, a deep tower of pre-packed plastic buckets, each containing one hundred twenty individually sealed freeze-dried meals, occupied the entire wall next to the door. She knew that the buckets alone contained enough meals to sustain eight adults for an entire year, only requiring water to reconstitute. With a shelf life of twenty-five years, the buckets represented their last option. She shuddered to think how they might feel after eating nothing but freeze-dried food for a year, but it easily beat the alternative.

—From Event Horizon

Steven

One of my favorite lunchtime topics is “what are we having for dinner?” I’m always looking one or two meals ahead. I bet some of you think I’m about to embark on a guilt trip about people in the world (probably in Africa) that don’t know when they’ll eat their next meal. I don’t have to. You know what it’s like to feel hungry, and it’s not an enjoyable sensation. Oddly enough, I get crankier about food than water. By all logic, it should be the other way around, but it isn’t. My kids never throw a fit because they’re thirsty. If we run out of snacks (for eating between meals), watch out! Rough seas ahead.

Food serves two purposes. Nourishment and morale. Like my wife said, it takes three to four weeks to die of starvation—from a strictly nutritional perspective. You’ll mentally collapse a lot sooner than that, especially in a crisis situation, when everyone is already stressed to maximum levels. Food procurement needs to be a major component of your personal preparedness plan.

There are so many ways to approach this topic. Almost too many to list. Your first instinct might be to plunk down the credit card and buy a year’s worth of dehydrated food in the handy tan or white buckets you see on survival/preparedness supply websites. If you have $7,000 burning a hole in your pocket, unlike most of us, you could do way worse. Then again, if your SURVIVE WHAT scenario falls along the continuum of natural disasters, you could probably spread that cash out a little better to cover every topic in this book. Ultimately, it’s up to you. Before you press “buy,” let’s talk about the buckets a little more.

There’s no doubt in my mind that these make a fantastic emergency food item. The packets last forever (twenty to twenty-five years), they’re easy to transport (throw the bucket in your car or take out packets and stuff them in your pack), and they provide a nice variety. Having two of these buckets (combine an entrée with a vegetable/side dish bucket) can vastly enhance your bug out plan. Here’s the catch (a few), as far as I can tell. First, you need to boil water (one to two cups per packet) to reconstitute the food. Make sure you bring a small camping stove with you on the move. Second, the buckets typically hold sixty servings. Each serving represents 250–300 calories. I’m not saying you need to maintain Cracker Barrel-level serving sizes through the apocalypse, but I think it’s fair to say that most of us would cry in our sleep if we ate less than a thousand calories a day, especially if we were hiking under stress. If you do the math, each person will need about four servings per day. For a family of four, each bucket will last about four days—just to stem the tears.

Why do I keep railing on these buckets when I truly do think they’re important to have on hand? Because I’m afraid too many of us (me included) think if we press “buy,” we’re covered and we’re done. How many of you have a camping stove and enough propane to boil water for the duration of those buckets? That’s just one of the questions that I didn’t think of at the beginning. It made me think twice about putting all of my eggs in one basket. The food aspect of emergency preparedness is a three-dimensional puzzle best handled by the RULE OF THREES.

If your most likely SURVIVE WHAT scenario keeps you in place, the bulk of your food preparedness work and resources should go to a multilayer approach around your home. For me, that means a storage area containing lots of dried foods (beans, rice and pasta stored in airtight containers) and several shelves of canned foods, which we rotate into our regular meals and replace to keep expiration dates at bay. Combined with a continuously stocked pantry and refrigerator (we shop weekly and often overbuy), our on-hand food supply gives me a peace of mind.

A smaller aspect of our long-term self-reliance plan is a summer garden. We’re in our third year of planning, and the garden gives us more every year. At this point, you might be saying to yourself, “Damn, that Konkoly guy has this locked down! Garden too? He’s set!” Not really. As Randy so kindly pointed out the other day, on average it takes an acre of land to feed a person for a year. My entire lot is a half-acre, and I’m using about a twentieth of that for the garden. With the growing season ending in early October, someone’s going to be hungry in November. In Maine, nothing of substance grows again until mid to late June. That’s a big gap.

For us, gardening is a way to cut down on our produce bill in the summer, eat amazingly fresh vegetables every night, and learn an essential skill that will come in handy when the lights go out for good. We just need to master the art of capturing seeds at the end of the season. I hear that FEDCO and Johnny Seeds won’t be delivering during the apocalypse.

Obviously, you can’t take a garden with you on the road. Like water, the amount of food you can carry shrinks drastically if you decide to bug out. Back to the dehydrated food packets and my favorite option: MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). You can pick up a case of MREs on the Internet for $70. I won’t go into too many details, but look for the MREs that include the flameless heater. Add a little water and the heater pouch cooks the entrée. Pretty handy when you can’t or don’t want to start a fire. Each MRE delivers roughly 1200 calories and comes with side dishes, crackers, condiments, a dessert and a juice drink mix. When “Gunny” threw these out of the back of the five-ton truck to the marines, I was right there jumping up and down to get one!

What’s the difference between MREs and dehydrated food packets? I’ll keep this simple. They’re less expensive per calorie. $70 for 14,000 calories vs. $125 for 16,500. And your kids will have more fun. On the flip side, MREs will only last four to five years under normal basement temperatures. The dehydrated food packets can last twenty-five years. I recommend a mix of both to suit your plan.

I left a few things out, which I’m sure Randy will cover. Farm animals and hunting. Neither of us are hunters, so maybe he won’t hit that one. Here’s what I’ll say, and this comes from the mouth of a vegetarian. You’d be crazy not to incorporate it into your disaster preparedness plan. A wise man once said, “There’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole,” and Charlie Thornton (from my books) said, “There’s no such thing as a vegetarian in the apocalypse.” I’m feeding my family with whatever I can get my hands on.

Last words here. Remember the words SURVIVE WHAT and figure out what’s best for YOUR plan, not mine. This is all about you. If you want the Big Kahuna, one-year stack of dehydrated food buckets, go ahead and press the “buy” button—just make sure your significant other knows that it wasn’t my fault. I don’t want to see any bad reviews for this book saying “Thanks to Konkoly, I now have thirty-six plastic bins of dehydrated food in my house and a delayed retirement!”

Randall

Who’s hungry?

Growing up in the South, it would be a drastic understatement for me to say that food is an important part of everyday life. It is so much more than that. Life down here revolves around food. Casual conversations between friends and neighbors inevitably turn to what’s for dinner or how your garden is looking this year. It seems a profound improbability that any gathering of more than two people can take place below the Mason-Dixon Line unless food is involved. Even as we pause to give thanks before the meal, the final words of the blessing are most often marked with a resounding, “Now, let’s eat!” In the South, food goes with every occasion. Hell, half the time food is the occasion. We are seasoned pros at making the focus of an entire day’s effort whatever prized dish is destined to be the star of tonight’s menu. Food is a symbol of community around these parts. Whether there’s a death in the family or a new addition, you can expect to see more food hauled in by those coming to visit than any two or three families alone could eat. And don’t plan on dropping in for a friendly visit without getting your belly full. I have a large extended family with lots of aunts, uncles and cousins. I can’t imagine showing up at any one of their doors and not being treated to something delicious to eat, and the invitation would not be posed in the form of a question. It may not always be a full meal, but I can guarantee I won’t leave hungry. I mean, I wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings, now would I? And that’s exactly what I would be doing if I didn’t grab a bite while I was there. What can I say? Every conversation goes better with a big ole cathead biscuit and some sweet tea.

I wanted to share all of that with you in hopes of giving you a little perspective. When I think about being prepared, the issue of food is a really big deal. Not only is it a necessary part of any survival equation, it carries the additional weight of representing much more than just the fuel necessary to keep us going. It represents everything we cherish by association, and it flavors the memories that make up the highlight reel of our lives. Both for our physical as well as our mental well-being, food is a box on the preparedness checklist that we’ve got to get right.

When you think about food and how you might get through a full-blown disaster situation, or any other disruption to our normal food delivery system, you have to start with what you have on hand. What if you had to get by on what is in your pantry right now? In terms of days, how long would it be before you found yourself out of food and in a really bad way? If the number you came up with totals less than two weeks, you need to start work on improving your food storage. The good news is you can get started as soon as the next time you go to the store.

Our government advises that you have enough food on hand for three days. At Practical Tactical, we recommend that you extend that out to have at least two weeks’ worth of food on hand in addition to the normal supplies you have in your home. The secret here is that this is a goal that is insanely easy to achieve. Each time you go to shop for groceries, simply add an extra couple of cans or boxes or bags of whatever you would buy in a normal week to your cart. “Store what you eat and eat what you store!” is the rule here. There’s no need to get adventurous or experimental. In just a few weeks, you will have built a nice little stockpile. What about not using all of this “extra food” before it goes bad? No worries. The food that makes up this initial buildup of emergency food should be the stuff you already eat regularly, and you will be able to simply rotate it into your normal meal plan.

Once you’ve got a solid foundation of supplies for your emergency food storage, you will want to think about expanding your options by including some dry goods in your plan like rice, various types of beans, and pasta. Some other things to keep in mind at this stage of the process are exactly who you’re buying for and whether there are any diet restrictions to consider. If there are children in your family or group, it would be a good idea to make sure to include foods that you know they will eat. If anyone has dietary needs that require special consideration, it is important to factor that into your buying plans as well. Finally, going back to the idea that food is more than just fuel, you may want to include some “comfort” foods in your emergency storage-buying plan. Familiar favorites can do wonders for your attitude. A chocolate bar can go a long way towards turning that frown upside down.

Before you know it, that two-week supply of “emergency food” (that you may have thought was impossible to build) will turn into a one month’s supply, then a two months’ supply, and then a six months’ supply if you keep at it in a consistent manner. How deep you want to build your larder to be is up to you. Just know that whatever your goal, you can get it done.

If you are considering extending your emergency food supply out to a year or more, there are options for that too. A really convenient way to extend the effective range of your stored food is by adding prepackaged dehydrated options to your pantry’s roster. With a shelf life of up to twenty-five years on some of the products available in today’s market, storing food for six months to a year doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Another extremely versatile and practical option that has an extended shelf life is MREs, or meals ready to eat. These are vacuum-packed, individual meals that on average will provide a solid 1200 calories or more per complete serving.

Our family’s emergency food storage plan has three tiers: every day, short term and long term. The everyday supply is the food we keep in the kitchen pantry and in the fridge. It covers two to three weeks without any trouble. The short-term supply is the food we keep in our secondary pantry and deep freezer, which consists of canned goods, various dry goods stored in airtight containers, and foods we have “canned” or put up from our garden. This tier of supplies would push our food security out to two to four months. The long-term supply is a mix of everything listed above, plus a combination of MREs and other dehydrated options. This is the food that we would turn to if we were looking at an extended emergency situation lasting six months to a year. To our way of thinking, if we are looking at a disaster that forces us to rely solely on our stored food for a year, then we are talking about a real game-changing type of event, and nothing will ever be the same. If that’s the case, we do not think it’s practical for us to store enough food to live on indefinitely, and we had better have other options in place.

Did you notice that I mentioned something about “canned” foods that had come from our garden? I casually slipped that mention in there, but it is actually a huge part of our food-storage plan. As nice as it is to have those dehydrated and prepackaged items available as options for your long-term food storage plan, do you really want to have to rely on them as your sole source of sustenance over the long haul? A well-rounded mix of the options available to you should be the goal of every food-storage plan. That is why it is advantageous to develop ways to supplement your “off the shelf” food storage with foods you can generate yourself. Having the ability to grow at least some of your own food and preserve it for later use vastly expands your options for having familiar, nutritious and great-tasting food year round. Having a vegetable garden is just one of the methods we use to extend and enhance our emergency food supply, and we will take a closer look at home gardening a bit later, but there are other options worthy of consideration as well.

“The first supermarket appeared on the American landscape in 1946. Until then, where was all the food? … It was in homes, gardens, local fields, and forests. It was in the pantry, the cellar, the backyard.” – Joel Salatin

In addition to having your own vegetable garden, another way to generate some of your own food is by hunting and fishing. As a general statement we, as a society, are mostly detached from where our food actually comes from. I’m certain there are people out there who think the meat that ends up on their plate actually comes from the grocery store in a tidy, pink Styrofoam package because that’s the only way they have ever known it to exist. However, in a true disaster situation this facsimile of reality is a luxury that we will no longer be afforded. Much like gardening, hunting is not something you can just decide to go do and expect to have any measure of success. You may not be a hunter today, but if you think the possibility exists that you may have to become one at some point in the future, then hunting is a skill you need to learn now. I did not grow up hunting, and I have not been hunting as an adult, but it is not foreign to me, and I know several people that are hunters. I have come to realize that hunting is a skill that I should add to my toolbox, and I intend to begin my education this fall.

Sometimes the skills that will be of benefit should you ever be faced with a survival situation are also things that we do for fun. Fishing certainly falls into this category. Much like camping teaches us about the importance of having shelter, fishing is a survival skill that we unwittingly practice every time we head to a lake to “drown a few worms.” Fishing may not be a skill that will be a good fit for everyone’s situation based on the geography of your area, but if you have access to a lake or river, it certainly gives you another option for a source of food, and that makes it a skill worth having.

Other concepts with a more long-range view that would add to your food supply and overall food resilience include creating an edible landscape or adding small stock to your backyard community.

No, I’m not saying you should eat your boxwoods. You can design and build an edible landscape by choosing to grow plants that produce food rather than just pretty flowers. Woody agriculture like fruit and nut trees make a wonderful addition to your living space and are often quite beautiful as well. Instead of planting a Bradford pear tree that’s pretty but does not produce fruit, go with a Bartlett pear and set yourself up with great-tasting, fresh pears for years to come. Don’t like pears? That’s fine. You should grow what you like. The idea remains the same.

Wait, did I suggest that you need to get a cow? No, I did not. However, just because you may not have the space to have a pasture doesn’t mean you cannot have a few classic farm animals to help you add depth and richness and even happiness to your food supply. Small stock like chickens, rabbits and goats (just to name a few of your options) are a fantastic way to add a source of food as well as resilience to your long-term plan and nutritious food to your diet right now. Whether you’re raising them for meat, eggs or milk, any of the options listed above provide a wonderful and regenerative source of protein. Of course, there are things you would need to learn about the care (and potential processing) of any animal you might choose to keep, but these are certainly viable options should you choose to add them to your plan.

If you really want to extend the food options available to you, I would suggest you take a look at primitive earth skills like trapping and foraging for wild edibles native to your area. Each of these options requires education and training, but you would be hard-pressed to find a more interesting and rewarding motivation to spend a little time wandering through the woods.

To our way of thinking, there is no downside to building and maintaining a supply of stored food in case of an emergency. Of course, you will have food on hand should there be a disaster, but given that food costs are seemingly always on the rise, having a supply of emergency food also serves as a hedge against rising food costs. Since you should be storing the types of food that you’re already eating, you can rotate your stored food into your weekly meal plans. This will eliminate the worry of expiration, and “going shopping” will come to take on a whole new meaning around your house. Finally, if your stored food does come up against its expiration date, you can always donate it to a food bank and earn yourself a nice tax write-off. Building and maintaining a supply of stored food is a winning proposition any way you look at it, so why not get started on building yours today?

If you haven’t gotten your fill of “Food Talk with Mr. Powers” yet, fear not. We’ll expand on infrastructure and our philosophies of yum a bit later when we take a look at homesteading. Oh, yes. I’m talking to you. Homesteading.

Chapter 9: COMMUNICATIONS

Campbell placed the ham radio headphones on the communications desk and stood up, his back crackling as he extended fully upright. The past two days hadn’t been kind to his aging frame. There was no doubt about that. He’d slept on a cot next to the radios, his Kenwood transceiver scanning preset AM frequencies used by militia groups regionally and nationwide.

Sleep didn’t come easy, as reports of civil disorder, fires, and a near complete breakdown of the nation’s essential services infrastructure travelled in high frequency radio waves to anyone who cared to listen. Information was spotty at best, but he’d gleaned invaluable information about the event from the airwaves. Cities beyond the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California and the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest seemed to have suffered less of an EMP disruption than the rest of the nation. None of the cities on the West Coast had power, which made sense given the interconnectivity of the nation’s electrical grid, but vehicle and home electronics remained mostly unaffected. California was a long way from New England, but it gave Campbell a glimmer of hope. Not all of the country was down for the count.

—From Event Horizon

Randall

I’m sure you’ve been there. I’ve certainly been there. Something has happened…a car accident, a severe storm, or maybe something worse…and you are separated from a friend or loved one that you fear may have been involved. You quickly try to call just to make sure they’re okay, but you can’t get through. In an instant, your pulse quickens and the floor begins to tilt as a “just in case” phone call becomes the most important call you can ever remember making. Sometimes the call rings through on the very next try, and all is well. But then, there are those other times when it does not…again and again. It is in those instances that time seems to stand still and the only thing you are aware of is that high-pitched ringing in your ears. Good news or bad news, it doesn’t matter at this point. You just want to get through! Not knowing is just the worst. As Pat Frank so eloquently penned in his timeless classic Alas, Babylon when Admiral Sam Hazzard is speaking to Helen Bragg about the possible fate of her husband Colonel Mark Bragg, “We inhabit the same purgatory, Mrs. Bragg. The dark level of not knowing.”

On March 14th, 2008, a killer tornado tore through downtown Atlanta, Georgia. Among the many events taking place that weekend in Atlanta was the Southeastern Conference basketball tournament, and I was working downtown that night. I was inside when I received a phone call from my wife, Alice, telling me that the local news had broken into programming and radar was showing there was a tornado in downtown Atlanta right now, right on top of me! Being inside a large building, I had no idea anything was going on, and because I’m a bit of a weather fanatic, I had to go see for myself. Alice knew this about me and knew she couldn’t keep me from checking things out, but she was going to stay on the line. As I headed outside, I was walking up a set of steps that led to an elevated breezeway that would take me out to the parking lot. There was a revolving door that led to the breezeway and, not knowing what I was going to see through the wall of glass, I was proceeding with caution. By the way, Alice is still on the line with me. Five seconds later, the wings of the revolving door collapsed and smacked together as I was slammed by a wall of wind. I threw my arm up and spun away from the door, expecting to be showered by splinters of glass, but instead I was pelted by dirt, pieces of insulation and other building materials that had been turned into dangerous projectiles by the furious winds of the storm. I stepped to the side and out of the wind-tunnel effect that had been created by the now gaping revolving door. I was still on the call with Alice, and I was trying to describe what was happening all around me when I heard a scream…and it was getting closer. I peeked around the corner and saw a thinly framed security guard being blown down the breezeway, flailing wildly as he was pushed towards the building. Even over the roar of the tornado that was right outside the building, Alice could hear the man’s screams too. As the man got closer to the building, his cries were getting louder. Using the increasing sound of the man yelling as a timing mechanism, I reached into the wind tunnel and grabbed the guard to pull him to safety. Alice heard it all. At this point, with the tornado roaring, the man screaming and me being covered with debris, I shouted over the din of the storm to tell Alice, “I’m gonna have to call you back!” Just a few moments later, the tornado passed, and we began to take stock of everyone and assess the damage that was all around us. Very shortly, there were images all over the news showing the destruction that had been wrought in a major American city by a tornado rated as an EF-2 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, packing winds of up to 130 miles per hour. I knew I was safe, but Alice didn’t know that. She may have had an idea, but she didn’t know. I immediately tried to call her back to let her know I was all right, but my cell phone had no signal. I walked back inside to a landline and tried again. Nothing. Finally, about forty minutes later, I was able to get through to Alice and let her know I was okay. She was glad to hear the good news but quickly let me know that not being able to reach me, especially when you consider the way our call had ended, had not been the best part of her evening. Point taken.

That was not the first time I’ve found myself in an emergency situation, and I am certain it won’t be the last. There were several lessons in preparedness learned by everyone in the path of the storm that night, but let’s focus on communications after a disaster.

Hey, Steve, back me up on this one, will you? The first step in any traditional military conflict is to take out command and control communications. If you find yourself in the middle of a major disaster situation, you are in a battle for your survival. You are under attack from an event beyond your control as well as the chaos surrounding it. Every military mind on the planet understands the importance of communications in combat. Because of this, they take steps to protect their ability to move information, and they defend against being left deaf and blind with both aggressive and passive measures. A key part of this plan to maintain the ability to communicate is resilience. There are layers and layers of redundancy built into every level of our military operations. As civilians, we may not be able to prevent our interpersonal communications from being disrupted, but we can certainly take steps to build resilience into our lives.

Let’s take the easiest option first, telephones. The first option is simple. If you have access to a telephone landline and it is still in working order, use it and reach out to any friends and loved ones to let them know how you’re doing. In today’s technological age, virtually everyone carries a cell phone on them at all times, and a majority of those phones are smartphones, which means they have more computing capability and connectivity than basic feature phones. Smartphones often feature options like a digital camera, web browsing and the ability to run third-party applications. If you have a smartphone, you should consider downloading emergency alert applications that you can set up to warn you about everything from severe weather to emergency service (police and fire) alerts in your local area. In an emergency situation, every moment counts. In the moments just before and immediately after a disaster, making a call on your cell should be the first method of communication you attempt. If you have a smartphone, you can also use social media apps like Twitter and Facebook to reach out to others to let them know what’s going on where you are and whether you’re okay. Paired with a smartphone’s ability to shoot video and take quality digital pictures, social media like Twitter, Facebook and others also serve as a reporting tool in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. You can document the event on your phone, then upload the videos and pictures to the web for the world to see. This can be helpful in many ways, including helping law enforcement and researchers to better understand what happened during the chaos of the event once things calm down.

Finally, regardless of what type of mobile phone you have, you can still send text messages. Following a disaster, if calls are not going through due to a spike in the volume of calls being attempted or if the cell towers in your area have been disabled or destroyed, you may still have the ability to send and receive text messages. Text messages use less bandwidth on the system than phone calls, and this gives them a better chance of going through. Knowing this, you may want to make texting your first option.

Once the event has ended and using a traditional landline or a cell phone is not an option due to infrastructure failure, you still have options, but they take a bit more planning. Regardless of whether we are talking about a home disaster kit or any version of a mobile survival kit, it should contain a radio that does not require electricity to operate that can be used to receive information. Whether it is battery powered, solar powered or a hand crank model, everyone should have a radio with the ability to receive weather alerts and an emergency broadcast system message. This will help you have a better idea of what’s going on in your area beyond what you can see, and information like that is priceless. If you have a battery-powered model, make sure you have fresh batteries in the radio and spare batteries on hand.

Another option for comms post-disaster is two-way radios (Walk ’n’ Talks). These can be as simple or complex as you want them to be. You can get models that receive weather alerts, are waterproof or are hands-free. You can decide what works best for you and what best fits your budget. As long as they give you the ability to reach out and talk to someone, and you can count on them when you need them, the model you choose is really inconsequential. Just keep in mind that quality counts, and never more so than after a disaster.

If you’re looking for a communications option that’s a bit more robust, you should consider Amateur Radio (ham) or Citizens Band (CB) radio. These two options give you a much greater range, and you can get either system in a mobile or stationary rig. If you choose to broadcast as a ham operator, you will need to get an operator’s license. However, if you only wish to listen to your shortwave receiver, no license is required. CB radio does not require a license for use. Remember that both systems require electric power to operate after any disaster. Mobile systems can be powered by batteries or your vehicle, but if you have a stationary setup, be sure to include a way to power your rig in your planning.

A tried-and-true method of communication that is often overlooked in the world of preparedness and that is about as analog as they come is handwritten messages. Regardless of the type of disaster you may be facing, pen and paper will still work. Furthermore, keeping a notepad in all of your kits at all times is recommended. You never know when you may have to take down important info, draw a crude map or simply leave a message for someone. We do suggest opting for a waterproof notepad like those offered by Rite in the Rain whenever possible, but anything will do in a pinch.

If you really want to take things to a different level when it comes to communications within your family or group, you can develop a cipher or coded messaging system that only the members of your team will understand. On the fun side of things, this is an activity that can be very entertaining and educational for everyone involved. Besides, who wants the insert name of the big bad invaders here to know what’s going on if we someday find ourselves in the middle of our very own Red Dawn world?

An important consideration for anyone that spends a lot of time in the wilderness or thinks that they may someday find themselves lost out there where there are no roads is the concept of directional messaging. In other words, if you get stranded or lost in the woods and you decide to keep moving, you need to remember to leave an obvious indication of which way you are headed by crafting a directional arrow or some other symbol using whatever you have on hand. You can use rocks, limbs, debris, parts from a disabled vehicle or even leave a note (See what I mean?) on a vehicle you leave behind. It doesn’t really matter, but the bigger, more colorful and out of place your message appears, the better. This will make it more obvious and give search teams a good idea of where to look for you in their search planning. When you’re in a wilderness survival situation, the primary goal is to affect self-rescue and walk out, or get rescued. To that end, you will want to do everything in your power to make sure that happens as quickly as possible, and directional messaging is a skill you need in your back pocket that can help you do just that.

Finally, speaking of low-tech ways to communicate, what about talking to your neighbors? In today’s world, we are a society closed off from one another, and that is mostly by choice. We’re persuaded to stay shut in our homes by television, video games or the internet, and we really don’t have any idea who’s living right next door. We want to encourage you to unplug from the matrix for a while and start to build a relationship with the folks you see every day in your community. On a practical level, this information will help you to recon your local area and get a better understanding of where everyone stands in their preparedness and an idea of what resources might be available to you at some point in the future. On a human level, you will find that it is your neighbors and the members of your local community that are the very folks you will be working with following any sort of future disaster. We say build those relationships now because you may be forced to rely on them in the future!

Steven

My cell phone sounds terrible, and I live in the middle of suburbia. Apparently, serving a few thousand people with cellphone coverage in 2014 isn’t a priority for the town—or the cell phone carriers that wheel and deal with our elected councilors to win the coverage race. I don’t have a lot of confidence that the tower providing me with such “awesome” service will be at the top of anyone’s priority list in the event of a disaster.

What about my “landline”? Strike two. I have one of those all-in-one packages through my cable provider. Don’t laugh at this obvious flaw in my communications plan. It was the only way I could get all of the channels my kids will NEVER watch for a reasonable price. If the power fails or my router goes down, the phones are useless, which isn’t too far from their normal operational status—two of the five phones that came with the base unit are barely charged at any given moment. I wish I could blame lazy kids.

You know what? I like it when the phones don’t work or the power goes out. Finally, a little break from email, the latest shows we “have” to watch or the constant nagging of several projects on my computer. Maybe I’m secretly looking forward to an EMP. Back to the way life should be. Quiet days—just my Kindle and me—and no way to download more books. Damn, I knew there was a downside to e-books (you should order this book in hardcopy). There’s a little truth to this paragraph, right? Not the part about wishing for an EMP, but the rest of it. When the power goes out for a few hours, it’s kind of relaxing. Just you and your family, until right around the three-hour mark. Then the questions start flying. What’s going on? When is the power coming back? Why did the power go out? Is there a crispy squirrel somewhere or did “the terrorists” finally shoot out enough power station transformers to crash the grid?

Nobody likes being out of the loop for too long. I start looking for answers right away. Fortunately, cell phones continue to function during the typical power outage scenario, allowing you to talk with a friend on the other side of town and confirm that the world as we know it remains intact. What if you couldn’t use your cell phone? The world gets a little smaller when your communication range is reduced to walking across the street and knocking on your neighbor’s door.

In the event of a disaster causing an extended loss of power, communicating beyond shouting distance will be a problem. For many reasons, that’s the worst time to lose a capability we take for granted. What if this happens during the middle of the day, when the kids are in school and you’re at work? The scenarios are endless, and frankly, there’s not much you can do about it. The options for portable, emergency two-way long-distance communications are expensive—essentially limited to satellite phones.

Before you throw in the towel or break out the credit card, remember the key mantra of this book. SURVIVE WHAT? A scenario knocking out cell phone coverage is highly unlikely. The cellular system might experience overload with everyone calling at once, but you can usually sneak a text through the data stream—important to remember. Since not every family is going to buy four satellite phones and the voice plans to go with them ($400 for a refurbished phone and $25 monthly emergency plan), we’re going to assume that you will read chapter fifteen and put together an effective disaster plan that gets everyone home or to a designated rally point. Now what?

Most of us will be limited to one-way long-range communications. A portable emergency/weather radio is a good option. Every family should have one, preferably the kind that you can hand-crank to charge. This is the most basic option, which will give you access to emergency broadcasts. A handheld scanner is another layer, allowing you in some cases to listen to local emergency responders. A good scanner will come with preset frequencies in several useful frequency bands. Police, fire/emergency, ham, marine, railroad, Civil Air, Military Air and CB radio (10-4 good buddy!). You might get lucky and stumble across a few sources transmitting some highly useful information.

What if you want to talk to them? Now it gets a little more complicated. For the frequency bands listed above, you’re mostly out of luck with the exception of marine, Civil Air, ham and CB radio frequencies. The problem here is that you’ll need a separate radio for each. Please prove me wrong on this. I don’t think you can, unless you “illegally” modify a ham radio to transmit on CB, Civil Air and marine frequencies. As much as I’d like to talk to the outside world when a disaster strikes, my more immediate need for communication lies at home, so I’ll focus there—for now.

Once I get my family in one place, I’d like to keep them there. Obviously, I can’t tie us all together like “one of those families” we’ve all seen at the airport. Bathroom time will be a little awkward. The next best solution is a family-sized set of inexpensive “walkie-talkies,” also known as two-way radios. Perfect for the house, neighborhood and slightly beyond (some are advertised to reach sixteen miles—good luck with that). We use these while camping and boating, for the rare occasion when our interests diverge. Alex Fletcher often incorporated two-way radios for the same purpose, in addition to tactical communications with his two buddies, Ed and Charlie.

Is anyone mad at me for not giving ham radio its due respect earlier in the chapter? You didn’t spend the time and money on an amateur radio certification for nothing, right? There’s a reason I pushed it down the list. Everything I’ve mentioned so far is portable. I’m big on portability, especially when it comes to the technology-driven topic of communications. With a good scanner, satellite phone, and a few two-way radios, you can carry your communications needs in a fanny pack (or whatever they’re called). Don’t jump on me about the handheld ham radios. I’ll get there. I want to address the base station type of ham radio that can put you in touch with Siberia, because that’s the only type most of us consider when we hear the words “ham radio.”

I hear you yelling at me. “He’s prejudiced against ham radio because he can’t fit it in his pocket. I’m talking to China! Good luck doing that when your beloved system of satellites have fallen from the sky!” I hear you. Ham gives the operator access to thousands of ham users around the world (if you know what you’re doing), without reliance on anything but radio waves. Not a bad deal at all, but let’s be honest. Are you going to do this? It’s not overly expensive, but you do need a license, which requires a test. I barely get my car registered on time every year—I often rely on a lenient police officer to “remind” me.

Ham also requires practice and skill to effectively talk with anyone outside of town. Most prepper websites stress this aspect of ham radio, and I concur. I spent two years in a specialized U.S. Marine Corps unit that lived and died by communications. HF, VHF and UHF with dozens of antennae configurations and power amplification setups. There’s a reason the marines have a specialized career path in communications. Longer distance communication using radio waves is an art. I view ham radio as one of the last pieces of your personal preparedness plan, but a sweet one if you have it in place or are willing to take the steps to effectively employ one. I don’t want to completely talk you out of ham radio, but I do want to put it in perspective compared to your other communications needs. SURVIVE WHAT?

Handheld ham radios might be a more realistic option if you like the idea of amateur radio. Since they have a limited transmit range (five to ten miles under the best conditions), they function more like a two-way radio, and you won’t have your hopes dashed when you can’t talk to Brisbane, Australia. Hopefully, you can contact a friendly and competent ham operator within your transmit range, who will share regional, national and possibly international information.

Of course, all of these handy-dandy items require electricity for continued operations, which brings us to the next essay.

Chapter 10: ENERGY

“We have Emily and Ethan watching the connection in the barn. You never know…Alex’s log indicates that the bank of panels on the barn have never been tested with this gear. They have a fire extinguisher,” said Samantha.

“Mom, it’s fine. The electricity is already flowing from the panels through the barn. This won’t change anything,” said Abby, shaking her head. “Ready?”

“Go for it,” said Kate.

Abby flipped the transfer switch, and nothing happened at the circuit breaker box. She pointed behind them at two side-by-side LED monitors wired to the battery bank, which consisted of 16 deep-cell, 12-Volt AGM batteries mounted on a thick wooden table in the center of the room. Red and black wires ran back and forth across the batteries, in a pattern that made little sense to Kate. She believed they were connected in parallel, whatever that meant. The monitors showed green numbers, which she assumed was a good sign.

“It’s charging. The one on the left is set to measure the charging current and the one on the right is a multifunction monitor. It’s showing 12.6 volts, which means the battery bank is about ninety percent charged. Based on the calculations in Mr. Fletcher’s book, the system is rated to provide 2880 amp hours, which should be enough to run lights at night, the security equipment, the pump for the well, and other appliances if absolutely necessary. Long term, we’ll have to closely monitor the charge and discharge rates. It’s all in the book. We should probably take a close look,” said Abby.

Everyone clapped and congratulated Abby, who looked slightly embarrassed, but continued.

“We replaced the controller, inverter and both monitors, but we don’t have any more backups.”

“Is the system still vulnerable to an EMP?” said Kate.

“We disconnected the grid-tie inverter, but according to Mr. Fletcher’s book, the wires connecting the panels to the house will probably conduct enough of the EMP to fry everything. If we get hit again, we’re out of luck.”

“Well, I doubt that’ll happen. How many times in one lifetime do you get EMP’d?” said Tim.

—From Event Horizon

Steven

We have a little game in our house called “swap the batteries.” Any device powered by AA or AAA batteries is included in this “game.” The rules are simple.

1. Everyone plays.

2. When the batteries in a device are dead, you replace them with the batteries in the nearest functional device.

3. The TV remotes are off-limits until the very end.

4. Have fun! (That’s always a rule in our house.)

When I pick up the TV remote and it feels light, I don’t bother to press the button or check the other remotes. I know for a fact that every battery in the house has been diverted to my son’s Xbox controllers or my daughter’s pink walkie-talkies.

There’s a hidden silver lining to all of this. Unwritten Rule 5. The kids never cannibalize the flashlight batteries. I joke about the remotes (if swearing is considered joking), but I’ve never warned them about the flashlights. They understand the value of light in a power outage, because they’ve experienced the sensation firsthand. We lose power three or four times a year. At least one of those outages lasts five to twelve hours. Hardly a “disaster,” but when the big light bulb in the sky goes away at the end of the day, you have to carry a flashlight around the house.

On a scale of one to ten, losing the ability to flood the inside of your house with unflattering fluorescent light bulbs scores a big fat ONE as a disaster. Didn’t people live like this for millennia before the widespread distribution of electricity?

Of course. Life was a lot less complicated back in the Civil War era. Not easier. Less complicated. Homes were heated by wood or coal-burning stoves, and oil lamps or candles provided most of the lighting. That was the entire sum of a home’s ENERGY needs. Things are a little different today. In the event of a power loss later tonight, we have furnaces to run, refrigerators to keep cold, and a whole host of electronic devices to operate. I take a three-tier approach to this “problem.” What a surprise. The RULE OF THREES again.

Important note that applies to the rest of this essay. If the weather is fine, and you’ve ruled out “societal breakdown” as the cause of the power failure, you can get in your car and drive until you find an area with power. Frankly, most of you will still be driving to work at this point. “My house doesn’t have power” doesn’t hold a lot of weight with project deadlines looming at the cubicle farm. Please keep this in mind, because much of what I’m going to say may feel like I subscribe to the “bunker” mentality. I don’t. My brother-in-law lives in Vermont. Can you say, “Unexpected house guests?”

The first tier handles a temporary loss of power (twelve hours to two days) due to a thunderstorm, windstorm or a blizzard—the vast majority of power-loss scenarios. I have a saying (which I didn’t invent) that goes something like this. “I can stand on my head for two days if I have to.” I can’t stand on my head for more than twenty minutes, but I use this phrase when the kids complain about going without TV for a day or Wi-Fi access for an hour. The point: You can endure some changes and perceived discomfort for a reasonable period of time.

Even in the dead of winter, you can bundle up or burrow under blankets. No fireplace or wood-burning stove required (though highly recommended). Don’t believe me? Neither does my wife. Ever go on vacation and turn your heat down to 50 degrees? Whenever we return from a winter vacation, the house is at 54 degrees, even in the middle of February. That’s a livable temperature with a few layers of warm clothing, though I will admit, it feels like subarctic temperatures when it’s inside your home.

What else? The water still runs, and you can cook food. Our stove runs on propane, but anyone can crack out a camping stove (ventilate the area, please) and heat up a can of SpaghettiOs for the family. You might feel like the Road Warrior in an apocalyptic wasteland, but it’s really not a big deal. You’re basically camping in your house, without the hundred-foot hike to the campground’s messy bathroom.

Battery-powered flashlights and camping lamps combined with a few strategically placed candles can get you from point A to point B in your house just fine. For entertainment, you can pull out the hand-cranked emergency radio or scanner and listen for updates. Additionally, you probably have cell coverage at this point. Use your phone judiciously to talk with friends about the situation, check websites and communicate via social media. Remember, you can charge cell phones using your car. Just keep the garage bay open and the door to the house closed if you need to turn your car on to charge devices.

Here’s the controversial part. You don’t need to run a generator yet (even if you have one), unless you have to run a sump pump during a rainstorm. I have friends with powerful whole-house generators that start the instant the power stops. The lights don’t flicker and the central air keeps pumping gloriously dehumidified, cold air into their house. Sounds nice—if you can afford the price tag ($5–10K). There are much less expensive, portable generator setups.

Tier-two power considerations kick in after day two. This is the start of my SURVIVE WHAT scenario. If they can’t restore power within forty-eight hours, you could start to face bigger problems. In cold temperatures, your pipes could freeze and burst, which could put a serious dent in your comfortable camping experience. Charging radios, scanners and cell phones may present a challenge, as these items are used more frequently to determine the big picture outside of your house. Your comfort level and morale will decrease significantly. Is any of this truly life threatening? Not if you have the rest of THE BASICS covered (food, water, first aid, shelter), which is my primary goal.

For prolonged power outages (out to ten days or so), I focus on morale once the BASICS are addressed. A battery bank can power your furnace for an extended period of time, providing hot water for showers. Everybody appreciates a hot shower. We can run the fan on our propane fireplace with the batteries, which heats the entire first floor with a minimal charge expenditure compared to running the furnace. It’s more than enough to keep the pipes from freezing and the kids from complaining. We can also charge all of the personal electronics, which keeps everyone occupied to some degree. The battery bank can be connected to the grid (charge maintained when the power was flowing) or solar panels (continuous charging in the absence of grid power).

I say batteries, you say generator. I’m cool with that. Either choice accomplishes the same goal for my SURVIVE WHAT scenario. And to show that I’m not biased, I’ll say this—the generator gives you way more power for a longer period of time, for the same price or less. You have to keep it running with gasoline from containers unless you can hook it up to natural gas or propane (great options), but that’s not a big deal for a well-maintained generator. I say batteries because it fits in with my long-term, tier-three preparedness plan.

Tier three is where we get serious and discuss two considerations. Long-term power needs (electrical infrastructure wrecked by natural disaster or taken out by solar flare/EMP/snipers) and portable power needs if you decide to bug out. This is Alex Fletcher-level preparedness. I’m going to level with everyone. This is where I split with the Fletchers. I don’t have a philosophical disagreement with my alter ego; I have slightly different priorities.

Alex Fletcher invested money in a solar power system in The Jakarta Pandemic to protect his family from a possible pandemic. In real life, Steven Konkoly bought a sailboat to spend guaranteed time with his family on Casco Bay during the summer. I’m not saying he’s wrong and I’m right. We’re both one and the same, sort of. If the power went out tomorrow and stayed out for the rest of the year, I’d have to say that Alex was right and I didn’t listen—or I was right, but I didn’t listen to myself.

Alex’s ENERGY plan in The Jakarta Pandemic and The Perseid Collapse series represents the pinnacle of what I imagine a family might require in the absence of grid-generated electricity. You can always go bigger and better, but a rooftop solar panel array connected to a sizable battery bank gives you a wide array of options to address “indefinite,” basic power needs.

What about portable energy needs? I include this in tier three, because it signifies a major event requiring you to leave your house—this doesn’t include a temporary relocation to a hotel nine miles away for comfort reasons. We’re talking about an event that forces you to evacuate your house. Civil disorder, major natural disaster destroying your home or rendering your area unsafe—use your imagination. I’ll keep this part simple. You want the ability to power flashlights and communications gear. All of this equipment is powered by replaceable batteries or internally charged batteries. You need a way to handle both. Here comes a RULE OF THREES within my three-tier system. Bonus.

1. I recommend a decent supply of disposable batteries to power your flashlights. Quick and easy.

2. Beyond that, you should consider investing in rechargeable batteries. If you’re on the road or in temporary shelter for an extended period of time, you’ll run out of disposable batteries at some point. Some of you are raising your eyebrows. How do I charge the batteries?

3. With a portable solar-panel charging station. This is not a fixed panel attached to a neck brace and worn over your head. The technology is amazing, and some very potent (small-device oriented) solar-charging systems are no bigger than the hardcopy version of this book. You can also use these systems to charge all of your other communications devices.

Are you tired of reading about power? I’m tired of talking about it. I think I’ve covered the basics, but I’ll turn you over to Randy, because he generally knows far more than I do.

Randall

What is energy? Practically speaking, energy is defined as the capacity to do work. So, if you’re going to get about the work of surviving any disruption, emergency or disaster situation, you’re going to have to have energy. Nothing happens without it.

Energy is a key component of any preparedness plan. Whether we’re talking about the big-ticket items like keeping the lights on in your house or having the fuel on hand to power vehicles and tools, to the smaller (but just as important) things like having the batteries or fuel necessary to keep your flashlights and radios operational, you’ve got to have energy.

From fire to food to liquid fuels, energy comes in many forms. How you choose to power your preparedness plan is up to you, and the preparedness prism will serve as your guide. Once your plans are in place, choose the method of power generation that is the best fit and then learn how to use it.

If you’re planning to stay in your home and ride out the disaster, you will be in good shape as long as the electrical grid is functioning, but you will need a plan in case you were to lose power. If you’re looking for a long-term answer to any future power disruptions, adding an array of solar panels to your preparedness infrastructure may be the option for you. If the cost of the solar option is a prohibitive one for you, another reliable source of backup power is a generator. There are solar generator models available that use photovoltaic panels to charge a battery that can be used as a source of power, or there are the more traditional generators that run on liquid fuels, just be sure to store the appropriate amounts of fuel necessary to run the generator if you choose a traditional option.

If you are forced to leave your home or if your plan calls for a mobile option, you are still going to need a way to power and charge your gear. Radios, headlamps, cell phones, laptops, tablets, handheld GPS devices…all devices that could find their way into your BOLT kit…and each of them need a power source or need to have the ability to create their own power. In addition to making sure you have batteries in the right sizes and quantities to power your equipment, you may want to consider gear that can generate its own power, such as a hand-crank radio or flashlight. Another option for power on the go is a portable solar power pack kit like those made by Goal ZERO. These powerful, lightweight solar systems are a fantastic addition to any mobile disaster kit.

When it comes to energy needs in most disaster situations, the ability to start a fire, having a quality flashlight and a small radio with new batteries, plus a few cans of fuel for a camping stove will be enough to get you through the event. Your level of preparedness only improves if you’ve got a generator (and plenty of fuel if necessary) on hand, and you can easily scale your preparations up to any level from there. Whatever your energy needs when it comes to preparedness, remember the power is within your reach.

Thank you for reading The Basics (Part One) – #2 in the series. Please visit the Authors’ Amazon page to preview and acquire #3 in the series: The Basics (Part Two)

About Steven Konkoly

Steven Konkoly graduated from the United States Naval Academy and served as a naval officer for eight years in various roles within the Navy and Marine Corps before taking up writing.

His first novel, The Jakarta Pandemic (2010), explored the world of "prepping," well before television and books popularized the concept. Hailed as a "grippingly realistic" family survival story, The Jakarta Pandemic introduced thousands of readers to the unfamiliar concept of "survival in the suburbs," motivating many of them to take the first steps to better prepare themselves for a major disaster. His recently launched series, The Perseid Collapse, continues Steven's legacy of engaging (and informative) post-apocalyptic (SHTF) fiction.

He is the author of critically acclaimed the Black Flagged series: Black Flagged (2011), Black Flagged Redux (2012), Black Flagged Apex (2012) and Black Flagged Vektor (2013). The Perseid Collapse (2013), book one in The Perseid Collapse Series, signaled his return to the post-apocalyptic genre, followed shortly by Event Horizon (2014) and Point of Crisis (2014).

Steven lives with his family in coastal, southern Maine, where he wakes up at "zero dark thirty" to write for most of the day. When "off duty," he struggles to strike a balance between a woefully short sailing season and unreasonably long winter.

Please visit Steven’s blog for updates and information regarding all his works:

www.stevenkonkoly.com

About Randall S. Powers

Randall S. Powers graduated from the Grady College of Journalism and the University of Georgia, building a career in journalism spanning twenty years across all forms of media, including radio, print, digital and television.  Since 1998, Randall has worked with an international broadcast media outlet with credits as a media manager, editor, producer, speaker and trainer and has been a contributor on three projects that were awarded the prestigious Peabody Award.

Using the skills gained during his career as a journalist, Randall widened his focus to include disaster preparedness becoming an entrepreneur as the founder and Chief Managing Partner of Practical Tactical, a personal preparedness consulting firm. From this new platform, Randall works as a personal preparedness consultant, public speaker and author.

In 2014, Randall published the Practical Tactical Quick Start Guide as a personal preparedness resource and reference manual designed to help those new to “prepping” develop a well rounded and complete disaster plan without becoming overwhelmed by the process.

Originally from Toccoa, Georgia, Randall lives with his family on their homestead outside of Athens and Atlanta. 

Contact Randall directly by email at practicaltactical4you@gmail.com or through his website at:

PracticalTactical4you.com

Table of Contents

THE BASICS (Part One)

Chapter 5: FRAMEWORK

Chapter 6: SHELTER

Chapter 7: WATER

Chapter 8: FOOD

Chapter 9: COMMUNICATIONS

Chapter 10: ENERGY

About Steven Konkoly

About Randall S. Powers