Mr. Rawles:
Good day to you and yours. I hope they are all in good health. In regards to your submissions in the 9-14 blog, “The Importance for Blood Typing.” A friend wrote is submission in another forum, that I have kept for a while now. This would be a better then nothing option that might actually save a life. But like everything else in life you have to make minimal preparations now for it to work later. If you ever had to use this technique, right then is not the time to have to gather the materials to perform the test and of course, if it is your wife or child that this bleeding, you would not want to be trying this for the first time. If you have an established retreat and personnel, then you should already have basic information about each person, blood type allergies and so on. But as in your excellent book Patriots, there could very well be a need to take on new people into the group (even after “Badtimes” has started) that might not know their blood type so I can see this as a viable (emergency) option. With this system if you had a working knowledge of several people’s blood type you could come up with a persons blood type through the process of elimination. I would recommend everyone have basic medical information about each of the family members on some type of laminated card so that they can have it a moments notice in an emergency.
This describes a primitive medical technique: the life saving procedure of cross matching blood. Done under primitive conditions of a long term TEOTWAWKI situation.
1. Take a hypodermic needle from a pressure cooker (expedient autoclave “Not very pretty but it works.”)
2. Draw a blood sample and carefully squirted it into a test tube from a child’s chemistry set.
3. Place the tube into a sock with a piece of parachute cord was attached and whirl the test tube around and around (expedient centrifuging) continued to swing the test tube until you separated the cells from the fluid.
4. Draw off the fluid and wash the cells with saline working rapidly.
5. Have cells and fluid from the patients who need blood to test against.
6. Put sample of cells into a sample of the patient’s serum, and the patient’s cells in yours and look in the microscope.
7. The microscope can also come from a child’s collection but local high schools science equipment would be better.
8. It may be difficult to work with but you must be careful with the focus.
9. Worked the focus, when the instrument is properly focused, observe the blood cells.
10. Little stacks of adhering saucers are Rouleaux formations which indicate clumping, meaning the blood types are incompatible. No clumping indicates compatibility.
11. Now record the potential donors name and blood type (if known) and who they can or can donate to.
12. You must test and fill out these file cards for every person in your group.
13. Have this information determined well ahead of time.
14. Remember you will have no way to store whole blood, except in the donor.
Condensed from: Lucifer’s Hammer
REMEMBER: GOOD HYGIENE CAN PREVENT MANY PROBLEMS. WASH YOUR HANDS AND BOIL YOUR WATER!
Poor hygiene and disrupted water supplies would lead to an increase in diseases such as typhoid and cholera.
Without vaccines there would be a progressive return in infectious diseases such as polio, tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria, mumps etc, especially among children. People suffering from chronic illnesses such as asthma, diabetes or epilepsy would be severely affected with many dying (especially insulin dependent diabetics). With no antibiotics there would be no treatment for bacterial infections, pneumonia and a cut would kill again, contagious diseases (including those sexually transmitted) would make a come back and high mortality rates would be associated with any surgery. There would be no anesthetic agents resulting in a return to tortuous surgical procedures with the patient awake or if they were lucky drunk or stoned. The same would apply to painkillers, a broken leg would be agony and dying of cancer would be distressing for the patient and their family. The pregnancy rate would rise and with it the maternal and neonatal death rates, woman would die during pregnancy and delivery again and premature babies would die. In the absence of proper dental care teeth would rot and painful extractions would have to be performed. What limited medical supplies were available would have to be recycled, resulting in increases risks of hepatitis and HIV infection. Regards to you and yours, – Chuck K.