“I would probably die.” my friend responded to the question of “What happens if there is a power failure while you sleep?” His smile was closer to a grimace. He was a fragile old man, out of the hospital for just a week, and would be using supplementary oxygen for the rest of his life. His oxygen concentrator, used at night while asleep, required 115 VAC. It wasn’t an idle question. We had, on different occasions, discussed survival situations, including TEOTWAWKI. (It is similar to deciding how high “up” is.)
Within days he had cobbled together an alarm that used AA batteries to scream a warning when power was lost. It was plugged into the wall socket in his bedroom. He purchased a heavy duty inverter for his automobile and got a much larger battery for his car. He left an extension cord into the house from the vicinity of his car and could plug his oxygen concentrator into this auxiliary power supply in a matter of minutes. Three months later, the power went off at 11 P.M. and stayed off until 10 A.M. the next morning. His entertainment through that time was listening to the scanner and the emergency vehicles trying to cover other people’s problems.
Having a disability doesn’t necessarily equate with being helpless. It should not absolve you from being as self sufficient as possible. The ability to plan ahead for emergencies is critical for everyone and people with disabilities even more so. You have to push your limits to find out what they really are and accept some pain now, when recovery is relatively easy, rather than wait for an emergency and discover just how vulnerable you are. Yes, there are people with profound problems that this may not apply to; however, you don’t know what you can do until you try.
Using my friend as an example: He had a land line telephone for 911 capability, a cell phone, and later a satellite phone. He leased the satellite phone for $500 a year that had 600 minutes on it-not that expensive. The cell phone he used for inexpensive mobile calls and the satellite phone if he was out in the countryside and was out of cell phone range. He also carried a GPS unit and on some of his meanderings through Wyoming and Montana, he would call his answering machine attached to the land line at home and leave GPS coordinates every hour so. If he went missing, he could be tracked.
He started the process of getting a ham license.
His station wagon had extra oxygen bottles, some medications, some food, several gallons of water, a sleeping bag, first aid kit, change of clothes, a chair, and a tarp. On occasion, he would find a spot that he wanted to photograph at a certain time of day, stop, set up the chair, grab a bottle of water and a snack and wait for that instant when the colors and light were perfect.
For self defense he had a .22 Ruger automatic pistol, a 1911 in .45 ACP, and an M1 Carbine. He practiced regularly. (With a smile on his face.)
He only kept two months worth of food at home as he figured that if things went bad longer than that, he was not going to survive. His judgment was based on cold hard facts about himself and his personal situation; it was his decision and he faced it head-on.
He did several things well: He analyzed his immediate abilities and requirements for survival. He asked himself hard questions about his personal abilities: physical, mental and medical. He pushed himself mentally and physically to find his boundaries. He looked at himself and his situation without any of the wishful thinking that is so easy to do and then planned accordingly.
The first reaction of most people, when discussing survival TEOTWAWKI, is “Of course survival is better than the alternative.” Discussing specific situations, I have also had people flat out tell me that if something like the situation described in the novel “One Second After” occurred, they would prefer to not survive. I am certain they would be the first people on my doorstep trying to claim guest privileges if they knew that I was prepared and stocked.
Living it isn’t the same as merely reading about it. When you are living through a disaster, it is like being nibbled to death by ducks. You don’t see “the big picture” or how it will affect you, only what is happening to you directly. It may be miserable but you can plod on. Reading about it in a story, the writer gives overviews that allow you to grasp a lot of the pain and suffering on a larger scale. You can grasp how hopeless it may be. In a story, you can also see what a difference the addition of just a few items might make: a method of self defense, a real first aid kit, or maybe a large bottle of multivitamins.
You have to look closely at what you intend to accomplish in survival. If it is just yourself, that’s pretty straightforward. Even so, are you going to try to help the society around you rebuild or just dig a hole and pull it in after yourself? Do you have family? What are their requirements and expectations? What about grandkids? Some of these people will feel you have gone around the bend with your preparations. After all, life has been good and bad things only happen to other people. Do you store provisions for them without letting them know? What skills do you have that other people will need? Can you motivate people–who don’t believe that prepping is needed–to learn skills that may be useful WTSHTF?
Pardon me while I state the obvious: Life is messy. Don’t make your plans too tight, make sure there are extras you don’t think you will need. Be a generalist. Sometimes the disasters that come at you are nothing you would have ever expected.
TEOTWAWKI can be as personal as losing power and not being able to breathe, as unthinking as a tornado, or as broad a national disaster as the loss of the power grid. Each one has its own problems and solutions. Each one will have individuals with their own particular set of preparations and needs. One size usually does not fit all.
What are your physical limitations? If you have a condition that may require an ambulance, then living back in the hills might not be a solution. Two hours on a snowmobile to get to the ambulance in the dead of winter would not be healthy if you have issues. Can you overcome your personal limitations with planning and engineering? If you can’t do stairs, can you get a house with a single level? Can’t bend over? How about elevated vegetable garden plots? Put wheels on them so they can be shifted for sun or security. If you can’t spade a garden now, then don’t plan on doing so after TSHTF. Maybe Square Foot Gardening or modified hydroponics would be an answer. Try them both for the experience.
Can you hide in plain sight if needed? Take some classes or volunteer at a local theater and learn some set design. In the worst case scenario, you could make your house look like a burned out hulk, complete with the sour wet ash smell so people would leave you alone.
Bug out? If you have physical or medical limitations, being a refugee is probably going to be a real problem. You will need to plan on leaving earlier, and on less notice, if it’s at all possible. That means you need to stay as fully aware of developing problems as it is possible to be. A scanner and a current local map is a start. Shortwave receiver? Internet news feeds? Local contacts in the emergency services group? Then where would be your bug out destination? Close and semi-secure may be better than far away and highly secure.
Having resources at a separate location in the event of emergencies is extremely desirable. Maybe you can get some storage at the home of your relatives. Your kids might be willing to “humor” you by letting you store stuff in their basement if they don’t quite agree with your prepping. That’s okay, as long as you can do it. Having a large cache of supplies seventy five to a hundred miles away is a good thing. Worst case, the kids or the relative can use those supplies even if you perish.
Bugout bag? If you have a disability, it becomes much more important than before. It almost certainly will need careful preparation and thought to compensate for whatever problems you have. If you can’t carry it or drive it, can you wheel it?
You have to plan and work at living a normal life now, while compensating for whatever disability you have. The trick is to add the extras on top of that plan that will allow you to survive when disaster strikes. Plan and implement for the most obvious and immediate threat first. Then expand it. Check with your city or county disaster preparedness group for their ideas on what the likely emergencies in your area would be, and then play “what if” scenarios with your imagination. Don’t be limited by their ideas, use them as a springboard for your own. Read some of the books like “Alas, Babylon”, “Life As We Knew It” or “One Second After.” There is a great selection of books and information at SurvivalBlog’s Bookshelf Page.
All these preparations cost money and take time. It can be quite intimidating, so much so, that some people never get started. If that is your problem, use the “unraveling a sweater” approach: Ignore the size of what you want to do and grab the first “string” that comes to hand and start with it. Maybe it is as simple as buying an extra months quantities of your normal staple food purchases. Once you have started, your preparations are much easier to continue. Make lists. Buy what you can and scrounge as much of the rest as you can. If you are patient, observant and diplomatic, it is amazing what you will find free or nearly free. Don’t forget garage and rummage sales; sometimes their prices are a penny on the dollar. Look for closeout items in stores, often the prices are halved or less. Sometimes on garbage pickup day, I see better quality stuff at the curb than in the second hand stores.
Let’s face it: in an area wide emergency there are going to be far more demands for “The Authorities” time and resources than there will be an ability to respond. If you have prepared well, you can stay out of the way of disaster and listen to the scanner. Whatever you do, if you’re going to need assistance in spite of all your planning, don’t wait till the last possible minute and then scream for help. The chances are they won’t be able to get to you, or even worse, someone will be injured or killed trying to get you out of whatever predicament you are in. Keep planning ahead and more importantly, act on the plan as quickly as possible.
During an emergency that does not involve you as an individual, unless you have specialized training that is needed; you can quite often help the most by staying out of the way and not needing emergency assistance. Further, it is quite often best, if you have planned well, to be ignored or overlooked by the bureaucrats that invariably get involved during emergencies.
If we’re lucky, we may never need any of these preparations at all. We may be making a huge investment against future inflation and that, by itself, is not a bad result.
Yes, there is an element of selfishness involved, or call it enlightened self interest if you prefer. The fact is, there is a time for selfishness and a time for selflessness. Choose wisely.