I suppose that I have a “prepper” all of my almost 57 years. The oldest of four children, I was raised by my engineer father who would probably seem quite believable as the father in the bomb shelter in the movie Blast From the Past
This article is about the psychology of a perceived ‘survival’ event, at least. First you will need a little background:
I was with my father on the way back from my uncle’s house in a neighboring town one night in the middle 1960s. We were talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis [a few years earlier] and the President’s response to it, when my father asked me if I realized that we lived almost on the “bulls-eye” of one of the nation’s top ten nuclear targets.
At that time, the Phillips Petroleum Refinery in Phillips, Texas, was the largest refinery in the world, and it was about 15 miles downwind from our house. We also lived within a few miles of two carbon black plants, used as one of the major ingredients in manufacturing tires, making ink, and even refining sugar. We were not far, about 50 miles, from Amarillo, Texas, on what had recently become Interstate 40 and had been Route 66, which was the major east to west coast route, and was also on the major route north to south from Mexico City to Canada.
Needles to say, this was a lot for a young kid to take in and assimilate even though I had been aware of all these things peripherally for a long while. Whenever I was able to talk and think again, I asked if that was why he had always been so insistent about my brothers and I joining the Boy Scouts, and learning about first aid, survival, and shooting and such. He just said, “Yes.” A few miles later he told me that if I ever heard on the radio or television of an impending attack on the United States, or anything that would make me think that one might be coming, that if I was away from home, I was not to attempt to return home until I was sure it was safe to do so.
I said “Okay “almost automatically, never thinking it could actually happen. I did start to work a bit harder on Scouts and merit badges than I had been, but even at that age it seems I had already learned OPSEC. I rarely mentioned my father’s odd notions, even to the other Scouts working on badges alongside me.
A few years later, and it still seems incredible to me that so few people know of this incident, there was a mix-up in the tapes used for the Emergency Broadcast System. If you have ever looked at an old car radio from the late 1950s to the 1970s, you might have noticed the two little triangles on the dial for the CONELRAD system. These were where you were supposed to tune to in the event there was actually such an event. This was probably as close as the system ever got to being used.
Like many teens in my area, I was listening to my car radio, tuned to what was then a rock & roll station, KIXZ in Amarillo, Texas. I had been out that morning, scouting on the north side of Lake Meredith, researching where my younger brother and I would try deer and turkey hunting later that fall. It was shortly after noon, and I had just left the lake and was heading back home. The announcer came on stating that there would be a test of the Emergency Broadcast System, which was nothing noteworthy in those days. The test message wasn’t what came across, though. It was the real one. I stopped literally in the middle of the road.
The announcer came back on, saying that he didn’t know what was going on, but to stay tuned and he would let us know. That conversation with my father several years ago, and my promise to him, immediately came flooding back into my mind.
I turned the car around and headed back into where I had been that morning. According to the Civil Defense literature, you were supposed to get to low ground and as protected a spot as you could manage, in no more than fifteen minutes.
I headed for a spot my brother and I referred to as “Lone Ranger Rock,” as it had a fanciful resemblance to a rock that appeared time and again in the old Lone Ranger television program. It was a huge split piece of a soft chalk-like rock, with the split running roughly north and south, and offered probably the best cover I could get within the next fifteen minutes. The split was large enough for me to park in, and I could open one door. I sat there for the next 45 minutes, listening to the radio as they updated us on what they knew, which at first wasn’t very much.
Sitting there, I began to make a list of what resources I did have with me. In addition to my outdoor clothes and hunting boots, I had a standard transmission ’64 Dodge Dart sedan with a 225 slant-six engine in good running condition, with tires that were about 9 months old.
I had $16.84 in my pockets.
I had a good jack and just over ¾ of a tank of gasoline.
I had my Scout pocketknife, a Marlin semiautomatic .22 carbine with a sling, and a grand total, once I finished searching the car, of 224 rounds of .22 LR ammunition. (I had been not-very-seriously hunting bullfrogs that morning without success, and rattlesnakes were also common in that area.) I also had eleven #7½ 12 ga. shotshells.
I had a wool sweater, a t-shirt, moccasins, and a pair of jeans in the back seat, in a brown paper bag. I had an apple and half of a small bag of potato chips from my lunch.
I had my brother’s and my backpacks and camping gear in the trunk, from a camping trip with the Scouts. We just hadn’t bothered to take the stuff in to the house after our trip, other than some clothes that we needed to wash.
That gave me two good sleeping bags; my compass; my sheath knife; my brother’s sheath knife; two mess kits, four filled metal matchboxes with home-waterproofed strike-anywhere kitchen matches, possibly 100 altogether; a couple of waterproof ponchos; two plastic groundsheets; and maybe three cans of food, plus maybe some snack food stuff that was left over and we hadn’t eaten.
I had three first aid kits; a big one in the car that was like what the Europeans required then in all automobiles, and two pocket first aid kits that would each probably fill a Band-Aid tin. In fact, mine was in a Band-Aid tin. Mine at least, had some water purification tablets, about 20.
I had three one-quart canteens, only one of which had water in it, and a two-quart canteen, which was full.
I had a hatchet, and an entrenching tool that stayed in the car at all times.
And I had three fishing rods and some assorted tackle. And that was it, as best I can remember.
The event made me think, as you can tell. I remember very well what I had, because at the time I was thinking it might be all that I would have to start the rest of my life, if the world made some bad choices in the next few minutes.
Quite frankly, I was amazed at how much I did have with me. It could have very easily been far less. I was almost sick, sitting there waiting for the announcer to come back on and tell us what he could find out. I didn’t even know whether I was a coward, or a dutiful son.
When the man finally came back on and told us it had been a mistake, I sat there for a long time. I wasn’t sure whether I could believe it truly was a mistake, or if his statement had somehow been disinformation that had gotten into the system; in short, if I could believe what I was being told.
I had no way to check it, other than to listen to other radio stations; believe me, I did. I finally found a second station that mentioned it, almost an hour later. I never found a third radio station that mentioned it.
Finally, about dusk, I started back to town. [The tape mix-up] was on the evening news on the television. My family had never heard a thing about it, all day long.
It has been a long time since that day. I never go anywhere without some kind of what is now called a “get-me-home kit”. I had a ‘Bug-Out Bag’ before it had a name.
It was a “just-in-case kit”, and its contents have varied over the years, along with my work and locations. I no longer live in that area, and my father is years ago deceased. But I have long had what Dean Ing called a ”tenacity kit” in his underrated book, Chernobyl Syndrome
I read Mel Tappan’s articles when he wrote for Guns and Ammo. I subscribed to “Survive” magazine when it first came out, after I figured out how to do it and yet not have my name appear on any list.
I served my country in the Army, both here and overseas. I was an acting First Sergeant, before I mustered out. I won’t mention my training or assignments, other than to say there were a lot of both.
But of all my life and career, that hour in the Canadian River Breaks is still one of the defining moments in my life.