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Surviving the Disaster Golden Hour – Part 5, by J.M.

(Continued from Part. 5. This concludes the article.)

If I’m going to be operating in a rural or wilderness area there are some changes I make to what I bring with me. I lose the Boker tool and the shove knife (since there probably won’t be many doors I need to get through), and I add in an Orion Pocket Rocket Aerial Signal Kit [1]. That gives me 4 signal flares that will go up to 300’ and burn for 6+ seconds, which should significantly increase the odds of being spotted by rescue personnel. As I mentioned previously, when I’m backpacking I also have a smaller bailout bag attached to the outside of my backpack with a first aid kit, the flares, the rest of my emergency kit and some water in case I need to dump my backpack and run to try to stay ahead of a fire. I also make a point of always making sure I know where I am and have some possible escape routes planned out in case I need to get away or to from something. If I’m worried about a wildfire I’ll have routes planned to the closest nonflammable terrain such as a rocky area above the treeline or a local lake or river. Even if I’m only going on a short day hike I make sure I have my emergency kit and enough supplies to get by for one or two nights in the woods.

If you operate on or around any large bodies of water or are concerned about getting caught in a flood there are a couple of additional kit items you may want to consider:

The final type of kit you should consider is what you keep in your car. Most of us have a Get Home Bag (GHB) in our car, but what if you’re trapped in a blizzard and can’t get home? Your location and time of year will obviously play a big role in the best options for your car kit, since what you should carry in northern Montana in the winter will differ significantly from what you should carry in the Nevada desert in the summer. The focus for your car emergency kit should be the same as for any other type of emergency – survive the incident, get to safety and get help. The things I always have in my car no matter when or where I go are:

The rest of your car kit depends on where and when you plan on driving. I have a bag with clothes that I swap between summer and winter gear, a couple of lifeboat ration bars and water packets, a serious first aid kit, a folding bow saw [10], an e-tool [11], a small alcohol stove with a canister of fuel, a zero degree sleeping bag, some wool blankets and a GHB kit. The saw and e-tool are useful for getting rid of branches in the road during winter and digging myself out of the snow if I get stuck.

Home Base

Most of what I’ve been discussing has focused on responding emergencies when you’re out and about, but the exact same practices apply as well in your own home and property. One advantage of planning for emergencies at home is that you (hopefully) have intimate knowledge of the environment and can control what preparations you make to handle emergencies. There’s a lot of information available on prepping your home for emergencies like fires, floods, gas leaks, earthquakes, etc., so I’ll just focus at a high level on what I call the four ‘Ps’:

Your home is the place you typically spend the most time, so you should leverage your advantage to control circumstances relating to life-threatening emergencies to ensure you and your loved ones will survive.

Doing Nothing

I’ve discussed a lot of ideas and options for handling emergencies and escaping from dangerous situations, but it’s also critical that you be able to recognize that sometimes it’s better to stay where you are and just wait for help. If you get lost hiking and can’t find the trail, find a comfortable spot and try to signal rescuers with your signal mirror, flares or whistle. If you followed safe practices and gave someone a trail plan before heading out and you don’t return on time, they’ll most likely notify search & rescue who will start looking for you. The further you are from your original planned track the harder it will be for them to find you. Or say you’re relaxing in a large park in some city and a major earthquake occurs. If you’re in no immediate danger from falling buildings or fires, you may just want to sit tight. You can try to help others close by who may be injured or in distress, but you’ll hopefully have done your homework and know that aftershocks can cause a lot of additional damage, so digging through the rubble of a partially collapsed building to look for survivors might result in the rest of the building coming down on you. During any emergency you need to consider all possible options available at the time and figure out which one makes the most sense based on the information you have.

Additional Reading

If you’d like to learn more about emergencies and disasters and how people react (and you should), I highly recommend the following books:

Conclusion

Unless you’re with law enforcement, a first responder, or in the military, the odds of you experiencing a life-threatening emergency during your lifetime are relatively low. However, if you do encounter such a situation and you’ve done nothing to prepare yourself, your odds of surviving are a lot lower. Like any activity, planning is critical – take some time to think through where you go and what you do on a regular basis and make a list of the types of emergencies you could encounter along the way, and then figure out what you can do to improve your odds. With even a moderate investment in time and resources, you could significantly improve your chances of surviving many of the types of localized disasters you might encounter.

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Comments Disabled To "Surviving the Disaster Golden Hour – Part 5, by J.M."

#1 Comment By St. Funogas On January 9, 2021 @ 1:59 pm

Hey J.M. a very impressive, very informative, well-written, easy to understand article.

Your last section on Home Base is the most likely place emergencies will occur for us stay-at-home types who are working on various projects all day long. Almost every week in my local newspaper this time of year there is a front page story of the latest house that burned down, almost always due to space heaters being used improperly and wood stoves. By the time the volunteer fire department arrives, all they can do is prevent it from spreading to other structures and then do mop-up afterwards. It’s pertinent that those of us relying on the local VFD to pretend like they don’t exist and have our own well-practiced fire plan. When they do arrive, we can either have slowed the fire down enough for them to actually save the house or we can have it extinguished if we react quickly enough while it’s still small. I not only have a plan, but as I’m standing there looking at the wood stove, I try to think of all the possible emergencies involving it: the chimney overheats and sets the ceiling on fire, the chimney falls over, a leg collapses and tips the stove, etc. If any of these happen, I’ve done like you said and pictured in advance what I’ll do so when the emergency happens I won’t have to stop and think, just let foresight and practice take over.

Thanks again for taking the 50+ hours it no doubt took to put this article together and for sharing your expertise.

#2 Comment By Jonathan Gardner On January 9, 2021 @ 2:24 pm

Far fetched, but if your spare tire is inflated, you can get air from it….

#3 Comment By Animal House On January 9, 2021 @ 4:30 pm

The article was very informative and I enjoyed reading it. Like St Funogas, we are mostly at home base now. We have a masonry fireplace with a flue inside it for the wood stove. Although our wood stove is an insert, we still have the chimney cleaned and the topper inspected every year. We also have fire extinguishers every where, as the volunteer fire department would not get here in time to save the house.

#4 Comment By Francis On January 9, 2021 @ 5:12 pm

This is an excellent article. While some of us may select a different way, you’ve given folks enough data to use what you use or they can find what they think is more appropriate.

To me, the major thrust of your articles (be prepared in all these areas) is really important.

This reminds me of JWR’s book: “Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse”, it’s an adventure book but with real world specific items that will help in the coming financial disaster, as will your articles.

Thank you for writing this article. Bless You!

#5 Comment By John McDonald On January 9, 2021 @ 6:20 pm

Thank everyone for the great comments! If you’ve ever been involved in a life-or-death situation I’d like to ask you to write up a quick article on what happened and what you did to survive it and submit it to SurvivalBlog so that others can learn from your experience.

#6 Comment By drb On January 9, 2021 @ 11:40 pm

I have all three of the books that are referenced. They are excellent and each looks at survival from a little different perspective.

#7 Comment By Grey Mann On January 10, 2021 @ 2:16 am

A very solid well written piece. Very extensive coverage especially for the new prepper.

#8 Comment By Capt Nemo On January 10, 2021 @ 5:00 am

On the scuba pony bottle, GET SCUBA CERTIFIED BEFORE USE!

Air embolism can happen in as little as 2 feet of water depending on how compliant your lung tissue is. If you have had Covid, your lungs are scarred for life, and breathing compressed air is out of the question! If you get an air embolism, by the time they can get you to a chamber and compressed again, you are either dead, or a vegetable for life!

This is why Covid scares the Schiff out of me as a diver!

Vehicle side windows are now being made with laminate glass like your windshield. This is to prevent ejection in a crash. The problem is that it makes emergency egress in an underwater situation much harder, if not impossible! The hammers don’t work well on that stuff.

#9 Comment By Gman On January 10, 2021 @ 12:56 pm

We were taught in an Auto Fire under the hood to spray thru the radiator into the engine compartment. Never open the hood and look in.
This may not apply to some of the “NEW CAR or TRUCKS.”

In the old days it worked.

Gods Blessing. The Gman