SurvivalBlog.com

Communication

If traveling by foot, plan on only taking the AM/FM crank radio. It will last for weeks on a couple of AA batteries and for much longer with its crank power. All the HAM radio equipment and walkie talkies are not worth the weight and have much higher power consumptions. If you can, always listen to any radio using headphones in one ear so you do not attract people to your location with the radio noise. Radio stations may only be operational for short bursts throughout the day, so try all the AM and FM frequencies at different times each day.

If you are traveling by car, pack all the HAM radio stuff and other electronic stuff you can find. Of course, also pack all of the batteries. Operating these devices would take a lot of room to explain; stick to the car’s AM/FM frequencies. If time allows, you should be reading the first aid book and the wilderness/urban survival books, not the radio manuals (which are with the radios) though you should of course bring them. If you are rushed for time, make sure to at least bring the small walkie talkie-looking radio. Out of all the HAM radios, you may be able to make local contact with someone in a time of need using this radio.

Defense

Conservative estimates for the number of women raped in the 1992-5 Bosnian War climb as high as 50,000. Sadly, for many women, their rapes were not a one-time ordeal. Many women were kept in rape detention centers where members of the police and military could have easier access to them[1]. Why should we think a lawless United States would be any different. People will no doubt join together in the days after lawlessness begins; some banded for good and some for bad. In addition, those men or women who would never dream of committing a sexual crime, when driven mad by hunger or fear, will try to rob you for your food and/or weapons. One more note: Today in America many people take mind-altering drugs (because some would be in insane asylums without them), and others are addicted to alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs. When these addicts are forced to quite, they will all be going through some kind of withdrawal symptoms. As people begin to realize the value of having a gun and feel the pain of hunger some may do anything to steal from you!

While Traveling By Foot

Be very cautious after passing by or meeting any other travelers. Hopefully, your camp will be located somewhere that you will not meet other people. If you do meet anyone and exchange any words, do not give out any more information than you have to. Be on your guard within your camp and move your camp after anyone makes contact with you while you are in your camp! Assume they are coming back to rob/attack you during the night.

1. Avoid having a fire at night, it will be a beacon that can be seen for miles.
2. Always try to use fire away from the place you plan on sleeping.
3. Practice “leave no trace” camping– no fires, no garbage, et cetera. (Some call this having a “cold camp”.)

While Driving

Once people begin to fear the worst and see all 110 lbs of you loading up months worth of food and supplies, lock the car between EACH trip down. Assemble everything in the house and then ferry it all down to the car as quickly as possible. Carry a concealed handgun at all times. Keep super attentive while walking; scan around for people watching you. If they ask what you are doing, say something like “going to visit the grandparents.” Carry items in black garbage bags so know one knows what you are carrying.

Assume all road blocks are ambushes with an evil intent. Road blocks may look like cars parked across the road, downed power lines, or felled trees. As soon as you see any type of road block slow down, scan the road to the sides of the car, and (if you see no one around you) stop before approaching the road block. Take out the binoculars and scan the road block. Look for any sign of people guarding it. If you see people being let through but having to give up gas or food or any type of supplies, turn around and find another way. If you are traveling alone and have a car full of supplies, you will be a great catch to simply keep. If they are simply asking questions and letting people pass, use your judgment. Beware of traps, as well. Cars along the sides of the road can easily be pushed or driven across the road once you have passed, sealing you inside a trap. The best way to proceed when you see cars parked along side the road is to slow down and stop (after checking the road sides for safety) and then inspect the cars or potential road blocks for signs of movement from afar, using the binoculars.

If someone starts firing on you while you are moving, do not speed up to an unsafe speed. If a bullet hits your tires while traveling very fast you will lose control. Do not bother returning fire, you will miss (unless they are literally a few feet outside of your window). It would also be wise to have a gun in hand to let anyone hiding know you are armed while passing through/approaching any suspicious areas.

If you need to rest, cook, or use the restroom, use your judgment. Pull off somewhere you do not expect any traffic. People, however, may be more likely to mess with you if there are not a lot of people around to object to their behavior, so use your best judgment. Obviously, keep the car locked when you are away from it, and take a long gun and a handgun with you. Keep the handgun concealed. For sleeping in a rural area, conceal the car as much as possible and if at all possible do not sleep in the car. Sleeping in the car will ensure you will not hear anyone approaching your position. Sleep in a tarp near to the car; near enough to keep an eye on it. If sometime during the night someone does come knocking on the car, you will be in a much better tactical situation than if you were basically trapped inside the car caught asleep.

1. Take your BOB with you when you leave the car!
2. If someone approaches you while you are outside of the car, put the front of the car (where the engine is) between you and the direction they are approaching from. This is the best place on the car to stop bullets.

If you are forced to sleep in a non-rural area where people will definitely be around you, do not sleep in the front seat. Sleep in the back near the gas cap. Hang some sheets up in the car so people cannot see in. The sheet makes it hard for anyone to know how many people are inside. Sleeping near the gas cap lets you hear when someone tries to steal your gas. Leaving a window cracked will help you hear outside.

Operating the Guns

Tips on shooting:

1. You are almost always better off avoiding/fleeing from any confrontations than you are standing your ground and fighting.
2. Take your shots slowly. With the long guns, one shot per second is more than fast enough. Slow controlled fire is the idea. Use the scope!
3. Never jerk the trigger. Always take slow controlled squeezes for every shot.
4. Whenever possible, rest your gun or body against the ground or a tree to steady yourself. (This will also provide cover and minimize your cross section in the sights of your foes.)
5. For the handguns, keep one arm relatively straight out in front of you and the other arm bent. Locking both arms out in front will cause you to have an uncontrolled recoil.
6. Focus on the FRONT gun site, not the rear site. This will keep your aim much more controlled.
7. Treat every gun as if it is loaded at all times. (Make sure it is empty before cleaning!)
8. Know your target and beyond. (Do not fire at a squirrel climbing up the neighbor’s house.)
9. The safety can and WILL fail. (Dropping your gun may get you shot.)

Taking Care of and Using the Guns

In the BOB. you should have packed the gun oil and some cleaning swabs. Since you probably will not be firing the guns much at all, your main concern is keeping them rust- and dirt-free. There are two types of cleaning methods you will need to master: (1) cleaning the barrel and (2) cleaning the action and gun innards. The instructions below are limited. The owner’s manuals for all of the guns are with our stored supplies; read them and actually practice taking the weapons apart, if you have time.

Cleaning the barrel is pretty easy. No gun take down is required. You will need to have packed the: (1) gun cleaning rods, which are gold-colored; there are three of them that screw together, or you can use the smaller wire cleaning kit that is in the BOB, (2) small and large patch holders– one is for the 22 and the other for the larger calibers, (3) gun cleaning solvent, (4) gun oil, which comes as both a spray and a regular oil, found in a can in the “liquids” Tupperware and another oil bottle in the BOB, (5) patches, which are little squares of fabric that can also be made out of other non-synthetic fabrics in a pinch; don’t use synthetic fabrics as the oils may break them down inside the barrel, and (6) wire brushes for each caliber of gun. To clean the barrel, assemble the cleaning roads (all three for long guns, only one section for pistols) and first attach the proper size patch. Add only a few drops of gun oil to the patch. Do not use a full size pad for the 22 as it could get stuck inside the barrel, rip off 1/3 of the small patch. For the other calibers you may also need to rip the patches smaller. You just want enough patch for slight resistance as you run it through the barrel. You may only need to run it through a few times to get any bits of sticks or dust that entered the barrel out. Change patches when they get fouled. Repeat until when you look down the barrel it seems clean and slightly shiny. You should not see any beads of oil inside the barrel; this can actually be dangerous, as it can cause your barrel to explode if you fire it. So, if you think you used too much oil, simply run a dry patch through.

If you have to fire the guns a bunch, you may look down the barrel after cleaning and see there is still dirt in there (or your patches still come out dirty). To get this more stubborn dirt out, put some cleaning solvent on a patch and run that through. Follow this patch with the wire brush a few times. Then run through some dry patches until they come out clean. If you cannot see anymore sticky deposits, send through an oil patch and you are done. If there is still a lot of dirty specks, repeat the process with solvent and the wire brush until the barrel is clean.

If you stick the barrel into the dirt, clean it as soon as possible (ASAP) because shooting it while plugged with dirt could cause it to explode. You can flush the barrel with water to save on cleaning patches and gun oil. Do not worry, it will not rust so long as you follow up with some oil when you clean it after the water flushing.

Cleaning the innards of the gun: The aim here is to clean the action/magazines/trigger assemblies/bolts of each gun. For all guns, you should never try to take apart the trigger mechanism! Limited take down instructions for each gun are listed below, but none of them have you taking apart the trigger assembly. To clean the innards, your aim should be to remove any dirt you can see using a water flush or cleaning patches, followed by a light oil coating. (Folding a cleaning patch over a stick is helpful to get into small places.) You should only need to flush with water if you drop the gun in the mud. Again, if you see beads of gun oil, you put too much on. Too much oil is bad inside the gun because it can seep into your bullets and cause them to malfunction. Therefore, be especially light when oiling around the magazine. For the magazine itself, you want to be sure you clean those as well. You should not feel or hear any scratching as you slide bullets into and out of the magazines. Dirt in your magazine can cause the gun to jam up or not feed correctly.

22 Long Rifle

The 22 has a “push button” safety. The safety is “on” when you push the cylinder located adjacent to the trigger from the left side. When you push this cylinder from the right, you will see a small red band on it sticking out from the left side. This means the safety is “off”.

The magazine release is located directly above where the magazine is fed. Simply push it along the long axis of the gun to remove a magazine.

After a fresh magazine is placed into the gun, you must pull back on the “charging” lever and let it slam forward. Now the gun is ready to fire. After you have emptied a magazine, the action will stay open. You need to put in a new magazine and then pull back on the “charging” lever and let it slam forward.

Sometimes you will pull the trigger and nothing will happen; this is because the bullet was a dud, which is not uncommon with the 22 LR ammo. Simply pull back on the “charging” lever and the bad bullet will get ejected and a new one inserted into the chamber.

The gun can jam. The most common way is a failed feeding/ejecting attempt, meaning a bullet may or may not have been successfully ejected, and the new bullet failed do go into the chamber. When this happens, you must “jimmy” the “charging” lever back until the lever is free to slide forward and a fresh round is chambered.

To get into the “innards” of this gun, you must remove two screws that connect the receiver to the stock. After the stock is off, you need to push out a pin that is located on the side near the back of the receiver. Now you have access to pretty much everything you need to clean the gun for the amount of training you can glean from a few sentences. Refer to the full manual for more complete take down instructions.

12 Gauge Shot Gun

The 12 gauge has a “thumb slide“ safety. It is located on the back top of the gun, where your thumb can easily move it. When it is pushed forward, you will see a red dot and this means the safety is “off”.

To load the gun (from being totally empty): (1) slide the pump towards the trigger (2) insert a round into the action (3) slide the pump forward and the round should be fed into the chamber/barrel (4) now you can push rounds into the feeding tube located under the barrel.

To simply add more rounds while there is a round already chambered, simply push rounds into the feeding tube located under the barrel.

Unlike the 22, I have never had this gun jam nor had a misfire.

To get to the “innards”, unscrew the bolt that is located on the end of the feed tube (where the pump slides on). Then you will be able to “wiggle” the barrel free from the receiver by rotating it back and forth and pulling on it (in the direction away from the butt of the stock). You can wipe away any dirt and spray oil into the gun from this state pretty easily. This really does not get you into the “innards”, so refer to the owner’s manual with photos; it is with the supplies and has pictures!

9 mm Pistol

The 9 mm is a little confusing. On the left side of the gun there are three knobs of metal. This first (from the barrel end to the grip end) is a take down knob, the second is a slide release, and the third is the safety. The safety is engaged when it is pushed “up”. When it is down you will see some red paint.

To take the gun apart, you need to push down on the first knob. You kind of have to wiggle it back and forth until you get it into a sweet spot. The idea here is that this knob holds in a pin that you need to remove, so we need to push this knob down and out of the way. Try with your finger; if you cannot do it with your finger, use a screw driver to force it down. Once you get this knob pushed down, you need to go to the other side of the gun and push on the small pin that is located directly over the trigger. In order to see the pin, you need to push back on the slide until the pin comes into view. So you need to apply pressure to the slide and be pushing the pin out while simultaneously pushing on the pin from the right side of the gun. Once the pin pops out, the top of the gun will slide off. You can now clean the outside of the barrel, the big springs by the barrel, and every other exposed part of the inside of the gun. Make sure to clean the tracks where the top part of the gun slides.

To operate the 9 mm, you simply insert a loaded magazine and pull back on the slide. The gun will automatically load a round into the chamber and be ready to fire. You have done this before! The gun will fire until it jams or runs out of ammunition. After the last shot, the slide will stay in the back position. This lets you know you need to reload. You simply put a new magazine in and pull back on the slide and release; it will fly forward.

If this gun jams, you need to get the jammed bullet out of the way. I have never had this happen (unlike with the 22), so I assume you just “jimmy” the slide until the bullet pops out. The important thing is to somehow get the jammed bullet out of the way. Causes for jamming can be dirt in the gun itself, or on the bullets (dirty magazine). Clean it often!

45-caliber Pistol

The safety on the 45 is on the left side of the gun. It is a little lever that moves up and down. In the down position the gun’s safety is not engaged and you will see some red paint.

To disassemble the 45, you need to push back the slide until the two small indents on the slide and the bottom part of the gun match up. Then, and only then will you be able to push out the pin that holds the slide onto the bottom part of the gun. Essentially, you are doing the same thing you did for the 9 mm, but there is not a knob you need to push down first. The pin in this case is attached to something named a “slide step”. It is a lever connected to a pin. You simply pull on the lever while simultaneously pushing back on the slide.

To operate the 45, you simply insert a loaded magazine and pull back on the slide. The gun will automatically load a round into the chamber and be ready to fire. You have done this before! The gun will fire until it jams or runs out of ammunition. After the last shot, the slide will stay in the back position. This lets you know you need to reload. You simply put a new magazine in and pull back on the slide and release; it will fly forward.

If this gun jams, you need to get the jammed bullet out of the way. I have never had this happen (unlike with the 22), so I assume you just “jimmy” the slide until the bullet pops out. The important thing is to somehow get the jammed bullet out of the way. Causes for jamming can be dirt in the gun itself, or on the bullets (dirty magazine). Clean it often!

General Defensive Attitude

1. When in doubt, do not “borrow” anything from anyone. Some communities/individuals will most likely be killing looters on site or worse.
2. Even for trained individuals fire fights are very, very dangerous. With no operating emergency services, even getting “nicked” by a bullet could kill you. Try to avoid as much human contact as possible.
3. Put more trust in people you find that still have their family unit intact. A group of four men is much more likely to have the Lord of the Flies mentality than a man and his wife with their kids. That still does not mean they will not take what they need from you if they can.
4. Rely on your own EXCELLENT judgment when it comes to joining forces with anyone you meet.

Staying Put

If you deem it is impossible to travel by foot or car for whatever reason, you need to radically change life at our home. Basically, you need to adapt each of the sections in this article to life at home. Below I will give some recommendations on doing so.

Supply Cache

First off, you do not want all of your supplies located (1) within plain sight within the house, or (2) within the house. You should both hide/camouflage your supplies and split them up between a cache located outside the house (preferably buried in the yard) and a cache hidden somewhere in the house. The idea here is to treat your caches like grocery store visits. Visit them rarely, and only keep a small amount of supples out of the cache at any given moment. This limits the chance anything will be stolen or burned in the event of a fire. For the outside cache, you need to make it water- and animal-proof. I recommend digging a hole large enough for the galvanized trash can in the back yard. This will keep out rodents and should be pretty water tight. Place all supplies in plastic within the cache and camouflage the top to look like a garden. For the inside cache, we already have one built, and you know where it is. If you leave by foot, you cannot carry both long guns. Leave the 12 gauge behind in the buried cache with extra ammo as well.

Water at Home

For water, obviously you do not want to be leaving the property to go down to the retention ponds by the highway. This leaves the house unguarded and you exposed. Instead, you must try to collect and store water.

1. While the city water is still running, fill every container you can find with water! Do not forget about all of the wine making equipment and the kegs in the shed!
2. Pull the trash bins around to the back of the house (within the fence line) and place them under the gutter down spouts. You will have to “rip” the down spouts free from the house to get them to feed directly into the trash cans. Those cans will hold hundreds of gallons of water. Treat this water as described in the section on water.
3. Remember there will be water in the hot water tank and in the tank on top of the toilet.
4. You can make little “ponds” by digging holes in the yard where you know we already have run off issues and lining them with plastic sheeting (tarps, garbage bags, etc.).

Home Heating and Cooking

For heating the house, we do not have a wood stove nor propane. As we have a very limited supply of wood in our neighborhood, I do not think a heating stove is worth the effort to construct. As we lack stove piping, it would be quite unsafe, too. Instead, focus on making small cooking fires OUTSIDE of the house. Most “preppers” seem to agree that the majority of well-populated city areas will burn. I also agree, but perhaps not so much due to looting as to people trying to make fires for warmth or cooking.

Home Fortifying

The doors on our home will not withstand a few kicks. In addition, the doors have glass panels near the locks which make breaking into our house child’s play. You should begin fortifying our home by nailing boards across the glass portions of the doors. Then, nail a piece of wood across the short axis of the door about half way up. Next, nail another board into the floor parallel to the door. Next, measure and cut two or three boards to get jammed under the board you nailed to the door and resting on the board you nailed onto the floor. Draw this out on a scrap of paper and it will become obvious what I am having you build. Since this will now keep our doors from being easily kicked in, you will have more time to escape or defend yourself if someone is breaking down the door.

In addition to blockading the doors, I would also cover the windows in plywood. There are plywood sheets in the shed. (They actually are being used currently as a shelf in the shed). You can use interior doors to cover windows as well!

For home defense, I would pick two places on our property to “fortify”. We have sandbags in the attic and a shovel in the shed. The goal would be to have one place within the house you sleep in that also has a good view of the front door/front of the house. You must knock small holes in our walls to get a better view (use the stud finder in the garage). Similarity, I would construct a bunker at the highest point in the backyard near the fence. Dig deep enough that you can sit comfortably and only the top of you head is above the ground. I do not recommend actually using these bunkers to defend the house. You have no tactical training. Your best bet to avoid getting injured is to stay alert and avoid threats. If you have properly cached your supplies, no one should find the bulk of your supplies, if they enter our home. This means, however, you need somewhere to go when they are in our house. That is why the outside bunker was dug. You should try to camouflage this bunker as you did the outside cache. consider putting the wheel barrow over it. Even better would be to construct it such that it looks like a pile of leaves with only an opening for you to see and potentially shoot out of. Inside the bunker, you will have the advantage. Your bullets will rip right through our house. Any bad guy taking cover below the windows or around the side of our house will get hit, if you simply aim where you see them hiding.

Home Modus Operandi

At night and during the day, you want to keep as low a profile as possible.

1. Pull the van into the garage.
2. Keep cooking fires as small as possible. Put them out with water, if you can spare it, so you save wood and reduce smoke.
3. Try not to use ANY light at night. It will ruin your night vision and make our house a beacon for people outside, although, after the windows have been boarded, it will be hard to see any light.
4. Try to minimize both the amount of time you spend outside and contact with our neighbors. I would consider getting into the back yard through a window rather then the gate in order to reduce the amount of time you spend outside of our fence and therefore in the “open”.
5. DRILL! DRILL! DRILL! Practice moving from inside to your outside “bunker”. Practice reloading the guns as fast as you can. Basically always be asking yourself “what if” types of questions and then coming up with a solution. Then, practice that solution!

For gardening at home, read Carla Emery’s “Encyclopedia of Country Living,” especially the section of the book on growing vegetables. Then read, “The Seed to Seed” book by Ashworth. We have more seeds saved than space on our lot. Keep our seeds cool and dry; store them in the outdoor cache underground in an airtight container. I will say no more here regarding gardening other than use the 22 to get the rabbits, squirrels, and raccoons ASAP!

Purchase Plan

In the event stores are still open, please consult the book by Rawles called “How to Survive the End of the World As We Know It”. He has chapters on what to buy and how to buy it. Focus on buying (1) salt (get 50-lb blocks from the farm supply store), (2) rice, (3) wheat berries (or flour, but we have a flour mill!), (4) corn (preferably whole corn; try the animal supply company near our home first, and buy as much as you can get into the van), (5) oats (try the animal supply company near our home first, and buy as much as you can get into the van), (6) fat and oils (peanut butter, cooking oils, and such), (7) powdered milk (gets lots of baby formula, if possible, for the kids), (8) canned meat, (9) sugar, and (10) canned fruit and vegetables.

Discussion and Conclusion

This article is meant to give you a sense of preparedness. However, there is a reason astronauts have PhD’s and must be great problem-solvers; you can never be prepared for everything! Inevitably, you will need to improvise when some of your gear breaks or gets lost or stolen. This is the fun part; how can you manipulate the objects around you to improve your chance at survival. Keep a good open imagination and a positive attitude, and with luck you will be fine!

[1] United Nations entity for gender equality, the empowerment of women: Fast facts: statistics on violence against women and girls. URL http://www.endvawnow.org/en/articles/299-fast-facts-statistics-on-violence-against-women-and-girls-.html.

Traveling

Not all those who wander are lost^[1]. We are not men of Numenor keeping the evil of Sauron at bay. In the situation for which this document is written, your goal should be to travel to somewhere where your odds at survival are greater than your current location.

Our car has two spare tires– one full-size tire in the back and one smaller one under the front of the car. The car’s manual describes how to change a tire. Our car has a full hydraulic-size jack in the back (in the blue Tupperware container). This jack is much more stable than the little one the car’s owner manual says to use. The instructions for the jack are on the box.

If you need more gas you can get it from any other car and/or gas-using device. To siphon gas, (1) use the acrylic tubing (or whatever tubing you can find) and insert it into the tank with gas. (2) Place a collection vessel lower than the tank with the gas. (3) Very carefully suck on the tubing until you see gas coming up to your lips. (4) Put your finger over the end of the hose and take it out of your mouth. (5) In a quick fashion, stick the tubing into your awaiting vessel and the gas should start to flow. (Siphoning by mouth is dangerous; if you get any into your mouth or eyes, flush with plenty of water.)

Gas should be a priority item that you purchase. There is an extra gas can in the shed. You can also fill the large 15-gallon blue plastic tank with gas (or go buy extra gas cans, if the situation allows). I have a can of something called “sta-bil” in the garage; it calls itself a gas stabilizer. Add this to any gas that you plan to leave sitting for awhile (more than a few months); do not forget the gas that is in the car.

Map Reading

The easiest way to know where you are on a map is to check it frequently. Your aim should be to constantly look for landmarks that you can locate on the map and in doing so confirm your location. The more zoomed in your map is, and the more details it has (e.g. topographical contour lines) the easier it will be to confirm you location. Depending on what map you are using, the symbols on the map may differ slightly. Read the key and make sure you understand it. While reading a map, it is best to align it to the North and then try and identify all the landmarks you can to connect the map in your hands to what you see. Know the scale of your map! A common mistake is too identify small turns in rivers or streams or small hills or rises as the larger ones that are actually on the map. Knowing the map’s scale will help you to avoid this problem. (For example, while walking near a stream you spot a 100 by 100 yard pond; you look on the map and spot a pond near a lake and assume that is your location. However, the pond on the map may be several times larger than the one you see. Now you are unsure of where you are.) Depending on the scale and detail of your map, you should always have a general idea of where you are. Do not get upset over not knowing exactly where you are or not being able to identify some landmarks; it is very normal if you are using an unzoomed low-detail map! The easiest way to know where you are may simply be by staying a comfortable distance from major roads and “bumping” into them once in a while! The odds that you will find maps of sufficient scale and detail to navigate with using topology are pretty slim. Expect to get by using town and road names.

Using a Compass

To help with identifying landmarks on a map and to aid in actually walking in the right direction you should use a compass. (After aligning a map, it will become easier to know which hill is which.) Using a compass is actually pretty simple. Place the compass away from any metal objects (such as gun barrels or the car) and wait for it to settle down. Be sure the needle does in fact turn, however. If the compass is tipped too much, the needle will not move. Once the needle stops moving, it is telling you the direction of Earth’s magnetic field at that point in space. Unfortunately, this direction is not going to be lined up with the lines on your map! The effects of magnetic declination, however, are pretty small in our region, so you can pretty much disregard worry about them.

Using the compass to walk in a certain direction:

1. Locate yourself as best you can on your map.
2. Pick out a direction you want to head on your map.
3. Calculate how many degrees from true North (or magnetic) you need to head. Use the compass itself as a protractor and lay it on the map to calculate the angle you need to head.
4. Holding the compass up to your face (flip up the little “sight” to help you align the compass) find some kind of landmark to walk to. In general, the further away the landmark the better, since (as you will find out very quickly) it is not easy to walk in straight lines through the woods. Often walking in straight lines through the woods is impossible, especially where there is any terrain whatsoever; stick to walking on contour lines!

Choosing a Route

For reasons discussed in the defense section, in general, you want to try and avoid all other people. As for where you will be headed, that will heavily depend on the reason for the collapse. In general, you want to head to a place with a low population density.

By car:

1. To avoid large towns that may not show up as large towns on your map, pay attention to the number of advertisements for upcoming towns.
2. Most towns have above-ground water holding tanks that you can see far before coming close to the town. This could be your cue to check your map and use your judgment about proceeding.
3. If you have to go through a town, driving down main street may not be the best idea. Try getting on a side road near the outskirts of the town. Here, you are gambling you won’t get lost and waste gas. Use your judgment.
4. Rural America is full of county roads laid out in large rectangular grids. Avoiding a town may be quite simple in most cases! Check your map.
5. Leave yourself bigger buffers for bigger towns and cities. (Remember the traffic outside Chicago on Thanksgiving when we were still two hours from the city!)

By foot:

1. Stay away from using roads and rail road tracks. In some cases you may be forced to use roads, rail roads tracks, and/or hiking trails (if you can find one!) because some types of terrain are nearly impossible to get through. For example, thick brush is nearly impossible to get through without getting on your hands and knees, in places.
2. Keep your water supply in mind. Water is heavy (one gallon weighs 8.4 lbs.) and you may drink more than a gallon a day. Therefore, consulting the map and picking a course that is close to ponds, streams, and rivers is a good idea.
3. If you have to cross a waterway that requires you to get wet and it is cold: (1) Gather some kindling and some firewood; pile some on the bank. In case you lose footing and have to retreat back to the bank, you can start a fire to warm up. Later, you can take some over to the other bank with you to warm you when you get there. You can get more after the fire is going, or perhaps you can “pre-stash” a bunch of wood by throwing it over the water! (2) Take off and store your clothes in a water-proof bag. (3) Try to keep your pack over your head to keep it dry as you wade/swim across. If the water is pretty shallow and you only need to remove your shoes and pants, make sure you unlatch your backpack, in case you fall in, so it will not drag you under the water. (4) When you get to the other side light a fire, dry off, and warm up!

First Aid

The best first aid is prevention. Use common sense and try to protect yourself from minor cuts and scrapes, as they will tax your immune system. Barring some freak hiking or car accident, the worst damage you could possibly encounter will be from another human. Consult the first aid book in the first aid kit for everything! (Remember to swap out the first aid manual with the Weiss version from the bookshelf.) The first aid book covers many, many possible problems. Covered in this section are some things you may have to deal with and are presented in case you do not have access to any other references. You can substitute soapy water for iodinated water. Also, boiling water is commonly called for in this section to sterilize various items; I recommend keeping a few fuel cells unused for this purpose. (Starting a wood fire is not what you want to be doing in the middle of a first aid session.)

Sterile Dressings

There will be some sterile dressings in the first aid kit. To make more, boil any fabric. (This is a good use for that cotton you should not have brought along.)

Minor Cuts and Scrapes

Wear gloves when using the saw! Wear long pants and sleeves when walking through thick brush! Leaving minor cuts and scrapes unwashed and uncovered is inviting an infection. Clean minor wounds with clean water, and be sure to scrub the wound, if necessary, to get all the dirt out. You can put a drop or two of the iodine tincture on the wounds or a small dab of neosporin and then cover with a small piece of gauze or a band aid.

Major Cuts and Scrapes

For major scrapes and cuts, you first want to stop any bleeding. Do this by applying a clean (if possible) piece of cloth or gauze over the wound. Raise the wound over the level of your heart, if possible, to reduce bleeding. You can simply apply pressure with your hand as well as tie upstream of the cut, if it is on your arm or leg. Once the bleeding stops, rinse the wound with a mixture of clean water and 10 drops of iodine. (Here you want to avoid floaties in the water for sure.) Applying iodine tincture, without diluting it, can cause tissue damage. Apply some Neosporin and consider covering the wound with a layer of petroleum jelly to keep it clean. Cover with a sterile dressing. Clean the wound with the iodine solution or clean water daily, and change the dressings until it has healed up. (You can also drink the water treated with a double dose of iodine.)

Hypothermia

If you find yourself confused, losing hand dexterity, or shaking violently when it is cold out, you may have or be getting hypothermia. The fix here is to get warm. If your clothes are soaked, get naked, dry off, and put dry ones on. (Even if you don’t have a lot of dry clothes, a little bit of dry clothes is better than a lot of soaked clothes). It is going to be difficult to do it, but you must get out of the wet clothes. Then, wrap yourself in the mylar emergency blanket, shiny side facing you. Then wrap yourself in your sleeping bag and then all of the tarp material you have. If you can manage, get our of the wind and try to insulate yourself from the ground, as described in the shelter section. As for making a fire, only attempt to do so if you really think there is a lot of wood within easy reach. There is no guarantee you would succeed, and you probably would have been better off getting into your cocoon. Obviously if you have no dry clothes and no tarps, you should try to make a fire. If you have no dry clothes, keep your wet ones on and cover yourself with whatever you can, as described in the shelter section. Try to make something warm to drink or eat in all cases!

Heat Stroke/exhaustion

Unlike hypothermia, which may be unavoidable in the winter, heat stroke and heat exhaustion can be avoided in most cases. If you find yourself heavily sweating, getting the onset of a headache, feeling dizzy, having dark urine, or nausea, you may have heat exhaustion and be on your way to heat stroke. Stop all physical activity, get out of the sun, get fluids, and apply wet towels to your body. If you do not heed this warning, you may find that you stop sweating, get a worse headache, have red skin, start vomiting, and experience muscle cramps, a fast heart rate, fast breathing rate, dizziness and/or confusion. You know then that you are entering heat stroke territory. For your purposes, the treatment is the same as for heat exhaustion. Consider wading into a stream or pond to cool off, but only if you haven’t had any severe dizziness or passed out up to that point. (You don’t want to drown.)

Gun Shot

Treating a gunshot wound can be broken into three stages: (1) stop bleeding and avoid shock, (2) wound cleaning and debridement, and (3) daily wound care (cleaning re-packing/bandaging wound). First, you stop the bleeding by applying pressure (using sterile gauze, if possible), elevating above heart, and applying pressure to the “pressure points”. If you have avoided getting hit in a large blood vessel, the wound may only seep a little blood after awhile. If a major vessel is hit and there is no surgeon around, you probably will not be conscious long enough to help yourself. Step 2 is to clean the wound and get all the severely damaged tissue, bone fragments, and bullet (if possible) out of the wound. Debridement is the fancy word for cutting away any tissue that is dead or probably will not make it. NATO recommends^[2] cutting away any tissue that has a bad color, does not respond to stimuli (contraction), has a consistency differing from surrounding tissue, and does not have adequate circulation. This is known as “the four C’s.” Obviously, the laymen will not have experience being able to tell what is normal for each of these metrics. Do your best, and remember that any questionable tissue left behind will be a haven for infection to take hold. Use the scalpel and tweezers to cut away and remove any questionable looking tissue and bone/bullet fragments. Clean the wound by irrigating it with a mixture of clean water and iodine (diluted 10 drops per liter). Step 3 is to pack the wound with sterile dressings. You may also want to cover it with petroleum jelly. (You can boil it to sterilize it/Neosporin before packing.) The following is from the NATO emergency war manual : As a dressing, dry sterile gauze should be laid lightly in the wound. This should be no more than a wick. In no case should gauze be “packed” into the wound since this additional pressure can cause necrosis of any tissue that already has its blood supply partially compromised. The single most important principle in the management of battle wounds is their nonclosure following debridement. The surgeon must not give in to the temptation to primarily close certain “very clean appearing” war wounds. Such closure is ill-advised and inappropriate and can only be condemned.^[2] You can close the wound 4-6 days postdebridement. Boil all tools that you use, wash your hands and the surrounding tissue, and you must ensure no foreign matter gets into the wound during the “operation”. Obviously, if you are at home, you can have a lot of these supplies set-up in a constant state of readiness (and encourage the neighbors to do likewise).

Stabbing/puncture

The key here is to get a deep cleaning of the wound. If the object is inside of you, try to get the first aid kit out and ready before removing it. Also try to get some water boiling. After taking the object out, or if it was already out, let the wound seep blood for a few minutes to aid in getting it clean, unless it is bleeding pretty severely and you risk losing too much blood. Irrigate the wound and clean the surrounding skin with clean water with extra iodine added. Again, do not apply un-diluted iodine as it will cause tissue damage. Use the syringe to force water down into the wound. Apply some Neosporin and consider covering the wound with a layer of petroleum jelly to keep it clean. Cover with a sterile dressing. Clean the wound with the iodine solution or clean water daily and change the dressings until it has healed up. Do not sew up or tape the opening closed; it must be left open to seep!

Damage to Eye

Damage to one eye will most likely cause the other eye to become clenched shut as well. This is your body’s way of minimizing eye movement; both eyes move together, even if one eye is closed. The main concern for treating the eye is to not apply pressure. Applying pressure can “deflate” the eyeball and cause permanent damage. You can flush out the eye with clean water. You can use iodine treated water using the syringe in the first aid kit, which will force water at the eye. Just DO NOT APPLY UNDILUTED IODINE TINCTURE TO THE EYES! Cover the eye with a clean dressing and tape it in place. Again, be sure not to apply too much pressure when doing this. Try to avoid moving your other eye as much as possible. Use the mirror in the first aid kit to remove anything that may be stuck in the eye tissue or surrounding tissue.

Feet First Aid

1. Give your feet daily massages.
2. Keep your toe nails trimmed.
3. Wash your feet as often as you can and make sure they are as dry as possible before putting your socks back on.
4. Exposing your feet to the sun for as long as you can (while eating/resting) will help kill bacteria, dry them, and increase the circulation to your feet (since they will not be in socks or shoes).
5. The “butt” cream used for baby butt rash is perfect for your feet! Use it if you start to have difficulties with you feet.

If you get a small blister, do not open it. An intact blister is safe from infection. Apply a padding material around the blister to relieve pressure and reduce friction. If the blister bursts, treat it as an open wound. Clean and dress it daily and pad around it. Leave large blisters intact. To avoid having the blister burst or tear under pressure and cause a painful and open sore, do the following: (1) Obtain a sewing-type needle and a clean or sterilized thread. (2) Run the needle and thread through the blister after cleaning the blister. (3) Detach the needle and leave both ends of the thread hanging out of the blister. The thread will absorb the liquid inside. This reduces the size of the hole and ensures that the hole does not close up. (4) Pad around the blister.^[3]

Constipation

Your diet, exercise, and stress will all be changed, and most likely your poop will look different as well! Do not expect to defecate that much if you are traveling by foot. You will be eating good food and burning a lot of it off. With that said, you may be constipated if you cannot poop at all or if when you do poop, it is very difficult. You may also feel like there is a hard turd plugging you up. This is known as fecal impaction, and the remedy is to go in there with your finger and break it/pull it out. Obviously, have something ready to wash your hand with after you do this. To avoid and or treat constipation: (1) Drink plenty of water. If you ever feel thirsty during the day, you are not getting enough, (2) Get fiber in your diet by eating dandelions or other edible greens, (3) Take some laxative that is in the first aid kit. Choosing not to deal with this problem may make it worse, and you may experience pain and vomiting, (4) try to defecate often to avoid your stool hardening while it waits to be released.

Might as well comment on how to go “number two” here. I find it best to find a log to squat against while in the woods, this gives you plenty of back support while you go about your business.

¹J. Tolkien, The lord of the rings (HarperFiction-Tolkien-Profit Share PB, 2009).
²T. Bowen and R. Bellamy, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office (1988).
³P. Underwood, US Army Survival Manual (Skyhorse Pub Co Inc, 2011).

HJL,

I saw a link to this in the Galts Gulch Daily Digest. I still am amazed that people think that they deserve such handouts without having to put forth any effort whatsoever.

It reminds me of the documentary on the Pruitt-Igoe housing project failure in St. Louis. Pruitt-Igoe was where people who were provided with low income housing allowed their neighborhoods to become overrun with prostitution, crime, and drugs, but were not willing to do anything about it. Other than call the police for someone else to fix their problem that is. My children are Millennials, but they have been brought up to know that if you’re not willing to work for something (food, home, peace, etc.) then you have no reason to expect something. It is a sad thing when the MSM is pushing for more of this type of stupidity instead of using their access to the public to inspire for good.

P.S. I really enjoyed how you answered the question the other day regarding home security firearms, and I am in 100% agreement. I for one carry my sidearm 24/7 and that includes at home. When I am sleeping it is on my nightstand next to me, not locked in a safe. Fathers and Mothers need to seriously take the responsibility that your family is for you to protect, not the police, teachers, or other ‘social interest groups’. Thank you – Brad M

Dear Sir:

For those who plan to leave the big cities in the event of disaster, the critical question is when to go. Leaving too soon means missing work and family obligations, but leaving too late may well be fatal. I am guessing the Internet will be down by then, so do you have any wise guidance in advance of that time? Thanks – Worried

HJL Replies: This is always the million dollar question, and if I knew the answer I could be a very rich man. The real answer depends on you and your situation. For some, the answer is now. They are simplifying their lives, learning to be more independent and doing without, at times. Others are unwilling to leave their work or family and are planning on walking the fine line, leaving right before it’s too late to get out. Still others have no intention of leaving and becoming a refugee. There is no simple answer to this question. Only you can analyze the risks and rewards for “bugging out” at any particular time in your unique situation. You also need to have more than one plan. If you are one who wants to make that decision as close as possible to catastrophic circumstances, then you also need to be prepared with an alternative plan in case you misjudge the exact timing. My personal preference is to shelter in place. If I’m not in a situation to be able to do that, I need to make the necessary changes now to enable that. As part of that decision, I have chosen to have a much simpler life than I would if I lived in a big city. I have actually found that the choices I made to have a better family life were very compatible with the choices to get out of the big city anyway.