Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Survivorgal
The lack of Federal response to Hurricane Katrina’s victims first put the idea into my wife’s head: you had to be able to survive a week, maybe more, without any assistance whatsoever. You couldn’t count on having power or running water. You would have to rough it. And while we don’t get hurricanes in the Northwest, we do get tsunamis. Tsunami warnings, anyway — lots of them.
Then, last year, the tragic story of the Kim family got a great deal of local airtime. They were trying to make it from I-5 to the Oregon Coast, and when snow made for poor road conditions, James Kim decided to take a logging road. He thought it would lead to the coast, but it dead-ended. By then, they had run out of gas. Hiking out for help, James Kim died of hypothermia, but thankfully his wife and kids survived.
But I think it was Survivorman (Les Stroud) who finally convinced my wife that she should send me out to buy hundreds of dollars of survival gear. Below the cut: the end product of my efforts.
What you see here: six Rubbermaid containers, a toolbox, a New Yorker bag, two buckets, and a rod and reel. This doesn’t even touch what’s already in the car trunk (snow chains, a 24-pack of bottled water, flares, a crow bar).
I’ve lost track of what’s in all these containers, but Karen hasn’t. She has everything neatly listed on sheets of paper, one to each box. The fishing pole was my idea. We live walking distance from a surefire fishing hole; unless the ocean turns radioactive, we should be all set for food. And if the ocean turns radioactive, I doubt we’ll have much left to care about anyway.
I took care of the first aid kit. It’s a hell of a lot better than any first aid kit you could buy, naturally, since I added some surgical instruments, scalpel blades, suture, needles, syringes, and local anesthetic. I told Karen I had enough gear to do an appendectomy. Not that I remember how to do an appendectomy, but I think I could manage, in a pinch.
Two buckets, you’ll notice. One’s for surf fishing. The other, I gather, is some sort of impromptu toilet. I hope I never need to find out.
There’s plenty of redundancy here because redundancy is a good thing. Redundancy can save your life. And so we have lots and lots of wrenches and pliers, knives and plastic bags, paper towels and sterile gauze, band aids and matches —
Oh, you don’t want to know how many different ways we have of making a fire. MANY. Matches are only the most brainless option. We have presto logs (you can shave them to make tinder), a magnifying glass, tinder sticks (same idea as the presto logs, only more portable), road flares, and my personal favorite: a block of magnesium with a sparking flint built into it. Using a knife, you make a pile of magnesium shavings. Then you rake your knife down the flint, igniting the magnesium shavings, which in turn will ignite your tinder.
Survivorman loved it, so we must love it, too.
I’m feeling a little nervous about water. We have the 24-pack in the trunk and 7.5 gallons upstairs. Supposedly, you can drink toilet water (from the tank, never from the bowl), and in a pinch we could probably decontaminate the fish tank water with a drop or two of chlorine bleach. That has to be at least thirty gallons.
What we really need is our own home desalination rig. Then we would have a permanent supply of fresh water . . . or we would, provided we had the power to run the rig, replacement supplies, etc. Thus, we need power. Limitless power. Solar? Wind? Hydroelectric?
I’m pretty sure we can survive a week.
Not so sure about the Apocalypse.
D.
Good Lord. I hope you at least have the simple stuff, too, like flashlights and batteries. And one of those get-out-of-your-car-quick tools. What about jerky? DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH JERKY??!
I have solved all these problems by 1.) a good capacity for suffering and 2.) an assumption that, in the event of a major emergency, I will be one of the first killed and eaten, anyway.
We have lots of candles, flashlights, batteries, and LED flashlight powered by hand-cranking (combined with a radio, too!) But what’s a get-out-of-your-car-quick tool? Do I need one of those?
As for jerky, I have TMJ issues. (We need to get a manual can-opener, though, and Spam. Lots of Spam. Not that we like Spam, but I assume it will outlive all of us.)
Or Twinkies. Twinkies have a half-life in lieu of a shelf life.
Does your house use natural gas? Better pick up a shut-off tool, too. Or a brass wrench. Can’t have sparks near one’s gas leak, can one now?
Amazingly enough, we actually have snow this Christmas. Go figure.
Shut off tool? You kidding? After the Apocalypse, I was going to use propane to barter for women!
Brass wrench? I’m sorry, I meant to say brass wench… As you were; carry on.
Of course, I still need a telepathic dog who will lead me to the women . . .
Yeah, but then you have Don Johnson as your co-star, and no one wants that…
Whoa, I had myself cast as Johnson. You saying I’m Blood?
No… Hadn’t really thought it through to that conclusion.
Funny though.
At least you weren’t cast as the dog.
Here’s that tool I was rambling about:
http://www.autogeek.net/life-hammer-resqme-kit-yellow.html
In any real emergency, you really need to take care of the basics: food, water, and warmth. Sounds like you’ve got warmth covered: if you’ve not done it already, I’d recommend picking up some good quality sleeping bags. They don’t go bad. We’ve already talked about freeze-dried food. The other thing, and probably the most important thing, is water, and you don’t have enough.
A simple solution would be to get one of those coolers that take 4 gallon bottles. We have one , and 3 bottles (I should get another into the rotation). The bottles are $10 at our local grocery store, I think, and so for $50 you could lay in 40 gallons of water.
As for the mutant zombie cannibals, you need one of these: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/78284/automatic_shotgun/
I don’t even need to go buy anything for survival. We’re packrats and hubby has a full supply of any tools you need in the basement and also in the car. And I’m always buying stuff we don’t need and it ends up in the pantry. We could probably live for 6 months on our pantry’s contents, if we didn’t mind eating out-of-date cous-cous, old cans of sardines or mackerel, ancient soups, and lots of pasta. As for gallons of water, not so much…but surely you could live on the cases of beer we have in our downstairs fridge?
I hadn’t considered getting one of those big water dispensers. Great idea.
And then there’s the generator problem. How else am I going to get power to maintain my high speed internet access?
If there were some worldwide crisis, something truly apocalyptic, I wonder how long the Web would last. We need to have all of this up on the satellites and out of harm’s way.
If I remember right, the Internet was designed to survive a nuclear attack. Of course, I don’t know if that took EMPs into consideration and I doubt we have the kind of redundancy that they had back before the Internet became a more or less commercial concern.
Don’t forget a rechargeable-battery-operated power drill too.
Satellites would be up and running, but your internet provider would likely be toast. Maybe you need a sat-phone, antenna and dish.
Dan, we have a battery-operated rechargeable drill, but why do you mention that in particular?
Tam: I think I need my own planet 🙂
In a pinch, you can use it to recharge batteries.