All Dressed Up And Nowhere To Go
If the earth beneath our feet moved all of a sudden, it would send everybody and their grandmother into a flashmob of running and screaming in every direction. It wouldn’t matter what people were doing, they would probably run out into the street bumping into each other even though everybody’s eyes would be as wide as dinner plates. Fear and panic is a common human response, science says. It’s a natural mechanism for self-preservation, though, it does nothing for your pride and self-respect if you happened to be taking a nice long shower when the bathroom tiles started popping out of the wall like lacquered popcorn.
This is why people have developed a contemporary urge to prepare for disasters, imagined or otherwise. I mean, some of us prepare for typhoons and earthquakes, while there are some who prepare so much that Godzilla would have to mount an attack on their homes, specifically, several times just to exhaust their supply of canned beans and lighter fluid — if, said attack took place in tandem with an alien invasion and an extinction level meteor strike.
Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand why sometimes people have to dig a sixty-foot trench in the backyard to accommodate a nuclear holocaust bunker. It’s the rest of us that need to worry, I guess, the weird segment of society who gastric-juice-cleanse our intestines at the slightest prospect of having to eat termites, grasshoppers, and all those other wonderful creatures who thought they’ve evolved enough to look unappetizing. Apparently, they should have never underestimated the human hunger for snacks.
Although, don’t start hoarding camouflage pants and radar-deflecting boots just yet. Don’t go out and buy an SUV with vampire-melting floodlights either, or even guns. If an earthquake or another category-five typhoon happens do you think you can just hop into your vehicle and go out for a drive? Wait until the trees and electrical posts start piling up outside your house and the only thing your SUV can do is sit in your garage looking expensive. You won’t even be able to burn the upholstery to make a fire because it’s probably made of fire retardant material, the rest of it is made from toxic stuff whose fumes make tear gas seem like a party favor. Guns work great in the movies, but in real life it’s not like you can go out to hunt elk and deal with grizzly bears. Most of us can’t even catch mice that eat our socks at home, let alone things that can actually run and scrape our face off with claws the size of a machete. Besides, guns makes sense if you live in a place like Alaska, but not so much in places where there are more frogs than large game. In which case, you’ll be better off learning how to make traps.
People think they’ll walk around with a big rifle and they’ll be safe from marauding gangs of scary people — by which, most people imagine to be something that resemble the extras from the Mad Max movies. In reality, it’s more likely you’ll step on a rusty nail and die from gangrene. People don’t turn mindlessly violent just because the weather turns bad, it actually takes a while before people get to the point that they transform into an angry mob. Chances are, it will be you with your gun trying to intimidate desperate people who sets off a mob. Actually, it’s like getting run over by a very slow steam roller if you’re still standing at the same spot by the time people decide to hurt each other. Just get as far as you can from large crowds of people as quickly as possible and look for a safe place to stay. Don’t go walking around with a gun while looking for food and water either, you’re not in a movie. You’d be surprised at how supportive people are with others in the same situation as they are — if you’re nice.
I make this sound funny on purpose, just in case you’re wondering, but I know there’s nothing funny about disasters. I’ve seen victims of typhoons, people who’ve been swept away by floods, I’ve seen the desperation and eventual violence that hunger inspires, and I know the misery — I’ve been in the middle of it many times. The only reason why I talk about disaster preparedness casually is because I don’t need to sound like an educational voice of doom for people to get it.
First of all, the earth hasn’t split apart and there hasn’t been a sighting of Godzilla for a long time, so there’s time to do stuff. Secondly, don’t go out and buy a doomsday vehicle just because you can’t run even if your life depended on it. Third, don’t get a gun just to avoid the necessary chore of rummaging for food. You can’t just sit on a lawn chair, aim, and fire a weapon that will attract the attention of every blood-thirsty mob within walking distance of where you’re hiding. Although, if you get thirsty you can simply keep shooting at the ground until it leaks. No, actually that’s not true, that will never work.
I would concentrate on truly useful things if I really want to be ready for disasters. Start running, as I said before, because it’s going to be the first thing you’ll do in a disaster situation anyway. I actually wanted to say that it’s also the last thing you’ll do in a disaster situation, but it sounds too ominous. In any case, I’m sure you get the idea. Try to get strong enough so you can actually help yourself and others. Trying to survive is mostly physical work that requires endurance, you’ll have to walk long distances, carry heavy loads and you’ll have to deal with all kinds of terrain. So, go out and run, ride a bicycle, hike over mountains, do all kinds of things that conditions your body for the rigors of survival. You can’t be sedentary one moment and then just spring into Olympian liveliness the next. As the fictional Gerry Lane says, “movimiento es vida” — movement is life.
Movement uses energy, though, and when you expend energy you need to recover it somehow. If only human beings ran on batteries we could all just pack a Goal Zero solar kit and we’re good. But we’re not machines, so we need to eat to get energy. You could try to find out what kind of vegetables, fruits, nuts, and other stuff are easy to find wherever it is you plan to hide out during the apocalypse, and then learn to cook with those things. “Man can’t live with with bread alone,” as the wise saying goes, so it’s safe to assume that we can’t survive on freeze-dried rodents and pickles for too long.
I’ve run into soldiers on patrol in the jungle who break cover just to trade their MREs with whatever I had in my bag — sardines, meatloaf, moldy bread. These are professionals who are trained to eat mud and MREs, and yet they can’t get rid of those things fast enough. Ready-made food is convenient, but it’s more nutritious and healthy to get fresh supplies and cook them. But don’t plan to hide at a supermarket or a café, that would be a very bad idea for a good number of reasons. Sure, it’ll probably start out with everyone congratulating themselves for being such a genius, but only until the meat section goes bad and the coffee beans run out along with the bagels. Some people turn into wild animals without coffee and bagels.
In terms of survival implements, try not to get too attached to anything. It’s nice to think that you can have the level of choices available only to James Bond stashed in your special survival bag, but if there’s an earthquake and the roof falls over that bag of yours, then what? Don’t think in terms of “I need to have that great-looking knife made from the bones of gods!” Instead, just learn how to use any knife. It doesn’t make any sense to have nice-looking things and have no idea how to put them to good use. As long as that thing can cut things that will go into your mouth, it’s good enough. Don’t depend on books and weekend camping in camouflage tents with your camouflage-clad friends, go out and actually do things.
Most of the stuff you think you already know are going to be very different when you get outside. I don’t have anything against theoretical learning, it’s just that there is no book that can cover all of the possibilities that nature can throw at you when you’re down. Rain, for example, makes people pull out their rain jackets to stay dry and keep warm. But warmth attracts blood-sucking leeches that come out when the temperature cools, and sometimes they get into your eyes and they bite down on an eyeball with the dedication of a rabid monkey. I’ve seen people try to deal with this situation using tweezers, pinching it with dirty fingers, smoke, spit, pleading with it to come out on its own, and rolling around in the mud while cursing the day they decided to go outdoors. None of it works, of course. Instead, just cup a hand and fill it with water sprinkled with some iodized salt from your cooking supplies. Pour that stuff into your eye with the weird squirming thing protruding from it and wait for it to fall off — and you’re done.
Survival is as simple or as complicated as you make it, though, I’m sure there is some wisdom in being infatuated with high-tech stuff and shiny things. Although, I tend to listen to the voice of experience when it says “the more you know the less you need.”* The absence of a dependency on things is the best tool a person can have to survive. When a river turns into a torrent in the jungle you don’t need waterproof clothes, you need to know how to navigate around it. When the sea turns violent and it swallows your boat, you just need to know how to swim. When relentless wind and rain catches you high on a mountain ridge raked by lightning strikes, you just need to have the skill and courage to find the summit through the clouds. This is the kind of advice that actually works, and I know because it’s how I made it through all of those things I just described. You can pack whatever you want and wear whatever you feel can help you deal with danger, but without a genuine ability to save yourself you’d just be getting all dressed up with nowhere to go.
*Yvon Chouinard — rock climber, alpinist, environmentalist, surfer, kayaker, falconer, fly fisherman and founder of Patagonia Inc.
