We've been far less concerned with the internetz the last couple of months, because we've been working on Castle Anthrax. IOW, our personal arrangements for when the threat of spicy times becomes an actuality, as well as being our retirement fortress of MYOB when we've had enough of indentured servitude for our final employer.
Where is it, you may ask?
NDBBM.
It is far from our front porch, well away from the 10% of America that lives in the surrounding area, and conveniently far from the beaten path to make us happy with the arrangement.
The last few weeks have been spent securing things to a reasonable degree, and working on plumbing and other infrastructure.
So as much fun as we have here, it doesn't hold a candle to weightier things at the moment. We do not expect a horrific turn of events tomorrow, or this year, but want to be in a better position for whatever comes, whenever it happens, with a view towards when we wish to put out the following unwelcome mats, bolted to the step,
then chain-locking the front gate, and set about minding our own business to a far greater degree.
Posting will continue to be therefore rather light. We have frequently advised people to make the most of the good times to prepare for bad times. That's exactly what we're doing the most of at the moment. We hope you are too, or have already done so. Anyone who doesn't realize Trump and Vance are a seredipitous but temporary respite hasn't been paying close attention.
And FTR, this is probably just about all we're going to specify on this particular activity until a friend or relative comes on here, and tells you we won't be posting anything at all, since there's no internet in the afterlife. We earnestly hope that day is looong in the future, but for the time being, we quite literally have much better things to do than deal with the minutiae in the wider world. We expect to still log on and visit our own favorite stops and drop comments, but overall, this place has been moved temporarily to about twenty-seventh on our list of daily Top Ten Things To Get Done.
While we're otherwise occupied, feel free to frequent the other bloggers on the Blog List, or cruise through our greatest hits from the last seventeen years we've been at this. When Castle Anthrax provides some object lessons, we shall be only too happy to share those, consistent with our personal privacy. When things are a lot farther along than now, we expect to return to more regular posting.
In our absence, you have our sincere best wishes for your efforts to make similar arrangements.
So 11+ years ago, we gave Baby Brother a blueprint for a SHTF Medical Kit. (He's still a smiling idiot, and after getting the list, never did another thing about it.) But we were wondering where, with inflation, the current price point for it is.
FTR, it was circa $850 in 2014.
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1. The divider set and lid liner for your Pelican 1600 case
Nota bene: And these are the cheapest ones. This is govt. contract ripoff pricing. Go to WalMart or the local fabric store, buy about 4 yards of the cheapest olive drab or dark brown cotton broadcloth you can find (or repurpose 3 old bedsheets), and cut it into triangular bandages yourself. Fold or roll each to a compact size, and put them into 6 ziplok snack bags. And save yourself $40 out of the $50+ buying them would cost. If you're paying 9 bucks apiece for triangular cravat bandages, you're rich, an idiot, or both.
There's 11 years of inflation for you. Over 40%, although some items decreased in price, the total for almost the same load-out has gone up.
And all the links are updated. You're welcome. Here's the rest of the OP. Best wishes.
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You can trim back some of the spendier high-speed tactical stuff to save a few bucks, but it's your ass (or someone near and dear to you), and I don't think you want to run out of supplies before you fix all the holes.
Notes:
Drop the money on the divider. It's the reason the EMS Pelican is another $150. It gives you small clear pockets for the small stuff, and 18+ pockets in the bottom for the big stuff.
I set this up so you could handle the most likely emergency problems (cuts, punctures, burns, sprains & fractures), including the TCCC {look it up!} supplies most likely to save your or someone else's life if someone catches a cowboy load at the range, as well as GSWs after the Zombie Apocalypse. Dual utility.
The plain gauze, tape and band-aids are for the far more frequent little stuff, to prevent turning it into bigger problems.
I didn't source (but you should add) two things:
* A good AAA LED headlamp, because you'll really appreciate light and both hands free when it's dark. My personal favorite ( I have 3 of them) is the Petzl Tactika Plus Headlamp. I get mine at REI for about $46 or so. http://www.rei.com/search?query=petzl+Tactika
Runs on 3 AAA, has a red lens that flips on or off, and has 4 light settings - econo, medium, bright, and flashing.
* * * 2025 UPDATED INFO: The current comparable model now goes for $129.95:
* The other thing is a good disposable CPR face shield, so you don't swap cooties in CPR. I'd get one in case you need to do CPR on family members, or them on you, but otherwise, I can't see you doing rescue breathing on anyone not on the cover of the Sports illustrated Swimsuit issue, so I left it out.
Until such time as you re-acquaint yourself with First Aid, bear in mind that it's still mostly what you learned in boot camp in the prehistoric era: Stop the bleeding, start the breathing, protect the wound, and treat for shock.
Direct Pressure, Pressure dressing, elevate the limb, tourniquet (don't be shy - unlike in the 1980s, they now know tourniquets like the CAT applied early is a lifesaver for bleeding extremities).
For minor holes, pressure with the 2x2s or 4x4s, then clean with the BZK/Bactine (same thing, except Bactine has low-dose lidocaine to make it sting less!), clean any penetrating trauma with Betadine and sterile non-preserved saline, then sterile dressing and clean bandage. pressure and pressure dressings, including Israeli bandage, or plain old ACE wraps, and if necessary, a tourniquet as well.
Airway is simple once 911 isn't an option: either a nasal trumpet, lubed outside with the Surgilube, up one or both snotstrils will open it, or they're going to die.
If you want to learn about TCCC needle decompression, and cricothyrotomy airways, we can talk. There are actual military/medical training vids on YouTube right now.
But outside of civilization, you aren't going to save anyone with CPR after 30 minutes, unless they were immersed in frigid water. If they stop breathing for other reasons, and you can't get them breathing again after half an hour, and help isn't on its way, that's probably a hint to go through their pockets for loose change, and collect one of their dogtags.
And in any victim unable to move around afterwards, whip on those space blankets, either for shade, or for warmth.
I also left out things like C-collars and anything diagnostic, until such time as you learn how to use it.
If you get a wild hair up your ass, find out who's doing basic EMT training at the local CC out there, and consider doing the class.
Training is the only thing you can't pull out of a kit, and some things, you just have to learn.
If you want, I can teach you how to measure blood pressure in about 20 minutes, but you need a stethoscope (A $20 Sprague works fine) and an adult cuff (manual, with a squeezy bulb, not one of those pieces of electro-garbage.) Let me know, anytime you want. One of the $60 fingertip pulse oximeters gets you pulse and O2%. Add a good thermometer, and you've now mastered the same triage vitals done in every ER from coast to coast.
A couple of good tweezers for splinters (a flat set, and a pointy set) are always a good idea, and you can grab those at any decent drugstore. Several small sewing needles work great for working out splinters and shallow stuff imbedded at the surface of the skin. An X-acto knife if you're feeling daring. Note that the large burn kit has a pair of good EMT shears in it, to use anytime you need to cut clothes open or off, so no need to buy a separate one.
*** 2025 UPDATE: That's changed. They're not in the current kits. Buy a pair of good, SHARP EMT shears. ***
Resist the urge to get a "kit, instrument, surgical". They're overpriced, under-useful, and you could get better instruments just by visiting a gun show.
And unless you know what you're doing, you don't need the toys to go poking around in holes, or start yanking things out until you know what they're into. Anything deeper than your range of sight needs to be left in a hole until someone with better training decides whether it can come out or not, verstehen sie?
When you get the box, and the goodies, not everything on that list can or should fit inside it. And adhesives don't like hot cars. So put some of the items inside, and replenish as you use them, or annually check them and replace the crusty ones.
DO put the kit in your truck, because if you need it at a shoot, or on the highway, it won't do you any good at home on top of the gun safe, right?
I hope you have stashed/are stashing a cushion of any family Rx meds by any means possible, including "oops, I lost my meds and need a whole month's replacement!" provided you're footing the bill, or any other legal way possible. Cycle through the overstock first in/first out, so you eventually always have 3-6 months of fresh stuff in reserve. Imagine a major earthquake, and no pharmacy for a month or three. Let alone anything more dire.
Note also I didn't include any meds except topical wound stuff.
I'm a big fan of getting the unit dose packages of whatever you already use, like Tylenol, Motrin/Advil, Tums, Pepto, and anything else. OTCs don't magically go bad after three years, so don't throw them out, just don't give them to anyone not related to you by blood. Except for certain antibiotics, most pills remain useable for 10-30 years if stored properly (cool, dark, dry).
Don't forget sunscreen, chapstick, and high DEET percentage bug juice.
The item in the header pic might look to you like a $2.99 roll of 18 gauge floral wire, available at any Hobby Lobby, with cousins for sale at Home Depot, WallyWorld, Michael's Crafts, etc.
It is, and it isn't.
What it really is, is twenty 5-foot long pieces* of snare wire suitable for all sorts of small game, helpfully all connected on one handy spool, with a nifty wire-cutting gadget on the bottom of the package.
If you're ever stuck and trying to survive, putting out a snare, i.e. ONE, is a joke, well-known to hundreds of SERE School instructors over the years who've seen or heard earnest students announce they put out their survival snare. Singular. Usually with absolutely nothing to show for the effort.
Putting out twenty snares on a trapline, or 3-5 squirrel poles in a target-rich woodland,
OTOH, is a much higher-percentage shot at getting something to go in the stew pot for supper.
Use the handy cutter on that package, once the need is urgent, to chop your entire 100' roll into handy 5' segments.
With each segment,
1. Pull a few inches around a small pencil-sized stick, twice around, creating a double loop, leaving about an inch or so beyond the loops created.
2. Slide that double loop off the stick carefully, keeping it open, and twisting an inch or so of the wire beyond the double loop tightly around the end before the loop.
3. Take the unfinished end, and pull it through the double loop, keeping the double loop open, until you've created a loop the appropriate size of the game you're trying to catch.
Repeat 1-3 another 19* times.
4. Find appropriate places on game runs, burrow holes, etc., to place your snares, and anchor them to driven or buried stakes or rocks, as appropriate, to secure anything you catch. Don't pull on the double loops, and minimize handling the snares. If you have anything to cover your scent, or to bait the set/run, do it after it's placed.
If you've done this right, anything passing through your snare will pull the noose tighter, causing the metal double loop to cinch down, preventing it from releasing anything you catch, and getting tighter the harder they pull against it.
Check all your snares at least once a day. Checking at dawn and dusk isn't a bad plan. Otherwise you're just feeding any local predators, instead of yourself.
There are myriad ways to set out snares like these for birds and small game, and all those approaches are beyond the scope of this post. Further study and real-world practice is highly recommended. Do it now, when your survival isn't at stake if you fail.
But now you have the knowledge of how to create the individual snares necessary. Sizing the wire you use and the noose size and height up or down gives you the opportunity to capture anything of almost any size, if you build the right noose with the right wire. (Snares for cougar, wolf, bear, and moose are not recommended. But you do you. Deer- or feral hog-sized snares, by contrast, could yield quite a bounty.)
Bear well in mind that whatever you catch may not be dead when you find it, and may not like being snared. Be prepared to turn it from a problem into a menu item by dispatching it without getting clawed or bitten in the process.
Boilerplate b.s.: Obey all game and hunting regs if you practice with these. Don't trap the neighbor's pets (or children) in testing these out. But remember that in a personal life-and-death survival situation, there are no game regs, and screw the bag limit.
You can buy purpose-made snares from several trapping suppliers, but generally for a lot more money. Unless you're trapping professionally, don't bother. But throwing a few spools of floral wire in your kit for survival purposes gives you snare options that might come in handy, with wire that won't rust, and is already a color found in nature.
*(Or thirty-three 3' pieces. Or fifty 2' pieces. And so on.)
Pardons be damned. Prosecute every one of the bastards anyways, down to the lowest level, and force them to prove their innocence, or proof of clemency, in court, after paying lawyers $1000/hr. Even if they've got pardons, they can all be compelled to testify fully and truthfully about every single crime they committed, or face fresh perjury charges which those pardons don't cover. Get their serial felonies on the public record, on national TV, 24/7. That will end any do-overs down the road, for thousands of them. And invariably, it'll turn up new co-conspirators not covered by pardons, who can - and should - be prosecuted to the hilt. Make the J6 Witch hunt look like a church egg toss. Make Retribution Great Again!
If nothing like that happens, it's all One Big Con, and the entire country is the mark.
Write that on your hand with a Sharpie, lest ye forget.
And bear well in mind, that's only taking cognizance of the current national political climate. The time may be far shorter than that. Remember that the incoming president is 78 years old, and 78 year-olds, even healthy ones, drop dead all the time, for every reason under the sun, including none at all besides random happenstance.
That's also not looking at geopolitical, economic, or eleventy other Swords Of Damocles hanging over humanity's head already. The whacktards they conned into pulling their own pants down on Doomsday Preppers were always only concerned about one ridiculous and highly improbable scenario, like being overrun by zombie Bigfoot hordes, or somesuch far-fetched idiocy. Real life isn't Retard TV plots. Actual preppers are concerned about every single real-life pear-shaped possibility. That's the difference between prudence, and psychotic delusion.
The beauty of being any kind of prepared is that there's a 95% crossover in terms of what you need to have in place, for any one apocalyptically bad day, as compared to any other one. It's the same eight to twelve main things, over and over. That's always been true.
Time flies. So get right, or get left.
But hope for hangings in batches in Lafayette Park, across from the White House. It doesn't cost you anything, and it's a consummation devoutly to be wished. Plus, whether it happens, or doesn't, you'll soon know exactly where you stand in the grand scheme. And full shelves and ammo cans will always gladden your heart, and make up for a host of empty promises.
While this is probably an EDC item in NYFC, a Drop Wallet, AKA "Mugger Wallet", is a handy piece of gear to carry in urban areas, while travelling, or any time you feel the need, and per recent discussions over at Commander Zero's's blog, something not everyone has heard of.
The idea is to have a plausible wallet you can fork over, ideally by dropping or tossing, when getting stuck up for your wallet and other items on your person.
1) Get a decent wallet.
2) Load it up. Some people advocate a few real bills, . Personally, the amount of real money I'm prepared to hand over is $0, but you do you.
You can obtain, for $10 + shipping, a dozen cinematic US bills, totalling $372, 2@ of $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100, all used in motion pictures (and clearly marked as such), from BezosMart. I'd rather do that, and salt it with enough to be convincing.
Looks real. Totally fake. Look closer.
Fake cash only gets you part of the way home though.
3) Lard the card slots up. How?
Grab a mittful of gift cards the next time you pass a rack of same at the store.
Cost: $0. Actual value: $0. Decoy value: Priceless. Make especially sure to get a couple with the VISA and Mastercard logos, and place them prominently up front.
A few higher-end merchant gift cards won't go amiss to pad the section.
4) Some people will tell you to put old picture IDs or driver's licenses in there too.
BAD idea. a) Why give someone a handle on your real identity? b) And BTW, if they have an old address on you, they can cyber-stalk you to your true address now for a little payback, for a few dollars. Why make that easy for them?
Instead, work a little harder. Get any number of fake I.D.s, again from online sellers (I'm talking the ones you can buy and have without doing 5 years in the pen, not teenager fake IDs, which if you buy online, you'll send the money, and never see the money nor the ID ever again.)
Try these instead.
Find a state that works for you. Then rework them with a fake name and address, change the details, and put in an old photo of yourself. Copy that in color and laminate it (FedEx/Kinko's is your friend here). In fact, make 5-10 copies, so you don't have to do all this again after you toss the first wallet. You want to be Fred Flintstone, Kelly Green, or Bob Sledder? Knock yourself out.
5) Throw in some random business cards and miscellaneous crap.
Need family pictures? They sell those too. Go to any store with photo frames, and find some shots of "your" kids, wife, husband, girl/boy friend, etc. Photocopy to size, cut to fit, and now Bob is literally your uncle.
Carry the fake wallet for a while to break it in, wear and tear it, etc.
When it comes to every day carry, obviously, put it in a different pocket than your actual wallet.
Maybe put the fake in your hip pocket, and hide the real one somewhere else.
When need presents itself, hand it over, drop it, or even toss it, to create distraction, giving you the chance to beat feet, create a little more space between you and Mr. Robber, or misdirect them long enough for more active measures.
Dealer's choice there.
Bonus points:
A) Leave another one in your house, 24/7, especially when you're away/out of town. Ideally, right in front of that hidden 4K color nightvision camera, so you and the cops get a great look at the burglar who lifts it.
B) Put one of the new small GPS tags in it. Not so much to find the bad guy (though if they oblige by taking it all the way home, so much the better), but to give the detectives a great trace of the route the thief took, hopefully past some other people's surveillance cameras (Ring, traffic cams, etc.) on the way to wherever they dump it.
If you want to put OC powder, UV dye, or itching powder on the bills and such, we won't tell.
C) Given the price of cell phones, carrying an old dead one (or better yet, a really cheap crappy burner phone that was never activated, traceable to no one) to fork over, and keeping your actual one more concealed isn't a horrible idea either.
At any rate, you now have options that don't include getting robbed of anything beyond an old wallet, some movie props, and a junk flip phone, and giving any would-be stick-up folks a reason to split with the goods rather than hang around and screw with you, without giving them anything that would lead them back to you, and might lead the po-po to them.
This topic, first posted here in 2021, recently came up again (no pun intended) on another blog, so we re-present it, for the newbs:
Prepmeister sensei Commander Zero relates a recent experience (or rather, refusal to experience same) with a ten-years-past-its-"Best By"-date can of chicken soup. You should RTWT.
And now you get this post, by way of follow-up, and piling on.
Historical background: Canning food in tin cans was the genius idea of Nicolas Appert, arrived at in pursuit of a Napoleonic prize, to invent rations that an emperor's army could tote to their campaigns throughout Europe, indefinitely, securely, and without having them all go bad. (Refutation #4,000,087 on the Hit Parade of answers to the historically retarded idiots who spout "War never solves anything.") Which spoilage happened to casks of salted beef and pork with a tedious regularity. Not just for soldiers, but for everyone. Starving soldiers won't fight, because, as the same emperor noted, "An army marches on its stomach". Not literally, of course, that would be silly. But this is why amateurs discuss tactics, and professionals discuss logistics. No beans, no battles. True for Napoleonic legions, true for Roman legions, true in Iraq and Afghanistan, and true for you and your little tribe, same-same.
The early processes have, obviously, changed over the years. How isn't as important as what it means for you, if you're deep-stocking to get you and yours through...Whatever Happens.
So first, a few pointers.
1) Canned foods have a "Best By" date. If this is news to you, you're already too far behind the curve to be in this class. Log off, and come back when you're caught up.
2) "Best By -" dates, exactly like most expiration dates on medicine, are a scam. Exactly like the iconic "Lather. Rinse. Repeat." They were placed there primarily for PR and marketing purposes, because printing "Please consume all of this, even waste some of it in overuse, and then rush back to the store and buy more of Our Stuff" was considered a bit too spot-on. Part of it is also CYA legal boilerplate, because some jackhole will put his canned goods in a corrugated tin shack in the sun in the tropics, paint the whole thing black, located below the water table in a swamp, and then bitch to high heaven when all his stuff explodes, is rusted and rotted, and smells like a Kardashian's nether bits (we hear). And then sue the company for his own jackassery.
3) For people who understand the concept of "Store in a cool, dry place.", it's a handy guideline for optimum freshness, appearance, smell, taste, and nutritional value. Not to mention safety. It is not, however, the last word, and many products will be just fine long beyond those dates. Who determines what those actual dates are? By the following formula:
4) Caveat emptor. (Common Core grads: google it.)
5) Certain foods (tomatoes, citrus items) have shorter lifespans. Acid: it's a physics and chemistry thing.
6) Oxygen is not your friend. Neither is a lack of it for shoddy or improper canning. There are both aerobic and anaerobic bacteria. This is why bulging cans get tossed. Always. Your ancestors who didn't do that? They're probably not your ancestors, but in any case they usually died for ignoring that rule.
7) As we told you, they don't can foods presently the way it was done in 1970, 1940, or 1870.
The cans and lids are not tin anymore, they're steel and aluminum, lighter now than they were a few decades hence, and they frequently utilize a plastic membrane. See for yourself.
(Someone with high-functioning Asperger's can share the exact chemical composition of the liner; IDGAF.) The point is, this is why it's unsafe, and untasty, to heat foods in those new-fangled plastic-lined cans, unlike we could do when I was growing up, and most TV came in both black, and white. Because to do so will either ruin the food, and/or expose you to a chemical stew that doesn't go well in your insides. The first aid for that, is to not be a jackass, by not doing it. Put it in a proper cooking container, and rock on.
(That's also why, before you make Hobo Stoves and such, you'd better burn or scrape out that liner, unless you enjoy the aroma of burnt plastic with your meals.)
8) If you open something that doesn't look right, smell right, or taste right, wave goodbye, and toss it. Problem solved. You have five senses for a reason: heed them.
But somebody was too stupid to do that? Now what?
A) Botulism.
Botulism is nasty stuff. Like your cat, somebody who gets a dose of this is either going to crawl under the porch and die, or not. All you're going to do for them is supportive care, and treating the symptoms, and hope for the best.
It's caused by spores, and the kind that remain viable despite sunlight, like anthrax spores,for centuries, and which are highly resistant to most forms of sterilization. The toxin the spores produce (which is the problem) can be inactivated by heating at 185 F. for 5 minutes. IOW, boiling or hotter. But the spores that made the toxin are still in the food. Hence, throw it out if there's any suspicion.
Food-borne botulism: The classic form of botulism is caused by the ingestion of preformed toxin in contaminated food. Symptoms include double vision, drooping eyelids (ptosis), slurred speech, difficulty swallowing and muscle weakness that is symmetric and descends through the body (first shoulders are affected, then upper arms, lower arms, thighs, calves, etc.). Death is usually due to respiratory failure and may occur as soon as 24 hours after onset of symptoms.
"Supportive care" may include months of treatment, and multiple courses of appropriate antibiotics. IF you have those.
Quoting again:Foodborne botulism: Within 1 hour of ingestion of suspected food, the recommended course of action is a gastric lavage, or enemas, and the administration of a cathartic (sorbitol). In some cases intravenous administration of AB or ABE botulinum antitoxin is required, and assisted ventilation if respiratory failure occurs. Treatment may be required for weeks or months.
FTR, you ain't got and aren't getting AB or ABE antitoxin, unless you're far more advanced than the scope of this essay. And you probably don't have any sorbitol either. So that means ingestion will almost certainly prove fatal. We repeat, any suspicion of toxin, throw the food out. This isn't something you risk under any circumstances (unless you're a moron).
B) Everything else.
Most (99.99999%, for a SWAG) "food poisoning" is no such thing. People who are poisoned get sick, and depending on the toxin administered, die. What you've probably got is simply gastroenteritis (GE).
GE is usually caused by spoiled food, and/or lousy sanitation/preparation/food handling.
In most cases, it's caused either by air or insect vectors depositing bacterium on your food (like leaving your aunt's potato salad uncovered on a fly-infested hot day at the family picnic or BBQ), or the cook/server failing to lave los manos before, during, and after preparing, cooking, or serving you your food, including on dirty dishes, or after visiting the porcelain thinking room. It can also be caused by poor water purification, unfamiliar pathogens, etc., but frequently this is the same route, just with a bad water supply in between someone's fecal, and your oral. It is, thus, usually a fecal-oral transmission pathway, meaning someone got their chocolate in your peanut butter. In short, you ate shit.
There are two general stages to GE.
In Stage I, you think you're going to die.
In Stage II, you're afraid you won't.
This is because your body, whether you consider it a miracle of creation, or evolution, has a brilliantly simple feedback loop for letting you know you have unauthorized houseguests in your digestive tract.
It launches all torpedoes, fore and aft, from both ends of your alimentary canal, to repel all boarders.
Repeatedly.
You will now spend at least the next 12-24 hours with one end, or the other, pointed at the porcelain thinking chair, as you pass from Stage I to Stage II. You may, at times, require a bucket, when both ends are actively offloading. In between, having a few crackers and some ginger ale or lemon-lime soda handy for tiny nibbles and sips may help keep you alive, in between laying on that oh-so-cool tile floor, because it feels so good.
If you can, by hook or crook, lay in a supply of Rx Zofran ODT, you should do so. (Usual caveats about allergies, medical conditions, etc. apply. I.e. : Don 't be stupid.) Zofran is one of the currently best anti-vomiting/nausea meds available, Rx only, and ODT means "orally dissolving tablet" meaning if you can but shove the tiny tab under your parched tongue, and let it dissolve there, it will automagically absorb sublingually, to curb the load-launch-fire sequence from your forward torpedo hatch. By not having to swallow it, you can't barf it out before it kicks in.
For your other end, there's Immodium. Read and follow all label directions; it's an OTC. It's function is to turn your aft torpedo tube load-launch-fire circuit into rush hour traffic on the 405 freeway; i.e. total standstill. Use per directions until respite is achieved, then re-hydrate. You should have stocks of this laid in by, you should pardon the pun, the metric buttload. It should travel with you any and everywhere, when you travel away from home. Period.
Vomiting and diarrhea isn't serious for a few hours, until it is. It both dehydrates you, and jacks up your body's electrolytes, and if you have other conditions, you can't take your meds nor process them, so cardiac conditions, high blood pressure, diabetes, thyroid problems, and all sorts of other complications can take this from bad to worse if untreated.
In extreme cases (dysentery, cholera, etc.) you will literally crap your guts out.
Thus fulfilling the second half of "eat shit and die". It's actually a thing.
If you have the ability to properly administer intravenous (IV) fluids, do so. It bypasses the alimentary canal, and can rehydrate someone rapidly and effectively, if you know what you're doing, and can do so correctly. Bone up extensively; this is not a skill or therapy to attempt on the fly, in the moment. You can exacerbate a number of life-threatening conditions if you overdo it without knowing WTF you're about, and you can cause infection and death in a host of ways if you attempt it half-assed. Killing your patient with CHF or hepatitis instead of dehydration is a poor way to say you care, and a waste of resources if you don't know what you're up to. I cannot stress this enough for the untrained. If you don't KNOW WTF you're doing, leave this for those who do.
But if you have Zofran and immodium, and a bare minimum of common sense, you can begin cautious hydration and nutrition.
Start simple: clear liquids. Clear means CLEAR. Water. Juice. Gatorade. Clear soups. Jello. Avoid all alcohols and caffeine-containing drinks; they're diuretics, and they'll only further dehydrate your patient. If you can't see through it, it isn't clear. Clear?
Then soft foods, easily tolerated. Parents should know this as the BRAT diet: Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast.
Then regular foods. As tolerated.
If symptoms return, or any level is not tolerated, return to the previous level, and advance as able.
And nobody who's nauseous gets ANYTHING else to eat or drink. EVER.
You feed or water that person, and you're just loading the catapult for the next launch, and you're the one who's going to get a faceful. Don't Do It!
A couple, by which I mean TWO, pieces of small crushed ice, to wet the mouth that's bone-dry, won't matter. A bowlful of ice and a spoon, however, is asking for trouble.
Throughout the process:
Monitor vital signs. Pulses should be below 100/min, or they're still dehydrated. Check temperature, to make sure there isn't a fever, and hence this is infection/viral, not GE.
Hydration, elimination, nutrition, in that order.
How much fluid are they taking in?
How much have they put out as pee? (and vomit?)
Bowel movements: watery, runny, loose, solid? How many? How frequent?
And then, nutrition? Diet, and toleration, then quantity, and back to output.
If they don't have a normal pulse, no fever (101F. or greater) and they aren't peeing clear and copious urine, they're not done yet.
GE comes on fast. But it goes away fast too. One to two days, tops.
If this lasts longer, there is something else at play here. Consult your medical people at that point. Your doctor, in normal times. Whatever you've got if you haven't got access to normal care (wilderness, disaster, worse).
Most GE goes away quickly, and leaves nothing but sore abdominal and rectal muscles behind (you should pardon the pun) afterwards. You can minimize it, but generally, the person has to literally gut it out. You can, however, mitigate the symptom duration and severity with proper treatment.
{And if you f**k up proper treatment, you can spread it around to yourself and everyone else. Wash your hands, clean the patient, clean and sanitize linen, bedding, clothing, dishes and utensils, et cetera, or after you die, Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton will kick your ass around the block for eternity for being a dumbshit.}
And if it isn't going away, you've got a bigger problem.
The best way to prevent GE is prevention: proper personal sanitation and cleanliness, proper food storage, handling, preparation, cooking, and serving, followed by proper clean-up afterwards, from dishwashing to sewage and garbage disposal.
Proper public health measures save more people worldwide than medicines, antibiotics, and surgery combined, since ever. By the billions. The reverse is also true.
See to as much of that as you can, and your experience with it will generally not be firsthand, up-close.
If you think we'd be providing TPTB with an actual picture of our actual holdings online, in front of God and Everybody, we have a bridge for sale cheap. Bring cash.
This weekend is herewith declared Gun Collection Cleaning Weekend.
Every last one, butts to barrels, including function testing. Normally, we just play with one or two a week, and call it even.
Without getting into details, we could outfit a couple of squads, including LBE, long since.
Our ultimate goal is a full platoon, small arms, sidearms, edged weapons and implements, basic load, and all LBE and field gear. (On the theory that If You Build It, They Will Come.) Even in Califrutopia, it ain't that hard a metric to meet a little bit at a time over the years.
It will be followed by Ammo Inventory Day.
Then Gear Loadout check.
Then we will be inventorying and cataloguing water, food, and medical supplies; then doing Generator, Solar panel, and battery Test Day, Comm Shack, Lights, and NVD Inventory, Kitchen Inventory Day, and finally House and Perimeter Check Day.
FTR, we've already gotten all vehicles pretty well sorted out, and their basic loads await only a trunk re-pack, and a camper resort day.
Our Area Study was done years ago, and we only update it quarterly. And we know a small but formidable number of like-minded individuals.
Rancho Apocalypto? Maybe in retirement.
More likely, in the short-term: Regional warlord underground. Which is far likelier to be needful anytime in the next decade.
For now, we'll be off to the store presently to get another jug of CLP, and more rags and patches to replace the ones we expect to use up. Posting will be commensurately light this week.
You should probably be about something similar, don't you think?
I didn't feel like I had a long post in me today; just nothing the muse was itching to belt out.
And then, I saw Peter had a long post on various things up at BRM; you should RTWT.
But regarding one of the sub-topics, i.e. a decades-long tyranny here?
Point Of Order:
Preparedness is a fine thing, but let's get serious.
Everyone who looks at "how it is" in the rest of the world when civilization goes to sh*t, overlooks to their eternal peril a vital difference:
The Rest Of The World isn't armed to the teeth with more loose small arms and ammunition at large amidst the general population than the world's next 10 largest militaries, COMBINED.
Which kind of undoes any napkin math on the topic that doesn't take that into account, whether we're talking foreign despots, or domestic wannabees.
Anyone from the nominal Top Dog on down who forgets that factor is going to die with a third eye in their forehead and one heck of a surprised look on their face.
Somebody, anybody, including FedGov, thinks they're going to "lock it all down" interminably, and institute Communist/Medieval serfdom on this nation?!?
Average Joe's toleration of "public good" screw tightening has eroded down to the wear bars on that particular tire. Ain't nobody having another helping of that, nor likely to anytime this century.
It is to laugh.
Somebody tries that anyways? Fed agent's pelts - whole body mounts, mind you, not just the horns - would be nailed to every wall from Maine to Monterey, and snitches' and collaborators' heads would decorate every fencepost in sight, from sea to shining sea.
In minutes and hours, like as not, and not in months or years.
And, given so much as a "What for?" nudge, they most assuredly will do exactly that.
This will be no seventy-year slog of waiting for the edifice to fall over of its own weight.
People in this country lack the patience (or innate subservience) for that sort of wait-it-out crap.
They're going to go out and start killing something. More specifically, someones, plural. In job lots. Google "great gross".
Carlos Hathcock had 93 confirmed kills in a jungle war, mostly in a single tour of duty of under 13 months. Chuck Mawhinney's official tally is recorded at 103, and another 216 probables in the same conflict. Simo Häyhä chalked up 542 Reds in only under a hundred days in the snow, maxxing out at 25 in one day. With a bolt-action rifle and iron sights!
Be like Simo.
Put in simple terms, if there's as little as one Simo in 30,000 in the entire U.S., the entire problem is gone - forever - in the amount of time it takes to put one Marine through boot camp. (And the waiting line to sign up for that has gone pretty quiet of late.)
There's no respawn button, they can't shake-and-bake new orcs fast enough to overcome that problem, and even the hordes pouring across the border are going to be headed the other way the minute that happens.
Pepe LePew couldn't clear out a town as fast as two-way gunfire hereabouts is going to solve the illegal alien problem. Least of all if some of it squirts in their direction.
And trying to disarm the populace triggers the exact scenario the feds are earnestly hoping to avoid.
10,000 problem children?
In WWII, under occupation by actual Nazis with SS and Gestapo given free rein, the French Resistance was less than 3% of the total population.
10,000 problem children in this country now would only be 3.333/100,000ths (0.00003333) of 1% of the US population, i.e. 10,000x easier to pull off.
"But Blutto, we're afraid! The government has nuclear weapons!"
Uh huh. And how long can those guys last in that hole if there's 100 farmers with deer rifles up top, and Wyoming, Nebraska, etc. cease to be permissive operating territory?
How long does the flight line last at Whiteman AFB when the locals start popping anyone who gets within 100 yards of a B-2 on the ramp, and you can't land a plane or get a food truck onto the base?
How long you gonna sustain subs when the crew can't return to port, and has to survive on what they can catch freehand off the deck?
Major League Stupid in this country is over in a season.
No one's going to be inclined to wait three generations, and hope their grandchildren someday breathe free oxygen again.
That rot will be burned to the ground in days to weeks.
(Take the J6 mob, this time with actual guns and torches, like a real coup would have included, and let your imagination run wild for about 0.2 seconds. We'd be short about 600 senior government members in a matter of that many necktie parties under those circumstances.)
Speculate all you want about what happens here the day after that.
But a multi-year reign of tyranny in this country is going to be like trying to paddle a canoe up the falls at Niagara.
And that's before the criminals they can barely contain with 90% public support for law and order decide to pile on, because they aren't obeying any stinking laws.
This country will not revert to Zimbabwe. Dodge City or Deadwood are far likelier.
There isn't going to be New York City law at that point, any more than there'll be Moscow or Beijing communism for more than a hot minute.
But Committees of Vigilance and hanging judges will become all the rage. And there's one whale of a lot more people than just 10,000 waiting and more than willing to give that another try.
A long emergency is a distinct possibility.
It would most likely occur after an incredibly brief and brutally violent short-term tyranny.
If anyone's not planning for that, they aren't planning for a long emergency, they're just planning for a long inconvenience.
Divemedic responds to the yappy pups who keep throwing out the "You first!" response to those of us who blog and talk about shoulds and oughts.
TL;DR: He's right, and they're wrong.
My detailed thoughts:
It's quite possible to both blog, and make concrete preparations. Most smart folks are doing at least the latter, which is better than nothing.
The problem is the shortage of thinkers and organizers (or people smart enough to listen instead of spew bile) who can't look past Step Two, and the yakkers and flakkers who think this is a one-step process consisting of either/or, who are probably doing neither to any notable degree, let alone working on any higher levels of The Pyramid.
You could look it up:
This embiggens.
[Word To Your Mother: It's a 22-step process, and you're not even functioning at Step 3 yet.]
Franklin and Adams spent the entire Revolutionary War wining and dining in France (Step 9 if you're keeping score at home), and all that talking and diplomacy got us was money, arms & munitions, and military support sufficient to gain our actual freedom. So imagine how stupid you sound when you denigrate people making your case in public to anyone listening.
When you notice someone brighter than you talking intelligently about "stacking up" some international support, pay attention. They're playing chess, and you're playing checkers.
Just don't hold your breath waiting for them, or any actual backing, to show up.
And for anybody dishing on those holding in-person training for those of you out there with exactly zero lifetime real-world military experience (that would be 97+% of everyone, according to Census data since 1975), unless you've got your own well-regulated platoon - that's 30+ pipe-hitters for Common Core grads - of Immortals trained, supplied, organized, ready, and standing by for pear-shaped society, you probably ought to re-think your own cleverness. They aren't getting rich doing it, and they're trying to do a favor for literal hordes of mostly ungrateful numbnuts, who don't know what they don't know. Tribes and greater are the only thing that's worked since before recorded history. Solo actors and family-sized units are a death sentence, since about 50,000 B.C. or so. But keep thinking you'll be the exception. Maybe God holds you in special esteem.
Most of the loudest whiners (who, so far, are not deliberate fed-poasting agents provocateur) are going to blow their load, fail, get pissed, and run to emulate Benedict Arnold when no one else wants to do things their way.
"Unless you are actively attacking, retreating, or in movement to contact, you should be constantly seeking to improve your position. Dig, mine, wire, sandbag, and undertake continuous activities to make the enemy's job universally harder and costlier." - every army since Ever
In case you haven't noticed, things are relatively quiet lately (and I say that with an ER worker's loathing of what happens next). But overall, things aren't getting appreciably better, nor worse, unlike not-so-distant time past, and any minute in the future. And despite any huge amount of recockulous Chicken Littling from the Usual Suspects, Globull Warming isn't going to eat your children, COVID is less than a mousefart in a hurricane, and the Next Big Thing hasn't reared its ugly head. Yet.
It will show up soon, for any value of that item, in due course, especially with an activist regime of puppetmasters pulling on that IED and trying to pry it up, by the minute.
So you should be working on everything you can during pauses like this, to better your own position. Because this won't last, and things will not be getting better any time this decade, and probably not in your lifetime, for more than a year or three, at best.
Location, location, location.
Logistics: bullion, beans, band-aids, bullets.
Intelligence: all sides. Yours, theirs, and third parties.
Personnel. Not just who and how many, but also including their medical, financial, legal, and spiritual issues.
Training.
Communication.
Survivability and Resilience of all of the above: P-A-C-E.
If you don't know what any of these things look like specifically for your situation, you're waaaaay behind the curve. If you don't have a list of things to do to improve the status of each, a plan for what to be doing, and are not actively increasing each and every one of them incrementally but notably, as your time, available resources, and opportunity presents itself, you're still doing it wrong.
Because when things start going off the cliff - and they're going to do that - you're going to deal with the landing with what you've prepared and secured, not with what you'd wished for.
Fly the OCD flag a little, look over your plans from top to bottom, make adjustments, and follow the ABC Rule: Always Be Checking. Plans change. Weather changes. Enemies change. Needs change. Supplies spoil.
A front-wheel blowout at 70 MPH, in the fast lane, is a great time to do physics calculations in your head on how smoothly and quickly you can get over to the right hand pull-over lane without
a) becoming a one-person Dukes Of Hazzard stunt demonstration team (BTDTGTTS)
b) getting creamed by an 18-wheeler
c) driving off the rapidly deflating rubber, and using your rims for ad hoc fireworks sparklers in rush hour traffic, thus ensuring the purchase of a new wheel as well as a new tire.
AAR Takeaways
1) As Commander Zero has mentioned on multiple occasions, you'll use wads of fifty bucks a lot more frequently than belts of .50BMG for most personal emergencies. This would be one of those cases.
2) Off the accelerator, hit the hazards and the turn signal, and make smooth but rapid lane changes without drastic alterations in direction, to keep the rim on the rubber. (Greased that.)
3) For a driver's side tire change, there is no such thing as too far off the road. Including completely off the highway, down the off-ramp, and into a nice quiet parking lot, if you can make it that far. (I couldn't do that. Far beyond best-glide distance.)
4) Angle the car so your @$$ has more between it and oncoming traffic than just good looks and God's best wishes. Even if you have to move again after you've stopped. Trust me on this.
5) A daylight tire change is interesting. (Mine was.) One at night can be life-changing. Not in a good way. A hands-free headlamp isn't a luxury. Neither are eyes in the back of your head. Not everyone in the right-hand lane is fully awake, sober, or a very good driver.
6) Know your area. Sometimes traffic is less of a hazard than the 'hood (and the hood rats) at the end of the off-ramp. The lesser of two evils is always the right choice.
7) A low-speed spare is better than nothing. But not by much. A wheel with a real spare is vastly superior.
{And should be as mandatory as seat belts on all new cars, or at the very least, an option at purchase. "Yes, I'd like to save $18 off the $30K purchase price and get that P.O.S. pot-metal wannabe tire instead of a real spare, because I'll never need it" said no one ever. And if anyone did, that's quite simply a fucktard. Or a jackassical auto exec who should be flogged with electrical cord, and then staked out butt-naked and supine in the breakdown lane of a major highway for 24 hours, every time they suggest it at a board meeting. It shouldn't require a separate after-market expensive choice either; it's how it oughta be, period. /rant}
8) A small thick steel plate or short piece of oak 1"x8" or pine 2"x8" is often the difference between jacking your car up, and jacking your jack down into soft ground. Only one of these moves lets you remove a bad tire.
9) The flares were nice, but you don't always want to start a fire or attract attention. Sometimes, letting traffic pay no notice and cruise on past is better than creating a lookie-loo hazard, and eating 3000 pounds of dumbshit sandwich when some gawking @$$clown stops to see if there's a headless torso sprawled across your hood, and turns a flat tire into a twelve-car pile-up.
10) The LED flares are absolutely splendid, but "10-year" shelf life (as if) batteries don't last two years in hot/cold car trunks. Annual checks are in order, and spares still in the original package are even better.
11) Folding triangles never run out of battery power, don't start fires, work day or night, and alert to a hazard without creating a bigger one. I'll be adding those to the trunk box ASAP.
12) We haven't changed a flat tire in 30 years, so we're not an Indy pit crew, but taking 30 minutes to git 'er done was a wee bit embarrassing. A ground tarpright next to the jack was handy, but a gardener's foam mat would have been a boon to knees that aren't 18 any more.
13) Consider 12V power tools for jack raising and lug nut removal/replacement. Every minute you're not next to traffic, is another minute you're not next to traffic. Pedestrians never win auto vs. pedestrian contests, especially at highway speeds. Ask me how I know.
14) Fix-A-Flat is helpful, unless it's not. Some holes just aren't salvageable.
The Good
Cars with Tire Pressure Sensor systems provide life-saving information and change reactions to life-saving moves. If your car doesn't have this, consider it the next time you buy.
Getting to Main Trauma 1/2 hour late is always better than getting there 1/2 hour early, as the main attraction.
A tire is always cheaper than a car wreck, ambulance ride, or hospital bill.
A cash cushion always solves a lot of problems with minimal hassle.
The Bad
Dead batteries suck. Especially if they're a single-point-of-failure for anything. P and A were good, but having the C and E in PACE would have been far better.
Put the crappy OEM spare in the garage, and get a real spare tire for the trunk. If this had been a trip to Vegas problem 50 miles from BFEgypt, rather than 3 miles from work at rush hour, this could have gone from annoying to a really sh*tty deal very rapidly.
The Ugly
The time to perfectly and logically organize the trunk supplies is yesterday. And it's either done right, or it's not.
I literally last week drastically upgraded the FAK in the vehicles. Should have done all the emergency equipment at the same time. So, this week, instead of last week. Got off lucky this time.
Leave guns and ammo alone. But slap a $10 excise fee on every case of screws sold to contractors as a road hazard mitigation fee, and use it to make road hazard protection free on every set of new tires, to punish the fucktards who drop their gorram deck and drywall hardware hither and yon like the Johnny Appleseeds Of Mayhem fucktards they are. I've never been shot, but I've lost more tires over the years to screws that didn't fall out of cars, but rather off of work trucks, than I can recollect.
Not counting the news outlets or websites along the full range of accuracy and veracity, I follow multiple actual individuals' handwritten blogs. (Bot news aggregators don't thrill me.) Looking them over, many are current serving or former military and a couple are some variation of high-speed low-drag elite forces ninjas. Or just funny as all. Because life without humor is just despair. So in other words, the same folks I trusted in the military not to wet the bed, sh*t themselves, or otherwise run around like headless Nancys, are the same folks I trust on the interwebz, for demonstrating pretty much the same trustworthiness and circumspectly responsible behavior. Color me shocked.
Comments are fully moderated, due to idiots and trolls. Grown up discussion here will appear just as soon as I have the time to push it through. ANONYMOUS UNSIGNED COMMENTS WILL BE AUTO-DELETED WITHOUT MERCY, and the url added to the spam filter, or mercilessly mocked at the bloghost's sole discretion. If you're too chickensh*t to come up with an alias for online purposes, you're not tall enough for this blog. Pick a name, and stick with it, and you're good. Get cute, and you're wasting your time and my electrons, and your masterpiece will never see the light of day. No warning shots will be fired. If you can't maintain decorum and polite behavior, I won't toy with you, I'll squash you. If one of your comments disappears, YOU f**ked up. If all of them do, it's time for you to go. Disagree with the points made, on the merits, and you're good. Go after me personally, or other commenters, and your comment will never see daylight here. My tolerance for skirting the line is at absolute zero, and will remain there. Don't f**k up.
