Preparing for a Nuclear Plant Accident

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, is the U.S. agency responsible for protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy. They oversee a great many elements related to operation and administration of nuclear plants and have furnished guidelines and policy for response and safety in the event a release of nuclear material does occur.

Almost 3 million Americans live within 10 miles of an operational nuke plant, and many more could potentially be affected in a major accident. If you live anywhere near a plant, this section goes doubly important for you. Before we do anything else, take the time to study that map above, and determine where the closest plant is to you and your relative position to it. You need to know how many, how far and what the prevailing winds and jet stream are like between you and the plant. Being typically downwind of a plant is bad, bad news in the unlikely event a meltdown occurs.

Any good crisis response plan will include a pre-, during and post-event phase, and that is exactly what we will do here.

Should an accidental release of nuclear material occur, you can expect sirens and full-tilt emergency alert systems to activate. Local television and radio stations will broadcast instructions on exactly what you should do.

At any rate, follow all instructions from the emergency alert system, but your priority is to increase the distance between you and any radioactive material as quickly as you can. This might mean evacuating if you have a quick egress route or it might mean sheltering in place in your home. Whichever solution you choose, you must take steps to prevent airflow into your shelter or vehicle that could carry radioactive material with it.

This is accomplished by closing all doors, windows, vents, chimney flues and other apertures. Shut down all heaters, air conditioners venting fans, intakes and similar appliances. If you have time, seal cracks and crevices with your plastic sheeting and tape.

Remember, we want as much material, and as dense as we can get, between ourselves and the radiation as possible. If you can go underground, do so. If not, head to the innermost part of the structure.

No matter what happens, stay out of the affected zone! Radiation loses strength fairly quickly, but a fresh release of hot radioactivity can cook you fairly quickly, or at the very least give you severe radiation poisoning.

If you suspect you have been exposed, it is vital you decontaminate as quickly as possible: strip all clothing, wrap it carefully in your heavy plastic to prevent secondary release of material, and keep it as far away from you as possible. Next wash your body and hair thoroughly with soap or shampoo (no conditioner! – that will bind radioactive material to you) and change into fresh clothing.

Post-event

Tune in to the EAS for updates and instructions on evacuation and seeking aid. If you have been exposed to radioactivity, or begin to feel unusual symptoms like nausea, aches or burning, seek medical attention as quickly as you can. Radiation is an insidious and persistent killer, and timely aid may reduce or at least blunt the worst of its affects.

Assume anything outdoors or in an unsealed building was contaminated. This goes for objects, food, water supplies, anything. Radioactive fallout that comes to rest on an otherwise sealed container can dangerously irradiate the contents, creating a secondary hazard that can sicken or kill.

If you have evacuated, only return home when authorities tell you it is safe. There will be an enormous amount of investigation, monitoring, checking and sampling going on in the wake of an accident, and it will take time to collate the data and make a determination about the safety and habitability of the surrounding area and environment.

Your Nuclear Meltdown Survival Kit

Your nuclear fallout survival kit will be instantly recognizable to any prepper. Turns out most life support functions in any major disaster remain more or less constant. The following list is published as the minimum guideline by FEMA in cooperation with the NRC.

• Water – one gallon per person, per day. Minimum 3 day supply. Covers drinking and sanitation.
• Food – three day supply of non-perishable, shelf stable food. Aim for 2000 k/cal day for an adult.
  • Don’t forget your can opener.
• Disposable Eating Utensils – this is definitely one time you do not want to be worried about washing dishes. Eat and toss it.
• Emergency Radio –Crank or battery powered. Make sure it receives NOAA and all EAS alerts.
• First-Aid Kit – For minor boo-boos and basic trauma care.
• Flashlights
  • Include extra batteries
• Whistle – For signaling.
• Plastic Sheeting – Heavy mil, for sealing and airlocking shelter location as well as containing contaminated clothing, etc.
• Duct Tape – For attaching and sealing sheeting, and miscellaneous other tasks.
• Sanitation Kit
  • Baby Wipes, garbage bags and plastic ties
  • 5 Gallon Bucket for containing waste. Fill it with sawdust or kitty litter to help control odor. Make sure you have an o-ring sealing lid.
• Wrench or Vise Grips –For turning off utilities.
• Maps
• Gas mask (NBC or CERN approved)
• Cell Phones – Include chargers, backup batteries or alkaline-powered power cells to maintain charge.
• Prescription Meds and Glasses/Contacts –You will be up a creek if you lose your only set or run out of meds when trapped somewhere.
• Feminine Products
• Baby and Pet Needs – Food, formula, diapers, leashes, etc.
• Cash – Assume all cards will be frozen or not accepted. Cash money always speaks.
• Sleeping Bags and Blankets
• Complete Change of Clothes for all Family/Group members – you must assume someone will be exposed and contaminated. Make sure they are environmentally appropriate.
• Bleach and eye dropper – Useful for general disinfection and disinfecting water.
• Fire Extinguisher – In the event a fire breaks out while under a radioactive emergency, assume there will be no fire dept. coming.
• Matches and lighters –for fire starting.

Considering how rapidly a nuclear accident can escalate, it pays to keep a kit of the above at home and in the office, and perhaps one in your car also. You may not be able to make it home or even evacuate in time should the alert go out. If you have to pick a random building to shelter in, your kit may mean the difference between a safe and reasonably comfortable stay and death.

Security Considerations: Direct Attack, Hacking, etc.

For some years, the talk around national security concerns has revolved significantly around America’s aging infrastructure and our all-around vulnerability to hacking across many civil and government domains. Our power grid in particular is a tenuously fragile thing, and experts will be quick to regale you with horror stories about how easy it would be for professional, even amateur terrorists to plunge significant portions of our country into darkness and chaos.

As of March this year the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team confirmed that Russian hackers penetrated government entities and private companies in the energy, nuclear and aviation sectors, another proof positive that cyber attacks will be a weapon aimed at our heart should hostilities erupt.

The obvious concern when it comes to nuclear plants is that a remote hacking operation could access critical infrastructure or operational controls in the plant, allowing terrorists to cause a meltdown without ever setting foot in the facility.

Mercifully, that is the realm of fiction. Yes, anything that is connected to a network, or the internet at large is vulnerable to hacking, but that does not apply to nuclear plants: they have purposefully been designed as and remain analog-operated facilities. This means that there is nothing to hack, nothing to remotely take control of. They are islands unto themselves, informationally.

That does not obviate the risk of a direct attack by motivated groups taking over a plant physically, then using general mayhem or special expertise to trigger a meltdown. All nuclear facilities are guarded, but the quality of the security teams varies wildly, and there is considerable controversy over how prepared they will be against the special threat posed by a hardcore terrorist cell.

Practically speaking, a physical attack on a site that is not squashed utterly at the outset should be treated as an imminent release of nuclear material for your purposes.

Bugging Out

A common thread when discussing a nuclear plant accident is the topic of bugging out, and the folks that claim they will simply jackrabbit the hell out of town at the first puff of glowing green vapor. It’s a fair idea, but one that must be braced by reality.

First, you very simply may not be able to bug out, at least not at the outset of the event. It may occur too quickly, and you may be caught flat-footed or unable to make your way past thronging masses of other people going to the same place as you are: away. This means you must have a viable plan to shelter in place, even if it is just a backup. Getting caught in a car or in the open is a bad thing.

Second, where will you go? If you plan to hit a piece of property or dwelling far, far away from the plant, you had better know what the situation is with prevailing winds and the prognosis on expected fallout lest you settle into a nice warm shower of ionizing radiation. Fallout from a nuke plant is usually the nuclear fuel itself, melted and mixed with boiling steam exhaust into a vaporous cloud of deadly radiation which readily travels with the wind.

Lastly, you simply may not need to bug out. The plant may be far enough away and the wind favors your position, in which case you can stay put as long as you stay on your toes. You might actually put yourself at greater risk by joining a mass exodus of panicked, fleeing people. Use your head and your reason; be smart.

Although different catastrophic/emergency and disaster events require different strategies and appropriate levels of preparation, they all share a single concept.

Security. Security, defense, and personal safety measures also span different levels of preparation effort and expense.

This is a good idea in any case even before an apocalyptic scenario, and the harder and more time consuming you make it for a predator to attack and invade your city home or apartment the better the odds they’ll get caught at the door by police. Or give you time to escape at another egress or ‘gun-up’ in defensive counter attack mode behind some concealment/cover and take them out ambush style as they break in.

But in a doomsday scenario such as a major power grid collapse, sudden universal economic collapse, or super bad disease outbreak, there won’t BE any Police response, at least not for you. Fortifying your home’s doors and windows and stocking up on a few weeks’ worth of extra food and water won’t help you that much in the long run.

The first myth is that you can survive in place relatively easy if you read certain books. That might work through a hurricane, super blizzard, or local power outage that traps people for many days, but not in an all pervasive major social and economic, and resource breakdown that would last months and even years. This is an entirely different prep than surviving in place strategies. Do not make the mistake of not realizing the difference.

In the worst case SHTF event, you must be as isolated as you can from congested metropolitan areas if you want any chance for safety and survival. Period. Because sooner or later desperate and extremely psycho dangerous “zombies” will target your urban dwelling place and get through your home fortifications one way or another, and kill you, or burn you out.

Almost any house can be breached and broken into by determined attackers given enough time if there’s no worry about police showing up on the scene and the occupant/defender’s name is anything other than Rambo. And I don’t mean days, but more like only a few siege hours.

Even brick houses with bars or steel break in shades like you see on business storefronts in high risk areas. And if you somehow manage to kill them before they get in the first time, there will just be another group, even scarier, right after that in most large urban environments. That’s the reality.

Bug Out and Live!

The best way to initially survive a worst case scenario is to NOT to be around anything for very long that can kill you. Then remaining low profile if not completely secluded off the predator radar and out of targeting sight. Because why would anybody of sound mind, except in certain unfortunate personal circumstances, want to stay in a burning high rise hoping the sprinkler system will work when they could take the emergency exit out immediately?

So bugging out should be your primary plan. And the only place to go is out in the rural areas where contact with others is as limited as possible along with minimal profile footprint concealment. Once you’ve attained that, then the next part is making sure the “zombies” can’t just easily take it all away from you if they do stumble upon your hideout.

If you chose a decent BOL, some professionals with experience in this think it’s easier and more advantageous to your safety and security to make a virtually impenetrable perimeter barrier around your dwelling than it would be to seriously fortify a house/apartment in the city or town.

The factual truth is that these types of bad human relations as violent social conflicts have been going on since Biblical times and always contain certain elements. It always boils down to attackers and defenders. Fortified compounds, camps or castles, and superior firepower and tactics which change the advantage and even the whole game.

5 Lessons to Learn from Vietnam About Perimeter Defense

The art of this type of social warfare evolved to a stagnation point during the Middle Ages and then became obsolete during the evolution of the military industrial complex and modern world warfare that included airpower and massive tank warfare. It was not revisited and perfected until the mid-20^th century, in a small country police action in a faraway country called Viet Nam.

Ironically, as I draw from personal empirical knowledge and on the job experience and historic record on the comparisons and similarities, the best paradigm for survival perimeter combat preparedness comes from the Vietnam war, both when the French and the Americans were fighting it.

The lessons learned and strategies and tactics ultimately deployed became so refined and successful they remained in military application even to the modern Afghanistan war, and American mountain base camps and varies only due to advanced technology in weaponry and early anti-intrusion detection.

The Viet Nam conflict draws parallels similar to apocalyptic anarchy because political perspective notwithstanding, the typical American defenders hunkered down in camp compounds and defended against mainly ground forces who won‘t have air or naval power or sophisticated precision electronic detection or aiming technology.

The Viet Nam ground war was relatively primitive terms of force multipliers and its success, or lack of it, depended mostly upon small unit engagement with relatively basic weaponry.

Amazingly, today this type of fortification can be replicated on a smaller civilian but equally effective outcome on the private BOL compound today, and in a couple tactical applications, even better! Obviously the scale of enhanced force would be somehow different but the essential principles of applied dynamics and what works best are the same.

Here’s how to get started in the simplest, least expensive way.

1. Local Threat Evaluation

A combination of the likelihood of indigenous harmful contact and the random plain view discovery level of your BOL determine the odds of you getting approached by marauding “zombs”.

If they can’t see you from any road, there simply is not that much of a chance of many roaming predators getting into your area, because most of the area is inhabited by good people, more exposed than you but pretty self-reliant and well-armed, and they would pro-actively interfere with any groups of predators before they would ever get to your neck of the woods. So the likelihood of your BOL getting hit is very low.

Setting up a protective live defense perimeter barrier would virtually guarantee your long term survival of the rare one time attack if that happens, because almost any well prepared and armed prepper will have enough firepower, ammo and resources on hand to handle that. That is opposed to a long duration regular siege and total destruction type environment that would be common in anarchy ruled urban environments.

2. Barrier Protection

What does the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall, 13^th century castle walls and other heavy barriers have in common? Walls are the most difficult obstacles to penetrate or breach by humans without heavy destructive equipment, but they also are the most expensive.

If your intruder simply can’t move forward and gain access to you in your inner protective shelter without getting stopped one way or another by formidable outside barrier, then your perimeter security succeeded and you survived. That’s why it’s better to have an outside perimeter circle of defense rather than allow them to get too close to your main retreat.

Again, the Vietnam War proved beyond doubt that you don’t need a castle or great solid wall to get the job done. There are other, even better ways…

3. Perimeter Alarms

Aka anti-intrusion alerts and early warning devices. In Nam, we used anything and everything for perimeter alert from our empty beer and soda cans filled with pebbles, to the latest state of the art (at the time) forward terrain radar units and seismic ground sensors spread out even beyond the perimeter along with trip flares, and booby trapped grenades, and of course a healthy amount of pre-positioned Claymore mines if some of the attackers somehow get too far into the perimeter kill zone.

IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING you can easily replicate most of that with modern electronic battery operated noise alerts either with PIR detection triggers or pull pin type trip wire activation along with careful use of pyrotechnics, or both. There are pros and cons with each, mostly depending upon if you have a lot of animals especially deer in your area.

Pyrotechnics are a very good tried and true method of alert and can be enhanced to perform double duty as a shock deterrent ONLY IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. The old saying is that there are only two types of pyromaniac powder monkeys: those who are already missing some fingers or eyeballs, and those that are getting ready to.

The other thing is the potential forest fire hazards if you live in a dry area especially if you are using the trip flares, instead of a flash bang alert.

There’s also the legality factor. Most states have strict laws on the amount of powder you can legally shoot off in a non-commercial/professional display personal firework. I believe the max is an ounce of retort/bang powder that you can shoot off or purchase without a commercial license. But check it for yourself before trying anything else!

Plus, if the DNR is snooping around your land and you made an oversized flash bang on a trip wire that damaged his eardrums that will become cause for arrest.

I know there is advice out there on how to booby-trap your doorways but I seriously don’t recommend doing that with anything that can kill or maim (stick with loud siren alerts or flashing lights only) because not only is it illegal virtually everywhere, but it will be only a matter of time before you yourself or someone you care about trips the booby-trap.

And I strongly recommend that you don’t get into that with common store bought fireworks, which could easily blind or burn an innocent victim or start your house on fire.

On a perimeter defense, the common larger over the counter fireworks like the bursting skyrockets and rapid fire mortar tube clusters pre-loaded shooting and bursting shells could be used just to wake up the group of invaders.

The burst charges are not black powder loaded, but contain the silver flash powder which provides a potentially dangerous hyperbaric close concussive effect even in only a cardboard tube with the legal maximum amount of powder.

Again, these are legal to own, but you can’t shoot them at people without getting into trouble. Just like guns.

But in an all-out lawless society where nothing will be adjudicated anymore in any system but God’s court after you’re dead, these are formidable perimeter counter attack devices because they also can be enhanced for maximum damage and launched on demand electronically from a secure rear position or even tripped by wire.

So it wouldn’t hurt to stock up on these because they’re legal and fun on the 4^th, and would definitely come in handy on a doomsday “holiday” as well, both as an alert and force deterrent out to a hundred meters or so. Like shooting mini-RPGs and a mini grenade launcher barrage on egress/entry routes backed up by hidden wireless security cameras, which now can reach distances out to five hundred meters or better.

But if you are just getting started, stick with the pull pin or PIR battery security sound alert/alarm devices.

You’ll immediately get why I caution you on this after your nephew or YOU forgot about it while out squirrel hunting, trip it yourself creating embarrassing Hershey Squirts in your under drawers, and your children or grandchildren will laugh at you mercilessly.

You absolutely need a lot of training and experience before you start playing with things that go bang. After you think you are safely proficient with the mind set of perimeter security devices, you can graduate yourself and augment to the trip wire re-loadable retort devices like the 12 ga. shotgun shell blaster.

These are on the internet for about $40. They can take a shotgun shell right out of the box but these don’t work well because it is designed to be used with a barrel.

By itself it just pop bursts not even loudly below the shot/slug, and doesn’t even become any shrapnel because the powder is a slow burning type and it just splits the sides. Waste of good ammo. But you can get louder blank shells and commercial screaming flares and loud bangers from specialty ammo vendors on line. Pricey but very effective alert and deterrent effect.

There are also other good and even cheaper percussive devices that use only .22 caliber blanks, shotgun primers, or the nail gun blanks which also work decently on a lesser scale.

4. Perimeter Intrusion Obstructions

Of course a high chain link or barbed wire fence always helps slow down people you don’t want coming in on your property, but these are easy to breach if you are a good climber or have a pair of wire cutters.

You can make it look like a FEMA prison camp and it will feel like one also, but it won’t do much good against anything but animals maybe, unless you electrify it, and I don’t mean horse/cattle fence. I mean you’ll need sizzling frying high amp prison fence to stop “zombs” using only a fence. Not to mention it will be pretty obvious to passers-by unless you camo paint it or something.

The next best thing is pyramids of concertina type barbed/razor wire rolls. Harder to breach without having heavier tarps or plywood which “zombs” certainly won’t have in their back packs. Easy to set up.

Or, you can do it cheaper and less labor intensive with something that worked so well in the Nam that we almost felt sorry for the enemy who tried to get through it because it always was like the proverbial shooting of fish in a barrel. We called it snag wire and/or tangle foot and as their moniker imply, once ensnared, they were almost impossible to get untangled from.

And all it amounted to was regular barbed wire rolled out on the ground in crisscross or lattice pattern on the ground at intersects less than an average human step, and propped up with stakes at various heights from ankle to knee level.

Enhanced by anything imaginable from punji spikes to tripwire grenades to napalm bombs along the way. Not to mention backed up by the secondary defensive firepower towers, and bunkers armed with heavy machine guns and LAW rockets and inner perimeter mortars.

Tangle foot would be comparatively easy and less expensive to set up in conjunction with the ’creative’ use of ‘passive’ natural terrain obstruction like tree limbs and boulders and heavy brush on your perimeter. You’d only need about an eight foot width across the part of the perimeter you were setting it up at.

Look closely at the seemingly natural and innocent looking forest pictures to the untrained eyes. In the pictures of downed trees and branches which were intentionally created as an egress obstruction.

You can’t walk or climb over that without falling, tripping, and twisting yourself to injury and entrapment while not getting far, as it stretches for several yards straight ahead and several yards to the flanks before you can make it through but hidden in the grass are also stretches of tangle foot.

So you would naturally walk around it until you found a pathway/clearing to continue on. This turns out to be a funnel zone which essentially lures the intruders into going where you WANT them to be herded. Which is replete with trip alerts, more serious booby traps, cameras, or whatever else you like when the SHTF and you no longer casually walk around in the area because you’re now in full defense mode.

And these funnel areas–which actually control the locations of entry to your compound–then become pre-set up dedicated fields of cross fire counter attack kill zones. Where you can lay a heavy ambush backed in and covered from the entry way or snipe them as they try to get all the way through and closer if they aren’t immediately deterred and retreat away.

If you look closely at the woods picture with the path on the right side, there is also a natural passive tree barrier on both sides going outside the picture for fifty or so meters either way.

It looks like storm/weather damage caused the blockage but it’s actually a clever expedient perimeter hack by bending down horizontally and staking down smaller trees cross wise which continue to grow and can’t be penetrated except by chopping through. The path is normally used for egress but can be tightly sewn up and protected fairly quickly.

5. Defensive Counter Attack Booby Traps and Other Devices

Don’t waste time getting into man-trapping devices like large snares, dead falls, punji pits, etc. These are so labor intensive, time consuming, and mostly don’t work, that it’s not cost effective in this day and age. And it will be a pain in the ass pulling out dead animals all the time.

Yes, they were used in guerilla warfare but only because the Cong were so piss poor and resource impoverished that they couldn’t do anything else. And good Point man could spot them a lot easier than trip wired grenades. When they got their little rice ball hands on better explosive ordnance, they quickly forgot about these primitive sticks and stones methods.

First and foremost and probably least expensive is a passive perimeter far enough away from your main compound/shelter that’s too far for an easy pick off gunshot or throwing of firebombs, usually over fifty meters and ideally about a hundred meters, with anti-intrusion alerts and deterrents.

Then augmented by tangle foot and strategic counter attack defense zones that can be upgraded later in a bad SHTF scenario with extra more effective counter attack equipment that you can make with legal supplies you already have in your stockpile.

Obviously we only touched the subject of base camp perimeter security, and what you still need to know if this article piqued your interest would fill volumes. But if you do have a serious interest in this I’ll answer any questions you have in the comments section and/or point you in the right direction for further edification on the subject.

What would it really be like to have no running water, electricity, sewer, newspaper or Internet?  No supermarket or fire department close at hand?

I have a good imagination but I decided to talk to someone who would know first hand what it was like: my mother.  She grew up on a homestead in the middle of Montana during the 1920s and 1930s.  It was a two room Cottonwood cabin with the nearest neighbor three miles away.  She was oldest at 9, so she was in charge of her brother and sister.  This was her reality; I feel there are lessons here for the rest of us.

There was a Majestic stove that used wood and coal.  The first person up at four thirty A.M., usually her father, would start the fire for breakfast.  It was a comforting start to the day but your feet would get cold when you got out of bed.

A crosscut saw and axe was used to cut wood for the stove and after that experience, you got pretty stingy with the firewood because you know what it takes to replace it.  The old timers say that it warms you when you cut it, when you split it, and again when you burn it.  The homes that were typical on homesteads and ranches of the era were smaller with lower ceilings than modern houses just so they could be heated easier.  The saw and axe were not tools to try hurrying with.  You set a steady pace and maintained it.  A man in a hurry with an axe may loose some toes or worse.  One side effect of the saw and axe use is that you are continuously hungry and will consume a huge amount of food.
Lights in the cabin were old fashioned kerosene lamps.  It was the kid’s job to trim the wicks, clean the chimneys and refill the reservoirs.

The privy was downhill from the house next to the corral and there was no toilet paper.  Old newspaper, catalogs or magazines were used and in the summer a pan of barely warm water was there for hygiene.  During a dark night, blizzard, or brown out from a dust storm, you followed the corral poles-no flashlights.

There were two springs close to the house that ran clear, clean, and cold water.  The one right next to it was a “soft” water spring.  It was great for washing clothes and felt smooth, almost slick, on your skin.  If you drank from it, it would clean you out just as effectively as it cleaned clothes.  Not all clean water is equal.

The second spring was a half mile from the cabin and it was cold, clear, and tasted wonderful.  The spring itself was deep – an eight foot corral pole never hit bottom- and flowed through the year.  It was from here that the kids would fill two barrels on a heavy duty sled with water for the house and the animals.  They would lead the old white horse that was hitched to the sledge back to the buildings and distribute the water for people and animals.  In the summer, they made two trips in the morning and maybe a third in the evening.  In the winter, one trip in the morning and one in the evening.  They did this alone.

Breakfast was a big meal because they’re going to be working hard.  Usually there would be homemade sausage, eggs and either cornmeal mush or oatmeal.  More food was prepared than what was going to be eaten right then.  The extra food was left on the table under a dish towel and eaten as wanted during the day.  When evening meal was cooked, any leftovers were reheated.  The oatmeal or the mush was sliced and fried for supper.  It was served with butter, syrup, honey or molasses.

The homemade sausage was from a quarter or half a hog.  The grinder was a small kitchen grinder that clamped on the edge of a table and everybody took turns cranking.  When all the hog had been ground, the sausage mix was added and kneaded in by hand.  Then it was immediately fried into patties.  The patties were placed, layer by layer, into a stone crock and covered with the rendered sausage grease.   The patties were reheated as needed.  The grease was used for gravies as well as re-cooking the patties.  Occasionally a fresh slice of bread would be slathered with a layer of sausage grease and a large slice of fresh onion would top it off for quick sandwich.  Nothing was wasted.

Some of their protein came from dried fish or beef.  Usually this had to be soaked to remove the excess salt or lye.  Then it was boiled.  Leftovers would go into hash, fish patties, or potato cakes.

Beans?  There was almost always a pot of beans on the stove in the winter time.

Chickens and a couple of milk cows provided needed food to balance the larder.  They could not have supported a growing family without these two resources.

The kitchen garden ran mostly to root crops.  Onion, turnip, rutabaga, potato and radishes grew under chicken wire.  Rhubarb was canned for use as a winter tonic to stave off scurvy.  Lettuce, corn, and other above ground crops suffered from deer, rats, and gumbo clay soil. Surprisingly, cabbage did well.  The winter squash didn’t do much, only 2 or 3 gourds.  Grasshoppers were controlled by the chickens and turkeys.  There was endless hoeing.

Washing clothes required heating water on the stove, pouring it into three galvanized wash tubs-one for the homemade lye soap and scrub board, the other two for rinsing.  Clothes were rinsed and wrung out by hand, then hung on a wire to dry in the air.  Your hands became red and raw, your arms and shoulders sore beyond belief by the end of the wash.  Wet clothing, especially wool, is heavy and the gray scum from the soap was hard to get out of the clothes.

Personal baths were in a galvanized wash tub screened by a sheet.  In the winter it was difficult to haul, heat and handle the water so baths weren’t done often.  Most people would do sponge baths.

Everybody worked including the kids.  There were always more chores to be done than time in the day.  It wasn’t just this one family; it was the neighbors as well.  You were judged first and foremost by your work ethic and then your honesty.  This was critical because if you were found wanting in either department, the extra jobs that might pay cash money, a quarter of beef, hog or mutton would not be available.  Further, the cooperation with your neighbors was the only assurance that if you needed help, you would get help.  Nobody in the community could get by strictly on their own.  A few tried.  When they left, nobody missed them.
You didn’t have to like someone to cooperate and work with him or her.

Several times a year people would get together for organized activities: barn raising, butcher bee, harvest, roofing, dance, or picnics.  There were lots of picnics, usually in a creek bottom with cottonwoods for shade or sometimes at the church.  Always, the women would have tables groaning with food, full coffee pots and, if they were lucky, maybe some lemonade. (Lemons were expensive and scarce)  After the work (even for picnics, there was usually a project to be done first) came the socializing.  Many times people would bring bedding and sleep out overnight, returning home the next day.

A half dozen families would get together for a butcher bee in the cold days of late fall.  Cows were slaughtered first, then pigs, mutton, and finally chickens.  Blood from some of the animals was collected in milk pails, kept warm on a stove to halt coagulation and salt added.  Then it was canned for later use in blood dumplings, sausage or pudding.  The hides were salted for later tanning; the feathers from the fowl were held for cleaning and used in pillows or mattresses.  The skinned quarters of the animals would be dipped into cold salt brine and hung to finish cooling out so they could be taken home safely for processing.  Nothing went to waste.

The most feared occurrence in the area was fire.  If it got started, it wasn’t going out until it burned itself out.  People could and did loose everything.

The most used weapon was the .22 single shot Winchester with .22 shorts.  It was used to take the heads off pheasant, quail, rabbit and ducks.  If you held low, the low powered round didn’t tear up the meat.  The shooters, usually the kids, quickly learned sight picture and trigger control although they never heard those terms.  If you took five rounds of ammunition, you better bring back the ammunition or a critter for the pot for each round expended. It was also a lot quieter and less expensive [in those days] than the .22 Long Rifle cartridges.

If you are trying to maintain a low profile, the odor of freshly baked bread can be detected in excess of three miles on a calm day.  Especially by kids.

Twice a year the cabin was emptied of everything.  The walls, floors, and ceilings were scrubbed with lye soap and a bristle brush.  All the belongings were also cleaned before they came back into the house.  This was pest control and it was needed until DDT became available.  Bedbugs, lice, ticks and other creepy crawlies were a fact of life and were controlled by brute force.  Failure to do so left you in misery and maybe ill.

Foods were stored in bug proof containers.  The most popular was fifteen pound metal coffee cans with tight lids.  These were for day to day use in the kitchen.  (I still have one. It’s a family heirloom.)  The next were barrels to hold the bulk foods like flour, sugar, corn meal, and rice.  Everything was sealed or the vermin would get to it.  There was always at least one, preferably two, months of food on hand.  If the fall cash allowed, they would stock up for the entire winter before the first snowfall.

The closest thing to a cooler was a metal box in the kitchen floor.  It had a very tight lid and was used to store milk, eggs and butter for a day or two. Butter was heavily salted on the outside to keep it from going rancid or melting.  Buttermilk, cottage cheese and regular cheese was made from raw milk after collecting for a day or two.  The box was relatively cool in the summer and did not freeze in the winter.

Mice and rats love humanity because we keep our environment warm and tend to be sloppy with food they like.  Snakes love rats and mice so they were always around.  If the kids were going to play outside, they would police the area with a hoe and a shovel.  After killing and disposing of the rattlesnakes- there was always at least one-then they could play for a while in reasonable safety.

The mice and rats were controlled by traps, rocks from sling shots, cats and coyotes.  The cats had a hard and usually short life because of the coyotes.  The coyotes were barely controlled and seemed to be able to smell firearms at a distance.  There were people who hunted the never-ending numbers for the bounty.

After chores were done, kid’s active imagination was used in their play.  They didn’t have a lot of toys.  There were a couple of dolls for the girls, a pocket knife and some marbles for the boy, and a whole lot of empty to fill.  Their father’s beef calves were pretty gentle by the time they were sold at market – the kids rode them regularly.  (Not a much fat on those calves but a lot of muscle.)  They would look for arrow heads, lizards, and wild flowers.  Chokecherry, buffalo berry, gooseberry and currants were picked for jelly and syrups.  Sometimes the kids made chokecherry wine.

On a hot summer day in the afternoon, the shade on the east side of the house was treasured and the east wind, if it came, even more so.

Adults hated hailstorms because of the destruction, kids loved them because they could collect the hail and make ice cream.

Childbirth was usually handled at a neighbor’s house with a midwife if you were lucky.  If you got sick you were treated with ginger tea, honey, chicken soup or sulphur and molasses.  Castor oil was used regularly as well.  Wounds were cleaned with soap and disinfected with whisky.  Mustard based poultices were often used for a variety of ills.  Turpentine, mustard and lard was one that was applied to the chest for pneumonia or a hacking cough.

Contact with the outside world was an occasional trip to town for supplies using a wagon and team.  A battery operated radio was used very sparingly in the evenings.  A rechargeable car battery was used for power.  School was a six mile walk one way and you brought your own lunch.  One school teacher regularly put potatoes on the stove to bake and shared them with the kids.  She was very well thought of by the kids and the parents.

These people were used to a limited amount of social interaction.  They were used to no television, radio, or outside entertainment. They were used to having only three or four books.  A fiddler or guitar player for a picnic or a dance was a wonderful thing to be enjoyed.  Church was a social occasion as well as religious.

The church ladies and their butter and egg money allowed most rural churches to be built and to prosper.  The men were required to do the heavy work but the ladies made it come together.  The civilizing of the west sprang from these roots.  Some of those ladies had spines of steel.  They needed it.

That’s a partial story of the homestead years.  People were very independent, stubborn and strong but still needed the community and access to the technology of the outside world for salt, sugar, flour, spices, chicken feed, cloth, kerosene for the lights and of course, coffee. There are many more things I could list.  Could they have found an alternative if something was unavailable?  Maybe.  How would you get salt or nitrates in Montana without importing?  Does anyone know how to make kerosene?  Coffee would be valued like gold.  Roasted grain or chicory just didn’t cut it.

I don’t want to discourage people trying to prepare but rather to point out that generalized and practical knowledge along with a cooperative community is still needed for long term survival. Whatever shortcomings you may have, if you are part of a community, it is much more likely to be covered.  The described community in this article was at least twenty to thirty miles across and included many farms and ranches as well as the town.  Who your neighbors are, what type of people they are, and your relationship to them is one of the more important things to consider.

Were there fights, disagreements and other unpleasantness?  Absolutely.  Some of it was handled by neighbors, a minister or the sheriff.  Some bad feelings lasted a lifetime.  There were some people that were really bad by any standard and they were either the sheriff’s problem or they got sorted out by one of their prospective victims.
These homesteaders had a rough life but they felt they had a great life and their way of life was shared by everyone they knew.  They never went hungry, had great daylong picnics with the neighbors, and knew everyone personally within twenty miles.  Every bit of pleasure or joy was treasured like a jewel since it was usually found in a sea of hard work.  They worked hard, played hard and loved well.  In our cushy life, we have many more “things” and “conveniences” than they ever did, but we lack the connection they had with their environment and community.

The biggest concern for our future: What happens if an event such as a solar flare, EMP, or a plague takes our society farther back than the early 1900s by wiping out our technology base.  Consider the relatively bucolic scene just described and then add in some true post-apocalyptic hard cases.  Some of the science fiction stories suddenly get much more realistic and scary.  A comment out of a Star Trek scene comes to mind “In the fight between good and evil, good must be very, very good.”

Consider what kind of supplies might not be available at any cost just because there is no longer a manufacturing base or because there is no supply chain.  In the 1900s they had the railroads as a lifeline from the industrial east.

How long would it take us to rebuild the tools for recovery to the early 1900 levels?

One of the greatest advantages we have is access to a huge amount of information about our world, how things work and everything in our lives. We need to be smart enough to learn/understand as much as possible and store references for all the rest.  Some of us don’t sleep well at night as we are well aware of how fragile our society and technological infrastructure is.  Trying to live the homesteader’s life would be very painful for most of us.  I would prefer not to.  I hope and pray it doesn’t ever come to that.

The world is an open book in terms of transportation, economy and immigration. This also means its open to disease as well.

A highly communicable pandemic would have the potential to travel this world and back again in a matter of 48 hours. I make this bold prediction just based on international business travel. This does not take into account tourism. If it reared its head in a place like China or the US, it would be the worst-case scenario. The blessing with something like Ebola is that it is in Africa and the population as well as tourism and business travel pales in comparison to places like US and China

Viruses More Likely to Cause a Pandemic

Why are these viruses more likely to cause a pandemic?

All of these viruses are so-called RNA (not DNA) viruses. This means there are more mutations happening every time the virus replicates in a cell. More mutations lead to more changes in the viral genome, potentially making the virus more virulent– better at infecting humans, replicating more efficiently and therefore making people sicker. Another thing these viruses have in common is the fact that they are usually present in animals and might not necessarily cause disease in those carriers but adapt to humans at some point, causing severe disease. These viruses also tend to cause high mortality because they affect several organs causing them to shut down.

When a Pandemic Starts

When a pandemic starts, don’t panic right away. You might hear on the news about new cases of avian flu in China or other Asian countries. They will be the most likely source of a pandemic flu, due to the presence of unregulated live bird markets that can spread the disease quickly, and the close contact people have with these animals. The same is true for respiratory infections such as SARS or MERS, which usually have adapted to humans after going through several animal species, starting with bats but then transmitting to agricultural animals and finally to humans.

The adaptation phase can be slow, but when the time comes that a virus transmits between humans, these infections will be rapidly spreading. Human-to-human transmission is the most critical barrier. So far, avian flu has not caused a pandemic simply due to the fact that almost all infections happened through contact with the animals themselves. At the most, family members transmitted among themselves due to close and prolonged contact. However, when human transmission becomes easy, it will be bedlam.

Human Cases

Most likely you will hear something about some human cases first, followed by rapid growing numbers in the country of origin and around. From there it won’t be long to hear about the first cases in the U.S. or Europe, maybe just a few days. This part is difficult to predict, as some infections are contagious at very early to slightly later stages of infection, but typically when people start to sneeze they are contagious. So, if you are relatively sure that a pandemic is at hand, call in to work sick, take your kids out of school, ensure you got supplies to sit it out, and rather enjoy some vacation days.

(Disclaimer: I am a scientist working with viruses, and that is what I will do). Folllowing this procedure, the worst case scenario is that you get some vacation days and the kids do too. That is better than going to work because you think you are overreacting and catching something by a colleague who just returned from his vacation, sat in an airplane, and is starting to sneeze into your general direction when trying to show you some pictures of that great landmark he visited (with many other people) on his cell phone.

Virus Transmission

So how does a virus like the flu or SARS transmit?

Transmission of a respiratory virus happens by droplets, so this is sneezing and coughing but also when somebody sneezes into his/her hands and then touches the shopping cart, the door knob, the debit/credit card checkout, et cetera. In other words, transmission happens extremely easily. You got more germs on your cell phone than there are on a public toilet seat, true story. Ebola is harder to transmit, as it is through bodily fluids, so people most affected were in close contact with patients, such as medical personnel and relatives. But again, there is a potential for a critical mutation making transmission easier.

Do’s and Don’ts of Biosecurity Measures

So, you decided to stay home, and it turns out there really is an avian flu or other virus spreading rapidly. You realize that even though you planned ahead, there are a few items you still want to get in a last-ditch effort. If you really have to go to a public place, take Lysol wipes with you in the car. Put on that NIOSH 95 mask. Don some nitrile or latex gloves. If people look at you funny, cough a bit, so they think you are being very considerate trying not to spread something or alternatively tell them the end is near. You could also ignore them; do whatever works for you. Just don’t be too embarrassed and take it off.

It is supposed to keep 95% of infectious particles out, so if somebody coughs or sneezes directly at you, you got a fighting chance. If you want 100% protection, you need to be prepared to spend a lot of money on a biohazard suit, go through the pain of putting it on and walking into the store looking like an alien, and be prepared to possibly cause a panic and deal with a 911 call while there. When you grab what you need, be aware of your hands.

Touching Your Face

Most people don’t realize that they tend to touch their faces unconsciously many times during the day, and you do not want to touch a surface containing the virus and then get your hand in contact with eyes, nose, or mouth, which will give the virus access to your body. Put those Lysol wipes in your cart and use them throughout, particularly after checkout and again when you arrive at your car. Give the steering wheel and the gear shift a wipe down just to make sure. If you wore gloves, take them off before entering your car.

General Biosecurity Measures

General biosecurity measures include: stay home! If you have to leave your house, use personal protection equipment, including the following:

• Gloves. Wear gloves if you go anywhere near potentially contaminated surfaces. Take them off when done! They might get contaminated and you will just distribute the virus evenly around. Gloves are able to protect you from virus touching your skin, but if that virus sits on the glove, you can still get sick if you are not careful. Picture that you are touching a surface with glowing green or red paint with those gloves and then continue to use them. Where is that paint going to end up? It will be on a lot of things that you touch afterwards.
• Mask. Wear a NIOSH 95 mask if venturing among people. Surgical masks won’t do a lot really.
• Hand Washing. Wash your hands frequently.
• Wipes. Keep up with wiping down surfaces that you and others touch frequently, particularly doorknobs and appliances.
• Keep Your Distance. Droplets can travel several feet, so try to stay a distance of six feet or more from somebody who is actively sneezing or coughing.

For respiratory viruses, these measures are the most effective ones.

Disinfectants

If you do not have a commercial disinfectant, a dilution of bleach does the trick. Generally, a 10% dilution is very effective, especially if it sits for 10 minutes, but on metal surfaces such as those on appliances that can be a bit problematic after a while. I use the metric measurements on my pitcher, 50 ml of bleach with 450 ml of tap water added for a total volume of 500 ml. It is just more precise, but if you are allergic to metric measurements, 0.2 cups (so a little less than 1/4 cup) in a bit over 2 quarts is approximately the same.

You want to use gloves, nitrile or latex is fine, and a 10% bleach solution won’t destroy your skin right away, but it will be irritating to some people, especially if you keep using it. Rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide work too. Influenza and coronaviruses (the ones that cause SARS- or MERS-like infections) are not as stable in the environment due to their structure. On the outside these viruses have what is called an envelope, made out of components of the cell wall from the cell they were replicating in, in other words a human cell. This envelope makes the virus actually more susceptible to disinfectants, UV light, and other environmental factors.

Evading Your Immune System

However, it also makes it better at evading your pesky immune system. Although not extremely stable in the environment, enveloped viruses, like the flu or SARS, can survive on some surfaces for up to 24 hours. This is why wiping down frequently is important, but of course you don’t have to do that if nobody goes in and out. The virus does not appear out of nowhere; you have to pick it up from somebody.

In summary, if you can avoid going out after a pandemic hits, stay at home. Don’t let neighbors or family in (especially the in-laws), and you will be fine, assuming you are self-sufficient in regards to food and water.