by Ron Foster
He and his family had been anxiously living in a constant state of fear and dread that sometime or another, maybe this day or any day in the future, that a group of tough looking thugs would appear on their doorstep and demand entry. Joe lived in horror of thinking of someone beating on his door with a gun or knife demanding entrance and justifying the intrusion with their version of law of the jungle rights to take whatever he had in the house that they wanted to take.
Worse yet for him to consider, would be one crazy man with a pistol kicking in his door, shooting him and leaving his family totally defenseless and at the intruder’s vile mercy. There were just too many horrible thoughts to shudder at and consider for a man with a young wife and a daughter to worry about.
These not unwarranted fears went above and beyond what would happen to him and his son possibly being hacked to death in a violent robbery attempt. If Joe managed to get himself foolishly killed now going out and attempting to find food that he knew was more than likely just not there, he might condemn his family to a worse fate than him just staying at home trying to guard them.
He had only one other hope to try to hold on to and help him to get by these days and it was a small one. It was that simple silly survival book of his that he had been reading like it was the bible over and over. It lacked a lot of information and it hadn’t even touched on security at all except to say “be sure to have deadbolt locks on your doors and secure your windows” and such. He guessed that the author of that 10 page or so pamphlet must have never spent time in a closed up house in the stifling heat of a Florida hot summer because that option was just too hard to follow.
Locking all the windows that gave easy access to the house Joe had studiously insisted on doing, but that still left others open to the outside world that wouldn’t take very much to allow someone to wriggle inside in the middle of the night.
He shouldn’t really cuss that strange little pamphlet sized booklet though for not giving him all the answers that he needed or wanted, right now it was his life line and it’s wisdom had saved his butt more than once already. It’s simple and practical make do preparedness measures and survival tips for his home that somehow he was formerly unaware of made all the difference in his world now. That book’s advice was all that remained of the modern world he had left now to rely upon for the very basics of things like water purification and lighting to try to help him survive.
He remembered the auspicious day when he and his wife had first recalled having that book in the house and had made a mutual mad dash to retrieve it from the hall closet that they kept the Christmas decorations, tree lights and unwanted presents or junk and such in. His workplace friend Lemmy had given it to him one day in an attempt to get him to prepare for disasters like this better but he had not read any of it until recently. Lemmy was what some people used to call a prepper. Joe wished he had really listened to that man better now.
He had originally readily agreed with his friend that you should have some extra food and water put back for hurricanes and such, particularly if you lived on the Gulf Coast but other than that he didn’t understand his friend’s fascination with all things preparedness. The guns, the ammo storage and the tactical gear just turned him off as too fanciful.
The threats of terrorism and such other headlines these days had made him think to store more water at his friend’s insistence and this he had done in fear of an attack on the water system. However, he had stored not near that gallon a day per family member recommendation crap that Lemuel had prescribed as a necessary measure against the systems collapse. Water was just too heavy and took up too much space and besides he was sure the agencies were doing something to protect it.
He had told Lemmy that he wasn’t worried about nuclear attack or anything of that scale because they would all be dead anyway so why bother storing more water than was needed for an extended outage from a hurricane? Besides the amount of storage space it would take up was beyond what he wanted to commit to in this small house. Besides, his wife would have a conniption fit if he put a water barrel in his carport. So he himself hadn’t done anything more than buy a couple of extra cases of bottled water to tide him and his family over until the government came to rescue everyone after a disaster. He regretted not doing more now but that was hindsight that couldn’t be changed.
Joe had seen his share of all the normal yearly public service announcements that were broadcast around hurricane season to build an emergency “72 hour kit’ or “Go bag” for each family member in the event someone had to leave home after a disaster. He had bought some extra batteries and a weather radio but he had never got around to making up any individual kits for the family members.
He had poo-poohed such an idea as an unnecessary waste of time and expense because the people advocating that preparedness measure had never met his packrat wife! If they went on vacation with the family or took off for a road trip she had all kinds of plastic containers that needed to be fitted in the trunk that was already chock full of all the supplies that she thought they might need. She had her lists and had already collected everything from A-Z like handy wipes, sun screen, Band-Aids, extra towels, lip balm, packets of ketchup, mustard, bug spray you name it and add an etc. on top of it all with odd items she thought just might be needed from some obscure event she considered possible.
Except for his family finding a forgotten snack box that had been packed for the last time they had thought about evacuating for a hurricane, the contents of those storage containers weren’t doing them a whole lot of good right now, though.
Matches were the biggest thing beyond food Joe was worried about running out of all too quickly before reading that survival book that they had eventually gotten around to thinking about consulting. Why his wife hadn’t included piles of matches or some cheap Bic lighters in her elaborate preparations he had no idea about but they soon found these items were in short supply long-term and were sorely needed. All he had when the lights first went out was a tube of those big long wooden matches he used to light his barbecue grill with and there were only a few left now.
Could be this crucial item for their survival was missing because his wife wasn’t the candle or campfire cook out kind of lady that she had forgotten that necessity of fire making but they were soon reminded of it the first time they tried to boil water. Thankfully the survival book had listed many alternative methods to start a fire without matches or a lighter or they would have been much more miserable than they were.
That little book even though it had very few pages and little information was the closest thing he had to a miracle at the moment and he had reread it many times. It even included some amazing uses for that lip balm he never used that came in right handy now.
He had found out that if you rub Chapstick on Q-tips, cotton balls, lint, cloth, gauze, or even dried bark you could make kindling that burns easily and for a long time. Petroleum jelly like Vaseline for the same purpose was also an innovation that the book had taught him that he had been hugely unaware of.
Yesterday, as he prepared himself for this foraging expedition, he had taken the advice of another page in his survival pamphlet and got his wife and kids to build their own survival bug out bags. He needed to fix that oversight of his right now!
It seems the wife had gotten rid of the kids book bags because they were older now and were “too cool” to use them in the grades they were in now so other means of carrying stuff on their backs had to be considered.
He had taken the cheap Wal-Mart blue tarp that he used to cover his grill with to construct his own pack in the event some sort of emergency shelter was needed and the rest of the family had made do with blankets to construct a thing called a horseshoe pack for themselves.
This pack is simple to make and use and it is relatively comfortable with the items in it arranged properly to carry over one shoulder. Lay any available square-shaped material, such as a poncho, blanket, or canvas, flat on the ground. Lay items you want to take on one edge of
the material. Remember to pad the hard items. Roll the material (with the items) toward the opposite edge and tie both ends securely. Add extra ties along the length of the bundle. You can drape the pack over one shoulder with whatever line you can find connecting the two ends. Soldier on!
Of course, there was always the unfortunate chance that he wouldn’t be able to make it back home for a variety of reasons and he had discussed this troubling idea with them as best he could. He explained that should they need to move away from where they were at, because of fire, crime, need of water, etc., that they would need those packs. His boy, Ricky, had been doing his own perusal of the survival pamphlet and he had already made his own raid on the kitchen junk drawer before anyone else could look through it for useful things or items that could be repurposed and put in their horseshoe pack. The boy was imaginative, he must say that about him.
Joe had found it hard to curb the boy’s exuberance and imagination to prepare as best he could and try to protect and provide for the family if they lost dad or needed to bug out as a family. Too many dystopian movies and video games had warped his son’s perceptions what a real fight or survival was all about, however. Fantasies of battling zombies and capturing mythical creatures didn’t have many real world applications to what they truly faced in this grid down world.
Joe talked to him about being more sensible but he did allow him to try to trap the squirrels in the backyard or try his luck to maybe bean one with a luckily thrown rock but the boys’ efforts were an exercise in futility it seemed. If anything, the birds and squirrels around here were even more wary now and stayed higher in the trees avoiding the humans trying to do them harm or stick them in a stew pot. They would survive in nature far longer than their would-be hunters.
Joe and Ricky discussed in one of those man to man conversations that sometimes come up way too early in young lives how it was time to grow up to face life’s dangers Dad might not be able to protect them from and the need to man up to protect sister and mom. They also discussed more mundane things and realizations of pops not being the superman the kid thought like how they would have to figure out for themselves for the first time how to clean one of the critters if they were miraculously able to kill one.
The survival guide had no instructions on catching, cleaning or cooking small game. They had one success in collecting wild game when Ricky’s sister, Beth, had gotten one with the old box, stick and string thing trap but then they were left with the quandary of what to do with a live squirrel trapped under a cardboard box. If you moved it at all, the tree rat would get away and no dinner today! Not that one squirrel would have made that much of a difference to their diet but they were jubilant in its capture.
Needless to say, the squirrels lightning fast escape occurred eventually and no one had come up with a good way to dispatch one anyway if they somehow managed to perform the trick again. Evidently everyone standing around a box with garden tools to whomp him if he ran by, didn’t work. The only thing that occurred was Ricky getting his foot mashed! Squirrels are smart, they learn fast to avoid things they see as a threat and the ones in their area were no different and moved away from these crazy humans or only foraged when it was safe and no one present.
The family’s attempt at making do-it-yourself bows and arrows was also a ludicrous joke. It was not so much the simple concept of constructing one that challenged them, it was finding proper string and a flexible enough branch that didn’t break to make something even slightly powerful enough to launch an arrow with any authority or distance that defied them.
A hammer, a tire iron and some kitchen knives were all the armament they had for procuring food or makeshift weapons. Not much to face a world of determined and practiced rough and tumble men and women. Joe had never even been in a real fight before outside of a playground wrestling match when he was eight or so years old. Beth had made, after reading the survival books response to threats, a somewhat believable label for a can of insecticide that said TEAR GAS on it in great big letters that might be good for a visual or physical deterrent if you got it in someone’s eyes but Joe was very skeptical if it was effective. The book said to use Wasp spray, not Raid cockroach spray and said nothing of adding a dumb label.
They were a rather miserably pitiful and unprepared family for a disaster like this, but not any more so than hundreds of millions of other desperate souls who were now going through their own personal food crisis.
In 1906, Alfred Henry Lewis stated, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.”
A popular saying derived from that quote is that “every nation is about nine meals away from anarchy/revolution.” That is, hungry people are desperate people who will topple any government was the original intent of the statement. “It is well for us to recollect that even in our own law-abiding, not to say virtuous societal case; the only barrier between us and anarchy is the last nine meals we’ve had.” Nine meals weren’t even nine days when society had collapsed around Joe and his family.
People by the millions wasted their lives violently trying to overthrow what they couldn’t understand. It seems a lot of people just couldn’t grasp the government wasn’t coming to save them now and that somehow rioting and burning their neighborhood down wouldn’t get any more action than them acting the fool and getting shot doing it to begin with. Oh, the cops and the National Guard enforced martial law very strictly and violently for a while but eventually they just didn’t respond at all. It was a free for all then of murder, rape, looting etc. until citizen groups themselves delivered their own brands of vigilante justice but for the most part it was too little too late. A precipice of despair and death behind and in front of them that would rob anyone of food was all that was left as society crumbled.
After only nine missed meals, it’s not unlikely most people would panic and be prepared to commit a crime to acquire food. Why government thought waiting five days to tell everyone they were on their own was reprehensible and added to the citizenries fury to confront something, anything really to express their wantonness and anger.
Even normally nice, civilized men and women who might just happen to see their neighbor with a loaf of bread and if they owned a gun now, they might well say, “I’m sorry buddy, you have been a good neighbor and all that and we’ve been friends for a few years, but my children haven’t eaten today – I have to have that bread, give it to me please– if not, I am taking it, even if I have to shoot you.”Give it up or die! All for a loaf of bread and no tears shed.
This trend towards lawlessness was particularly true in the situation Joe and his family found themselves in. Most people in their neighborhood had no more than a three day supply of food in their homes and that equates to nine meals before they started to go hungry and hope for good news if they had a working radio.
If there were just an interruption in the supply of food, like in the aftermath of a hurricane, fear would set in immediately but the system would always somehow hold together because people knew eventually and usually within in a short period of time that government aid would come. This time, oh this time, the resumption of the food supply and law and order was uncertain at best and everyone knew it: the fear had become much more pronounced as uncertainty turned to certainty that help wasn’t coming. EVER! Starving people tasting overwhelming fear will never end up well and will do what it takes, including taking from others by any means possible to survive. They didn’t need to be told to stay in the house to avoid dangerous conditions.
Author References To Ponder:
17 October 1896, Denver (CO) Post, “Further Facts in the Case of Mark Hanna,” pg. 6, cols. 6-7:
Those of us who are well fed, well garmented and well ordered, ought not to forget that necessity makes frequently the root of crime. It is well for us to recollect that even in our own law-abiding, not to say virtuous cases, the only barrier between us and anarchy is the last nine meals we’ve had. It may be taken as axiomatic that a starving man is never a good citizen.
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26 October 1952, Lewiston (ID) Morning Tribune, “Dream of UN Must Be Kept Alive—Lawson,” pg. 10, col. 1:
(Kenneth Lawson, Spokane Commissioner of Public Affairs—ed.)
“It has truthfully been said,” he told his audience, “that any nation is always nine meals away from a revolution. You can understand what this means when you realize what happens to people who go three days without food. They become panicky, they lose their wits and their intelligence, and they follow any leader blindly.” Hunger and war, he said, go hand in hand, and the struggle to prevent hunger is one part of the battle to preserve peace..
2
Old Fools And New Schools!
“Hey, Joe, come on over here for a moment, please. I got something I need to discuss with you.” “Bert the old man” as Joe referred to him as the nemesis of his neighborhood called out to him from under his carport located catty cornered across the street from his house, as he himself exited the front door to his home to go scavenging.
Joe eyed the normally friendly but quirky old man that he barely knew but had talked to every once in a while as necessary over the past four years and wandered over to see what he wanted.
“He probably wants to know if I have any beer for trade!” Joe mused as he crossed the street and watched the old man stand up with a can of beer in his hand.
“Maybe not, maybe he wants to sell some beer to me! I swear that old buzzard had a beer in his hand the first time I saw him four years ago sitting in that very same place and come to think of it now he has had one clutched in his hand or sitting next to him ever since. You would have thought that ol’ reprobate would have run out of alcohol by now!” Joe thought as Bert got up and met him halfway across his lawn and invited him to come back to the cooler shade of the carport.