“The last, but by no means least, important thing you will need to survive is knowledge. That means getting your hands on books covering subjects like survival, wilderness medical, canning, farming and homesteading. Less than one percent of our population has the knowledge on how to survive the next couple years. Make yourself part of that one percent.
“So here is my recommendation to you. While I realize that everyone’s situation is different, the next eight hours are going to be easiest to get a lot of things you’ll need. Most stores will still be open and most people aren’t realizing the magnitude of what’s going on. If your kids are at school, I would consider getting them on the way. I would have your wife and children immediately start filling the tub and water containers. Raid your wife’s jewelry box and get anything of value that you can easily trade. I would have my wife walk the kids to the local library and check out as many books as she can on the subjects we discussed. Another thing I forgot to discuss is medicine. If you have a family member that is diabetic or needs some medicine for their survival, I would add that to the top of my list for day one because three to four days from now when the drug stores are looted, you may never find that drug again. Make sure you take a couple grocery carts home with you unless you have a better system to travel with supplies.
“Spend tonight making a list and packing everything you will need. Don’t overburden yourself with anything that doesn’t directly relate to your immediate or long term survival. If you absolutely have to spend a second day gathering supplies then do it. But under no circumstances do you leave later than the second morning. It will take you a full day to get out of the city and you do not want to be anywhere near Pittsburgh four days from now. Be sure to check your phonebook for feed stores or farmers markets before you head out. Plan your route to hit these on your way out of town and try to acquire more seed. Which direction should you go? I would say either East or North East is the most rural areas with the most farms. If you head North West you’ve got New Castle which will be just as bad as Pittsburgh. If you go west you’ve got the towns of Wheeling and Weirton to contend with. If you go south you end up in West Virginia. The farmers down there are a lot more....hard. They are a much more independent society and you’re a lot more likely to end up looking down the barrel of a twelve gauge shotgun if you’re caught camping on someone’s property. So I definitely think East North East is your best bet.
“Make sure you try and stay on the major highways for the next week or two for easiest travel and avoidance of the smaller and cities along the way. Stay on the highway and don’t enter the towns for any reason. Your grocery carts full of supplies will definitely make you a target. If you cross paths with others on the highway, remember what I said: don’t engage in conversation, look as menacing as possible and give them a wide birth. After a week or so you are probably going to start encountering a lot more people travelling. At this point I would start travelling secondary highways or roads to avoid people. Just be aware that these roads have more houses in view of the road and a tendency to pass through towns instead of around them. I don’t care how tired you are at this point, YOU DO NOT ENTER THE TOWN! If you have to, back track until you find a cross road and work your way around the town. You need to get at least a hundred miles from Pittsburgh before approaching farms. Once the gangs of looters have cleaned out Pittsburgh a couple months from now, they will start raiding the smaller towns around Pittsburgh. You do not want to be caught in their path. I would also try and find a farmer at least five to ten miles away from the small rural towns.
“While travelling, be sure to find a good spot to camp well before dusk. If you wait till it’s too late, you may end up on a section of the highway that is too populated. You also want to have plenty of time to gather firewood, eat, set up camp and be in your blankets as it gets dark. You need to conserve your flashlight batteries for emergency use only. When your batteries run out, you have no more light. If you must travel at night, don’t use your flashlight. Your night vision will adjust and you’ll be just fine. A flashlight will just make you visible from a long way off to looters.
“Make sure you pick a campsite well out of sight from the road. Yes, I realize this means that you will have to pack your gear in and out to the highway every evening and every morning. But don’t get lazy in this area. If someone travelling your road in the evening sees or smells your fire through the trees you may end up with an unwanted guest eating your food or worse yet stealing it. I would even go as far as to take shifts throughout the night keeping watch. Spouses and older children are perfectly capable of taking shifts as well. You cannot allow yourself to get burned out by trying to watch over your family day and night and not getting any rest.
“Keep an eye on your water while you travel. As soon as a container is empty, fill it at the next available water source like a stream. Keep a scrap of cotton t-shirt to place over the mouth of the container to filter out any floaties. Don’t wait till you run out before you start looking for a new source. Also, don’t conserve your water. The last thing you want to do is end up dehydrated. Don’t forget to purify the water with drops of bleach if you have to drink it that day. If you have enough good water to get you through until evening time, wait till you can boil it that evening over a fire and conserve the bleach for emergencies. Be sure to pack the largest pot you have for boiling water.
“In order to boil that water you need to be able to start a fire. This is not as easy as it sounds. You may have started one in a fireplace or in your back yard before but it’s a lot different when your hands are numb and you don’t have a piece of paper or gas soaked rag to start it with. Take a phone book, wrapped in a garbage bag to keep it dry. Next you will need to gather branches and firewood. It is very important that it’s dead. If it doesn’t produce a distinctive crack when you break it, it isn’t dead. Be careful gathering dead wood directly off the ground as most of it will be somewhat waterlogged by pulling moisture out of the ground. In order to start a fire you have to build it slowly. You’ll need three different stages to get your fire started; very small twigs the diameter of a toothpick, twigs the diameter of a pencil and small branches the diameter of a highlighter. Make sure you gather three times as much as you think you’ll need to start the fire. I would say each bundle of every size prep needs to be around eight to ten inches in diameter. Do not cheat here because you are in a hurry to get your fire started. If you do, chances are, your fire will fizzle out and you’ll have to start the process all over again.
“Light your paper on fire and place it on a section of ground where you’ve cleared the snow away. Next, fan out the smallest twigs over the flame till they catch. Don’t just pile all your sticks on and smother your fire, make sure you leave room for the flames to leak through the gaps. Move to your second stage of twigs the size of pencils. Take a handful and fan them out over the twigs. Wait a minute or two till they catch and add some more. Again be patient and don’t pile it on too quickly because you’ll smother your fire and have to start over. Keep repeating this process through all three stages till your fire is blazing, then you can start adding larger branches and logs. A fire has to be built in stages. If you rush it and skip a stage, the smaller twigs will burn themselves out before the larger stage has a chance to really get burning.
“I would utilize a fire only if you really need it to boil water, cook, dry your clothes and sleeping bags, or to warm up if you’re absolutely freezing. I would only build a fire while it is still light out and let it die down before dark. A fire can be seen from a long way off at night. When the sun goes down you need to be ready to climb into the sack. Go to sleep early and be up at first light to utilize as much daylight as you can. Again, it is very important to be a couple hundred yards off the road. It will suck lugging your supplies through the woods every morning and evening but it may save your life. Also, make sure no one is around when you leave the road. You don’t want anyone seeing where you’re obviously planning to spend the night.
“Before we leave I want to leave you with a short story I used to tell my students when I was a SERE Instructor. This is a true story that you need to remember. About twenty years ago there was a bush pilot up in Alaska that would fly hunters into the back country for guided hunts. On a return flight he hit a flock of birds and crash landed his pontoon plane onto a small lake in the middle of nowhere. He survived the crash landing largely unscathed. His radio was damaged in the crash but he was able to get his bag of survival gear and swim the short distance to shore where he built a fire to warm up. Eight hours later, by blind luck, another bush pilot just happened to fly over and see his partially submerged plane sticking out of the lake. He landed to investigate and maneuvered over to the smoldering fire on shore. He found the first pilot next to the fire with a letter to his wife in one hand, a revolver in the other, and a bullet hole in his forehead. His body wasn’t even cold yet. That man had everything he needed to survive for weeks out there but instead he sat by his fire and gave in to despair. He convinced himself that he was going to die out there, that no one would ever find him and it was hopeless. Do...Not...Let...This...Be...You!
“I don’t know exactly how many of you grew up in church, but make sure you take a Bible with you. If you don’t believe in God, take one anyway because you just might get to a point where you need reassurance. If not, take a book by your favorite motivational speaker. Don’t give in to despair and never, ever give up, no matter how bad it gets. Be strong for your family. Be decisive. Think through your challenges, make a decision and stick with it. You are going to make mistakes and you are going to choose wrong from time to time. Just stay positive and roll with the punches. This will be a hard time for your kids as well, if you have them. Let them see you always positive and decisive. It will make this scary time for them easier and they will lean on your confidence and leadership.
“Again, I don’t know the religious standing of each of you but I’d like to pray before you leave. Join me if you’d like.” Sean bowed his head and began, “Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you today at a crossroads in our lives. I pray for your protection over each and every person in this room. Lord, give us the wisdom and guidance to provide for and protect our families in the hard times to come. You said in the scriptures that you would never leave or desert us in our times of trouble. I ask your hand of protection and solace as we leave this room to begin our journey. Lord, have mercy on the people of this great nation. Let your will be done in our lives as we surrender ourselves into your safe keeping.... Amen.”
Sean looked up to see the same faces staring back. There was a marked change in most of his co-worker’s faces for the better. Whether it had been the story he told or the prayer, he couldn’t be sure, but he had a hunch. With a strong voice Sean said, “Ok, let’s go! Everyone up and get moving. Tomorrow morning will come quickly and you have a lot to prepare.” Sean walked out of the conference room followed by his co-workers and friends. Already he could hear discussions taking place and groups forming for their walk home.
As Sean walked back to his cubicle, he entered into a surreal moment as if time slowed down and things started moving in slow motion. The gravity of what he just did hit him like a bucket of bricks. With no pride involved, Sean wondered how many of his friends’ lives he had just saved. He started wondering which ones might not heed his advice but he stopped himself. He had done what he could and they would have to live or die with their decisions. Sean said a silent prayer to himself that they would live and make it through if they decided wrong.
Chapter 4
As soon as Sean reached his cubicle, he immediately emptied the garbage bag on the floor and started rummaging through it. He laid everything out on the ground and started to make a mental inventory of what he had available. He had a pair of thick wool socks, military issue Poly Pro tops and bottoms, a pair of Realtree BDU style pants, a thick wool Swedish military surplus sweater, a long sleeve black t-shirt, a Realtree winter parka, a blaze orange hunting vest, a blaze orange fleece cap, two light gloves, a hand muff, a webbed belt, and a Realtree billed cap. After going through all the pockets, he found a Surefire LX2 flashlight as well as an LED light that clipped on his hat bill, a Leatherman in a leather pouch, a three-inch Kershaw Clash pocket knife, twenty-five feet of paracord which he used to pull his bow up to his tree stand, and a four foot strap that secured his stand to the tree.
Sean threw on his poly pros and his BDU pants, his wool sweater and his leather coat over top. He placed his gloves in his jacket pockets and the rest of his supplies back in the lower BDU pockets. As usual when he hunted, he placed the billed hat on with the fleece cap over top.
Just then, he felt eyes on his back and Sean turned to see Jeremy peeking over his cubicle. “This is for real, isn’t it?” Jeremy asked in a quiet voice.
“I’m afraid it is,” Sean said somberly. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to do what you said. I don’t really know what else to do and I agree with you on getting out of town. We’re going to head to my parents in upstate NY. They live a ways from the nearest town and there are a lot of farms in the area. It’s going to be a heck of a hike though. I never really thought about it before, but you’re probably right about how things are going to be. I just rented Contagion with Holly a couple days ago and although it was about a pandemic, the movie didn’t really make it out that bad.”
“Yeah, I saw that movie too,” Sean agreed. “Hollywood likes to glamorize things so the masses don’t panic. They try and make it all about the collective and everyone coming together to share all their food and supplies. But at the end of the day, the truth is that man’s nature will always seek self preservation first. That movie, Contagion, was pretty spot on until the end. Once the grocery stores were cleaned out and the military ran out of MREs, you could see the rioting over food starting. Shortly after that there is that scene about his neighbor being shot and his house looted in the middle of the night. At that point when society runs out of food, it will nosedive into anarchy and looting overnight and there is no coming back. In the movie, the government develops the antivirus and tells everyone ‘You’ll get your antivirus within the next year when your number is called. Stay in your house and don’t panic.’ The movie shows everyone elated and sitting around their houses happy and content. I thought, ‘Wait a minute here, I thought there was no food and people were starving.’ Just because there is an antivirus available six months from now isn’t going to change the fact that you or your kids haven’t eaten in a week. Things would have gotten a lot worse before they got better. In a pandemic situation like that, you have a lot more time before society starts to shut down. Vehicles still work, you still have lines of communication, and the interstate trucking industry would still be functioning until the rioting started to get really bad. But with an EMP it’s different, because it is instant. This is the worst case scenario for our country. It is going to be straight Mad Max in a couple months.”
Sean paused for a few moments. “It looks like you got quite a hike in front of you. If you’re going to be travelling that amount of distance, I would probably take at least two days gathering supplies and food. Take as much as you can. I would definitely get an extra shopping cart for your wife and son—he’s what, twelve now?” Jeremy nodded his head in confirmation. “Just make sure you hit the road fir
st thing day after tomorrow and don’t forget: after day three, don’t travel through any towns. Give them a wide berth. Good luck, Jeremy. You and your family will be in my thoughts and prayers.” Sean stuck his hand out and Jeremy took it in a firm shake. It was very awkward saying good-bye forever to someone you were just joking around with an hour ago. Sean gave him his best reassuring smile and Jeremy returned the favor before turning back to his desk.
Sean picked up the rest of his supplies and started walking back towards Gerald’s desk. He noticed Hannah heading towards the exit. She had a hooded sweater pulled up over her head and a thick warm wool coat on, but she had picked a bad day to wear a skirt. Sean noticed she had nylons on but it was still going to be a long cold walk home in the snow for her. He called out to her “Hannah, hold up!” She turned back as he turned and made his way in her direction. “I have an extra pair of my dress pants here that I’m not going to be using. They should at least cut the wind a bit.”
“Thanks,” she replied with a forced smile. Sean could tell she seemed pretty anxious. She probably wasn’t looking forward to the walk home in the snow.
“Actually, I have a better idea. Come with me real quick.” She followed him back to his desk where he said, “Have a seat.” She hesitated for a second then sat down in his office chair. Sean pulled a pair of scissors out of his desk and proceeded to cut the toes off his wool socks. They were too thick to squeeze into his dress shoes and would only cut his circulation off if he tried. That would leave him worse off than just wearing the thin dress socks he was wearing now. “Leggings,” Sean smiled as he held them up in the air. With a chuckle he said, “Louis Vuitton ain’t got nothin’ on me. Look at the nice big yellow stripe at the top!” Hannah laughed softly, but deep inside she was on the verge of crying. She believed what Sean had said in the conference room but didn’t even know where to start with her husband. How could she explain to him everything that was going on and would he even believe her? Where would they go? Both of their parents lived in California. Would she ever see them again? The endless questions swirled around in her head and she tried to force the tears down, but they came anyway.
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