Emergency

by Neil Strauss

  “The air-conditioning isn’t working.”

  “That’s because I’m doing the three-day test now.”

  “It’s too hot, baby. I’m going to Kendra’s house.”

  “It’s cooling off. I just opened all the doors.” I don’t want her to leave. I don’t want to be alone. “Stay with me tonight. It’ll be um, fun.”

  “Can I still use my curling iron?”

  “I can put the generator near the bathroom, and we can use extension cords.”

  “What about going to the bathroom?”

  “I have a little toilet I set up outside. Want to see it?”

  “Does it flush?”

  “No, it’s just a little bag.”

  “I’m going to Kendra’s.”

  I write on my troubleshooting list: “Get a more adventurous girlfriend.”

  DAY TWO

  2:30 P.M.

  I’ve been so busy today I haven’t been able to write until now. Living without conveniences takes time. I had to clean out the refrigerator and eat just about everything that could possibly rot. Then I gathered wood, built a fire, made soup, cooked fried chicken strips from the freezer, borrowed more washing water from the neighbors, cleaned the dishes and the grill, and added gas to the generator.

  It would be a lot of work doing this for a four-person family. It seems that almost everything we call modern—everything we think separates us from previous generations—serves only a small number of purposes: to help us avoid pain, minimize work, and/or save time. Otherwise, we’re not that much different from our primitive ancestors.

  As soon as I finish lunch, my stomach cramps. There’s no denying my body this time. Maybe the chicken was bad. I can barely untie the knot on the garbage bag fast enough.

  The cardboard throne is surprisingly stable under my weight. And there’s actually something pleasant about taking a dump while sitting in the sun. It’s like being at a nudist beach. I can even get a tan at the same time.

  If you ever see me with golden-brown skin but white marks in the shape of elbows on my knees, you’ll know what I’ve been doing.

  I write on my troubleshooting list: “Get Imodium. Just in Case.”

  7:00 P.M.

  When night falls, I shut the doors to trap the heat in, bring all the tools inside, replace the batteries in my lights and flashlights, fill the lanterns with kerosene, and build a fire for dinner.

  I take the last of my mostly defrosted fish out of the freezer, gut them, and stuff them with spices, lemon, and onion. Then I wrap them in tinfoil and place them on the coals of the fire. I’m reminded instantly of the fate of the rebellious Iraqi villagers that the marine at Tracker School told me about.

  While waiting for them to cook, I realize I need to shave. I bring a handheld mirror out to my dishwater container, set it up on the drying table, and start shaving.

  When I finish, Katie comes by. Hopefully, she won’t ask why my face smells like dish soap and chicken grease. She’s with her friends Kendra and Brittany. She never arrives alone, because she’s still too scared to drive.

  “Romantic,” Kendra says when she sees the house. Katie smiles. I can see this makes her more comfortable staying here. Maybe, instead of calling everything primitive, I can just call it romantic and get her more involved. Camping can be a romantic trip for two under the stars. Shooting guns can be a romantic fireworks display. Skinning an animal can be a romantic trip to the mall for a new coat.

  “I know you don’t like being here with the power out,” I say, “but I’m making a romantic dinner right now and I’d love it if you could join me.”

  “What are you making?”

  “I’m preparing some fish I caught.”

  “With your bare hands?”

  “With a fishing pole.”

  “What about the bathroom?”

  “If the bathroom toilet has one good flush left, it’s all yours.”

  I lead Katie and her friends outside to show them the fire pit. The fish seem finished, so I remove them from the coals and unwrap them. The skin peels off perfectly and the bone slips right out, leaving tender white meat that drops off in perfect flakes. Her friends stay to eat with us, and we feast on every bite in the glow of the lanterns.

  “This is like the perfect Friday night,” Kendra tells Katie. “You’re so lucky. I have to stop dating these club losers and find a real man.”

  “Try checking the Santa Monica pier for fishermen,” Katie replies.

  Despite the joke, she’s beaming ear to ear. She picks up a lantern and walks proudly to the bathroom.

  I hope it flushes.

  I cross “No fish” off my troubleshooting list.

  DAY THREE

  10:00 A.M.

  My refrigerator and freezer are nearly empty of solid food. No more eggs, no more meat except for two soggy chicken breasts I’m saving for dinner, not even an unmelted pad of butter. Though Katie wants cereal, the milk has gone bad. So I start a fire, heat up water, and make oatmeal instead.

  “If we had a goat, we’d have milk for the cereal,” Katie says, her head nestled on my chest as we curl up on the couch after breakfast. “It could be like our dog, but better than a dog, because it doesn’t go around biting things. It just chews on shoelaces.”

  Since that fateful afternoon with Mad Dog, Katie hasn’t stopped talking about Bettie. I suppose seeing her as a rug every time she enters the living room doesn’t help much.

  “I know,” I tell her. “I looked into it after going to that permaculture place, but I don’t know where to keep it.”

  “Maybe you could just keep it in the pool.”

  Farming is the first survival skill Katie has been supportive of. And I’ve actually found a person willing to sell me a beautiful Alpine goat. So maybe keeping it in the pool isn’t such a bad idea. After all, a live dairy goat—perhaps paired with a male for mating—will be better than a whole larder of canned food WTSHTF. And maybe it will help ease my conscience and fulfill the nurturing obligations of the circle of life that Mad Dog mentioned.

  I cross “Repair and fill pool” off my troubleshooting list.

  My neighbors are going to kill me.

  1:00 P.M.

  With Katie acting as a lookout, I take a covert plunge in the neighbor’s pool in lieu of a shower, then dip into the rations for lunch—peanut butter, Nutella, and graham crackers. Afterward, Katie and I make love on the couch. It’s the sixth time we’ve done it since last night. I could get used to this.

  5:00 P.M.

  Katie wants to make s’mores. I like that she’s getting into the spirit of the test. We walk along the road together and gather twigs and dead leaves. I teach her how to build a fire, and we roast marshmallows on sticks together.

  Since the fire’s already going, I decide to make the last of my perishable food. I teach Katie—who’s never cooked anything in her life but Pop-Tarts—how to prepare and season the chicken breasts. Despite her fears of fire, raw chicken, and work, she tosses the meat on the grill and cooks it.

  “It’s all wet and gushy and gross,” she says.

  “Am I going to get a disease from this?” she asks.

  “I don’t want to burn myself,” she complains.

  But she sees the project through. And when she’s done, the chicken is soft and moist, with spices cooked deep into the meat. It pulls off the bone in scalloped shreds. It may be the best chicken we’ve ever had.

  Though I can’t wait to turn the power back on, I’m enjoying this. I was never able to understand how people could live happily in the past without electricity and modern conveniences. Now I understand. They got along just fine.

  I cross “Get a more adventurous girlfriend” off my troubleshooting list.

  7:00 P.M.

  I think of all the half-empty soda cans I’ve thrown in the trash, all the half-finished plates of food I’ve scraped into the disposal, and all the times I’ve said “no, thanks” when a waitress asked if I wanted a doggie bag. Now that my ref
rigerator and freezer are devoid of anything edible and every sip of water and morsel of food has become precious, I’m ashamed of my wasteful past.

  I think of all the times I took long showers, left the lights on when I went out, ran water in the sink to cover up bathroom sounds, and maintained a house temperature of seventy-three degrees day and night. Thanks to this test, I’ve come to realize most of that consumption was completely unnecessary.

  But because all those resources are there, because they seem limitless, because they’re available at the press of a button or the flick of a switch, I—and most others—use them far too much.

  Perhaps the root of the energy crisis is not our wasteful habits, but the ease with which seemingly unlimited power, gas, and water are available to us. In a normal three days, with Katie and her sister at the house most nights, I use 531 gallons of water. This week, I’ve used just a gallon. In a normal three days, I burn 121 kilowatt hours of electricity. This week, all my electricity has come from a gallon and a half of gasoline. In a normal three days, I use 2.28 therms of gas. This week, all my heat has come from dead leaves, sticks, and a ball of jute.

  10:00 P.M.

  I search through my rations for a late-night snack. I’m starving. Most of what I find is crackers, trail mix, and some canned food. Nothing seems substantial enough.

  Then I notice my 9/11 safety bag in the living room and remember the box of MREs I’d also been talked into buying at the time. Supposedly they last seven years. And this just happens to be their seventh year.

  I open an MRE. There’s a packet of grape drink mix with absolutely no nutritional value, which I dump into a bottle of water to create some sort of weak Kool-Aid. The next package reads CRACKER, VEGETABLE ON IT. There’s also a tube of grape jelly in the envelope, which I assume goes on the cracker. Together, they taste pretty good—and, due to some feat of army engineering, don’t produce any crumbs.

  I’m beginning to think I can live off these—until I open the next package, which is marked CHICKEN STEW. I squeeze it into a bowl, and it sits there brown and chunky like dog food. But I trust the army corps of food engineers, so I take a bite. I don’t know if it’s spoiled, if it’s supposed to taste this bad, or if I need to heat it up or something.

  As I’m trying to force it down, there’s a knock on the door. It’s Katie’s sister, Grace, dropping by. As she sits down on the couch next to me, I notice she has a bag of takeout food in her hands.

  I watch as she removes an entire pineapple from the bag. She pulls off the top of the fruit, and the smell of delicious Thai cooking fills the room.

  “Do you want some?” she asks when she catches me staring at the steaming hot food she’s spooning out of the hollowed-out pineapple.

  “I can’t. That pineapple shouldn’t even be here. You’re ruining my disaster simulation.”

  “Just try some. We won’t tell anyone.”

  “I’m trying to see what it’s like to live in a world without takeout restaurants.”

  “You’re missing out.”

  “No, you are,” I say, and take a bite of my gruel, trying to repress the gag reflex that follows.

  I force the rest of the chicken stew down my throat, unwilling to let anything go to waste, then move on to dessert, which is a lemon pound cake that tastes surprisingly fresh after seven years in storage.

  I write on my troubleshooting list: “Buy new MREs.”

  11:00 P.M.

  Day three is coming to a close. Tonight or tomorrow, Tomas will come by and end the simulation. I feel like I’ve been on vacation, and I’m not looking forward to the phone calls, e-mails, and obligations waiting for me when I return to the plugged-in world.

  Not only have I learned a lot from what was basically a simple test, but it’s been one of the most romantic weekends Katie and I have ever had. We needed this.

  If there’s ever a citywide shutdown, I won’t look at it as an inconvenience anymore, but as an opportunity.

  DAY FOUR

  9:30 A.M.

  “Baby.” Katie is nudging me awake. “I want to shower.”

  Tomas should have been here by now. I check the door to see if he’s left a note. Nothing.

  I want to just turn the gas, water, and electricity on, but I must follow the rules. So I eat dry cereal, wash it down with warm water, turn on the generator, and write.

  “When do I get to shower?”

  “When Tomas comes.”

  “I’m going to Kendra’s.”

  12:30 P.M.

  I sit listlessly on the couch. I’ve gone through some beef jerky and tuna fish, and now I’m eating peanut butter and graham crackers again. I feel like life is passing me by. I could continue like this for weeks more, but I’m beginning to miss another thing the survivalists don’t stockpile: variety.

  There are no channels, and nothing’s on. There are no restaurants, and no specials of the day. There are no websites, and no new episodes of Homestar Runner.

  There’s just me, in my house, with my stuff.

  2:30 P.M.

  Still no sign of Tomas. I start writing a comprehensive list of supplies I’ll need to survive for a month, so I can keep stashes both here and in St. Kitts.

  Of course, now that people know I’m stockpiling, the first thing all my friends will probably do when there’s a disaster is run to my house.

  I suppose they’ll make an excellent source of protein.

  Why do I keep making these jokes? Is there a half-truth somewhere in them?

  I used to fear being the eaten. Now I fear being the eater.

  7:00 P.M.

  Still no sign of Tomas. I wish I could use my cell phone.

  I’m going to walk to his house if he doesn’t come soon. That’s fair.

  10:00 P.M.

  This isn’t fun anymore. Or romantic. It’s lonely and irritating.

  I have things to do, people to see, goats to order.

  DAY FIVE

  9:15 A.M.

  A loud, urgent knocking on the door wakes me.

  I walk downstairs to find Tomas, looking repentant.

  “Did you turn everything back on already?” he asks.

  “No. I was following the rules.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, is the emergency over?”

  “Yes. Sorry. It completely slipped my mind.”

  I hate him right now. But I’m also grateful for the lesson he accidentally taught me. It may be fun to have a vacation from modern conveniences, but it’s hell to live there.

  I write on my troubleshooting list: “Fire Tomas.”

  LAND

  WTSHTF, some people won’t have to worry about finding a bug-out location. If they don’t live in an isolated area already, they at least have a close relative living on a farm, raising a family in an outer suburb, or renting a summer retreat.

  But I come from a long line of committed urban dwellers. They live in the high-rises of Chicago, the working class boroughs of Boston, the hillside homes of San Francisco—basically everywhere you don’t want to be when the system collapses. Consequently, since restocking my supplies after my three-day test, I was well-prepared to bug in; but I still lacked a failsafe plan to bug-out.

  “If you’re going to live in the city, the key is getting out ahead of time,” said Kevin Reeve from urban evasion class when I called him for advice. “You need to keep your finger on the pulse and look for tripwires. If Israel attacked Iran, for example, I’d be on the next plane to St. Kitts. If you get stuck in L.A., your next best bet is to shelter in place. Bugging out would be your last resort.”

  On his next trip to California, Reeve took a few days off work to help devise my escape. Evidently, he meant what he said over dinner in Oklahoma City when he told me he’d be my network.

  Reeve and I spent the morning studying topographical maps of California, assessing the survival potential of dozens of lakes and reservoirs. Our goal was to choose three different locations and escape routes, so that no matter wh
at type of disaster struck, I’d have at least one getaway option.

  That afternoon we tested our first bug-out plan, and rode a motorcycle through the hills and fire roads to Malibu Lake thirty miles away. En route, we checked for possible obstacles, traffic choke points, and roads wide enough so that I could weave to avoid shooters.

  “This area actually has everything you need to survive,” Reeve informed me when we arrived at the lake. “There’s water, fish, edible plants, animal tracks, and yucca for cordage. You could hide in the cottonwoods here for weeks.”

  As we scouted the area, he plucked a yucca leaf and showed me how the pointy tip could be used as a needle to suture wounds. Then he picked up a stick and poked at a lump of nearby poo to see what type of animal had made it.

  “It’s composed of cereal,” he informed me. “Must be a dog.”

  I added poo reading to my survival to-do list.

  Then I scratched it out. Some skills were better left to the experts.

  AIR

  In search of a second, more remote bug-out option, I called Mad Dog for advice.

  “You need to get yourself an autogyro,” he said firmly, as if it were as essential as a good knife. “Then fly over all the shit rather than navigate through it. If you get an autogyro with pontoons, you can land on a mountain lake that has no road access. You could live there forever with just a seven-pound tent, a little fuel, an axe, a saw, and a fishing pole.”

  It sounded like the perfect way to isolate myself from the chaos and danger of a collapsing society. So I started looking into gyrocopters like this one:

  The problem was that gyrocopter kits cost between $10,000 and $30,000, and my survival expenses had already put me in debt. In addition, I had nowhere to store it, so I’d have to rent extra space somewhere. I inspected helicopters as well, and though they also seemed ideal for bugging out, a decent used one cost well over $150,000.

  So I chose a more affordable option: United Airlines. Obviously, a commercial jet wouldn’t be a feasible escape option WTSHTF, but for now, it was the quickest way to find a second bug-out location far from the smog of Los Angeles.

  To make sure I learned something from the experience, I gave myself a new test that probably would have killed me six months earlier: I decided to make sure I’d completely shed my addiction to the system and could survive three days in the wilderness with nothing but a knife and my wits to sustain me.