Emergency

by Neil Strauss

  Before flying back to St. Kitts, I called Wendell Lawrence, who’d originally urged me to move there. I told him about the rescue work I’d been doing and asked if there was any way I could be of help to the island. He put me in touch with the National Emergency Management Agency, the St. Kitts equivalent of FEMA.

  And so, after waiting for what would be the last time in the St. Kitts tourist lane to clear immigration, I returned to the Caribbean—not just to take advantage of its citizenship program, but to be useful.

  As soon as I touched Kittitian soil, I took a taxi straight to Market Street. So much time had passed since I’d last seen Maxwell that I made the mistake of trying to engage him in small talk. “Any luck working less and golfing more?”

  “No.” The word seemed laden by the weight of the world. “Unlike you, I have to work all day—not just sunbathe and play tennis.”

  I don’t even play tennis.

  Maxwell started filling out the last of my paperwork. Every laborious action seemed like a message letting me know that he’d rather be golfing. But this time I didn’t care. It didn’t matter if he was happy, sad, friendly, mean, or illiterate. He’d done his job. And though he’d done it slowly, perhaps that was just the pace of life down here.

  As he handed me a manila envelope, my heart filled with the warm, expansive feeling that Greg from the Sovereign Society told me he’d felt after leaving New Zealand. It was as if a large white building had been lifted off my chest.

  I thought of Tomas and the 4,000 immigrants receiving their American citizenship. This was my ceremony. Though it was slightly less august, it was no less poignant. I shook Maxwell’s hand, thanked him, and then, in a careless burst of optimism, invited him to dinner to celebrate.

  “I’m exhausted,” was his reply.

  I left the office clutching the manila envelope as if it were a newborn child I didn’t want to drop. The street was dense with the sounds of soca, the smell of fresh-baked bread, the bustle of teenagers on their way to this or that street corner. I wanted to find someplace quiet to open the envelope. Somewhere it wouldn’t get snatched out of my hands.

  Nearby, the tight cluster of colorful buildings and cramped shops parted to reveal a cathedral. I walked down the street and entered the dark church. Aside from the attendant at the door, I was the only person there. I sat in a pew, beneath an organ with pipes as thick as my torso. And, with Jesus staring down at me from the cross, I undid the clasp on the envelope.

  The first document I saw was a white piece of paper, which I pulled out to examine:

  The sight of it took my breath away. Especially when, beneath the thuglike photo I’d taken over a year ago in Koreatown, I read the words CITIZEN OF SAINT CHRISTOPHER AND NEVIS.

  I reached back into the envelope and grasped a thin booklet. A lump formed in my throat when I pulled it out:

  I opened it, my excitement building to a climax, Jesus craning his neck behind me:

  There it was. Finally. My name and mugshot on a non-U.S. passport. Even secret agents had to forge their documents. This was legitimate. As Wendell had said, my future wife and children would be Kittitians too.

  As I stared at it, I realized that a second citizenship was no longer something I needed, but something I wanted. Nationality mattered a lot less to me than it had two years earlier. I had survived just fine with a knife in the forests of America. And I’d survive just fine with a knife in the jungles of St. Kitts.

  Just to make sure I could get by on the island without help from the outside world, I found a local nature expert named Kriss, who helped me get to know the local plants and wildlife, which consisted mostly of monkeys and, ironically, goats.

  Though I worried I’d have buyer’s remorse after such a long, costly journey to get such a little booklet, I was elated. I had a beautiful apartment on a beautiful beach in a beautiful country. I was an American. I was a Kittitian. The world was that much more open to me.

  Besides keeping the passport as a backup in case of emergency—which didn’t seem so paranoid when three weeks later, during a terrorist attack in Mumbai, eyewitnesses reported that gunmen specifically asked for people with American and British passports—I already had three immediate uses for it. First I booked a trip to Cuba. Then I called back the banks that had turned me down. They might not want to do business with Americans, but there was nothing wrong with doing business with Kittitians. And, finally, I took Spencer up on the advice he gave me when I first met him and started a publishing company, luring my first authors with an offer to work in my compound in St. Kitts.

  By compound, I meant my apartment with a stockpile of supplies.

  Unfortunately, the first author I signed died of heart failure before making it to the island. He did, however, live six years beyond the average American life expectancy. His name was Larry Harmon, but he was better known as Bozo the Clown, one of television’s most popular children’s characters.

  Even with the makeup off, he was the happiest person I’d ever met. His secret to longevity, he told me one night over dinner, his face glowing with enthusiasm, was “Just keep laughing.”

  Along with my passport, guns, water, bug-out bag, medical supplies, a loving family, a healthy diet, and exercise, I promised him I would add laughter to my survival stockpile.

  A good soldier is always prepared.

  Nearly five hundred Kittitians stuffed themselves into Sugar’s, a local bar and pool hall, to watch the 2008 U.S. election. Among them was a small smattering of foreigners, including Katie, Spencer, and myself.

  “I like it here,” Katie chirped as someone handed her an Obama pin. “Everywhere you look, it’s really lush and green. There are little monkeys. And the people are nice. I feel safe.”

  I agreed. I’d come to trust her instincts.

  We had voted by mail, then flown to St. Kitts. Spencer was worried that if Barack Obama lost, there would be race riots at home. And though I didn’t worry about unlikely events like that anymore—especially since I had a ham radio, a network, and experience to keep me informed and out of the danger zone—it was a good excuse for my first trip to the island as a citizen. Judging by the enthusiasm at Sugar’s, where Kittitians wore Obama shirts and sang, “Hey hey hey, good-bye,” every time McCain lost a state, people would probably be just as angry here also.

  As CNN blared on a bass-heavy sound system more accustomed to soca and reggae music, I thought back to the election four years ago, when the idea of leaving the country first entered my mind. And I hoped that this time we would redeem ourselves in the eyes of the world—and of history.

  As midnight neared and Obama’s electoral votes began to surge, bartenders handed out plastic glasses and filled them with complimentary champagne. Then, suddenly, a sound like that of a record slowing down filled the bar. The televisions shut off, the lights flickered out, and the room went silent.

  Another blackout had struck.

  Fortunately, this time, I was prepared.

  I switched on a flashlight and found Spencer and Katie. “We can go watch the election back at my, um, compound. I have a generator.”

  On the way home we took a detour along the Caribbean, past the open-air beach bar where I’d first made the decision to buy the apartment that would give me citizenship. We noticed it had a generator running and CNN blasting, so we decided to watch the results over rum punch on the beach. If you’re prepared and don’t panic, I’d come to realize, most of life’s emergencies are merely inconveniences.

  When the forty-fourth president of the United States was announced at midnight and the crowd at the bar burst into applause, a wave of relief spread through the three of us. It felt as if we’d been holding our breath for eight years, waiting to exhale. It’s not that George Bush was a bad guy. There are no bad guys. Just people who are bad at their jobs.

  In a way, I was even grateful to him. If it weren’t for his administration, I wouldn’t be in a second home on a moonlit Caribbean beach, with a completely new outlook o
n life and my place in it. St. Slim Jim, patron saint of dual citizens and rescue workers.

  I just hoped the changing of the guard in America wasn’t too late. As the gaping hole at Ground Zero had been reminding us for the last seven years, it’s easy to tear something down. It’s difficult to resurrect it.

  “There’s still hope for America after all,” a celebrating Kittitian in a bright red shirt proclaimed nearby. There was that dangerous word again: hope. I was reminded of the party in the White House on the night we safely entered this millennium, when we expected the best but weren’t prepared for the worst. This time around, not only was I prepared, but I’d learned that hope is a passive emotion. It’s the last survival skill of the powerless. In the face of the unknown, I prefer action.

  That’s why, when I’m not in St. Kitts, most days you’ll find me in Los Angeles, doing search and rescue as SR14 with C.E.M.P., training with the Disaster Communications Service as ham radio operator KI6SJC, working local medical events as EMT number B1892201, running mass-casualty incident drills with CERT battalion 5—or milking goats in my backyard.

  Those who run from death, like the survivalists in their bunkers and the permaculturists in the forest, also run from life. As an EMT, as a C.E.M.P. member, as a latecomer to the world of outdoor adventure, I’d discovered that the opposite is also true: those who run to death also run to life.

  When you walk to the very edge of the abyss, and you lean over and peer as deep into the blackness as you possibly can, and maybe you even lower a hand into it and pull someone out who’s not supposed to be there, that’s when you feel alive.

  I used to wonder if Kurt Saxon, Tom Brown, Bruce Clayton, and all the other survivalists I met ever regretted dedicating their lives to a skill set they never had to use. But now I know the answer. They use those skills every day. Because after three years of searching and learning and accumulating, I’ve learned that it isn’t actually survival these skills bring. It’s peace of mind.

  I now know that I can take care of myself and my loved ones. But until the day comes when I have to do that, I’m going to be taking care of everybody else.

  EPILOGUE

  She was a nineteen-year-old student. She sang, played piano, and went to church every Sunday. Today, there was a C.E.M.P. call-out to Northridge, where an SUV sped through a red light and hit her as she was crossing the street.

  Her body flew several dozen feet through the air before landing face-first on the ground. The jewelry she was wearing clattered across the intersection. The artwork she was carrying scattered in the wind.

  She seemed talented. She seemed smart. She seemed generous.

  She never had a chance.

  It could have just as easily been me. It could have just as easily been you. But it was her.

  Tomorrow, though, is another day.

  THE PARTING WORDS OF THE FISHWIFE SIDUR TO GILGAMESH:

  “When the heavenly gods created human beings, they kept everlasting life for themselves and gave us death. So, Gilgamesh, accept your fate. Each day, wash your head, bathe your body, and wear clothes that are sparkling fresh. Fill your stomach with tasty food. Play, sing dance, and be happy both day and night. Delight in the pleasures that your wife brings you, and cherish the little child who holds your hand. Make every day of your life a feast of rejoicing! This is the task that the gods have set before all human beings. This is the life you should seek, for this is the best life a mortal can hope to achieve.”

  EXTRA CREDIT

  There was so much I did during the last three years to prepare myself that there wasn’t room for all of it in this book. In fact, there isn’t even room for complete endnotes. So, for the research-inclined, I’ve compiled a list of sources for the preceding facts and information. You can find it online at www.fliesian.com, where I’ve also posted the contents of my bug-out bag in case you want to build one yourself. If I’ve left anything out—of either the bibliography or the bug-out bag—email me at stslimjim@gmail.com.

  As for the other people who contributed to my survival skill set but weren’t mentioned elsewhere in the book, I’d like to single out a few of them here.

  First of all, thanks to Lance Harris, who not only helped me get my bulletproof vest, my California guard card, and my exposed weapons permit, but spent long nights talking to me about building the perfect team of people to survive an apocalypse. “Money doesn’t matter,” he told me the day we met. “People can store and save all they want. But when they meet a guy like me in a doomsday scenario, I’m going to take it all.” And I thought, “I want to make sure this guy’s on my side.”

  Thanks to Sid Yost of Amazing Animal Productions (and Trevor and Juliet) for helping me find such a well-dispositioned goat—and for the hands-on experience of learning to survive wild animal attacks. I’m sure I’ll never have the opportunity again to feed a bear a donut, put my arm in a lion’s mouth, or get my face licked by a wolf.

  Thanks to Jon Young, who helped me learn nature awareness not just through his Kamana program and his bird-call expertise but through directions to his house like, “turn left at the hill covered with Monterey pine trees.”

  Thanks to Roger Gallo, who wrote Escape From America a decade ago and gave me plenty of low-budget options for escape. “I would say there’s a number of Central American nations, beginning with Belize, where a person could go in and literally live off the land or the ocean,” he began. “You also have, with varying degrees of social freedom, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Panama. Chile is getting expensive, but there are other nations on the west coast of South America that are still reasonable: Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, where there are artist expat havens that many people don’t know about. And in the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic is a bargain.”

  Then there’s Jason Hadley, the first person I dared to meet from the Survivalist Boards, who kindly came over and showed me the contents of his bug-out bag, which were an inspiration, especially the pocket containing barter items like coffee, tobacco, and tampons. And Tom Kier, who taught me the credit-card knife and pain resistance; as well as ace handyman Phil Bakalis, who helped build my goat shelter and chicken coop.

  Thanks to Gordon West for helping me get my Technician class license, introducing me to the magic of ham radio, and keeping the spirit of amateur broadcasting alive and thriving.

  Thanks also to AJ Draven, for teaching me Krav Maga every Monday evening; David MacGregor of Sovereign Life, for a clear understanding of the nebulous world of the PTs; Nighthawk for the Tom Brown tracker knife and military consulting; those-who-shall-not-be-named in government intelligence for helping me confirm some of the information in this book; Simon Talbot and Captain Don for the boat know-how; Steve McGowan, Robert Drake, and Jim Vanek for the gyrocopter expertise; Sergeant Holcomb for the helicopter help and the advice to “think like an Indian”; Kate Murphy for being my mentor at C.E.M.P.; Sazzy Lee Varga for helping me get around goat-zoning ordinances; Mark Gallardo at Gun World for the patience; Rafik at St. Christopher Club for taking me to the killer bees; and Victor for helping me recover from them.

  The thanks continue for Jeff Graham of Kern Rokon for helping me get started on the bike; Dessi Quito for the motorcycle escape; the staff at the L.A. Ranger Station for putting up with the phone calls; Jeanne O’Donnell at the L.A. County Office of Emergency Management; Marie at the Canadian Embassy; Alissa Morales at Los Angeles County Health Services; Fred Mehr in the Hazardous Materials Unit of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services; and Kevin Reeve, who provided information used in the dog-fighting, restraint-escaping, lock-picking, and car-chasing illustrations.

  Reeve also taught me another important piece of survival information that I’d previously botched. “The secret to peeing in plastic water bottles,” he told me after I saw him sneaking into an alley with a water bottle one evening, “is to push down with your thumb on top of your dick to create a air pocket. If you make a tight seal, you’re screwed.”


  Above all, I’d like to thank—and definitely apologize to—Kristine Harlan (known to the people she’s suspicious of simply as Agent 99) for helping to source gyrocopter pilots, gun collectors, goat breeders, radio clubs, FEMA experts, and all manner of things that will make her never want to assist with research for me again, though I hope she does.

  Thanks to Cliff Dorfman, Kelly Gurwitz, and Grace Adago, who patiently listened to me read the entire book over the phone and provided a tireless stream of sage advice. For four layers of fact-checking (which I hope was enough), thanks to Ben Scott, Ray Coffey, Alex Willging, and Noelle Garcia. And thanks to my crack advance-reading team: Tim Ferriss, Jackie Dawn, Jonathan Glickman, Greg Fellows, Anna David, Ben Wyche, Katie Field, Don Diego Garcia, Dean Jackson, Stephanie Decker, Stephen Miller, Jeffrey Ressner, Thomas Scott McKenzie, Ben Rolnik, Kaia Van Zandt, Bravo, Tynan, Ghita Jones, Todd, D the R, and M the G.

  Thanks to my lucubrating and sempiternal editor, Cal Morgan, and the other deadline survivalists at HarperCollins, for a long and continuing relationship, particularly Carrie Kania, Lisa Gallagher, Brittany Hamblin, Alberto Rojas, Kolt Beringer, and Kyran Cassidy. Thanks, as always, to Ira Silverberg, my trying-not-to-be-snobby-yet-growing-more-snobby-by-the-year agent, and also to Ruth Curry. To Todd and Andrea Gallopo, Jeremy DiPaolo, Danielle Marquez, Bahia Lahoud, and the Meat and Potatoes design dream team for their heroic work. To Bernard Chang, whose wrists will hopefully forgive me for this. To Anthony Bozza, for starting the publishing company with me. And to Liam Collopy, Shari Smiley, Michael Levine, Peter Micelli, Gregory McKnight, Ramin Komeilian, Pedro Gonzalez, Peter Meindertsma, Omar Anani, and Julian Chan for sundry services rendered.

  Note that the sequence of a small number of events, such as the order in which some lessons were taught in the classes, has been rearranged for the sake of continuity. In addition, some of the identifying information in the documents included in this book has been changed to prevent identity theft. Not that I don’t trust you, of course.