by Ron Foster
America wasn’t always that way, and for older folks like Tina and Travis and the generation before them it wasn’t the world they had grown up or raised kids in anymore long before the grid went down. For the generations raised on violent video games, rap music and political correctness that could care less about the flag or patriotism, they found themselves on the losing side of trying to play the race card now as a means of coping with not receiving what they thought they deserved.
If you are not used to not having to organize anything other than influencing a criminal minded gang or protesting this or that you have no idea how to function in a world without rule of law other than trying to live by taking advantage of people even worse than a lot of people did before. The folks that will rally around the flag and country won’t stand for that sort of criminality to continue to occur in their neighborhoods, nor will they allow you take over their neighborhoods by force when the shooting back or aiming at folks becomes the norm after rules are lifted.
In a way, a mutual defense network or neighborhood watch force was the first community organization that people would ever join that centered on friends and neighbors living and working closely together. This would not be the first and only grass roots group of civic minded folks that sprang up historically up out of need in hard times. Vigilante justice, mob violence, confrontations with police and rioters you name it painted the world red and then people got too weak, sick or dead to be divisive and only those cooperating for the mutual good remained.
People did learn a bit more about their community as the Soro’s financed professional agitators didn’t appear in orchestrated protest and the call for calm over grievances took on a new meaning but it wasn’t enough.
The rats were literally coming out of the toilets in New York to eat. The roads coming out of the big cities were a hopeless snarl of traffic of abandoned cars and traffic jams as the desperate victims of modern societal collapse sought food and water in rural areas. Cutting off highway access to small towns or being guided through them by an armed escort had become a means of self preservation that was common for a time. As the collapse became worse it became more and more difficult to find able bodied people to man such barricades only the burned out cars remained often times as the only reminders these places ever pulled together to try to stave off the inevitable.
Before the grid went down we had ourselves unemployment that rivaled the Great Depression, Peoples generosity in charitable giving and the increased needs of society had already been depleting the coffers and closing many food banks before the first household light bulb was extinguished by a crazy man in North Korea.
A lot of people did give some food away at first to try to help others less fortunate than themselves. But hardly anything at all was given to anyone once it became well known no food or water or fuel aid would be forthcoming and most likely ever again from the state and Federal governments. There was still a substantial amount of elderly who had survived the great depression around as well as all those generations remembered stories they had once told called upon to lend their experience and advice on how to get through this. Alas, most didn’t have any answers, The Great Depression was a different place in time and they were all old and over medicated to do anyone a whole lot of good.
The Great Depression changed the lives of people who lived and farmed on the Great Plains and in turn, this changed America and its citizen’s fortunes. The government programs that helped them to live through the 1930s changed the future of agriculture forever. Weather touched every part of life in the "Dirty 30s": dust, insects, summer heat and winter cold. A whole lot of farm families didn't have heat, light or indoor bathrooms then like people who lived in towns then but they knew how to get by and were used to these conditions. Many farm families raised most of their own food back in the day– eggs and chickens, milk and beef from their own cows, and vegetables from their gardens. Finding anyone that did that before the grid was down as more than an occasional hobby was few and far between.
People who grew up back during the Depression said, "No one had any money. We were all in the same boat." Neighbors helped each other through hard times, sickness, and accidents. Farm families got together with neighbors at school programs, church dinners, or dances. Children and adults found ways to have fun for free – playing board games, listening to the radio, or going to outdoor movies in town. Thing is, most folks didn’t even know there neighbors these days and the only thing they had in common with or shared with strangers was the lack of knowledge in how to farm or take care of themselves in a survival situation.
Now days no one had a sense of community, any useable money, a means of self reliance or anything else for that matter but the desperation bred of starvation. A lot of innocent casual encounters didn’t go well at all and suspicion, jealousy and hate were the prevailing emotions as well as the occurrence of justifiable or otherwise thievery and it’s often times fatal consequences.
There was no time to learn agrarian skills or animal husbandry and those that once supported such a lifestyle were stretched very thin. Mechanical farming with chemical fertilizers is far different than dig in the ground with a shovel gardening.
Then there was amongst all this disharmony mother nature’s definite lack of cooperation and understanding when it came to weather and other things. The planet was in solar minimum and Travis and Tina known a hard winter was coming. For these reasons and many more they thought it was doubtful Carl would find anything more than more misery over at Smileyville but someone had to go and find out.
“Well no use on us speculating too much about if we can move over there or not yet, let’s just work on what we got in the here and now we got to deal with until he gets back tells us something positive or negative.” Travis said.
“Well you have been talking about us breaking the bug out bags down to something smaller and lighter for some time. We can work on that and talk about your thoughts on where we might be ending up going and why and try to finalize that decision making a bit. I am like you and feel kind of trapped here, still I like having all our stuff around us even though I come to believe in your prepper adage about “the more knowledge we know the less we need to carry” the last time we went ultra light hiking and camping.” Tina said loving to organize things.
“Oh hell I have created a monster in you Tina! I can’t believe you want to play in those backpacks some more. You know me, I love doing prepper crap but I always get a sense of dread approaching those bug out backpacks and bags. I am glad they are loaded to the max for car transport though because we will have some things with us that have become very hard or impossible to find, still I catch myself daily wishing we had something or another from back at our own home to use here.” Travis said eying the gear they had stacked up against the hall wall.
“I know what you mean, I do the same thing. The first thing I miss of course is all the storage food but we don’t even have all of our camping gear. I am sorry I rushed you so when packing up to get here but I am glad you grabbed that bit of extra prepper stuff to bring along with us.” Tina said admitting Travis’ preoccupation with prepping had sure paid off this time. His insisting on throwing a bit more of “Just in Case” supplies into the already over packed car trunk had been their ace up their sleeves in much more food than they would have had on hand otherwise.
Travis himself had remarked previously that even though he often kidded Tina about the amount of the stuff she always insisted upon bringing on a camping trip in all those tightly packed plastic totes she had organized so thoughtfully he was really grateful for those also. Those things had practically everything in them from handiwipes, diarrhea medicine, every condiment known to man, sewing kit, vitamins, bug spray, suntan oil you name it and enough extras for possible borrowing strangers and less prepared campers.
Travis would remark they didn’t need all that stuff all the time to just go camping for three days and she would retort why he needed to drag all that extra prepping gear a
long with what probably was a months worth of emergency food and ammo he had stashed here and there.
Tina knew to a T what she had in those camping totes but except for her bug out bag never knew what Travis had managed to sneak in and drag along for prepper supplies. It was always changing getting modified, repacked, and added too or getting moved to some extra duffle or olive drab gym bag. This was his hobby, his beloved pastime and he had been preparing and honing skills sort of as his life’s work to pass on to others and benefit himself and his family.
How he had managed to divide up supplies into what he considered operational weight minimums was one thing but it always amazed her how he could figure out how to somehow carry that much food around in his backpack and two survival bags. He wasn’t an over the top survivalist she knew, he was what you might call a “Prepper’s Prepper.” An innovator packrat of sorts in the preparedness community that liked to share new insights or realizations about true survival and practiced what he preached.
Being a "prepper" is a misunderstood as well as a widely thrown around term that encompasses everything from one who is prepared for doomsday to one sort of over prepared for loss of power after a hurricane, Being prepared doesn't mean having a bunker; mountains of food, ammo and gas masks, it could be as simple as being prepared for a power outage, or losing your job, or being isolated or cut off from society for a extended period of time.
Travis was just seasoned at doing this sort of thing and experience had showed him that his penchant for wanting to “expect the unexpected” often times paid off. particularly when it came to extra long term storage food. Still it irked Tina no end he insisted on bringing their winter “bug out” clothes with them to sunny hot Florida when going on vacation and be bitching about her wardrobe bags and piles of vacation and gear. The arguments went sort of like this…
Travis would say “Hey! If we get stranded in Florida from one of those several long term disastrous events you fuss about me spending too much time talking to my internet prepper buddies about we are going to need those winter clothes in a few months!
Tina “It’s the middle of summer and if it wasn’t for me thinking about the sun blocker you would be looking like a boiled lobster in a few days! You can remember to make sure to drag around military surplus winter gear for us both but getting you to remember to pick up some aloe vera for sunburns or Tums for acid indigestion from eating or drinking too much falls off your radar screen.”
Travis “That’s why I got you sweetie, besides we can buy what we need there now, no sense going broke buying crap before we get there and besides if we did in the one in a million chance of getting stuck there because of a grid down disaster where would we find good winter clothing in Florida grid down? Its just one small extra bag…
Travis knew from his military experience what it was like to live 24 hours a day without any heat and just the clothes you have on your back and swore it would never happen to him again without being prepared for the cold no matter where he was at. Military surplus was some of the best cold weather gear you could get and he bought it cheap and dang near new condition and didn’t worry about it getting lost or stolen riding around with them.
Tina “You’re always talking about me spending money on what I consider necessary things for us or me but I guarantee your “prepper hobby” costs five times more and probably won’t be ever used.
And so the banter went on and they took care of each others shortcomings or excesses in their own ways over the years. Everyone preps differently, everyone sees needs differently, compromise and love and appreciation of each other saw them through every time something was lacking in their lives so far however. It was this strong bond of talking things out, not going to bed mad or starting up an argument again first thing in the morning when a disagreement arose that insured they would be survivors in many ways.
Nibbling on dwindling food stocks and rationing themselves in this current disaster became a bone of contention with them though. Tina was one of those people that studied and used supplements like vitamins and herbs on a daily basis, Travis was the type that despised such overdosing in hopes of health and was hard pressed to take even a aspirin but wavered to her wisdom at times if he considered it common sense or unknown knowledge meant to benefit them both.
The current pissing contest going on was centered around whether or not to get into the survival tabs yet. For those that don’t know about these wonderful unique food supplements inspired by mans race to space and NASA research let me bring you up to speed.
The Survival Tabs are a convenient, compact, lightweight, lifesaving food ration for any emergency. They are completely nutritious, have a 10+ year shelf life and are absolutely delicious. Just let them melt in your mouth...you'll probably chew them up...they are so irresistibly good-tasting! "
10+ Year Shelf Life
100% of the U.S. RDA of 15 Essential Vitamins & Minerals
The Best Possible Nutrition in the Smallest Possible Volume
The Survival Tabs will keep you alive and moving for months at a time, on the amount you can carry in your backpack.
Now Travis as you are reminded isn’t a fix in a bottle kind of guy or someone who watches their vitamin uptake much but being a practical prepper saw the value in these vitamin and mineral packed things right off. Hell yea, lightweight packable protein and vitamins he wanted to know more and adapt them to his prepper purposes of reducing bulk.
That you could actually live on these things he was always dubious about and it went against his grain to think of himself in an Orwellian world of taking a pill to survive but he did his research and declared them “cool and indeed practical.”
Tina was very impressed with them when she read the following in their websites literature.
“One amazing fact about our survival tabs is that they can be assimilated into the blood stream within 5 minutes of consumption. About 97% of the protein contained in survival tabs are absorbed and made ready to be used for the replacement and repairs of damaged body tissues and fluids.”
Now Tina was all on board with those things also after reading that and Travis was known to not eat or have bad nutritional practices in her opinion and that man sure could customize himself over doing and burning the candle at both ends upon occasion doing gardening, wood gathering etc. plus his other work. However long term storage vitamins were in his preps and she hadn’t even known of them until he got on a roll about how many bottles of stuff he figured she had that were expired around the house and questioned if those supplements she hoarded could do more harm than good if taken.
When the poo had hit the fan and the grid went down he had become it seemed to her just as big of an advocate for supplements as she was with his thoughts on needing some of her stash. However with the two supplementing as one now her supply got used up quickly and she was jonesing for that what Travis called her” health crutch” and a argument was going on the neighbors overheard as they were coming over to discuss tomorrows mission of going to Smileyville in the morning.
“Now look Tina, we agreed what food is in the bug out bags stays in the bug out bags until we leave here for good. We can’t count on what we find on the trail and you can’t attribute every ache or pain you got you got now because of a lack of something you want to fix with a vitamin pill!” Travis was heard saying.
“You asshole! Just because you don’t want to understand that we would be healthier if we spaced out those food tabs now than later to endure the rigors of the trail you want to take don’t mean I can last that long to go on that long trip if we don’t use them for better health now. I thought you said that’s why you all of the sudden wanted to take my vitamins that you always belittled me for and now that they are gone your back to hoarding and saying they are unnecessary.” Tina said with a loud crash the ease dropping neighbors took wrongly as her throwing something in his direction.
“I never said general nutrition was unimportant, I got about as much walking around sense in th
at regard as you do. All I was saying was we need to save them tabs for when we get sick or traveling, besides them things ain’t your regular daily vitamins. Those are more like drinking the last two six packs of ensure we had left over before your parents didn’t need them anymore and we agreed we needed to keep up our strength because we were missing meals and short on food. I wanted to save those also by the way remember? We both knew times would be getting harder and that concentrated nutrition was pricy and not something we access anymore.” Travis said remembering that decision as well as what Tina thought should stay in the bug out bags.
Now a bug out bag or BOB is only supposed to contain the gear that one would need to survive for 72 hours if evacuating from a disaster but somewhere along the way it seems people start designing them to last even longer and make some kind of long term survival kit with all kinds of giz whizzs. This is usually when things get out of hand and they end up with so much gear they couldn’t possibly carry it in a backpack and get delusional notions about bugging out to the woods. Don’t think for a minute that you should pack your bug out bag with as many items as possible. In fact, Travis thought you should check your bag for any non-essential items with a large weight-to-space ratio and remove them. Ideally, a bug out bag should weigh about 15% of your body weight, assuming you’re in decent shape. 20% of your body weight should be the absolute maximum.
Eventually compromises were made between Travis and Tina and one bottle of survival tabs was allocated as an every few days supplement for their diets. Everyone had their meetings and unanimously agreed to Carl going to find out about the peanuts and there was nothing to do but go to sleep and wait on a new day.