by Ron Foster
This article has been generously shared with SHTFplan readers by regular community contributor Be Informed
Randal personally considered that the only way you are going to get by long-term is with alliances and community support. You are going to have to defend yourself and band with others, even if you don’t like them much. People will start grouping up by characteristics they share and also by geographic communities to try to survive in a post SHTF world.
Randal had created his own little support group from his little piece of rural America and these new friends of his were not prepped too much extent. They wanted to be more prepared but finances prevented them from doing much stocking of provisions. Randal had given them some extra gear of his and they discussed how little there was to share food wise and made plans to revert to trapping, fishing and Randal’s enough for one but not enough for all canned stores for however long they could.
Mutual need and mutual desperation will have folks forming up in little tribes and he wasn’t in a position where the idea of a loner prepper had any chance of surviving by himself or with just one other. Besides, it was against his nature not to share and a man can’t live very long without human interaction and community efforts to recreate some form of society. In a world where civilization might be changed forever by some chaotic effect you had better know it’s better to face the apocalypse with friends or tribe members or whatever else you wanted to call them. Best to have gotten all you’re acquaintances or friends beforehand and be mentally checking out people for how they might act or react to something adverse. You have to have a sense of belonging to add value to life and service your soul. Surviving in numbers soon becomes necessary.
10
STORM FRONT
The ARkStorm warning had come blaring out loudly out of the speaker on Jack’s weather radio a little past midnight. He was glad the radio was battery driven because the power had gone off earlier and not comeback on. He mused to himself while dressing and going into action. First he had to call and wake up Mark and Nancy. There was more Food, kerosene lanterns, water, blankets, and firearms that needed to be carried to the upper level he needed help with. They had never considered the temperature dropping below freezing in this part of California a few days ago when it was predicted and had decided that Mark and Nancy should consider moving over to Jacks house the next day.
His mom’s place was one of those type buildings that had a single chimney double fireplace arrangement for the upstairs and downstairs. The men had only carried a small amount of wood upstairs because it was a pain to transport up the steps. By realizing the length of time they would be trapped by the water in a flood on the upper floors if they were lucky enough not get submerged made Mark question if they should have carried up more.
Weather reports said the torrential rain for the last week had caused a local river to have had already swept its way down the city streets closest to the river's bank and created low lying area water which measured at least two foot deep. Now it appeared that the electricity had finally failed and with no power, wood or natural gas burning stoves; fireplaces had again become the only heat source. Phone service had also come to an abrupt end Jack had found out when he tried his landline. Cell phones still worked for the moment though and he was very happy about that.
“Maybe we should have done as some other people did and moved to higher ground.” Nancy said as she stepped in the door of Jack`s house and closed her umbrella.
Her brother Mark followed her in immediately and began shrugging off an old army poncho.
“I got both of our Bug Out bags and a few clothes in here.” Mark said shrugging off a military surplus A.L.I.C.E. pack.
“That’s good but did you pack a “Shelter Bag?” also? You know that 99% of the time if you haven’t already bugged out, evacuees will end up in some kind of shelter. You will need your comfort stuff with you - blankets, personal pillow, and hygiene kit... stuff like that. Your regular BOBs are designed around the idea of a camping and woodlands living. They include things that FEMA won't allow into a shelter. Like guns and big knives. I am pretty sure you haven’t thought of a water proof cell phone bag to water proof a pocket pistol in case you might have to bury one temporarily or just to protect it.” Jack said to get them thinking in the right direction.
“Just one question. If you go into a FEMA shelter, can you just leave when you want? I was always under the impression they decide when it is "safe" for you to leave and if you go you can’t back in somewhere else. It's just a thought.” Mark said.
“You are correct. They don’t allow you to have outside visitors either. Its compound living for months at a time under their rules on the property you have to look forward to if you end up in an evacuation center. Everyone gets an identification card and you don’t leave the camp for any reason.
FEMA short term shelters are just like a homeless shelter. Your stuff is liable to grow legs and walk away if you are not on your guard. They are also full of desperate and poor people who had no place to go and no one to take them in. Not the kind of people I would associate with frankly and would rather go camping or find a friend or relative to stay with if possible.
“I cannot imagine anyone trying to bring a weapon into a FEMA shelter.” Nancy said not quite grasping what Jack was getting at.
“An emergency shelter, almost by definition, is going to suck. It’s a last-ditch effort to take care of people who lacked the resources and or brains to make a better plan, so it's going to be... less than optimal conditions. These are also known as shelters of last resort and who ever couldn’t or wouldn’t evacuate end up in them. FEMA and Red Cross will not allow any type of weapon in their facilities. This is why I have two bob's. The first is for those short term emergencies - weather, a chemical spill, etc.; something that would force me to leave and affects my immediate area. Now I wouldn't go to a shelter, more than likely either a relative or a hotel is where I would head to in those types of event. The second is for TEOTWAWKI and contains all my survival crap.” Jack replied clarifying for Nancy the need for different items for different conditions.
“Yeah I remember that during Katrina bags and people were searched on entry and exit to shelters, using physical inspection and metal detectors.” Mark declared.
“With all of that flooding they are now predicting from this weather front when it hits Louisiana I hope we don’t see new news clips of "the Astrodome 2, the nightmare returns". Jack said meaningfully.
“Randal did a post on his theory that the 72-hour Emergency Kit, 72-hour Bug Out Bag, or Bail Out Bag or whatever you want to call it is obsolete. He said he was now convinced that the 5 or 7 day Bug Out Bag is the way to go. Hurricane Katrina was a huge lesson to the American preparedness community. We watched while a lot people struggled, died, and became victims. Our financial situation here in the U.S. is crumbling. Programs are being cut, resources running low, and politicians don’t ever think a disaster can happen to us or they might not care. Either way help will be a long way off from three days in his experiences in living through a few disasters. Even if your Bug Out Location is only two days away by car, running into unforeseen problems could extend that trip. For those who might have to flee on foot, vehicles, and boats having a 5 to 7 day bag might extend some of these individuals’ lifespan and comfort considerably. Having more is a lot better than having less especially in a disaster situation. Like many people say: "It’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it."
“Wow there is a lot more to this prepper stuff than I thought. If you lose everything what do you end up with?” Nancy said distractedly.
“You need to prep your mind as well so if you are ever in a situation where you lose everything you got a positive mentality. @MorningMayan put it beautifully when she said you would still have the mainstays of life. Trees, beauty and love and the understanding that Logic and reason through unity will overcome any adversity is a helpful mindset. Of course you will still have governments
and criminal elements who want to usurp god’s abundance but through unity of purpose and mind you can eventually overcome that also.” Jack stated.
11
When the Levee Breaks
Sometime during the night the levee had unpredictably broken leaving Mahmoud and Michael stranded in the emergency center. True to their vows to stay until the last minute monitoring the flood levels they had gotten themselves trapped by trying to perform this duty. The boat they were supposed to have relied on had washed over still attached to the chained trailer and was useless.
“I am afraid escape is impossible now." Michael said watching as the cold icy water continued to rise almost as if by magic. Michael and Mahmoud had gone down to the lower level earlier that morning and found the water to be almost two feet deep inside the building. There had been cries that had come through the night from neighboring buildings. The others who had opted to stay in the area were communicating with each other by a series of yells that went up periodically.
There was a faint tapping noise on the windows as the rain had changed over to sleet. The sound echoed hollowly and eerily in the room where the two had taken refuge.
From their perch they could see a huge wall advancing with incredible rapidity down the diagonal street as another levee broke and started a mudslide. It was not recognizable as water; it was a dark mass in which seethed houses, freight cars, trees, and animals. As this wall struck broadside downhill from them, they saw their favorite café crushed like an eggshell before their eyes, and then saw it disappear in the swirling waters.
It was perfectly awful for them to see the people sweeping by on portions of their homes and fragments of all kinds, and with scarcely a hope of escape, entirely unable to steer their crafts to safety Many of them were swept into eternity; some were praying, some weeping and wailing and some cursing Emergency officials urged people not to walk, ride or drive through flood waters, as this is the main cause of death and injury during floods
In low-lying suburbs only rooftops and the tops of trees remained visible. Whenever the rain clears, search and rescue teams are ready to deploy in what Mahmoud described as a "very gruesome" task.
"I think we will all be shocked by what they will find," Michael said overwhelmed with their plight as well that of others he saw dying before his eyes.
“I hope somebody will get around to finding us soon, but I am not counting on it.” Mahmoud said worriedly.
“We shouldn’t get much more flooding here, but there is no telling. The main thing we got to figure out is how to stay warm. I do not believe that I left most of my winter gear at home. I never expected a winter storm like this in California.” Michael said miserably.
“Well they know we are here and not communicating so someone will eventually figure out to check on us. Let’s go back down stairs and see what furniture or other supplies we can salvage and see about maybe getting a fire going.” Mahmoud suggested.
“I doubt we would get more than a chair or two we could bust up for firewood and I am not wading in that shit and freezing myself even worse. Maybe we can use that paracord in my bug out bag to lasso or snag something later.” Michael concluded and went to get his sleeping bag to wrap around his shoulders.
The two had built themselves what appeared to be a kid’s fort out of a couple metal desks and some chairs in an effort to stay warm and had a couple wool blankets stretched over some space blankets for a ceiling.
Flashlights and a little bit of C.E.R.T equipment they had, but they possessed no means of heating food other than a tiny Esbit stove Michael had stashed in his pack. He had only two Datrex bars in his kit; so that meant at most; they had about an extra 3 days each of food. They had lots of sugar, creamer and coffee though from the break room as well as some tea Mahmoud had stored with a jar of honey. A few cans of soup and some condiments from the fridge were all they had to sustain themselves otherwise as they waited for rescue.
12
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Randal listened to the news on his way to Prepper Stock and none of it sounded good. Major flooding had begun in California and mandatory evacuations had been ordered for the central valley. That meant millions of people were on the move and millions of other glued to their TV sets watching the disaster unfold. He had decided it didn’t make any sense to stay home and miss the festival. The bad weather hitting the west coast wouldn’t affect the east coast for another week or so. He wondered how many west coast preppers would not be attending because of the ARkStorm or were already well on their way to it when the warning was issued.
Joyce lived in California and was coming to the festival anyway. Her previous calls to him had been hard to field because as Randal had thought she was now about to lose everything under about 20 ft of water and his speculations had come true. Her son was evacuating to Texas with the neighbors’ daughter and son and they were supposed to arrive sometime later on tonight that is if traffic permitted. Randal had told her to try not to worry much about him if he was a day or two late arriving. Randal said couldn’t even imagine what a mass exodus out of California would be like other than bumper to bumper traffic creeping along at 20 miles an hour with thousands of stalled vehicles and travelers all along the highways for hundreds of miles.
The stock market and exchanges had closed for the day as the world went crazy speculating on the losses of the companies and insurers that were going to be affected by the storm. It wasn’t only the prepper community speculating on economic collapse now as the talking heads of media started voicing their own concerns. The president was set to address the nation at 12 noon regarding the disaster but Randal figured he would miss listening to that buffoon and just read or listen to the various writers who would soon be analyzing the speech’s merits and faults.
Randal didn’t quite believe that this ARkStorm would be the end of the US dollar but he could easily foresee the cost of everything sky rocketing. Losing Long Beach port as well as all the agricultural land was going to put the old law of supply and demand into a little bit to none of some products and they were mostly in high demand. One weird fact to consider was California produced 40% of the U.S. demand for milk and cream. That one factor tilted many scales in economic as well as health impacts. It is totally amazing to just take a moment and consider what a 40% reduction in availability of milk products would possibly do to the prices of foodstuffs like bread or cheese.
Randal also remembered when he was stock brokering a long time ago helping to raise venture capital, he had a deal come across his desk that he was fascinated with. It seems that a Alcohol producing plant in New Mexico was shut down because years of drought had affected the farmers around it and they had either gone out of business or couldn’t supply the green materials necessary to keep the plant producing ethanol for the gasoline markets as well as other consumables so they closed their doors and mothballed the facility for a future sale. A trader friend of Randal’s found where he could get the whey from a cheese plant free for the hauling that the plant could use to produce alcohol and the residue from the process could be converted into cattle feed for a food lot operation. The town owned the plant offered lots of incentives to get it operating again including some financing.
If that plant shut down again half the town would be out of work as well as removing a huge chunk of ethanol production and all the related uses and jobs that went along with it.
The cattle feed lot would have to shut down and that affects all the local farmers as well. That’s what happens if just one cheese plant shuts down! Randal mused thinking of how many other things could spiral out of control in just that scenario. You get ghost towns and pockets of deep poverty with high prices and little to look forward to in the future.
This ARkStorm thing was pretty incomprehensible to evaluate all the ramifications and repercussions about. Randal had discussed with his emergency manager friend Michael what he thought would actually happen if an ARkStorm hit.
“Poor bastard, he goes to do resea
rch on an ARkStorm and gets caught up in one!” Randal said to himself with only half a grin that soon left his face as worry about his friend set in.
“That sucker has probably already evacuated and is in the “rear with the gear” having the time of his life doing the finer points of planning or evaluating the rescue efforts.” Randal reassured himself.
Randal had seen Michaels preliminary evaluation of the ARkStorm scenario that geographic survey had helped put together. Randal was more believing of Michaels assessment than the governments in this case because he was more focused on the human elements of emergency management than the economic impacts that mainly keep a ton of people employed to just say how much a disaster like this is going to cost us and not come up with a plan to lessen the impact.
The government study said that upwards of 1.5 million would have to evacuate. Michael had pointed to several after action reports and academic studies that made it easy to conclude when generally speaking you were pretty much ok with doubling the figure of evacuees that would actually be trying to escape. Hurricane Rita was a good example of major underestimating the number of vehicles as well as people on the evacuation routes.