Medical
Regardless of what happens, people will always have medical problems and medical expertise will always be in demand.
There is Field Medicine (taking care of the wounded), Patient Medicine (taking care of the sick and wounded) and Surgical Medicine. The two that are available to the non-professional are Field and Patient Medicine – you would obviously have to study long and hard before being a competent surgeon.
Field Medicine is generally First Responder type of care. It involves knowing how to patch up major (and minor) injuries, acting quickly to save a life or dealing with traumatic situations (such as a car crash or a tree falling on somebody). This kind of training is readily available, you can find schools that will teach and certify you to become an EMT, then you can volunteer to work on an ambulance to get real world experience. You can also take courses to become a Wilderness First Responder from the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) or other places. Both of these will teach you how to deal with multiple injuries, but the real training and expertise can only come on the job.
Patient Medicine is generally working with patients in a non-emergency situation. When things have already been settled but they require longer term care. This is typically done by a nurse under the supervision of a doctor, but may not be the case in a crisis. The best route to acquiring this skill set is to attend nursing school. There are many schools that provide nursing courses in the evening and on weekends. You can also become a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) or Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN ) as an easier, but less comprehensive path. As with field medicine, it is important to get real world experience in this field. You can do this by volunteering at a hospital once you’re licensed or by simply switching careers. Don’t let your education stop once you are certified – continue taking medical courses as much as possible.
To be fully prepared, be sure that you have multiples of your most important diagnostic tools. Because many medical resources are not reusable, be sure to have a stockpile of things like syringes, gloves, needles, sutures, etc.
Communications
When the grid is down, communications may be down. Someone who is highly educated in multiple methods of communications will be able to bring the outside world to a micro-community.
There are multiple types of communications from short-range to long-range from cellular technology to HAM radios to hard-wired lines. Communications expertise generally requires an affinity for electronics and things that occur in the ether. If computers confuse you or are difficult for you, comms may not be for you.
If you are interested in developing skills in communications, the first place to start is HAM Radio capability. There are three classes of HAM certification. The “Technician Class” allows you to use the popular 2 meter band which is generally line of sight (repeaters can extend this). The “General License” gives you all HAM bands including all VHF, UHF and most High Frequency (HF) bands allowing you to communicate directly over very long distances. This method of communication is potentially the most useful in a long-term survival, scenario because it will allow you to communicate from one side of the country to the other. The “Extra Class” gives you all High Frequencies and is the ultimate in long distance communication.
In addition to HAM radios, it will be useful to become proficient in the use of hard wired landlines (which are more secure than radio transmissions), wiring into existing phone switching systems, wireless telephone systems, repeaters, antennas, television, CBs and other radio receiver systems.
The communication expert’s job is to be able to take whatever capabilities exist (through still functioning technology and systems) and make it possible for the micro-community to communicate with the outside world. If you’re in comms, you need to be prepared to help establish the ability to communicate through multiple levels of grid failure.
Farming
Every community needs to be able to feed itself. The Farmer brings that ability by raising both animals and crops. Farming can take place on thousands of acres where crops are raised or animals are pastured or on a small corner of suburban property. If farming seems like a skill you would be good at, you should know that it is a very hands-on education. If you’re unable to run your own farm the next best thing is to find a farmer who is willing to teach you. Your farm might consist of a garden with a small flock of chickens and some rabbits. Whether you can go big or have to run a small operation, it is critical to become experienced with the intricacies of properly raising animals and crops.
Skilled Crafts
There are several important skilled crafts that you can learn to master. They include Metalworking (forging & machining), Woodworking, Mechanics (auto and small engine), Textiles (making cloth and clothes), Leatherworking (tanning hides and working leather) and household crafts (soap-making, candle-making, potter, etc.). All of them require experience and skills that must be mastered prior to any kind of a collapse.
Each of these areas have their own specialized skills, tools and resources that the Craftsman will need to provide or know how to acquire in a collapse scenario.
Warfare/Defense
Having to fend off those who mean you harm will likely become a reality. Those who understand offensive and defensive tactics and security measures will be vital to ensuring the survival of the community.
These skills are typically learned through the military but can be acquired with dedicated study to military and other books. If you’ve missed the opportunity to serve your country, you can also gain knowledge of warfare by attending course on it. The drawback to this is that you will have no experience implementing the theories that you’ll learn in your classes. Those who are in the military would do well to take as many warfare and defensive courses as they can.
Any battle requires soldiers. If you can’t gain real world experience in warfare, the net best thing will be to attend tactical training courses. These classes will teach you how to fight with a gun and will make you an asset to anyone establishing a secure community.
Woodsmen
Any crisis community will benefit greatly from those who are experts at surviving and thriving in the forest. They will be able to provide the community with fresh game, greens and other materials. The person who can regularly track, stalk, kill and dress game will be vital to the overall survival of the community.
Developing skills in tracking, stalking and taking game will enable you to provide fresh meat for the community. These skills will become particularly useful when game becomes scarce from over-harvesting.
If a micro-community has to evacuate to the forest to survive, it is the woodsman who will have to teach them how to properly exist there. Beyond personal survival skills, consider what would be required to keep 100 people alive in the forest for a year and begin training for that.
Scientist – Chemistry/Physics
A community with a scientist will be able to invent, or re-invent, solutions to problems that we do not have to face today. They will also have the knowledge of how to create many of the things we utilize regularly but have no knowledge of the science behind them.
Learning chemistry and physics will provide you with the science you need to get started. Most courses though, will not teach you how to do many of the things your community will need. You will have to seek out information on the internet and through books and then experiment heavily on your own. Some of the things your community will need from you include lifting and energy devices, combustion and explosive systems (primarily for defense), solvents and solutions for household and industrial uses and more.
Summary
To make yourself truly valuable to a survival community, you need to be prepared to bring more than skills with you. Make sure that you acquire the tools and resources necessary to practice your skill – from a modern, pioneer and primitive approach.
Modern tools and skills are easy to understand, learn and acquire. Pioneer tools and skills are those that they would have used in the 1800’s, when th
ere was little to no power, fuel and other modern amenities. Saw mills were run by gearing river paddle-wheels, houses were built by making your own lumber, tools were built by a blacksmith. Primitive tools and skills are those that the Indians would have used by crafting what they needed out of nature with very little help.
It is also extremely important to be able to acquire or produce you own resources to practice your trade. If you are going to build something and you need wood, you will need to know how to turn trees into lumber, a medical practitioner will need to know how to make their own anesthetic and bandages, while a hunter will need to know how to make his own bullets.
By ensuring that you learn and develop a skill, acquire the tools of the trade and gather large quantities of needed resources for your trade, you will provide yourself with insurance that you will be able to make yourself a contributing member of society when there is a major collapse. The first step is the hardest and the easiest to put off - get going today!
Phil Burns is an EMT, a certified a NRA Instructor, Utah Concealed Firearms Permit Instructor, and serves on the Utah County Search and Rescue Team. He’s also the founder and director of the Utah Prepper’s Network.
2012: Apocalypse Not?
by Mat Stein
“Sooner or later, in any ‘fool proof’ system, the fools are going to exceed the proof.” —Arnie Gundersen, former Senior VP of Nuclear Energy Services, turned nuclear whistle-blower
I do not believe there is anything special about the number 2012. I give little stock to predictions that the planet Nibiru is on a 4000 year elliptical orbit around the sun, soon to wreak havoc on our planet, though I may eat crow one of these days if Nibiru does actually appear in the sky.
That being said, I do have grave misgivings about the near-term future for mankind, both from potentially devastating High-Impact-Low-Frequency (“HILF”) events, such as super solar storms and electromagnetic pulse (EMP), as well as the convergence of six alarming and potentially civilization busting trends, that I refer to as “The Perfect Storm.”
According to two major scientific government reports, Severe Space Weather Events: Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts, and the Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, either severe solar storms or a nuclear detonation purposefully designed to create an EMP could generate such an effect. Considering the fact that some of the critical large electrical components within our electrical power-grid structure are no longer manufactured within the United States, and that the lead times on these expensive custom-made items are currently running about three years, severe damage or loss of a number of these items, could have devastating long-term consequences for our infrastructure, quality of life, and the economy.
So, how likely are these kinds of events? In March of 1989, a severe solar storm induced powerful electric currents in grid wiring that fried a main power transformer in the HydroQuebec system, causing a cascading grid failure that knocked out power to 6 million customers for nine hours. More recently, in 2003 a solar storm caused a blackout in Sweden and induced powerful currents in the South African grid that burned up fourteen of their major power transformers, blacking out power to significant portions of that country for many months.
In May of 1921, a great geomagnetic storm produced ground currents roughly ten times as strong as the Quebec incident, affecting the Northern Hemisphere as far south as Mexico and Puerto Rico, and the Southern Hemisphere as far north as Samoa. It has been estimated that if an event like that one occurred today, in the United States alone it would put over 350 main grid transformers at risk of serious damage. Since there is currently a three year waiting list for a single unit, and most if not all of the world’s production capacity is located in areas susceptible to damage from a super solar storm, and the entire world’s current production capacity for these huge transformers is less than 100 per year, a super solar storm along the lines of the 1921 event may well result in The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI)!
However, the great-granddaddy solar storm of recorded history is the 1859 “Carrington Event.” During this storm, Northern Lights were seen as far south as Cuba and Hawaii, awakened hikers in the middle of the night in the Rocky Mountains because the lights were so bright they thought it was dawn, and induced currents in copper wires so powerful that telegraph lines, towers, and stations caught on fire at numerous locations around the world. Best estimates are that the Carrington Event was roughly 50 percent stronger than the 1921 incident. If it were to happen today, the Carrington Event would almost certainly devastate the giant interconnected machine that keeps our global economy working smoothly, leading rather rapidly to TEOTWAWKI.
Though probably significantly smaller in area than that of a huge solar storm, the localized damage from a terrorist EMP attack could be much greater. According to the Commission Report, a nuclear blast detonated 60 miles above the earth’s surface could expose roughly 1.5 million square miles to crippling EMP-field intensities. This is an area equal to about half the continental United States! Even if the EMP impact was far smaller than the scenario described by the Commission Report, it may well be powerful enough to paralyze the densely populated region extending from Boston through New York City all the way past Washington, D.C. Without killing a single person directly, a single suborbital nuclear detonation would wreak great havoc, potentially devastating the economy of the entire country.
The Perfect Storm
I suggest that you consider the following six trends that appear to be combining to form the perfect storm for global catastrophe, each of which is a potential civilization buster in its own right, if left unchecked. You may not agree with the scientific foundation for all of these trends, and it may turn out that scientists’ concerns about one or more of these trends are unfounded, but is it not prudent to plan for the potential that one or more of these trends might significantly damage or disrupt the complex global systems that we rely upon to keep ourselves comfortably fed, clothed, and sheltered?
1. Peak Oil
Our global economy and culture are built largely upon a reliance on cheap oil. From the cars we drive, to the jets we fly, to the buildings we live in, to the food we eat, to the clothes we wear—almost everything that encompasses the fabric of our modern life is either powered by oil, built from oil, or made/grown via machines powered by oil. When the price of oil rose above $140 a barrel in 2008, the world’s economy went into a tailspin—collapsing local economies, reducing consumption, and bringing the price of oil back down to a fraction of what it had been just a few months earlier. Global output of traditional crude oil peaked around 2005–6 and is currently declining. Expensive alternative oil and oil-equivalent sources, like tar sands, deep ocean oil wells, and biofuels have taken up the slack for the time being, but these are limited resources and their utilization is not growing as quickly as necessary to fill in the gap caused by the shrinking output from the world’s mature oil fields. In 2008 the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated the decline of output from the world’s mature oil fields at a rate of 9.1 percent annually, with a drop to “only” 6.4 percent if huge capital investments are made to implement “enhanced oil recovery” technologies on a massive scale. [see chart below]
Without developing energy alternatives at warp speed, or discovering and developing an entire Saudi Arabia’s worth of oil every few years from now until eternity (an impossible fantasy), our world will be in a heap of trouble, as declining supplies are projected to fall short of the current demand in this rather depressed economy.
In the mid 1960s, when discoveries of new oil reserves reached their historical peak, we were discovering oil at a rate four times faster than we were consuming it. In recent years, the tables have turned. With technology that is miles beyond what was available in the 1960s, we are discovering about one-tenth as much oil each year as we did then, and consuming it at a rate five times faster than we discover it. For years, governments have been
official naysayers about the “Peak Oil theory.” However, in April of 2010 the U.S. military issued a report saying, “By 2012 surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach 10 million barrels per day”. Over the next few months, this report was followed by similar ones issued by both the British and German militaries.
2. Climate Change
“The outlook for global warming if the world continues its current path is a lot worse than it was just a few years ago, says new research from MIT, making it even more urgent to put in place strong policies to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. The new MIT study, like all climate studies a sophisticated computer model, projects a median temperature rise of 5.2 degrees centigrade in 2100. That’s double the 2.4 degree increase projected in a 2003 study, MIT said. The range of temperature increases that are 90% likely stretches from 3.5 to 7.4 degrees centigrade [6.3F-13.3F].”
“Climate Change: MIT Study Says Temperatures Could Rise Twice as Much,” - Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2009
With a 90 percent degree of certainty, the world’s top scientists believe that our planet’s climate is changing at an accelerating pace, and will have increasingly severe consequences for our world. Naysayers stress the 10 percent scientific probability that man is not the cause of current climate changes, but would you board a plane if you were told it “only” had a 9 in 10 chance of not crashing? It is a rare person over the age of thirty who will tell you that the weather is not quite different now from when they were a child; if nothing else, certainly far more erratic, though not always hotter.
Survivalist Anthologies Volume 1 Page 41