How many times do I sit there watching Survivor saying to myself or my wife watching with me how much I would love to be out there with just simple tools, no grocery stores or wifi or iPhone--just nature, a handful of castaways and...howler monkeys.
I imagine myself abrading a hunk of wood smoking raw and magically stirring it into a living breathing food-cooking water-boiling immunity-earning fire; I have fantasies of climbing trees with my bare feet and calloused hands ripping down coconuts and cracking them open with my teeth and imbibing the water from their pith; I dream about being the ultimate survivor--move over Boston Rob!
But then when I really think about it, I realize just how totally uneducated and ill-equipped I am skill-wise to last even a few hours on one of those dreadful islands; and that the doofus I bust my gut laughing at is probably ten times more capable than I am.
When I think about that, I get down; I realize that instead of a sole-survivor, I'm a tech-geek middle-aged dude with a rabid imagination and superman complex. Thank God Canadians aren't allowed on the show--I may have been stupid enough to try out!
While this may be amusing to write about, survivor skills are actually critical in this rapidly changing world we're living in. Indeed, as Rainer Stahlberg writes in his gripping book, The Armageddon Survival Handbook: How to Prepare Yourself for Any Scenario, where we live we can expect any of the following:
- Extreme winter weather
- Tornados
- Heavy rain fall
- Flooding
- Chemical Spills
- Political instability
- Fires
The world we are living in is wrought with tension and unpredictability. During the Calgary flood--a total freak accident without precedent in almost 100 years--bottled water was cleaned out of the grocery stores. In the ice storm just last winter, people were eating cat food out of cans for lack of power to cook. What if those people had some kind of kerosine stove? What if Calgarians effected by the flood had an ample water-supply in a flood-resistant part of their home?
In past posts I've talked about the importance of having first aid kits for your homes and cars, as well as exit strategies from your homes in the event of fire, security threat, etc. But Stahlberg's book raises a number of critical things you should be doing right now to begin a general disaster plan:
1. Make a list of disasters that can happen to you, then:
- Take a first-aid course and learn about animal care after a disaster
- Find out about local warning signs and plans.
2. Create a disaster plan:
- Discuss with those closest to you what to do in different situations
- Prepare an evacuation plan
- Decide on places and contacts to reunite with your family and loved ones
3. Put your plan into action:
- Have emergency numbers with each member or your group
- Review your insurance coverage
- Accumulate equipment and supplies
- Install smoke detectors and have ABC-type fire extinguishers
- Find escape routes from your home and safe spots inside for different kinds of disasters. List the hazards in your home as part of this planning
4. Update your plan and conduct drills:
- Update your plan as the situation changes every six months
- Test your equipment routinely and update your batteries and perishable supplies
- Replace stored water every 3 months.
This only touches the surface of all that Stahlberg writes about in his Survival Handbook. I highly recommend this book and those he lists as further reading.
There is also the skills part of it all: your ability to survive in the outdoors, or have access to places outside of the city where you can set up a base camp. We take our modern world completely for granted, unaware of how security is a chimera and tomorrow can look radically different from today.
Think about it...
The most important thing is that you begin now the conversation--if you haven't already--with your loved ones and close friends. There is a growing brittleness and fragility in our world shot through with unpredictability. The best thing we can do for ourselves and loved ones is prepare ourselves as best as we can--to insure that we have the greatest chance of surviving the unknown.
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