Be Prep-ared

“Be prepared, son.  That’s my motto.  Be prepared.” – The Last Boy Scout

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The most prepared person is my friend, Justin Case.

When I was a kid, camping meant backpacking.  I had the good fortune to live in the mountains, where it my daily view waiting for the school bus was what people took vacation from work to see.  Heck, it was valuable enough to them that they would buy an SUV to haul a miniature home to come and experience for five days.  But to me, that wasn’t camping, that was daily life.  It’s amazing how we can become bored by splendor when surrounded by it daily.

Backpacking was camping.  When you camp as a backpacker, everything that goes up the hill goes on your back.  You are the SUV, which may explain why Pop Wilder put a bumper sticker on my butt.

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Okay that wasn’t it, but if it were 2019 the sticker would say, “Hey, vegans, you can thank me for killing that cow that was eating all of your food.”

When you backpack for more than a day or so, you really learn what’s essential.  The Boy and then later Pugsley joined the ranks of a familiar organization in hopes of becoming . . . “A member of an elite paramilitary organization: Eagle Scouts®” so that they can avenge me after the communists put me in the drive in movie camp.  I just know that there won’t be Raisinettes©, because communists hate Raisinettes™.

When The Boy first joined Cub Scouts® (the younger version where parents have to camp with the kids), my brain still equated camping with backpacking.  The tent I bought for camping with him?  A good four-man backpacker.  If you know anything about tents, you know that a four man tent is not big enough for four normal-sized humans.  In fact, it was just big enough for me and The Boy and our gear, and it was one you had to get on your knees to crawl inside.  To sleep on?  Self-inflating sleeping pads.

Honestly, I’ve never camped with anyone that I wanted to kill more.  When I was sharing the tent with him, every time I’d start to drift off to sleep, The Boy would shake me back awake.  Every time.  Why?  Because, allegedly, I would snore.

If you have never spent two nights camping with someone who intentionally wakes you up just as you’re getting ready to go into deep sleep, you may not understand that’s the sort of thing that makes you think . . . “You know, The Mrs. could produce a decent copy of The Boy that looks a lot like this one.”

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I shouldn’t make too much fun of Charlie Sheen – I hear he’s got a new show set for later this year – Two and a Half Personalities.

Everything I brought camping for that first Scout© trip including the tent and cooking gear fit into one decent-sized backpack.  Surely everyone else had the same idea about camping, right?  No.  When I got there I saw that spacious, palatial multi-room tents with cots, tables, and even sinks was the norm.  On one camping trip, the leader even brought a gasoline-powered electric generator for powering his tent.  I’m pretty sure at least one family brought a television, but since I was sleep-deprived, my memory might be suspect.

It was at that point I realized that outside of where I grew up, camping meant “living in a fabric palace with every possible amenity known to man.”

Yikes.  Eventually I gave up and bought my own fabric palace for camping with the The Boy and Pugsley when they were Cub Scouts©, though I stopped before we bought a generator and sink.  But when The Boy moved over to the actual Boy Scouts®?  Things changed.

The idea of camping there was that the boys (not the adults) were responsible for their own cooking, cleaning, equipment, and logistics.  They planned the meals, they selected the cooks, they divided the work, and nobody considered a fabric palace with a generator – it was not quite the austerity of backpacking, but it was close.  One especially nice rule was “no phones” for the kids.  As I was an adult leader in this elite paramilitary organization, I got to go camping quite a lot – sometimes over 30 days a year.

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My first trip, packing took an hour.  My most recent trip, packing took about five minutes – I’ve discovered that if I forgot it?  I can live 48 hours without it.

I experimented with gear – what gear made sense, what gear should be thrown out.  Thirty days of camping gives a lot of testing time, and do it over the course of several years?  Soon enough you’ve put nearly 150 days into the field for gear testing.  I learned what was useful, and what was useless.  Probably the best lesson was about things that were sometimes useful.

What was always useful?  The list is in (more or less) order from “never give up” to “might give up based on the trip.”

  • Clothing – Fully half the days of the year near Modern Mayberry, if you chose to go camping and it wasn’t raining, you’d need no more than your camping clothes to sleep. Might it be a chilly night on some nights?    But you’d be okay.  We often forget that the first line of defense against everything from sunburn to bugs to cold weather that we have is our clothing.  Clothing also keep us from getting arrested, or at least that’s what my probation officer keeps saying.
  • Shoes – Foot protection is important – no protection on the feet, you won’t be moving around. Sure, people in the distant past . . . yada yada.  It takes years to build up the appropriate calluses on your feet to walk around.  Having good shoes is just a trip to buy them.
  • Tent – I know one leader that made due with a tarp. I know one that only used hammocks.  I liked actual tents – it keeps the bugs out.  I eventually caved, and in car camping I use a tent that I can stand up in.  I know the others could work for me, but that’s what I chose because I’m old.  It was also good down to -15°F (-456°C).
  • Knife – I always carry one. Can cut a rope, I can cut dinner, but I just can’t cut the mustard.
  • Matches – In the winter, staying warm is a must, and fire can cook food.
  • Sleeping Bag – I take a sleeping bag, even in summer – worst case, you can sweat all over it.
  • Cot – I experimented with sleeping foam, and inflatable sleeping pads, but a cot is about the best. Sleeping pads are a pretty close second.
  • Coffee Cup – Yes, for coffee. But also for soup.  Or stew.
  • Bowl – I started out using a fancy mess kit. I know one person who used a Frisbee®, but I just settled on an unbreakable ceramic bowl.
  • Cookware – The bowl could double, if it was metal. I’m all for having both a bowl and a cooking pot.
  • Spoon – Spoons are like bowls on the end of sticks. Amazing that people would invent a smaller bowl to empty a larger one.
  • Book – I always took one, I always read one. Nice during down time.
  • Toilet Paper – Better than using poison ivy leaves.
  • Folding Chair – Sure, silly, but it was always used. You can only stand so long.  A stump works, certainly, and when I backpack we’d pull up a log.  But chairs are nice.
  • Light for Inside the Tent – Mainly useful for reading the book.

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This was nearly as useless as that glass hammer that I got from E-Bay®, or that wooden frying pan that I got from Amazon©.

What was sometimes useful?  The order is less useful here, since depending upon weather or other conditions, some of these would really be essential.

  • First Aid Kit – I still always carry one, though mine is a bit more tricked out than an over the counter version – I’ve added Super Glue®, butterfly bandages, a foam splint, and blood clotting agent. It’s hard to be John Wilder:  Civil War Surgeon® without a bag tools.  Did I mention I have a knife?
  • Bug Spray – Depending on the time of the year, this is really nice to have. I tried not showering as an alternative, but that only works as a people repellent.
  • Rope – Paracord is about right – you could always use more if you were hauling something heavy, but we never ran into any situation where paracord wouldn’t work.
  • Rain Poncho – Useful when it was raining, in theory. In practice, when it’s raining and 80°F out, it’s not required unless you happen to be made out of sugar.  When it’s raining and 40°F out?  It’s a necessity.
  • Water Bottle – Why isn’t this useful for every trip? Well, most places we went had water.  If they didn’t?  We brought it.  If unlimited fresh water wasn’t the case, I’d revert to my backpacking days where a water bottle and a water filter were near the top of the list.
  • Saw/Axe/Hatchet – Most fires that we made were out of small wood that we could easily break by hand. We used saws/axes/hatchets more for making things.  In deep winter camping, we’d probably want better firewood, so a saw becomes more useful.
  • Map – This is listed in “sometimes useful” but only when we taught map reading. We never went any place so far off the beaten path where a map was required.  If you didn’t have a cell phone?  This might be useful once again.
  • Frisbee/Football – Good times. And football doesn’t mean soccer ball.
  • Flashlight – When I started camping, I thought this was essential. Between firelight, moonlight, and starlight, rarely did I use a flashlight after the first thirty days.
  • Cell Phone – Okay, I’ll admit I surfed Drudge® while I was camping. And it’s great to have as an emergency backup, if there’s signal.

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I always carry a knife when I have a flashlight – you won’t see me taking a stab in the dark.

What was rarely (if ever) useful?

  • Compass – Modern GPS technology and cell phones have made this of similar usefulness as a buggy whip. I have several.
  • Bear Spray – Not very good for spicing up my chili when camping. When hiking, scouts make enough noise that bears are afraid.  And my (alleged) snoring would keep any bear away at night.
  • Wallet – Nothing useful there for camping, unless they need to identify the body.
  • Keys – Useful before and after camping. Not so much during.

A camping trip isn’t the end of the world, so there are things that we plan to take with us that we consumed during the trip:

  • Water – Needed. Unless you’re a kangaroo rat.  Clean water is of great importance, but maybe we take it for granted – and remember, it’s no substitute for beer.
  • Food – Unless you have a medical condition, over the course of any short duration, food is not a necessity, it’s a comfort item. We were comfortable campers.
  • Paper Towels – 99% of cleanup is done with paper towels. Not a necessity.  But nice.
  • Soap – To wash dishes. Or yourself.
  • Trash Bags – In a pinch, you could use them for rainwater collection, as a poncho, or weave it into a plastic rope to let yourself out of a psychiatric prison again. We just put trash into ours.

“Here’s a lesson to test your mind’s mettle:  take part of a week in which you have only the most meager and cheap food, dress scantly in shabby clothes, and ask yourself if this is really the worst that you feared.  It is when times are good that you should gird yourself for tougher times ahead, for when Fortune is kind the soul can build defenses against her ravages.  So it is that soldiers practice maneuvers in peacetime, erecting bunkers with no enemies in sight and exhausting themselves under no attack so that when it comes they won’t grow tired.”

– Seneca the Dead Roman Dude

“It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress.  If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes.”

– Also Seneca the Still Dead Roman Dude

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Roman algebra was boring.  X was always equal to 10.

One of the best parts about camping is that it allows you to walk away from 2019.  It allows you to leave behind the past and live with virtually no technology younger than 70 years old.  Camping pulls you away from most of the meaningless parts of our world, and it’s interesting to see people cope with moving from an environment that manages to provide amusement on demand to one where high-tech includes propane stoves and fire.

One particular campout brings this one to mind – an adult was continually whining about the weather.  Sure, it was November, and there was a constant rain.  Thankfully, we had an adult whining about the weather every chance he got.  Since the boys were off doing their own thing, they weren’t exposed to the negativity – the boys loved it, cooking oatmeal in the rain for Sunday breakfast.  Several thought the campout was one of the best they’d been on.

The lesson?  You don’t need most of the things you think you need, not even good weather.

Things that you need that you don’t think you need:

  • Practice – spending that amount of time away from a house taught me a lot about what I need, and what I don’t.
  • Mental Toughness – The life we have on a daily basis isn’t really normal, especially when compared to the lives people have lived throughout history. We live in luxury, with a great freedom from want, and ample food for everyone:  whether it gets distributed is another matter.  Living without these luxuries for a week and learning you can be happy with less is a great way to prepare for emergencies.
  • Amusements – Simple things like a deck of cards can help with the withdrawals from 2019. The next step is meaningfully connecting with people.  Crazy idea, that one.
  • Purpose – Understand why you’re doing all of this. Having a purpose that’s beyond Facebook® is priceless.

Here are some lessons I picked up from Hurricane Ike:

  • 90%+ of people don’t prepare at all until the last minute.
  • Unless you’ve practiced, you’ve forgotten something. I forgot propane for the gas grill, my neighbor had some.  He forgot gas for his car.  I had some.  Even trade.
  • Unless your family has practiced, they’ll be mentally weak. Even just a few days without power had people missing it, and in the aftermath of the hurricane, it got hot.  With no air conditioning, Houston was just plain horrible.  None of us were used to that.  Another week of no power and I’d have shipped off the rest of the family to a hotel.

The basics of survival are simple:  Air for breathing.  A place to get out of the cold.  Water.  Eventually, food.  Survival is hard to practice for – taking a few days off and camping is easy.  Taking a month off is harder, and taking a year off is nearly impossible for anyone who has bills to pay.  But if you’re ready for a disaster that lasts a month?  You’ve already gone to the head of the class.  And if you’ve learned to not murder your child because he wakes you up every time you start to snore so that sleep is impossible?

Well, that’s a positive, too.

Remember:  just because it hasn’t happened, doesn’t mean it won’t.  And when you’re prepared for a range of outcomes, both physically and mentally, you’re ahead not of 90% of the population, but 99%.  What will the future bring us? That’s a big question, but if you prepare, remember that practice is a part of the preparation.

As Concerned American always notes over at Western Rifle Shooters (LINK), “This material will be on the final exam.”

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

15 thoughts on “Be Prep-ared”

  1. See? Prepping for the apocalypse is fun! Camping, buying more ammo, compiling an Enemies List…

  2. Robert Pirsig, in his magnum opus, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, lays out a suspiciously similar menu of essentials for a ‘cycle trip as you detailed here for camping, John Wilder. I presume that you are familiar with the book?

    We went through the same evolution with our boys, Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts to summer-long employment for our eldest, three years running, at Camp Yawgoog in Rhode Island. Despite the goofy, outdated uniforms and some minor razzing they had to endure from their ignorant peers in the neighborhood, joining the scouts was easily the second-best experience my sons had through adolescence. Only slipping out of the rotten public schools and into the local sports-crazed Catholic high school was more rewarding.

    Sadly, the Boy Scouts is no longer an organization that any of us would recognize. Trans-happy PC nannies have clamped down on the dangerously toxic masculinity that the scouts used to inculcate in their unsuspecting and vulnerable charges (“Archery?!? Are you effin’ KIDDING? You could put your eye out!”) So far as I recall, there used to be merit badges for this and other manly pursuits such as woodcarving, fire-building and riflery. Try to sneak THOSE past our gatekeepers today.

    (OT – two recent comments here got vaporized. Didn’t think I let loose any bad words, but what do I know? I still think there’s only two genders.)

    1. Chuck, familiar with that book, though I never read it – it was a college “either/or” and I picked the other selection, which was I seem to recall a Mad Magazine. I’m guessing I should give it a look?

      The thing I like best about Scouts was, when done right, it promoted real leadership among the boys. Wonderful to see a kid go from stuttering to confidently speaking in front of the whole troop – and telling the adults to shut up.

      Yeah, the organization is pretty far down the tubes. I’ve put together notes for a post about it, but it’s difficult to write – it will require the right timeframe. And you’ve put the nail on the head – it’s the whole gamut of helplessness that we see in schools that they’re spinning out to every (formerly) wholesome pursuit.

      I have no idea why the previous comments were nuked – I restored ’em. Let me know if you want me to re-nuke ’em.

      1. Yes, ‘Zen’ comes highly recommended. I break out my tattered old copy every few years and feel renewed each time I re-read it. Must be going on a dozen passes now, since college days.

        Of all damned things, I first heard of the book in a chem lab I took sophomore year, when the prof quoted a passage from it regarding keeping a notebook and the scientific method. This may well be the most valuable thing (and possibly only thing of value) that I took from my first pass through the halls of academe. Well worth the ridiculously low price of state U. tuition at the time.

  3. Our overlords don’t even have a good reason for the nanny police state anymore. Toothpicks must be outlawed to protect the environment. Rope must be banned for safety. Baseball hats must be outlawed because they are ugly. Insurance must be mandatory to protect the insurance industry. Flagpoles must be banned to protect property values.

    Why not just put Americans in prison when they’re born?

  4. Man, you were so lucky being born in an area where camping could begin just walking out of your backyard. I was born and raised in deep south Texas, a sleepy small town that in 55 years was blown up 500% (just under 30,000 when I was young, now 150,000 – things have CHANGED !!), mostly for the worse if having a choice of 3 Targets, 5 Wal-Marts and 200 restaurants is a bit too much. Give me the citrus orchards, palm lined dirt roads and starry nights any day of the week.

    But as kids, we did go camping in the local nearby abandoned orchards. Musty canvas pup tents, mesquite wood fires and cooking canned foods set in the coals. Our apparel was our ‘play clothes’, Boy Scout ‘Yucca’ rucksacks our packs, and the sleeping bag was a single blanket. Canteen was a WWII surplus aluminum canteen, and we traded lugging the canvas desert water bags to the camp site. A small Old Hickory paring knife was our main blade, wrapped in a cardboard sheath. Good times.

    1. Great story. Yeah, my hometown hasn’t grown in forever, and that’s not bad. Modern Mayberry is slightly decreasing in population decade over decade. That’s not bad, either.

      Yeah, moving away from the mountains made me appreciate what I took for granted.

  5. I remember back packing in the Boy Scouts what you did not carry you did not have – sharing was obligatory, thus you suffered the blunt end of jokes for the week. Currently a bug out practice is in order “ruckin” would probably be my demise. EDC w/ collapsible bicycle is the best I get and thanks for the trip down memory lane.

    1. My pleasure. I keep walking, and I still backpack from time to time, but not nearly enough. One summer during college I spent 40 days in the hills. Good times.

  6. Boy Scouts taught me that even a Boy Scout knife is a good deterrent, when older scouts decide to dunk you head first in the fire water barrel. They thought it would be fun, but my friend coughed up water for a few minutes, after they dunked him and left him there to find his own way out. Call me a poor sport. After that moment, the general consensus was I was dangerous.

    As far as poison ivy: One of my childhood friends found the softest leaf for his business, which led to laughter from his father, when the rash became unbearable the next day.

    1. Ha! Yeah, the longest fistfight I ever got in was during a Scout campout. It looked a lot like the one from They Live.

      No poison ivy where I grew up, thankfully.

  7. As to life and population and sand……

    As humans we fight one thing more than anything else in our lives. We fight this because if we stop we will be dead. In fact all living things on this planet fight this very same evil. Our ability to overcome this force explains how we have evolved as we have.

    This force is gravity. You spoke of the angle of repose. Well, the angle of repose is based on the qualities of the material being piled and the amount of force being placed against it. Well, if you want to pile more humans in an area than normally would allow you have to be pretty good at outwitting gravity.

    Like everything else in life, there is a time where they flourish and then there is a time when chaos and then collapse occurs and gravity has its way. The Roman empire declined, literally as the citizens did not want to work to protect or preserve their empire. They surrendered to gravity without even knowing it or what that would result in eventually.

    If you apply a similar analysis to the youth of today, they almost as a generation have opted to not resist the force of gravity and instead prefer to occupy themselves with their electronics and entertainment. This shift to a sedentary lifestyle will eventually create a situation where the angle of repose or ‘obsolescence’ will collapse due to the lack of adding the necessary human effort to maintain the unity and harmony as well as productivity of our society.

    Our nation seems hellbent on destroying the very things that founded it by altering the dynamics of what made us great and abandoning the very principles and aspects of our lives that worked. As we recline or decline, we see the strength being weakened and our interrelationships and respect as well. Eventually the pile that is our nation will collapse under its own disorganized and un-managed weight. Like the sand that required moisture to maintain its form, so does our nation require elements of independence and American values in order to sustain itself.

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