Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

“Dear readers, there was no Battle of Mayberry. The only casualties were one scrawny cow, three deer, and a mule who had the misfortune to look like a deer.” – The Andy Griffith Show

Ahhh, the joy of teaching children to read.  And to kill mutants and zombies.

This is part ten of a multipart series.  The rest of them are here:  (Civilization, The Iron Triangle, and You, Civilization After an EMP: TEOTWAWKI (Which is not a Hawaiian word), TEOTWAKI Part III: Get on your bikes and ride!, Internet Cats, TEOTWAWKI Part IV and The Golden Horde, TEOTWAWKI Part V: Camaro and Camo,  TEOTWAWKI Part VI: The Rules Change, The Center Cannot Hold, TEOTWAWKI Part VII: Laws of Survival, Mad Dogs, The Most Interesting Man in the World and TEOTWAWKI Part VIII: Barricades, Tough Decisions, and Tony Montana),  TEOTWAWKI Part IX: Home at Last, and the Battle of the Silo and TEOTWAWKI Part X: Gump, Wheat, and Chill: Now With 100% Less Netflix.

Back to the action:

It’s one thing to be shot, but it’s quite another to be stuck with your face stuck in the soft clay mud of a creek bank while bullets zip over your head.  The nice thing about being shot, well, is that it’s over.  The slow, continuous beat of the rifle fire continued, and, let’s be real, it’s kinda terrifying.

My bet was that they figured out how to count.  And the thing that they were counting was the number of bullets that they had left.  The US military had evolved from the Revolutionary Army which had to conserve ammunition to fight a stronger foe with better logistics to one where upwards of 20,000 rounds of ammunition were fired per enemy casualty during World War II.  Some records indicate 200,000 rounds were spent per casualty in Vietnam.

Not now.  Every round should count.  It was going to be a while before the ammunition factories came back online, if ever.

Sure signs of savagery. 

And on the side of the Watch, we were specifically told to hold our fire until we had targets that we could hit.  Since the other side was just shooting, well, I assumed that they were either long on ammunition, or were shooting to keep our heads down so they could advance.

I crawled on my belly up to the edge of the creek bank.  I could see six of the invaders running towards me, zig-zagging.  75 yards out.  I pulled up my 30-.06 and took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.  I sighted and led the first man headed my way.  I squeezed the trigger.  Down.  I worked the bolt of the rifle and selected the nearest runner.  Squeezed.  He went down.  And again.  And again.  When it was just two runners, they turned and ran backwards, towards the big round hay bales in the center of the field.  They dove behind the hay bales before I could get a good shot.  I stayed low, behind the trees that grew near the creek.  Thankfully, the creek bed was steep enough that I could hide there.

Something about being shot at, made it easier to shoot back, but I hoped it never got easy.  I already knew I’d see those faces every night when I closed my eyes to go to sleep.

This was the battle of Yona Creek.

I don’t live in Yona, of course.  I live in Millerville, fifteen miles to the south of Yona.

But after Yona, this same rogue army would be heading toward my home there if we didn’t stop them here.  I know that

It was 45 days after the EMP.  We’d been hit enough times that we were fairly sophisticated.  We had younger men and women that were news runners.  On a bicycle, a fifteen mile ride was pretty easy, generally didn’t take more than an hour.  When you built a network of these news runners up, well, you had nearly real time news from the towns, plus real time traffic information.

Okay, that was a joke.

Thankfully, we had run out of coffee before this happened.

Most of the news was small news, someone cracking up and shooting up his home.  Someone giving up and committing suicide.  New births.  Shortages of medicine.

But what people were really interested in was The Drift.  That’s what we called it – The Drift of people from cities toward us.  Millerville was in the middle of a network of communities – there wasn’t really a way to Millerville without going through the surrounding towns, but Millerville had volunteered it’s sons to protect the border.  Better to fight them in Yona than at home.

But in order to be prepared when the invaders showed up, they had to know that they were coming.  Early on, barricading the roads had worked.  Not so much now after nine weeks.  People had figured out that legs don’t have the same restrictions that wheels do, and when coming to a town, they now took to fields and creek bottoms to avoid the roads.  Now, only the most dangerous people took to roads.  Or the most stupid ones.

How to cover this area and know when people were coming?

Scouts.

The Scouts were young men, 16-24 or so.  Able to camp.  Able to move quickly and report back when contact was made.

And they had.

At night, they could flash lights to the high point where we maintained a lookout.  During the day, they’d make their way back to town as soon as possible or use mirrors to flash to that same lookout.  They’d met up with a force of people, 45 or so, headed our way.  With guns.  Given that the Scout had provided a location and size, we grouped our people together into a blocking force along what we guessed was their line of attack.

And since invaders no longer had the advantages of a modern military – maneuver, munitions, artillery and air support, well, the idea was to dig in behind cover.  The era of fixed defenses and aimed rifle fire being supreme had returned.  Thankfully, Lieutenant Brady was leading the Yona defenders.

—–

Former Corporal Walt Davis, late of 1st Platoon watched the aborted rush toward the creek bed.  He winced as each of his men went down.

That was okay.  The rush had served its purpose.  A group of twenty, fully half of the men he had left, had snuck into position during that rush.  They were ready to work up the creek bed and flank the defenders.

Walt was mad.  This was supposed to be easy.  They had seen the Scout as he fled them on his bike, and Walt knew that not shooting him was the biggest mistake he’d made since the EMP.

He ordered the real attack to begin.

—–

After Davis sent his men forward into the creek, Lieutenant Brady, who had been concealed with fifty men due east of 1^st Platoon, in a drainage ditch, signaled his men forward.  I saw them.  Two clicks on my cheap Wal-Mart® kiddie walkie-talkie (it was a pink cat) told Brady that, as expected, the enemy was trying to flank the force in the creek bed.  Thankfully, Brady had selected a good position, well concealed.  100 yards of open country and he could engage with Walt’s flanking team.

I wonder if the walkie-talkie was Great Value®?

Brady motioned his thirty or so men forward.  Most were wearing hunting camouflage, better suited for turkey hunting than sneaking up on armed soldiers during broad daylight.

They made it 75 yards – tantalizingly close to the creek.

—–

Walt spotted them as they were within 20 yards of the creek.

“Dammit!  Swing the M240 over there!”  He pointed at Brady’s men, still obscured by the trees.  “Fire!  And go get them!”  He motioned his last twenty men forward.  The M240 was the standard light machine gun for the Army, they called it “the pig.”  Belt fed, and it shot 650 rounds a minute – 10 a second.  They were down to a less than 2000 rounds.  Regardless, it was powerful on the battlefield.

—–

I had never heard a machine gun in real life before.  It made constant thudding beat as it opened up on Brady’s men.  It had taken precious time, so most of Brady’s men made it to cover but still, 15 men went down as the weapon washed back and forth. The element of surprise was somewhat muted by sound of the machine gun, but Brady’s men still had the advantage.  His remaining 35 versus Walt’s 20 gave him numbers, and since most of his men had semi-automatic AR-15s, they even had similar weapons.

Or would have, if not for that stupid machine gun.  I could hear it, and I could see roughly where it was shooting from.  I pulled my rifle up.  No shot.

But if I moved out of the tree line, to the left . . . I crouched down and ran.  There.  I could see it.  I dropped to the ground, sighted, and squeezed the trigger.  The gunner went down, the gun went silent.  Another man jumped forward and grabbed it.  I worked the bolt and fired again.  Another man down.  And I then looked and saw 18 men looking my direction, and I’d left cover behind.

I worked the bolt.  Out of ammo – I needed to reload.  The bullets started kicking up dirt as they hit around me.  I tensed and thought about running back to cover – likely a fool’s choice since the moment I got up I’d be fully exposed.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to make that decision.  At that time, Brady charged.  Walt’s men turned and retreated.  They didn’t run away – they took turns covering each other, slowing Brady’s charge.  After a few hundred yards, Brady broke off.  We’d broken their nose.  They wouldn’t be back again.  They’d find someone weaker.

In the fall that followed, we had our first harvest.  It was small.  But we were learning.  A lot of the ancient tractors could be put to work, and repaired.  We even managed to fix up old harvesting equipment and learn how to make replicas in the factory nearby.  Next was fixing the diesel issue.  But we were on it, learning how to make biodiesel and how to make wood-gas powered tractors.

I work at the factory, the “veteran” with one good arm who works on the lathe.  My boys are in the Watch, working for Brady; one of them is a Scout.  And we live for today.

Home heating after the apocalypse.

There’s so much we don’t know.  We hear rumors.  Someone with a functional shortwave set said that they’d heard some broadcasts that said that Mexico had collapsed, and that portions of that nation had just headed north, and was in the process of fighting the Chinese in what used to be California.  The East Coast was nearly depopulated.  Miami had been lost to Cuba.  Nobody knew if any of this was true.  News from a state over was exotic.  News from the coasts was probably more myth than news.

Was something other challenge coming?  I don’t know.  I don’t think anyone does.  We just go day by day, in a world with a much slower pace.  On most days, that’s enough.

Tomorrow will take care of itself.

###

We are so used to information – we can email the International Space Station, we can email researchers at the South Pole.  We are connected, and used to knowing what’s going on everywhere.  However, if you go back 50 or 100 years, there was still national news in the paper, but there was a much richer amount of local news.  I can name the Supreme Court justices, but I can’t name the county commissioner that serves my area.

I do think that in the scenario I’ve set up, information and resource sharing would be fairly high.  Plenty of people around here don’t bother to lock their doors.  And given that we have lots of food, the main thing we’d have to be concerned about is defense, and here in the Midwest, we can’t defend a farm by ourselves.  Idaho’s remote cabin?  Maybe.  Here?  No.  Too accessible.  It’s the wild west, and the Comancheros are everywhere.

But one big question that’s still outstanding is:  is an EMP a real thing?  Last week I was informed by the inimitable Hans Schantz to information that at least one person says, EMPs aren’t a concern – a link to a summary of his ideas is here (LINK), and he has a book out.  That’s worth consideration, especially since so much of the data is flat unavailable and classified.

One thing that does seem to be the case is many more cars MAY work than originally thought.  When I first learned about EMP, the general consensus was that cars built after the advent of the electronic ignition wouldn’t work.  So, early 1980s.  Later tests have shown that most of the cars tested (1990’s to 2003) worked.  And all of them seemed to be “okayish” if they weren’t on during the EMP.

But who is a paid agent of Nuka?  Hmm?

Here’s a link to some pretty substantial information that was most recently brought up by a link from 173dVietVet last week (LINK).  It’s got a lot of great information.  Also the EMP Commission and their reports can be found here (LINK).  I also found some work done by the Army.  Computers were toast.

FEMA did, however, do research on how to fuel vehicles on partially combusted wood gas – smoke if you will.  The plans are here (LINK).  Half of Europe was running on wood gas when the Allies invaded.  It works.  And if you use cedar?  It smells wonderful.

In one sense, having the cars knocked out by an EMP is a best case for people living in the country.  The chaos in the cities is more-or-less contained in the cities.  Sure, people walk out of Thunderdome, but not as many will make it over fifty miles if the car is toast.  In an EMP-like event where the cars all work?  No place is safe.  And towns won’t have enough time to react to defend themselves.  Not a pleasant thought.

But the East Coast is certainly the worst place to be.  I would expect that not one out of 100 people would survive a winter EMP, cars or not.  Most people in urban environments have great survival instincts, if survival is defined as finding a place that serves sushi at 2AM.  If it involves not dying in the cold, not so much.  I learned that when (a long time ago) I was in a training session with actual adults who didn’t know what a sleeping bag was.  I’m sure these same people think that steak is manufactured in a factory some place and that milk comes from a milk well someplace.

Stupid city people.  We all know that milk is mined, not pumped.

“No, Wayne, 25 megatons of wheat.” – World War III (1982 TV Movie)

Okay, he’s been frozen, had his butt sore from bike riding, and shot.  I hope he likes wheat.

This is part ten of a multipart series.  The rest of them are here:  (Civilization, The Iron Triangle, and You, Civilization After an EMP: TEOTWAWKI (Which is not a Hawaiian word), TEOTWAKI Part III: Get on your bikes and ride!, Internet Cats, TEOTWAWKI Part IV and The Golden Horde, TEOTWAWKI Part V: Camaro and Camo,  TEOTWAWKI Part VI: The Rules Change, The Center Cannot Hold, TEOTWAWKI Part VII: Laws of Survival, Mad Dogs, The Most Interesting Man in the World and TEOTWAWKI Part VIII: Barricades, Tough Decisions, and Tony Montana) and TEOTWAWKI Part IX: Home at Last, and the Battle of the Silo.

The story to date:  Our resourceful protagonist was hundreds of miles from home the night in February when an EMP hit, taking with it all of society.  He’s bicycled and walked and made his way home. Upon arriving at home, he was drafted into the Watch, which was tasked with protecting his hometown, Millerville.  Millerville attacked a grain elevator south of town, with enough grain to feed the town for four and a half years.

The Silo, 7AM, Five Days after EMP

The bullet had gone into my left shoulder.  There was a burning sensation, and then the blood.  The strangest thing, I thought, was that it didn’t hurt more.  But what it missed in pain, it made up for in blood.  I’m not sure what the bullet hit, but there was a lot of blood.

I passed out.

I woke for a while – in and out of consciousness.  It was mainly when people were moving me.  There was a lot of yelling.  At one point I was in a golf cart.  I think.

Eventually I woke up in a hospital bed, surrounded by Coleman® lanterns and the hiss of the pressurized fuel that fed the flame in the light.  There were three other beds around me with injured people, I assumed from the raid on The Silo.  I noticed my right arm was hooked into an I.V., and a nearly empty I.V. bag was suspended above my head.  My right arm was held in place by Velcro® straps, I guessed to keep me from moving it.  I tried to move my left arm, and a bigger pain than I’d ever felt in my life lashed out from my shoulder.  I’d say I screamed like a little girl, but I’m pretty sure that most little girls couldn’t get the volume I had.

A nurse, the mother of a kid I’d coached in PeeWee basketball, showed up.

“Awake, I see.”  She smiled.  “I’ll go get the Doc.”

She left and walked back in with Dr. Walters.  He’d been in town for only a decade, so he was still a newcomer.  “I see you don’t duck very well.”

Normally, that would have been funnier, but my shoulder still ached.  I managed a chuckle.

“I’m pretty happy with the work I did on you.  I haven’t done surgery since Med School, but,” he gestured around, “I don’t seem to have much competition right now.  Your shoulder was hit, but that’s probably obvious right now – we’ll get you something for the pain.  The good news is that I think you’ll have a lot of motion after it finishes healing.  The bullet hit the bone, but bounced up and out.  I repaired it as best as I could.  You’ll never be as strong on that side as on the other.”

He continued, “You’re really lucky.  There are about five different supplies I ran out of during your surgery, that I have no idea when I’ll get more of.”  He paused.  “Thanks for feeding us.  The Silo was important.”

I’ve read that there’s an African language where the translation for “good” means, literally, “has food.”  That the food from The Silo would feed us for years, while we figured out how to feed ourselves was important.  Where would we be in thirty years?  No one could know that.  But today we could eat.

And today I could see my family.  I’d been gone for days, sent out to acquire The Silo, and now I wouldn’t be doing anything for a while until my arm healed.  They rolled my hospital bed into a private room.  My wife and sons were allowed in – they’d been waiting outside since I was brought in.

“So, dad, did you kill anyone?”

I know it was meant with youthful excitement of a thirteen year old, but it hit me deeply.  I’d fired off into the darkness, attempting to shoot at the muzzle flashes of the guns that were pointed at me.  For the first time in my life, I wondered if I had killed someone.

“I don’t know, son.  I really don’t.”

“Well, they say you’re a hero.”

My wife gently brushed my hair.

“Who is they?”

“Everyone!  I heard it from Timmy, who heard it from James.  Everyone in town is so happy!”

I forced a smile, “I’m just glad to be with you guys.  And,” I gestured with my hand towards my shoulder, “I think you’ll be stuck with me at home for a while.”

Lieutenant Brady stopped by while the family was there.  Instead of his regular police uniform, he was wearing the same SWAT team outfit he had been when we’d taken The Silo.

“Mind if I come in?” I waved him in.

“Glad to see you’re awake,” he continued.  “Glad to see you’re alive.”  He seemed uneasy.  “We lost a few out there – and every wound and loss will weigh on me.  But there’s good news.  Nearly every city around here has their own silo.  There’s plenty of food for everyone, so no reason to fight about that.  And we’ve developed a loose network for defense and information, because the cities are still draining.

“One nice thing is that all of the towns are really fairly easy to defend.  Most of them have some sort of natural barrier and only a few roads in.  I guess,” he chuckled, “that most of these towns were founded when an Indian attack was a real possibility so they were set up with defense in mind.  Never noticed that until now.  Ours is in an even better position.  We’ve got at least three towns between us and any big city.  We’ll know they’re coming.  But you, go home and rest.”

Going home was wonderful.

The house was like a freezer.  Natural gas and pilot lights and central heating was gone.  It was March.  Running water was a distant memory, and to the extent we had water, it was brought up in five gallon buckets from the pond for flushing, or brought up from the creek and carefully filtered and disinfected for drinking.  Things that soon disappeared?  Coffee.  Propane.  We had plenty of wheat.  And as a treat, one night a week we’d have some of the dehydrated food I’d had around the house for camping.  The dehydrated food would run out soon, but we’d have plenty of food, as long as we liked wheat.

Margo, my wife, had started gardening, as had every wife in town.  Every third day a farmer would stop by and tell us what we didn’t know – how to keep the deer out of our garden.  How to keep the moles from digging into the potatoes.  How to keep chickens.

Yes, chickens.

They were becoming very popular, and spreading rapidly.  You don’t have to kill a chicken for the eggs, and eggs were a wonderful surprise when you were just expecting yet more wheat the next day.  I heard a rumor that people were going to be able to get milk from a communal herd of cows, but you had to milk the cow yourself.  Butter!  Cheese!  If we could figure out how to make it.  And without Netflix® and PlayStation™ there were a lot of card games and board games after chores.  And a lot more fun under the covers at night with my wife.

The dark side of the new world was no information.  As a society, we were used to knowing the sex of the Queen’s great grandchildren and watching the birth live on CNN®.  Now?  We heard what we could, either from the bulletin board downtown or gossip from neighbors.  I was pretty sure that China would be “supporting” the population on the West Coast.  Alaska?  Either the Russians or the Chinese probably had moved their stuff in already.

The suicides were the most demoralizing.  It surprised me how many people were so tied into Facebook® and Twitter™ and the conceptions of what their lives would be that they couldn’t imagine a life without the constant information flow and distraction from the media they consumed.  And tobacco and drugs were gone.  Alcohol and weed?  Not so much.  You could turn wheat into a really bad beer or an even worse whiskey.  Weed grew like, well, weed.

But no one cared about weed.  The illicit alcohol was frowned upon since it took food to make it, but everyone had some at the dinner parties.

And that was another winner – neighborhoods were neighborhoods again.  We got together on Friday nights to have whatever wheat-based dish was popular this week, some eggs, and some moonshine.  I heard a rumor that someone was growing tobacco with success.  I had conflicted feelings about that.  But of vices, if people were having a cigar or a chew or a cigarette?  Far better than many I’d seen.

Life was good.   Were we ready to defend it?

North of Yona, EMP +45 Days

Former Corporal Walt Davis, late of 1^st Platoon, Charlie Company, surveyed the defenses of Yona.  They were in pretty good shape, all things considered.  The first few days after The Event, as his troops called it, was chaotic, but good for the platoon.  They had taken over a few small towns in quick succession, killing those that opposed them, but offering opportunities for the towns to surrender and offer up what the Platoon wanted, which was liquor, ladies, and food.  Not wheat, that was everywhere.  Steaks.

The Platoon also offered up membership to anyone who wanted to join, provided that they pledged allegiance to Walt.  This didn’t happen much on the first few towns, but after their reputation spread, they’d show up at a town and find that there were men lined up not to fight them, but to join them.

What started off as 25 soldiers had been as many as 100, which wasn’t bad, except that now it took four times the liquor, four times the women, four times the fuel.

It had been easy, except for that last town.  Everything had gone well at first.  They’d presented their women, as ordered.  Their booze.  But in the night, they’d been attacked, drunk off the booze, and attacked by the women themselves.

Walt had lost 43 men.  In retaliation, he’d blown up most of the town.  By the time they left it, what was left of it was just smoke in his rear view mirror.

But now he was . . . here.  Where ever the hell that was.  On the ridgeline, he scanned the town below.  Fixed defenses on the road, but nothing a half mile to either side.  This would be easy.  They simply hadn’t learned.  Walt was willing to teach.

He smiled.  Yona.  Stupid name name for a town.

### (for now)

We’re getting near to the home stretch.  Probably only one or two more of these in this series (at most).

In real life, I’ve had conversations with people about “the end of the world.”  The latest one (he brought it up) was that preppers were silly.  People like him, with guns, would come and take the preparations from people who didn’t fight for them.  He lives pretty far in the backwoods, but close enough to Dallas that he’d have tons of new friends moving in with him before he ever got to take away everyone’s stuff.

Another guy (who lived in Alaska) had the idea that he’d move into the backwoods with two fat women.  He also indicated that eventually, after he got hungry, he’d only need one woman.  Yeah.  Icky.

I don’t think that either of those are exceptional plans in the event of an emergency.  The situation I’ve sketched out over this series is probably too good to be true in many ways, but, I swear, the food part is based in reality.  In much of the Midwest, more food than you could eat in years is available.  In some places, the food is even more plentiful than sketched out in this story.  In others, like California or the East Coast, fighting over food will start whenever people run out of Nacho Cheeze® sauce.

While on my weekly tour of the Internet, however, I found this (LINK) excellent article on preparing and becoming (more or less) self-sufficient in food.  It’s not easy.  It won’t happen overnight.  So you need to have food on hand or a reasonable way to get it, and not food for an afternoon, but months, or more likely a year or more.

And people are the double-edged sword.  Too many and it’s just a horde.  Too few and you don’t have enough people and skills to provide food and defend yourself.  If I were going to make an error?  Yeah, fewer people is better than too many.

“We see our role as essentially defensive in nature.  While our armies are advancing so fast and everyone’s knocking themselves out to be heroes, we are holding ourselves in reserve in case the Krauts mount a counteroffensive which threatens Paris or maybe even New York.  Then we can move in and stop them.  But for $1.6 million, we could become heroes for three days.” – Kelly’s Heroes

I remember watching this movie as a kid.  Clint Eastwood – cool for 20% of the history of the United States.

This is part nine of a multipart series.  The rest of them are here:  (Civilization, The Iron Triangle, and You, Civilization After an EMP: TEOTWAWKI (Which is not a Hawaiian word), TEOTWAKI Part III: Get on your bikes and ride!, Internet Cats, TEOTWAWKI Part IV and The Golden Horde, TEOTWAWKI Part V: Camaro and Camo,  TEOTWAWKI Part VI: The Rules Change, The Center Cannot Hold, TEOTWAWKI Part VII: Laws of Survival, Mad Dogs, and The Most Interesting Man in the World and TEOTWAWKI Part VIII: Barricades, Tough Decisions, and Tony Montana)

The story to date:  Our resourceful protagonist was hundreds of miles from home the night in February when an EMP hit, taking with it all of  society.  He’s bicycled and walked until he’s on the final stretch home, 12 miles away, 100 hours after the EMP.  He was sleeping in a parked car at a road barricade of the next town up the road from his home when a bullet passed through the window.

The Highway Outside of Yona, 6AM

I’ve never been a light sleeper.  When I sleep, it’s heavy and deep.  And since the night before I’d spent most of the night crouched under a tarp attempting to avoid getting wet and dying of hypothermia, I was about 20 hours behind on sleep.  But the sound of breaking glass followed by the crack of a rifle is a pretty good alarm clock, especially since the passenger window was the one I was sleeping under in the Xterra.

I popped open my door and slid out, staying as low as possible.  I felt relief that the interior light didn’t come on – and I crouched behind the car.  The bullet had come in the back window, and out the passenger window.  There weren’t a lot of angles that fit both.  I talked to one of the men manning the barricade:  “Hey, he’s shooting at us from that direction.”

Then in rapid succession – a flash of light, the sound of a bullet hitting the Xterra’s body, and the report of the gun.

The commander of the barricade shouted, “Aim for the muzzle flash.  Don’t fire until I call for you to fire.”

Another flash/bullet impact/report.

The commander asked, “How many have the area in your sights?”

“Yes.”

“Sure.”

“Got him.”

About six of the men responded they were sighted in.

“On my count, fire.  Three . . . two . . . one . . . fire!”

Six rifles sang out.

By ROG5728 CC BY-SA 3.0 from Wikimedia Commons – Comments by Wilder 

No more flashes came.  Whether the shooter was hit, killed, or scared, I couldn’t say.  But there were no incoming shots.  But I was also fully awake.

“Guys, this is probably a good enough time for me to go.  It’s still over an hour to sunrise, but the full moon will give me enough light to get to road I’m taking home.”

That was at least a little bit of a lie.  I’d been thinking as I went to sleep that following the roads was officially stupid.  But trying to bushwhack every bramble covered patch of field and tree creek was also officially stupid.

But there were also railroads.

The trains were now gone, but the railroads had been in this area for over 100 years.  And railroads were very flat and bridged every little creek.  The distance from ties wasn’t perfect for my stride, but it was nice – on one or both sides there were trees that obscured my silhouette for almost every step I took.  When that wasn’t the case?  I scampered.

Sure, I was near home.  That didn’t mean that anyone watching might not want to shoot me on principle.  I knew I looked like I was sneaking, since I was.  But it was certainly better than the road, and I was making great time.

And I missed my wife.  I missed the kids.  The closer I was to town, the more fear rose in me – were they okay?

I hit the town about noon.  No one was guarding the railroad in.

Soon enough I was walking past the train station down the street towards the center of town.  I looked grubby, but it was great to be home – to walk by Taco Shack®, to see the (now empty) liquor store, and even the rest of the closed businesses.  It wasn’t long before two cops on a golf cart pulled over in front of me.

“Are you from town?”

“Yes, I just got back.”  I explained my trip.  The cops seemed a little surprised that it had gone so well and so quickly.

“Let’s see your stamp.”

“Stamp?”

“Yeah, the one the guys at the barricade gave you?”

“I didn’t cross any barricade.”

“Then how did you get in to town?”

“Walked in on the rail line.”

The cops looked at each other with the expression I assume I have on my face when I ask my family to help me find my glasses and they’ve been in my hand the whole time.  “Crap.  Okay.  Let’s see your ID.”

After reviewing what I assumed would be the last picture ID I’d ever own, they took out a piece of paper and stamped a star on it and wrote the letter “C” on it.  It was a self-inking stamp.  Then one of them signed it.

On the back was a list of rules:

1. No looting. No stealing.  All looters and thieves will be hanged.
2. No murder. A murderers will be hanged.
3. All able-bodied men must take part in the Watch.
4. All able-bodied men must be armed when out in public.
5. Review the Board daily for updates.
6. Curfew dusk to dawn for those not on Watch.

“Go home, get cleaned up, see your family.  Then report back to be assigned to the Watch.”

“Back where?”

“Oh, yeah – the county courthouse.  Nice building – designed before electricity – almost all of the offices have windows.  Check in on the first floor.”  The cop paused, “And welcome back.”

Most days I walk out the door to work and walk back in after work, and nobody even gets up.  Today was different.  As I walked down the last stretch of gravel road that led to my house, the front door flew open and a thirteen year old boy sprinted toward me . . . “DAD!”  He hit me with enough force that both of us sprawled over the winter-dead lawn.  His seventeen year old brother wasn’t far behind, and then I saw my wife, crying, running to see me as well.  Soon enough I was being roughly hugged and kissed in a pile on the grass by everyone in my family.

“Ooof, get off!”

I rolled over and got up.  I’d never felt so welcomed in my life.  Hand held by my wife on one side, and with my shoulder being pulled down on my right by my thirteen year old, we walked into the house.  I sat down at the dining room table dropping my backpack near the door.  I was surprised to see three rifles and a shotgun by the door.  I was also surprised to see my seventeen year old had my .357 magnum revolver strapped to his hip.

My wife put a cup of hot coffee in front of me – I could see our propane camp stove in the kitchen.  I told them my tale, holding nothing back.  They looked a little shocked – there had only been a little bit of violence here, one carload of kids from the next town over.  And the Town Council had been pretty benevolent but paranoid, my seventeen year old thought.  I finished my coffee.  I wondered how long we’d have it until we ran out . . .

After cleaning up, I went down to the courthouse.  My seventeen year old accompanied me, and we both slung rifles – me with my old hunting rifle and he had a semiautomatic AR pattern rifle.  Oddly enough, the old courthouse rules said that I couldn’t carry a gun inside.  After the EMP?  I was required to.  There was a short line for the Watch – a couple of gentlemen looking to swap watches.  The clerk wrote the swap down.

“I’m here to register for the Watch – I just got back into down.”  The clerk, who used to take payments for car license plates, took the paper the cop gave me.  She raised her eyebrow.

“Hmmm – looks like you’ll be in C-Watch, per the request of Officer Brady.  Um-hm – Well, you can meet with C-Watch.  Tonight . . .” She scanned the paper, “. . . at dusk, here.  It says to prepare by wearing dark clothes, and bring a liter of water and . . . at least twenty rounds of ammo.”

“You’re lucky, Pop.  C-Watch does interesting things, not just watching the barricades.”

We went to check the Board.  B-Watch, which my son was on, had been split into two.  One part was going to watch the rail lines coming in from the north.  His name was on that team.   Looks like the cops paid attention.

We went home again (yet more walking) and had dinner.  It was the last of the steak from the freezer cooked over propane in the kitchen.  It was amazing.  And then it was time to report.

Dressed all in black, I felt like I should be sneaking with John Belushi in Animal House.  I had my rifle and thirty more rounds of ammunition, plus the water.  There were a few candles in the courthouse, and in the dark it was nearly dazzling.  It’s amazing how a little light shines in the darkness.

“Tonight we’re going to assault the grain elevator at Star.”  It was the cop who gave me the ID with the star on it.

Star was a little railway siding about six miles from town.  I was in a group of about forty men.  All of us were similarly aged.

“I know that all of you are competent, and will do your jobs.  What we’ll do is march down to Star, surround the grain elevator, and then take it by any means.  Any means.  Let me explain to you the importance of that grain elevator – we know, since everyone who works at the elevator lives here in town, that the elevator is full of grain.  Well, not exactly full, but nearly 75% capacity.

“Let me make this clear.  In those grain silos is enough corn, wheat, milo, and soybean to feed everyone in town 2,000 calories a day for the next four and a half years.  We’ve been through a lot, but four and a half years will give us time to figure out how to farm like it’s 1799.  Now, the elevator is in the possession of some punks from down south who just showed up and shot the night watchman last night.  No more than a dozen of them.”

Four and a half years of food.  Stunning.

Our leader, Lieutenant Brady, outlined the basic plan.  We’d split into four 10-man squads.  I was in Squad 2.  He used a whiteboard to show our positions.  Squad 2 was to set up along the intersection and provide covering fire as Squads 3 and 4 advanced alternately toward the office.  Squad 1 was to be held in reserve to fill in as needed for either of the other three Squads.

The objective was to take possession of the elevator by dawn.

I’d saw we marched, but we didn’t.  We walked the six miles to the elevator.  The Moon started to rise after about two hours of walking.

Lieutenant Brady set up the Squads, and personally led Squad three as they began leapfrogging into position.

Our job was simple – when Brady said “fire” we were supposed to fire a steady stream of staggered shots at the front door.  No more than one a second, one every two seconds would be better, but continuously.  And sequentially.  The idea is that anyone inside the elevator would be so distracted by the steady streams of bullets that they’d stay low.  When Brady said, “clear” we were to stop.  Simple.

We got into position and took cover in the ditch.

I took careful aim on the front door.  I’d picked a rifle with open sights – I figured it would be much easier to use than one with a scope at night and with the idea that I’d need to be able to swing it quickly.

I was right.  Soon enough the assault began.

“Fire!”

We fired.  The window shattered.

That’s when the shots from our right started – shooting at us.  Brady wasn’t there, but I’m pretty sure he would have wanted us to defend our position.  We did.  We swung our rifles and started shooting back.

Two of our group kept the fire going at the front door, covering Brady.

As Brady yelled “clear” – the other two members of the squad joined us in firing at the group that had been shooting at us.

There hadn’t been return fire for a minute or so . . . so when Brady yelled “clear” again all the firing stopped.

Except for the bullet that hit me.

### (for now)

I was out hunting one night and I had lost my daughter.  She was hunting with me.  It surprised me that she was able to get lost at the age of 13 in a piece of land that was half a mile on a side, but she did.  When it hit dusk, I shot my .30-06 into the ground hoping to give her a direction to go to.  What amazed me was the huge eruption of flame – greater than 10 feet – that came from the barrel.  Rifles without flash suppressors are bright in the night – which is why the military pays for flash suppressors.  So, muzzle flashes are real.  And they can be visible for long distances.  Oh, and my daughter showed up, and I seem to be unable to lose her now – she has my number and everything.

And nighttime vision is important.  When I was starting fires (in the fireplace!) as a kid I’d try to light as many places along the newspaper as I could with the match.  My Dad looked and said, “Three on a match – that’s unlucky.”  Then he told me the story that it wasn’t really unlucky – it came from World War I when soldiers would light cigarettes.  If you lit three cigarettes on the same match, well, that gave the German sniper plenty of time to find you and shoot you.  Which I would call unlucky.

Railroads will be ignored early on in a sudden catastrophe, but provide a great way to move from place to place to the extent they don’t parallel big roadways.

I love it the most when I do my blog and learn something.  The food storage was my biggest surprise.  I actually called elevator operators to see what their inventory would be in February.  “Definitely would be at least 50%.  Probably closer to 75% full.”

This shocked me – the common theme for TEOTWAWKI in a sudden collapse is that calories would be king.  And they would be in New York.  And they would be in California.  But here in the middle of the country?  This is where the food is.  Real answer?  We’d have years of food if we could keep it.  Years.  The biggest concern would be the food going bad in storage.  Where we live?  Maybe work on preps other than food – since we seem to have massive amounts nearby.  I’d guess that within a thirty mile radius we’d have enough food for 100,000 people for four and a half years – so we could afford a doctor or two.

I mentioned this to a friend because the conclusion surprised me so much.  “So, the optimum time to attack the East Coast and population in February, during a blizzard, is the exact time where all of the food is stuck in silos in the Midwest.  I’ve never read this anywhere.”

His response was the same as The Mrs.:  “You’re not the first to figure this out.  I’m sure the military figured this out in 1952.”

Sure.  But no matter.  I still feel good about figuring that one out.  Oh, and there are tons of cows around.  Literally.  We might be the only area on the continent to gain weight after the end of the world.

Guess marketing the End of the World Diet will have to wait.