Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

“Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean.  I mean plumb, mad-dog mean.  ‘Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win.  That’s just the way it is.” – The Outlaw Josey Wales

Somehow, I don’t remember seeing this cartoon.  It just looks awesome! (h/t)

This is part six 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)

The story to date:  Our resourceful protagonist was far from home the night in February when an EMP hit, taking with it all of the society and the plentiful PEZ® it has provided.  He’s bicycled and walked until he’s only 45 miles from home, 70 hours after the EMP.

2:30 AM

The rain had started after midnight.  Before that, the night had been clear – I’d looked up and watched the Milky Way stretching across the sky.  I’d dozed and woke up, putting more wood on the fire.  But it wasn’t the rain that woke me up, it was the wind.  Just before the rain hit the wind went from a gentle breeze to big gusts of cold wind, followed by short pauses of stillness that teased me, made me think it was over.

Then the rain.  Cold, bitter, windy rain.

My fire had been blown out before the accumulating rain had a chance to form into streams that would have extinguished it anyway.

And the rain continued.  I jumped out of my sleeping bag and tossed my poncho, which had been over the sleeping bag, back on over my clothes.  So much for a night’s sleep.

The rain intensified.  I had tied off the emergency tarp above where I was sleeping, forming a sort-of tent, and I crouched under it.  I pulled the sleeping bag back around me and continued to crouch in the wind and rain.  The rope holding one corner of the tarp worked its way free in the wind.  I grabbed at the rope and pulled the tarp tight again.  A quart of nearly freezing water dropped right on my leg and foot as I disturbed a ripple in the tarp where water had pooled.

As I became fully conscious, I began to worry.  I wasn’t yet horribly wet, and the poncho would mostly protect me as I squatted under the tarp.  My feet, however, were in hiking boots that weren’t particularly waterproof.  And they were already wet and cold.

And the wind continued.  I shivered.  This was winter in the Midwest.  Sometimes snow, and sometimes cold wet rain, which was worse.  Snow was at least beautiful.

I finally pulled the sleeping bag under me, and managed to sit down and stay dry despite the water outside.  My feet were cold, but as the rest of me was dry, I eventually fell back asleep sitting up.

I woke up with a very stiff neck under a dark tarp.  But the rain had stopped.

My feet were still soaked, my hands were cold.  But I did have wool socks, and the wool would help retain heat even wet.  I had no idea what time it was.  I opened up a can of “cling pears” and drank the cool, syrupy liquid before eating the pears.

I tossed the can on the ground.  Littering used to be a thing I thought I’d never do.  Now?  I wasn’t going to carry an empty can to try to find a trashcan after the apocalypse.  In the dark, I got out of the tent.  The moon was out now and I could see my breath from its faint light.

I looked down.  The sleeping bag was now covered in mud and soaked with water.  I lifted it.  Probably thirty pounds.

I hated to leave it, since I knew that they wouldn’t be making sleeping bags again anytime soon, but lugging it the 45 miles to home was also a non-starter.  I packed everything else back up into the pack, after shaking the water off the tarp.

I started walking east.  Dawn was on the horizon.  I was a little surprised – I didn’t think I’d slept that long.  One thing I’d made on the road was a little spear – nothing more than my cheap Chinese knife duct taped to a sturdy stick – it doubled as a walking stick.  A pointy one.

Most houses were what you’d expect on a lonely country road.  A single-wide trailer from the 1980’s.  A farmhouse from the 1940’s.  A mini-mansion (ranchette style) from 2006.  But this house was amazing.  A brick wall, six foot high, and thick ran around the yard.  A three story brick . . . castle?  It looked like a silo, being round-ish, but had windows and obvious floors.

I shook my head.  No idea what that castle could have been.  A Victorian girl’s playhouse?

The main mansion looked like something a well-to-do merchant might have made.  I’d lived in the area for years, but never knew this house existed on this dirt road.  It was designed well before electricity, certainly.  That might be a plus for the new owners.  I could see smoke coming from the chimney, but kept walking.  I was only three miles from the highway.

About half a mile from the farmhouse a dog ran out onto the road.  It barked and growled.  It was mainly a German shepherd, but I could see that it wasn’t a purebred.  It was also barking and growling at me, so the pedigree was at best an academic discussion, all things considered.  It looked skinny.

I did not want to get mauled by a dog.  I also didn’t want to shoot it, if I could avoid it.  It was probably just hungry and scared.  But I was going home, and I was going to keep going on this road.  I stood upright, with my “spear” in one hand.  My pistol was in my jacket pocket – I could get to it easily if I had to.

I talked lowly, kept telling the dog, “It’s okay, boy, it’s okay” in a calming voice.  I walked slowly toward it.  It barked harder, jumping back and forth.  Agitated.

I kept walking, slowly.  The dog kept barking.  I went to the far side of the road, moving slowly, so I could give the dog a wide berth.

Finally I was side by side with the dog on the road.  It lunged.  No time to pull the pistol, I slashed with the stick, hitting the dog with the butt of the stick, rather than the blade side?  Why?  I have no idea.  But I struck the dog firmly in the ribs.  The knife blade passed in front of my face far closer than I wanted.

I quickly reversed my grip and pointed it back at the dog.

The dog that was backing up.

I’m pretty sure if the dog had been trained to be violent, I would have been in trouble, up to and including dead.  Thankfully, the dog sucked at attacking.  It was probably someone’s pet.  It lunged again.  This time, I stabbed it with the knife at the end of the stick, a glancing blow off of its chest.  It yipped as it ran away, off into the trees.

I looked at the knife – no blood, and only a spot or two on the ground.  I apparently sucked at spears.

I backed away from where I thought the dog was, so I’d be able to defend myself if it decided to make another run at me.  I pulled the pistol.

I was shaking.  It’s not often that violence is required.  Sure, I hunted deer, but the deer don’t have canine fangs and attack back.  After a few hundred yards I stopped walking backwards and turned around and started walking forward, glancing behind me occasionally to make sure the dog wasn’t getting ready to attack.

As I got to the stop sign at the main highway, I found myself for the third time in three days staring down the barrel of a gun.  This time an AR variant.  And as I looked to the left I saw another man pointing a deer rifle at me.  The rush of adrenaline didn’t stop me from noticing that both men had their fingers on the triggers of their rifles.  And the dead body off to my right.

“Where you headed, spear-boy?”

“Millerville.”

“Not this way, you ain’t.”

Fort Custer, EMP +3

There were three battalions of troops at Ft. Custer, with an average number of soldiers per battalion of 3,000, but only 7,000 soldiers lived on base.

The sergeant in charge the 1^st Platoon of Charlie Company usually lived on base.  But he had been on leave in Georgia.  Nobody had seen Lieutenant Janson since before the EMP went off.  He lived off of base.  Everyone knew him as a rookie who was homesick for Alabama, everybody had bet he was headed that way.  1^st Platoon, Charlie Company didn’t have anyone in command.

And that was a problem.

Initially, everyone had gone to chow on the first day after the EMP.  Sure, it was dark, but this was the Army, right?  They know how to cook even without power.

No.  The mess hall was just that, a mess.  There was milk, and boxed cereal, but there wasn’t anything hot.  And there weren’t any lights beyond flashlights.

A colonel had shown up, and barked a few orders before heading out of the mess hall.  The short version was that everyone was supposed to, except for meals, hunker down in their barracks until further orders arrived.  At lunch, someone had thought to get MREs and set them out, along with bread, peanut butter, jelly, and fresh fruits.  Sodas were out in the serving line.

Dinner was much the same.

The biggest stress on the troops was the lack of information.  Have a mixture of 7,000 mainly men, many at their peak of testosterone production, who were wired to be busy and have them do nothing?  A bad idea.

Day two and breakfast was there, but looking pretty meager.  Someone had gotten some lanterns going and had managed to hook propane up to the stoves so they had some hot food.  Things were improving?

No.  By dinner, the MREs were the picked-over least favorite food and the propane was gone.  The base store, or PX, was likewise empty.

The morning of day three, a corporal in 1^st Platoon, Charlie Company asked a simple question.

“They’ve forgotten us.  Who wants to get out?”

### (for now)

I’ve taught survival basics (the half-hour course, not the six weeks living in the forest fashioning an iPhone® out of bone and discarded pop cans) and have tried to drum into my students the simplest survival rule – the rule of 3’s.

• 3 seconds without Facebook©.
• 3 minutes without air.
• 3 hours without shelter.
• 3 days without water.
• 3 weeks without food.

Those laws are, of course, wrong.  I’ve seen an adult female live a full minute without Facebook™, once.  Some people can hold their breath for 4 minutes, or even slightly longer.  But nobody can do it for 3 hours.  And under certain climates you can make it longer than three days without water.  Or you might die in a day without it under certain conditions.  And I could probably make a few months without food, and my pants would fit a lot better.

But today’s lesson is shelter.  200+ days of the year where I live now, shelter wouldn’t be required to live.  In Los Angeles?  Probably 365 days a year.  But in a cold, driving wet wind with wind chill?  Yeah, you can die pretty quickly.  Clothing really matters in a situation like that.  Wool is your friend.  But in the high mountains in summer?  Put a cotton t-shirt on and get it wet from sweat?  You could have hypothermia in July.

Dog packs exist in the rural Midwest now.  After an apocalypse, they’d get bad, quickly.  Our hero ran into a lone dog and scared it away without too much trouble, probably because it was a scared house dog.  In a pack, however, they kill for fun.  And once they were hungry?  They’d be pretty good at it.  After a few weeks, a dog pack would likely become as dangerous as being between a Kardashian and a camera.

Fort Custer is made up.  But what happens when you have high testosterone trained warriors in an environment without a command structure?  I’m thinking we’ll know after a few more posts.

“After the First World War, Shandor decided that society was too sick to survive.  He wasn’t alone.  He had close to a thousand followers when he died.  They conducted rituals up on the roof, bizarre rituals intended to bring about the end of the world.” – Ghostbusters

Well, he has a point.  I think I need to post this to my timeline!

Previous posts in this series include:

This is part five 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 )

The story to date:  Our resourceful protagonist was far from home the night in February when an EMP hit, taking with it all of the society and the plentiful PEZ® it has provided.  He’s bicycled and walked until he’s only 60 miles from home, 58 hours after the EMP.

He’s just witnessed a Camaro pulling onto the road after hearing two shots in a farmhouse, and it was headed straight toward him.

EMP +2, 2:30 PM, 58 miles from home

The Camaro was half a mile away.  Hiding seemed like a good idea, but I looked to either side of the road there was no cover for 100 yards, and the camouflage poncho I was wearing consisted of dark greens and browns – it would be of no use against the straw yellow dead grass in the ditch here.

I stood motionless and waited.  I didn’t have long to wait.

The Camaro pulled to a stop in front of me.

The driver turned off the engine and soon enough a brushed nickel revolver was pointing at me out of the open window.  The thought entered my mind that he was holding the gun in his left hand, and maybe he wasn’t a good shot left handed.  But then I looked at the barrel again.  For whatever reason, the hole in the gun barrel looked as large as the full moon.  Betting that he would be a lousy shot with his left hand seemed like a lousy bet.

“Hands outside of the poncho.”

I slowly raised my arms to the side.

“Alright.  Hands above your head.  Lock your fingers together.  Slowly.”

I complied.  It’s not like I can run faster than a slug from the hand cannon he was holding, and, besides, I didn’t have anything to fight back with other than the cheap Chinese multi-tool that I had previously kept in my car as part of my emergency kit.

“Got a gun?”

I shook my head.  “Nope.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Millerville,” I replied.

“And where did you start?”

“Meridian.”

“You mean north of the Interstate Meridian?  That’s almost 200 miles away.”  He paused.  “How’d you get here so fast?”

“Bicycle, and then feet.”

“Impressive.  What did you see?”

“Can I put my hands down?”

“No.”

I sighed.  “Not much.  On the first day I just biked due south.  The next?  Due east.  Not a lot of people on the roads I picked.  I got shot at by the interstate running south from the City and lost my bike, but crossed under the Interstate on the railroad bridge.  Since then, I’ve been walking east.”

I still hadn’t seen the driver’s face – the sunlight reflected off of the car windshield.  I heard a single, humorless laugh.  “Unarmed.  Sixty miles from home.  I should just shoot you out of mercy.  Hell, I bet you haven’t even eaten since this started.”

The humorless laugh again.

He continued, “Okay.  Since you’ve obviously figured out that nothing electrical works anymore you understand, probably better than most, that civilization ain’t what it used to be.”

His arm withdrew back into the car, and I was relieved to see pistol disappear.

“For what it’s worth, the people in the farmhouse ahead are dead.  And I did kill them.  I’m the sheriff in this county, and I’ve been, well, taking out the trash today.  There are some people who will just be trouble, and they were pretty high on the list.

“If you really are going to Millerville, you should be armed.  There’s at least one pistol in there.  Probably some food.  So, go.  If I ever see you around our peaceful community again?  I’ll shoot you, too.  Now walk on over to that fence, and turn around and face the other direction until I drive off.  Good luck.”

I complied.  The engine on the Camaro roared back to life.  I heard the engine rev up and then the sound of the exhaust was up and over the little hill, lessening in volume continuously.

When I got to the farmhouse, the front door was open to the 1930’s or 1940’s era home.  There were two bodies on the couch in the front room, a man and a woman.  They looked to be in their early forties.  Both were dead.  I tried to remember the last time I’d seen a dead person – it had been at a funeral, my mom, I think.  Years.  And here were two dead people, dead less than an hour.  They had entrance wounds, center mass of their chest.  There was surprisingly little blood, but I imagined the back of the couch was a mess.  I wasn’t going to check.

Was the driver of the Camaro really a sheriff?  I had no idea.  I had no idea what these people had done.  A grudge, a score to settle?  Or?

It didn’t seem to matter to him to leave a witness alive, but in the end, he probably doesn’t care.  The chances of him seeing me again were nearly zero, and if the world ever did come back, the chances of him seeing me as a witness in court against him would also be effectively zero – I’d imagine the slowly cooling bodies in the next room wouldn’t matter to anyone left alive.  There’d be no one to press charges.

I’m embarrassed that I headed straight for their kitchen.

I skipped the refrigerator – it had been cold, but the power had been off for days.  They had a pantry, of sorts, behind a floral patterned curtain.  I looked around the kitchen – it was a mess.  Open containers of food on the counter.  Trash overflowing the trash can.  Dirty dishes everywhere.

In the pantry were an array of cans.  Corn.  Creamed corn.  I hated creamed corn.  But it never sounded so good to me.  Carrots.  Peaches.  Some pasta.

I looked around the mess on the counter.  Can opener.  Hmm.

There was an electric can opener, but there wasn’t a manual one on the counter.  I looked through the drawers, and couldn’t find one.  I remembered I had my cheap Chinese multitool – it didn’t have one, either.  But it did have a punch.  I put the punch up against the metal lid of the can, and smacked it with the base of another can.  Success – a small hole.  I repeated on the other side.  Another hole.  Since these were peaches, I decided that I could just start by drinking the juice.

It was the best thing I’d ever had in my life, sticky sweet, and tasting of summer.

I finally found a hammer in another drawer, and used it and my multi tool to poke a lot of holes in the can.  I used the needle nose pliers on the multitool to rip the small bridges of metal up, until I had a hole big enough to get an actual peach out with a fork I found in a drawer.

They were amazing.

When I got to the second can of corn, I cut my finger on the ripped up lid, deeply.  I dripped blood on the floor as I went to the bathroom and found some topical antibiotic and a bandage.

I wondered how long until a tube of Neosporin® would be worth more than gold.  I guessed that the answer was that it already was.  After wrapping up my finger, I looted the medicine cabinet, dumping everything into my bag – nobody would be making more medicine anytime soon.

As I walked back toward the kitchen to finish the corn, I saw an actual Leatherman® multitool on a dresser in a bedroom.  I checked – it had a can opener.  I went back to the kitchen.  Slowly, but steadily I opened the next can of food.

It was about 10 minutes after I finished eating, while I was looking for guns and ammunition, that the pain hit my abdomen.  I doubled over as waves of pain hit me.  I almost didn’t make the toilet before . . . well, before I needed to get there.  But I did make it.

After scrounging around, I found an old .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol – how old?  It looked like it might have been old enough to have served with Patton in World War Two.  There were twenty-odd rounds of ammunition and two magazines – a perfect match.  I also found some really old rifles in a closet, but no ammunition for them.

But in the hall closet?  The mother lode.  A sleeping bag and a small tent.

I put enough food into the bag for three days.  I hoped that would be enough to get me home . . . .

I left the house.  Maybe if I were a better person, I’d have buried the couple on the couch.  As it was, I was thinking more of me than them.  I headed east.  And I kept walking.

### (Until Next Week)

My guess is as we enter the third day, people are starting to get a little crazy, and not ex-girlfriend crazy, but Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre® crazy.  Our current society is built upon lots and lots of information, along with lots and lots of luxury.  I define luxury here as “stuff that’s not required to live.”  Day three will bring a deficit of both. As the snow storm pounds the East Coast and they have an epic battle to just stay alive.  In the Midwest?  Sparsely populated, and (during this story) unseasonably warm.

This meme was found here (LINK).  

What goes through someone’s head when the Sun is shining, the weather is nice, but the car won’t work, the stores are closed, and there is absolutely no information coming from anywhere?  Nothing good.  And this will be combined with declining supplies at home.

The average house has less than three days’ worth of food on hand.  The average store has less than three days’ worth of inventory.  But the stores are closed.  On day one, some people are out of diapers.  On day three?  Half the people are out of food.  And none of them know what is going on.  On day four?  We’ll get to that next week.

This meme was found here (LINK).

The reaction of the “sheriff” was an interesting one.  First, he wanted to know about what our hero had seen.  His communication channels are nearly certainly down, and getting any kind of information would be helpful in protecting his town.  Also, it looks like, he’s figured out that things will never return to normal.  That’s another unsettling thing – people won’t go after witnesses.  Why would they?  Authority is simply gone.

Would a sheriff proactively go after the bad guys after TEOTWAWKI – “taking out the trash” as he called it?  Maybe.  A good sheriff would know the troublemakers, the ones likely to cause trouble.  A good sheriff would know which people got off on a technicality.  And even a good sheriff might have a grudge.

Would scores be settled?  As to old vendettas being settled – that’s a certainty.  People are pretty good at keeping grudges, and there are some actions that are kept in check only by the threat of prison.  On day one, you’d see this behavior – scores being settled – in any medium to large size city.  On day three?  That city would be tearing itself apart.  Small, rural areas wouldn’t see that behavior that soon.  We all know each other.  To a certain extent, the Wilder family is still the new guys on the block, and we’ve lived in this house for a decade.

Regardless, as the sheriff said:  “Civilization ain’t what it used to be.”

Medicine now appears as a first time topic.  We take the current miracles of our age, antibiotics, antibiotic creams, and sterile bandages as commonplace.  And they are.  They’re also amazingly inexpensive.  However, in the past this wasn’t the case.  A simple cut on a finger if it resulted in infection, could lead to death.

Lastly, people are used to eating consistent amounts of food daily.  After intermittent (involuntary) fasting, digestive systems will change.  Yeah.  A small detail.  And maybe I’ve already said too much about that.

Yeah.  Digestive systems are icky.

“She’s the last of the V8 Interceptors.” – Mad Max

So, the only perfect car after the apocalypse is a V8 Interceptor, right?  But what does insurance cost after the end of the world as we know it?

This is part five 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)

EMP +2, 2PM, 60 miles from home.

I could hear the big V8 engine coming about a mile away.

And that was good, because I had no idea who was driving it.  As much as I’d have loved to hitchhike home, I had the gut feeling that anyone putting that much gas into the engine had a purpose in mind that didn’t involve taking me home.

I broke for the ditch on my right, and the dubious cover of the small tree beyond – the only cover for 40 yards.

I was still wearing the camouflaged poncho – it was nearly uncomfortably warm, even on a 50°F day.  But it had the benefit of not being orange.  I got behind the tree, got low, and stayed still.

Forty seconds later a 1960’s era Camaro topped the small rise and blew past me on the road, loudly.

As the high pitch dopplered into a low pitch as it passed me and moved away I guessed that the owner had taken considerable liberty with the state laws that governed noise reduction – the car was loud, uncomfortably loud.  And it didn’t slow down – whether or not it had seen me hiding behind the shrub.  Where ever they were going, whatever they were doing, it didn’t involve me.

That was good.

After a minute, I got up, and started walking again, east, following the Camaro.

Walking is boring.  Boring, boring, boring.  Blaise Pascal, the mathematician, was also quite a philosopher – and in what was probably a pretty dismal day he wrote the following:  “People distract themselves so they don’t have time to think about how wretched they are.”  It’s not exactly what he said – he was French, but it’s close enough.

But the boredom was alternating with apprehension.  My family was miles away, and I had no idea what was happening with them.  The good news:  they had been at home.  If it weren’t winter, they would have slept through their alarms, since their alarms were all electronic, and most of them were hooked directly to the Internet, and none of that was coming back soon.  But since it was winter, someone, probably my wife, had woken up when it got cold in our bedroom.  And knew something was wrong.

They were smart, though, and I imagined that they would have figured out pretty soon that the lights were gone for good.  At least I hoped they would.  We had actually spent time talking about it, more as a thought experiment, a “what would you do if” conversation on the deck on the mild spring and fall evenings.  My apprehension was like my apprehension about being on the road – my sons and wife would be fine, except for . . . other people.  Like the people in the Camaro.  Random people who had needs, desires, or bad blood.

Borehension?  Apprehendom?  Not sure there was a word for it.  But I kept going, one foot in front of the other down the road.

The third emotion I felt was hunger.

I’m not sure that I’d ever really been hungry, in my entire life.  I was only on the second day of this trip, and I hadn’t eaten.  The emergency food rations in my backpack – 6000 calories – were five years old.  I’d never rotated them.  And they’d been kept in the trunk of my car on 110°F days during five summers.

What causes food to go bad?  Heat, light, and age.  My trunk had given them two out of three.  When I opened the package, what wasn’t hard as a rock was rotten.

I threw it away before I got hungry so I wouldn’t be tempted to eat it.  It was heavy, and it was useless.

I couldn’t remember when the last time I had gone a day without food.  It was probably a few years ago.  But there hadn’t been many of them.  Now I was on my second day without food, and I had probably been burning 10,000 calories a day between biking, walking, and shivering at night in the cold.

But this part of the Midwest was nice for walking.  It was flat, and the roads ran straight – unless there was a river, lake, or hill, the roads went due north and due south, and there was one nearly every mile.  And I needed to head due East, so I kept going East.

And my feet hurt.  I worried about getting blisters.  If I had to finish this on foot, which looked likely at this point, blisters were my biggest enemy.  Outside of people I didn’t know.  Like the guys in the Camaro.

As I crested the next small rise I saw another farmhouse about a half mile off.  The Camaro was there.

I stopped and sat down, off the road, back into the ditch to watch.  No reason to highlight my silhouette against the ridgeline.

Two gunshots.  Separated by about fifteen seconds.

A minute later, two people got walked out of the house and got into the Camaro®, and started it up with a load roar.  They backed up, and then the tires threw out gravel as the driver gunned the engine, fishtailing as they straightened out the car onto the main road.

Headed straight back toward me.  And I had no illusions.  They were armed.  And their intentions weren’t good.

And I was a witness.

Meanwhile, in the big city to the north . . .

Tim looked out and saw that three houses in the next block were on fire.  He had gone to help, but all he could do was stand outside with neighbors that he’d never talked to as everything they owned burned.  He’d thought about inviting them to his house, but, again, he didn’t know them.  Maybe their next door neighbors would invite them in.  Or maybe there was an empty house they could stay in, until things returned back to normal.

He and his wife, Arlene, had some firewood, and had kept the house warm that first night, but now the firewood was low.  They mainly used the fireplace on Saturday nights, only.  And that was for atmosphere.

Tim had walked the half mile to the supermarket, and saw that it was closed.  But it wasn’t closed.  The windows had been broken out, and walking through the sliding doors that had been permanently pulled open, and nothing but darkened chaos inside.  Tim didn’t see a single item on the shelves, as far as he could see.  Nothing.  The store was empty.

Tim walked back home.  Not a car on the streets.  At his front door, he called out, “Arlene-ee, I’m home.”  No answer.

His next door neighbor, who he had stood with as his house burned, came down the hall.

“Can I help you?”

### (Until Next Week)

I typed in “Cover, Concealment, and Camouflage” into my browser.  What popped up?  The first link was Crosman®, the BB and pellet gun manufacturer.  On their page, they have copied the USMC Marine Rifle Squad Field Manual.  I guess I love these guys now.  Oh, who am I kidding.  I already have a pellet pistol and rifle from them.  Here’s their link (LINK).

Cover is what protects you from being shot, like a log, a tank, or hiding behind your mom – to be clear, not my mom, but your mom.  Concealment is what protects you from being seen, like a log, a tree, a hill, or hiding behind your mom.  And Camouflage is the use of manmade and natural material to avoid being seen, like incorporating brush to break up your outline, or using mud or charcoal to make sure your face doesn’t shine, or using camouflage clothing to blend in.  Your mom is awful camouflage, since she can be seen from space, and everyone stares at her because she’s so big.

But when moving through territory where you’re a stranger, or, you just don’t want to be seen?  Concealment and camouflage are critical.  Except they won’t work for your mom – she couldn’t hide behind a hot air balloon.  But your momma didn’t read Pascal.

Guess this was before Facebook®?

Pascal really did say something like the quote in the story.  He really was quite a philosopher – his book, Pensees, published in 1670 (read it here for free), showed that even back then mankind had a tendency to want to distract themselves so that they didn’t have to think about their actions.  “People distract themselves so they don’t have time to think about how wretched they are.”  Yup.  We do.

Back then?  Books were the distractions.  Then plays.  Music.  Radio.  Television.  Comic books.  Video games.  The Internet – Facebook®, Twitter©, SnapCat™, and MySpace®.  Everyone’s still on Myspace®, right?  And don’t forget work.  Anything so you don’t have to think about yourself, the consequences of your actions, and if you’re doing the things that follow your values, or, if religious, the values of your religion.

Yeah, tough.

Now imagine being in the culture where we are surrounded by Weapons of Mass Distraction on a continual basis.  And then they’re all gone – except for books and comics.

What will that do psychologically to the survivors?  I mean, you’ve lost everything, but the biggest thing you’ve lost is the ability to forget yourself.  I imagine depression and suicide will be pretty popular – people who will end themselves rather than confront themselves.  I sure hope you all like that quote when I put it on Facebook® complete with a cat or a bikini girl sitting on a 1960’s Camaro©!

And, yup.  A 1960’s era Camaro® has no systems to be impacted by an EMP.

Imagine, all of these things will work after an EMP. 

Americans, for the most part, haven’t felt hunger since the Depression®.  There isn’t a lot of evidence that many Americans died during the Depression™ due to hunger, but there were plenty of people that were hungry, but even then few people died due to malnutrition.

To clarify how pampered we are as a society:  a day or two after Hurricane Katrina, my wife and I were watching the coverage of that unfolding tragedy.  Someone on CNN® got on the air and said that PEOPLE WERE EATING PEOPLE IN THE SUPERDOME® DUE TO HUNGER.  Now, like I’ve said before, it’s been a long time since I’ve been a day without food.  But to go full cannibal after two or three days?  What?

I mean, if I was really hungry . . . maybe . . .

NO!

NO ONE EATS SOMEONE AFTER THREE DAYS WITHOUT FOOD.  NO ONE.

I mean, unless that was a normal thing for them from before.

But we are so very used to a normal flow of calories that it’s difficult for anyone to conceive of going a day without food.  What about a week?  Two weeks?

After an EMP that would certainly happen people will get hungry.  And that’s not unusual during human history.  During the Medieval times, what did the peasants do?  Drink and party all winter?  No.  They huddled in cold houses under blankets after eating the bare minimum to survive the winter.  They hardly did anything all winter long.  Because they were peasants.  And it sucked.  And their wifi was really slow, too.  But they didn’t get blisters.  Just kidding, they got lots of blisters, because they were peasants.

Blisters are horrible, and can cause fatal infections if not properly treated.  Thankfully our protagonist has extra socks, disinfectant, and Neosporin® if he gets a blister.  But they will ruin his progress if they get too bad.  But he can count on his neighbors to help, right?

Well, not necessarily.  How well do you know your neighbors?  I was sitting outside tonight making sure The Boy didn’t inadvertently crush himself as he changed the oil in the Wildermobile®.  He was using jack stands under the front axle for the first time, and I wanted to make sure he didn’t mess up.  Thankfully, I only had to offer two or three life-saving tips, and three or four car-saving tips.

What showed up while I watched him work?

A neighbor dog.  A sweet terrier with a flowered collar and a Denver Broncos® bandana.  Which of my neighbors liked the Broncos®?  They’re not a team in favor, here.  It wasn’t my new neighbors to the north.  Maybe the new ones to the northeast?  Sadly, even here in rural Upper South Midwestia, I don’t know my neighbors well enough.  Modern life seems to be set up to separate us – we have little time between work and kid sports and kid clubs and everything else.

We’ll see what happens to Tim, but it’s not likely that he’ll be with us too long.  He seems woefully unprepared.  Like your mom.