Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

“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.

“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.