How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 - THE SURVIVAL MIND-SET FOR LIVING IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

  Chapter 2 - PRIORITIES Your List of Lists

  Chapter 3 - THE SURVIVAL RETREAT

  Chapter 4 - WATER The Key Resource

  Chapter 5 - THE DEEP LARDER Your Family’s Food Storage

  Chapter 6 - FUEL AND HOME POWER

  Chapter 7 - GARDENS AND LIVESTOCK

  Chapter 8 - MEDICAL SUPPLIES AND TRAINING

  Chapter 9 - COMMUNICATIONS AND MONITORING

  Chapter 10 - HOME SECURITY AND SELF-DEFENSE

  Chapter 11 - FIREARMS FOR SELF-SUFFICIENCY AND SELF-DEFENSE

  Chapter 12 - G.O.O.D. VEHICLES AND THE DREADED TRIP OUTTA DODGE

  Chapter 13 - INVESTING, BARTER, AND HOME-BASED BUSINESSES

  Chapter 14 - IT COMES DOWN TO YOU

  Appendix A

  Appendix B

  Appendix C

  Index

  A PLUME BOOK

  HOW TO SURVIVE THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

  JAMES WESLEY, RAWLES is the founder and editor of SurvivalBlog .com, the Internet’s most popular blog on family preparedness. He is a world-renowned expert on a wide range of preparedness topics, including food storage, fuel storage, self-defense, communications, retreat security, “bug out” bags, survival vehicles, retreat architecture, gardening for self-sufficiency, small livestock, and a wide variety of traditional pioneer and self-sufficiency skills.

  The author is a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer. His preparedness consulting clients have included Fortune 500 executives, clergy, entrepreneurs, and fund managers. An influential figure in the modern preparedness movement, Rawles not only talks the talk, but he walks the walk: He and his family live at a well-stocked and fully self-sufficient retreat that is nestled in a mountain range “somewhere west of the Rockies.”

  Rawles is also the author of Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse, which has been described as “a survival manual, dressed neatly as fiction.” Two sequels are forthcoming from Simon & Schuster.

  PLUME

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, October

  Copyright © James Wesley, Rawles, 2009

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCAREGISTRADA

  LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Rawles, James Wesley.

  How to survive the end of the world as we know it : tactics, techniques, and techhnologies for uncertain times / James Wesley Rawles. p. cm.

  Includes index.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-14856-3

  1. Survival skills. 2. Survivalism. 3. reparedness. 4. Disasters—Social aspects. I. Title. GF86.R.6’9—dc22 2009028617

  Set in Iowan Old Style

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  Acknowledgments

  My sincere thanks to the more than 135,000 SurvivalBlog readers. Thank you for sharing your tremendous knowledge and insights.

  Special thanks to the Memsahib for her tremendous support.

  Thanks also to Michael Z. Williamson and to my Penguin Books editor, Becky Cole, for her patience and her eagle eye.

  INTRODUCTION

  An Extremely Fragile Society

  We live in a time of relative prosperity. Our health care is excellent, our grocery-store shelves bulge with a huge assortment of fresh foods, and our telecommunications systems are lightning fast. We have cheap transportation, with our cities linked by an elaborate and fairly well-maintained system of roads, freeways, rails, canals, seaports, and airports. For the first time in human history, the majority of the world’s population now lives in cities.

  But the downside to all this abundance is overcomplexity, overspecialization, and overly long supply chains. In the First World, less than 2 percent of the population is engaged in agriculture or fishing. Ponder that for a moment: Just 2 percent of us are feeding the other 98 percent. The food on our tables often comes from hundreds if not thousands of miles away. Our heating and lighting are typically provided by power sources hundreds of miles away. For many people, even their tap water travels that far. Our factories produce sophisticated cars and electronics that have subcomponents that are sourced from three continents. The average American comes home from work each day to find that his refrigerator is well-stocked with food, his lights come on reliably, his telephone works, his tap gushes pure water, his toilet flushes, his paycheck has been automatically deposited to his bank, his garbage has been collected, his house is a comfortable seventy degrees, his televised entertainment is up and running 24/7, and his Internet connection is rock solid. We’ve built a very Big Machine that up until now has worked remarkably well, with just a few glitches. But that may not always be the case. As Napoleon found out the hard way, long chains of supply and communication are fragile and vulnerable. Someday the Big Machine may grind to a halt.

  Let me describe just one set of circumstances that could cause that to happen:

  Imagine the greatest of all influenza pandemics, spread by casual contact—a virus so virulent that it kills more than half of the people infected. And imagine the advance of a disease so rapid that it makes its way around the globe in less than a week. (Isn’t modern jet air travel grand?) Consider that we have global news media that is so rabid for “hot” news that they can’t resist showing pictures of men in respirators, rubber gloves, goggles, and Tyvek coveralls wheeling gurneys out of houses, laden with body bags. These scenes will be repeated so many times that the majority of citizens decides “I’m not going to go to work tomorrow, or th
e day after, or in fact until after things get better.” But by not going to work, some important cogs will be missing from the Big Machine.

  What will happen when the Big Machine is missing pieces? Orders won’t get processed at the Walmart distribution center. The 18-wheelers won’t make deliveries to groceries stores. Gas stations will run out of fuel. Some policemen and firemen won’t show up for work, having decided that protecting their own families is their top priority. Power lines will get knocked down in windstorms, and there will be nobody to repair them. Crops will rot in the fields and orchards because there will be nobody to pick them, or transport them, or magically bake them into Pop-Tarts, or stock them on your supermarket shelf. The Big Machine will be broken.

  Does this sound scary? Sure it does, and it should. The implications are huge. But it gets worse: The average suburban family has only about a week’s worth of food in their pantry. Let’s say the pandemic continues for weeks or months on end—what will they do when that food is gone and there is no reasonably immediate prospect of resupply? Supermarket shelves will be stripped bare. Faced with the prospect of staying home and starving or going out to meet Mr. Influenza, millions of Joe Americans will be forced to go out and “forage” for food. The first likely targets will be restaurants, stores, and food-distribution warehouses. As the crisis deepens, not a few “foragers” will soon transition to full-scale looting, taking the little that their neighbors have left. Next, they’ll move on to farms that are in close proximity to cities. A few looters will form gangs that will be highly mobile and well armed, ranging deeper and deeper into farmlands, running their vehicles on surreptitiously siphoned gasoline. Eventually their luck will run out and they will all die of the flu, or of lead poisoning. But before the looters are all dead they will do a tremendous amount of damage. You must be ready for a coming crisis. Your life and the lives of your loved ones will depend on it.

  The New World and You

  If and when the flu pandemic—or terrorist attack, or massive currency devaluation, or some other unthinkable crisis—occurs, things could turn very, very ugly all over the globe. Think through all of the implications of disruption of key portions of our modern technological infrastructure. You need to be able to provide water, food, heating, and lighting for your family. Ditto for law enforcement, since odds are that a pandemic will be YOYO (You’re on your own) time.

  You’ll need to get your beans, bullets, and Band-Aids squared away, pronto. Most important, you’ll need to be prepared to hunker down for three or four months, with minimal outside contact. That will take a lot of logistics, as well as plenty of cash on hand to pay your bills in the absence of a continuing income stream.

  The Great Unraveling

  As this book goes to press in the summer of 2009, we are witnessing a global economy in deep, deep trouble. Artificially low interest rates and artificially high residential real estate prices in many First World nations fueled a worldwide credit bubble. That bubble burst in 2007, and the full effects of the credit collapse are just now being felt. The resulting recession might turn into an economic depression that could last more than a decade.

  The collapse of the credit default swaps (CDS) casino is indicative of much larger systemic risk. These exotic hedges are just one small part of the more than six-hundred-trillion-dollar global derivatives market. There are other derivatives that are just as dangerous. Veteran investor Warren Buffett called derivatives “a ticking time bomb.” I concur.

  All of the recent bad economic news and the advent of the H1N1 flu call into question some of the basic assumptions about living in a modern industrialized society. We are forced to ask ourselves: How much stress can a society take before it begins to unravel? How safe will our cities be in another year, or in five years? Will supermarket shelves continue to be well stocked with such a tremendous abundance and such a wide assortment of goods?

  With the information contained in this book, you can prepare yourself to live independently (“off the grid”) for an extended period of time. Self-sufficiency is the bottom line.

  Please note that I make reference to some useful Web sites throughout this book. If you aren’t on the Internet at home, you can access these sites from free Internet terminals at most public libraries. If any of these URLs are obsolete, then do Web searches for their new URLs or comparable Web sites. For the sake of brevity, I have used the SnipURL.com service to truncate the longer URLs for Web sites mentioned in the book. These short URLs will make it quick and easy for you to reference the Web sites mentioned herein.

  Also for the sake of brevity, I use a lot of acronyms in my writings. Each acronym is spelled out the first time it is used, and in this book’s glossary.

  This book provides both a challenge and a response: Are you truly ready for TEOTWAWKI? If not, then herein is what you’ll need to know.

  Read this book. Give it some prayer. Then get busy!

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Every effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this book is complete and accurate. However, neither the publisher nor the author is engaged in rendering professional advice or services to the individual reader. The ideas, procedures, and suggestions contained in this book are not intended as a substitute for consulting with your physician. All matters regarding your health require medical supervision. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising from any information or suggestion in this book.

  Regarding finances, this publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If you require legal advice or other expert assistance, you should seek the services of a competent professional.

  Furthermore, outdoor activities are by their very nature potentially hazardous. All participants in such activities must assume the responsibility for their own actions and safety. If you have any health problems or medical conditions, consult with your physician before undertaking any outdoor activities. The information contained in this guidebook cannot replace sound judgment and good decision making, which can help reduce risk exposure, nor does the scope of this book allow for disclosure of all the potential hazards and risks involved in such activities.

  Learn as much as possible about the outdoor recreational activities in which you participate, prepare for the unexpected, and be cautious. The reward will be a safer and more enjoyable experience.

  Finally, accordingly nothing in this book is intended as an express or implied warranty of the suitability or fitness of any product, service, or design. The reader wishing to use a product, service, or design discussed in this book should first consult a specialist or professional to ensure suitability and fitness for the reader’s particular lifestyle and environmental needs.

  1

  THE SURVIVAL MIND-SET FOR LIVING IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

  A Very Bad Day . . .

  There has been a power failure. It is a minor annoyance at first. You’ve awoken late on a winter morning because your alarm clock didn’t go off. The house is chilly, and even though you have a natural-gas furnace, the digital thermostat is not working, so there is no electricity for the heater fan to push the air through the ducts. Then you realize that with nighttime lows in the single digits and daytime highs in the twenties, if the power isn’t restored by the time you get home from work, it will be very cold in the house. You surmise that freezing rain must have knocked down some power lines.

  For breakfast, you have cold cereal and juice instead of scrambled eggs and hot coffee. When will that power come back on? You muse about how long the food in the freezer will last. You skip shaving because you are running late for work and your electric razor won’t work without power anyway. Then your car won’t start. The car radio doesn’t work either. You notice that one of your neighbors is poking and prodding around under the hood of
his car. The cold weather must have killed his battery too. You hear what must be a truck backfiring far in the distance. At least somebody got theirs started.

  You go into the house and turn on your transistor radio. It won’t work either, which is odd, since it is both AC and battery operated. Your kid must have switched the batteries with dead ones from his digital camera. Finally, you dig out your spare transistor radio from the battered ammo can that you use as a fishing tackle box—the one you take on your fly-fishing trips. You scan through the AM and FM bands—there is mostly static. There is only one radio station broadcasting. A frantic news announcer says something about a “high-altitude electromagnetic pulse [EMP] over the Midwest” and the power grids being down all over the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

  You are startled to hear loud, rapid-fire gunshots. They are very close by—right near your neighborhood. This is going to be a very bad day . . .

  The scenario that I just described is just one of dozens that could cause The End of the World as We Know It (TEOTWAWKI) in the near future.

  But for what other reasons should you prepare? Here are just a few terrifying possibilities (in no particular order):

  • Hyperinflationary depression

  • Deflationary depression

  • Terrorist nuclear, biological, or chemical warfare

  • Nation-state nuclear, biological, or chemical warfare

  • A third World War

  • An oil embargo on the First World nations