The Bad Times Primer: A Complete Guide to Survival on a Budget [1 ed.] 0960660801, 9780960660803

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THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

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Copyright 1981 © by C. G. Cobb

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author.

Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 81-52089 ISBN: 0-9606608-0-1 —

Published in the United States of America THE TIMES PRESS 11661 San Vicente Boulevard, Suite 901 Los Angeles, CA 90049

Designer: Randy Robertson

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DEDICATION

To Karen, with love,

for giving me the time I needed, and to Finagle, and his sidekick, Murphy, in the hope that they’ll leave me alone for a while, alia. 7vs with deepest admiration, gratitude, and respect, to:

Peter J. Amante Isaac Asimov

Joel Brodkey Bruce D. Clayton, Ph. D.

Jeff Cooper Rick Fines Ken Kern Gary North Joe Oldham Bill Pier Ayn Rand Howard Ruff Kurt Saxon Robert W. Smiley, Jr. Don Stephens

and especially Mel Tappan, for bringing this entire matter to my attention. But most especially, this book is for you. You are the reason I wrote it. Please use it.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: Meet Finagle and Murphy

CHAPTER ONE: SHELTER CHAPTER TWO: SUSTENANCE CHAPTER THREE: ENERGY _ CHAPTER FOUR: TRANSPORTATION CHAPTER FIVE: COMMUNICATION CHAPTER SIX: TOOLS Part 1: Tools for Hunting, Defense, and Pest Control Part 2: Automotive Tools Part 3: Construction Tools

Part 4: Land-Working Tools Part 5: Kitchen and Emergency Tools CHAPTER SEVEN: INFORMATION CHAPTER EIGHT: TRADE GOODS ~ CHAPTER NINE: HOW BAD IS IT? CHAPTER TEN: PRIORITIES

INTRODUCTION: Meet Finagle and Murphy

By now,

no one should have to ask, ‘Survival? Survival of

what?” Thanks to Kurt Saxon and Mel Tappan, there is a generally-accepted definition of the word “survivalist.” And thanks to the basic—though much-diluted—message being disseminated by Howard Ruff, hundreds of thousands of Americans now have a pretty good idea of what it is that survivalists plan to survive. Social disruption waits for us somewhere ahead. Whether caused by economic collapse (the single most probable cause), earthquake, plague, famime, war, terrorism, or—as is more likely

than I’d prefer—all of the above, social disruption is the probable effect. Those who plan to survive must plan well. Our lives will be changed as a result of massive social disruption. The things we take for granted. now may be precious luxuries during and after Bad Times. As survivalists, it’s obviously our first function to survive, but we should also be concerned with the survival of certain ideas, concepts, and skills _which amplify our nature as human beings. It isn’t enough merely to be here; plenty of us will accomplish that through sheer luck. Serious survivalists should bend their energies toward the preservation of the best our society has to offer, and “not to work toward a King-of-the-hill position for themselves in ‘some post-cataclysmic time, as those who like to sneer at the word “survivalist” are pleased to maintain. It’s my considered opinion that most such plans for self-aggrandizement won’t

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INTRODUCTION |

work dicaie Bad Times. There'll be too many other things to do which will be much more important. I’ll be discussing the possible causes of Bad Times in a later chapter, but because I want you to have some points of reference from the beginning of this book, I’ll briefly describe for you right now some of the things we’ll have to deal with. Starting, I think, with Finagle’s Law. Finagle (say Fin-AY-gul) and his prophet, Murphy, tell us that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong, usually at the worst possible time. That, I believe, is an apt description of the fix we’ve gotten ourselves into. Economically, we’re standing on the crumbling edge of total collapse. I’m not talking about something as simple as a depression (although the depression coming up will be very bad), but the death of the U.S. dollar. Since our government is so irrevocably involved with our currency, the demise of the dollar could very well topple the government. In that event, we can expect widespread anarchy with loss of essentials such as transportation, communication,

energy, law and

order, sanitation, and

medicine. We can expect extremely dangerous Bad Times lasting from six months to a year, and perhaps longer than that. Loss of transportation means loss of energy. If oil and coal can’t be moved, they can’t be used. And loss of energy means that we’re going to be facing some serious consequences: One of them is loss of food. The Green Revolution is mechanized; it needs a constant supply of fuel. Even our highgrowth-rate plant foods and fertilizers are petroleum-based. So are many of our medicines. Even if sufficient food could be grown to prevent us from starving, the loss of transportation won’t allow that food to be moved and distributed. Expect famine when total social disruption occurs. ) And when the power plants shut down, the hospitals won’t be too far behind. Modern medicine is dependent on a high-tech society. When that society is disrupted, you can expect epidemics. Plagues. High casualties. With government powerless or non-existent, natural disasters like

floods,

forest

fires,

hurricanes,

tornadoes,

blizzards,

droughts, earthquakes, and volcanoes will take far larger tolls

INTRODUCTION

a4

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ix

than would obtain in normal times. And these natural disasters will be occurring during Bad Times. Finagle and Murphy will see to that. Terrorism, both planned and spontaneous, will be living with us during Bad Times. Without the threat of force from a viable government, those nasty groups of organized killers can have a field day. And that’s not to mention military desertions and

raids on armories across the nation which will be happening at — about the same point in time. These raids will provide wander‘ing bands of looters with sophisticated weaponry with which to take food, shelter, energy, and medicine wherever they can find

ie And, of course, there are nuclear war. Dr. Bruce Clayton of us that nuclear warfare is not been painted up to be. Generals

the increasing possibilities of has been pointing out to many the all-consuming holocaust it’s and leaders of nuclear powers

are aware of that fact, and are also aware of how close we are to

gloves-off conflict. As bad as that prospect is, it.can be survived with careful preparations.

Perhaps the biggest threat to our survival on a personal basis ~. comes from the area of killing stress caused by future shock. Many of the changes which are imminent are going to be highly unpleasant, and will take too many of us by surprise. And stress, as mentioned, can put you under the ground, especially if said stress is brought about by sudden, unwanted change. Stress can undermine your self-esteem, erode your awareness, blunt your reflexes, and distort your judgement. It can put scar tissue on your heart, bore a hole in your stomach, cause your hair to turn gray and fall out, put lines in your face before they’re due, and sap your strength. Stress can make you acci_dent-prone and cause you great unhappiness. Ever moved from one place to another? If you have, you know that it’s a situation of stress which can be hard on you. Depending on the degree of change and the individual involved, stress can change your outlook, your behavior patterns, and indeed your whole future for the worst. I have personally seen an example where a move from one city to another caused a person to become suicidal. And I’m sure you’ve known someone who couldn’t cope with

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INTRODUCTION

a broken marriage. It’s a terrible thing to behold, much less experience. When it’s bad, it’s an emotional roller-coaster, and the lows are swooping, scary plunges. It takes time for the average person to pull out of that kind of situation. Some people don’t pull out at all. Now imagine, if you will, the Bad Times I’ve just described briefly for you. Put yourself into any section of it you please,

but make it as close as possible to what you would actually experience, based on your present circumstances. The personal stress which social disruption can visit upon you is almost inconceivable to us now, sitting safely back here in the present. I say almost. If you try, you can do it. Imagine what happens when the power goes off. Have you ever had to do without your refrigerator for several days? If so,

this will be easier for you to picture. That simple appliance which we take for granted suddenly becomes more important than electric lighting. What do you do with your leftovers? You have to plan your meals entirely differently. If you have a gas stove, you can bake bread and cake. Good. Reach into the refrigerator for the eggs—oops. Well, we can eat cereal. Good

old cereal, doesn’t need refrigeration, and sugar will keep indefinitely if it’s sealed up tight . . . but when you reach for the milk: frustration. Just a little thing, but it brings on stress you aren’t used to. Want to try it? Just unplug the refrigerator for a few days. Watch the cheese and butter turn. Now it’s several trips a day to the supermarket for small purchases. Suddenly it takes real planning to get through a day. Now imagine what happens when there is no Rent | What used to be a supermarket looks like bombed-out London. Never mind; you couldn’t get there anyway because there’s no more gasoline available. Besides, it’s dangerous to go out anymore without several armed people along. Concentrate on little things. How do you produce light? Or heat? Or a surface for cooking? If you have those basic things, then decide on tomorrow’s meals. Assuming you have the food which won’t spoil, do you have the tools to prepare meals from scratch? Do you have the skills? Do you feel that you’re

INTRODUCTION

xi

fumbling, and that people are blaming you, accusing you? What you're feeling is stress. It gets worse. You’ve been imagining stress brought about by sudden, unwanted change. Most of the people in this country are about to experience it. You can escape it in large measure by making ‘small changes yourself, starting now. Do it gradually. When you have a choice in the matter, it’s not nearly as wearing on you. Change yourself, and do it with an eye on self-sufficiency. I’ll explain how as we go along. I’ll do it a little at a time, just as you should. What I want you to do now is to put yourself in the right frame of mind. Be receptive to change. Run toward it, not away from it. Look for things you can change, not only around you, but within you. Cut new neural channels in your — brain. Make your reflexes things which won’t be frustrated during Bad Times, and try to eliminate the aspects of your daily life which will be frustrated during Bad Times. I can make suggestions which work for me, and I shall, but you have to try them to know if they work. Figure out your own changes, too, based on your circumstances, values, aptitudes, and plans. What

you'll be doing, besides removing a certain amount of future shock, is acting. You’ll be surviving. You will also be improving your self-respect and bolstering your confidence. Survival is an expensive proposition. To do it right, I would have to estimate a cost of roughly $300,000 as of this writing. Inflation will undoubtedly push that figure up, as will the law of supply and demand once the need for survival preparations becomes generally apparent. Go back and look at that figure again. Three hundred thousand dollars is the price of two small tract home loans including interest for a full 30-year contract life. Who has that kind of money? Not me. If you’re reading this book, chances are ~ overwhelming that you can’t pone it, either. Speaking for both of us, I think it’s a shame.

On the surface at least, survival is a rich man’s game. Only the well-to-do can afford the enormous cash outlays necessary to acquire enough land in the right area and to develop it properly, to design and build or modify a dwelling sufficient to survival, to procure the tools and the apparatus needed for self-suffi-

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INTRODUCTION

ciency, to lay away the huge supplies of food, gasoline, guns, and ammo which will provide: sustenance, energy, and selfdefense. And to do the aforementioned without long-term obligation, if necessary; in other words, to have the wherewithal to own it all outright.

To be sure, you could mortgage yourself to the hilt and put yourself into a survival-preparedness situation, but in the event of an economic collapse, you -could easily lose it all. And economic collapse, among other things, is what you should be striving to survive.

So what’s to do? Give up? Accept what’s to come? Certainly not. It’s only on the surface that survival is a rich man’s game. I’ve been preparing for survival for some years now, and I’m a long way from being rich. As a matter of fact, I’m a lot closer to being poor. I’m here to tell you that, not only is survival possible on a limited budget, it edges into the area of the probable if you go about your preparations in the right way. Please note that, if you are on a tight budget and looking toward survival, you don’t have much margin for error. You can’t afford too many mistakes, because a serious enough mistake in this arena could place you into a hell of a mess when the bell rings, and might even get you killed. Parts of this book I’ve written in a light, bantering tone, but be advised that I’m deadly serious about that last statement. You don’t play hopscotch in a mine field, or play horseshoes with live hand grenades. Survival can be accomplished on a budget, but you have to be careful. Assuming your means are limited and you want to take steps to ride out the storm, you have one advantage over those wealthy survivalists. Many of them are so busy making money that they haven’t the time to spare learning the vital survival skills. If you’ve ever seen a man on his way up, a self-made entrepreneur, a genuine American bootstraps millionaire, then you know that no toiler in the old-fashioned sweat shops ever worked harder or longer. This man fell asleep at 1:30 this morning and was probably up before dawn. He can afford the choicest real estate and the finest equipment money can buy, but he may have to put himself through excruciating hell to learn to use those possessions.

INTRODUCTION Make

no mistake:

xili if he’s serious, he’ll make

himself learn.

There is little that is beyond this type individual. But someone with move time than money can, on balance, learn better. If you have more time than money, I wrote this book for you. I’ve designed it to guide you around the worst of the pitfalls, and to try and prevent you from making too many mistakes. There’s a narrow path between panicked overreaction and too-cautious inaction. To use as illustration the mine field I mentioned earlier, if you’re standing in the middle of it, neither freezing nor bolting will get you safely out of danger. There is a way. It involves steady nerves, deliberate action, and a plan. It

also involves cramped positions and lots of sweat. It’s work. But unless Air Cavalry comes to extract you in the nick of time, it’s your only safe way out.

So stand easy, breathe Hague and loosen up. It’s getting,late, past time to begin. If you’re careful and take it one step at a time, you’ll make it. Ready?

Chapter One:

SHELTER

Most people do not choose the area of the country in which they wish to live. Instead, they normally hang around the section of the country they were brought up in, or graduated from, or that their parents moved to, or where they happened to be when discharged. When they move from city to city, they often do it because their jobs require it or because the work is there. Because most people are tied to their jobs, it becomes a ‘matter of pteserving their financial security not to move, even _ though they might not like where they are living. What you now have is the opportunity to choose your future ‘permanent home. Not only the section of the country, but the type of dwelling and the lifestyle of your choice. Within limits. Those limits are set by prudence and good sense, but still leave much room for variety. I decided to begin this chapter in this manner, because I wanted to be more positive than I had to be when dealing with this subject. Where you live, you see, could be dangerous to your health. Where you should be living is a place which offers safety, self-sufficiency, and a spirit of neighborly cooperation. Such a place would allow you to grow and raise your own food. Ideally, it would allow you the opportunity to produce your own source (or sources) of energy. You should be living a

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comfortable distance from population centers, military targets, seacoasts, nuclear reactors, and well-known agricultural areas. You should be giving some consideration to factors liké climate, latitude, altitude, weather, and other matters. Think about it,

and keep your choices in mind while you read these words. Because this subject is so important, I’ve devoted quite a lot of space to it, but not nearly enough—the subject deserves several books. You’ll be encountering categories like location, buying, leasing, types of dwellings, construction techniques, the feasibility of building your own home, land use, neighbors, and certain other topics. I’m going to show you the optimum situation which you should be striving to attain, and then go down through a list of alternate possibilities. You will have to decide for yourself what you can afford and what is beyond you. Ready? Location.

In my opinion, this is the most important consideration when planning survival. If you make a mistake in choosing your retreat location, you may not be aware of it until it’s too late to do anything about it except evacuate. You’ve got to be careful here. This is as good a place as any to emphasize something about

survivalism: it works best within a small community. A small town is apt to turn into an enclave, offering sanctuary for its inhabitants and a chance to help one another, to work together for the common good, and to defend one another, by defending the town when danger threatens. An already-functioning community is the best refuge open to you from the convulsions which are approaching. Conversely, it looks very difficult for the lone family to make out during a survival situation. Besides the immense stress involved in being responsible for everything (food production and preparation, defense, entertainment, maintenance of household/land/vehicle/tools/appliances/other equipment, practice of

emergency medicine, development of energy, and the problems inherent in keeping it operating), the solitary homestead is a

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natural target for those who'd love to share everything you have among themselves. One man armed with a scoped hunting rifle could effectively knock out an isolated family set up like that. Please note that, when I first became aware of the situation

and. was planning my family’s survival, I was leaning sharply toward isolation and total self-sufficiency. Two factors changed. my mind. The first was the enormous expense involved, to say

nothing of the back-breaking labor of getting it going and keeping everything operating. As for the other factor, I tried for a year to put a certain mental picture out of my head and never

could succeed in doing it. The plain fact was, I knew damned well that, if J were alone and without a base, and came upon an

isolated homestead, I could decimate it easily from long range. When there are only three or four of you, you cannot afford any casualties. I simply couldn’t stand the thought of being out there with my family and waiting for the sniper to show up. No _matter how you isolate yourself, if you can get to your land, so can someone else. Let that be your guide, and think on it hard and well. If you go that route, your sniper is out there somewhere. It then becomes a matter for the rules of chance—and Finagle’s Law. That is the penultimate argument against the isolated survivalist. The ultimate

argument,

of course, is the

actual appearance of the sniper himself. Don’t wait for him. I’ve opted to retreat to a small town. Believe me, you should do the same. When you’re a practicing survivalist, you need friends and neighbors. They can help you raise a barn, deliver a calf, repair your truck, exchange recipes, and show you how to cook ona wood stove. You, of course, have to be equally prepared to help them. It’s a good system, and it works. There are other points in favor of a small town retreat, and I’ll make them later as we go ~ along. By now, if you haven’t read Howard Ruff’s How To Prosper From

The Coming Bad Years, you undoubtedly know someone

who has. In it, the author acknowledges the declining economy, states that the bottom dropping out of it is highly probable, that a depression is coming which will curl our hair and maybe part it in the middle, that the cities will explode into violence

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(at least in the ghetto areas), and advises his readers to get out of the big cities now, when they still can sell at a good price, and while small-town property is still affordable. So far, so good. | Where, asks Howard, is safe?

According to the book, 20 or 30 miles from a ghetto area would be perfectly safe. That’s twenty or thirty miles. Now, I have to point out that Howard says that, while things are going to get bad, they aren’t going to get too bad. In case you’re confused, I’ll enlarge upon that: According to Howard, we'll be in a depression when most of the rest of the world drops back into a stone age. Howard believes that the American Dream will survive. That democracies stand a better chance of _ weathering the storm and recovering faster than other nations. That he is not a peddler of doom. That those people who advocate a bunker in the mountains with a machine gun ‘mounted on the roof are overreacting and are being just a little bit silly. That he is an optimist. That he thinks everyone should have a year’s supply of storable food handy because there’ll be shortages and starvation. That Western civilization will not end. That he has armed himself but is not planning to shoot anyone because: no one will be assaulting his home for food and shelter (the guns are for hunting game). That when the power goes off in the cities and water pressure drops to nothing, the ghetto residents are going to be mad (but, by implication, no one else), and they’ll be coming out of those ghettos when it happens (but, by implication, no one else). That twenty or thirty miles from a big city ghetto should allow enough safety. For some reason, ghetto-dwellers are assumed to be the big danger. The further assumption is made that, for some unnamed reason, they won’t be venturing too far from their own turf.

That’s interesting. Accept that premise at face value, and you might conclude

that the following premises make sense: 1. Two million Mexican nationals (conservative estimate) do not enter this country illegally each year, a journey which sometimes is measured

in hundreds

of miles,

to find work

in strange,

unfamiliar

surroundings because they cannot feed themselves at home. Therefore:

;

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THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

2. The U.S. Border Patrol is overstaffed. 3. The Berlin Wall was constructed for esthetic purposes only. And: 4. The motives of the East German Vopo guards are generally misunderstood. 5. The Vietnamese Boat People are a figment of the world’s imagination.

6. The term “refugee” has no relevance in the 20th century.

No, of course Howard Ruff didn’t make those six statements.

No one would, and mean it. They are simply too ridiculous to be believed. Twenty or thirty miles?

Make no mistake, I’d love Howard Ruff to be right alla the way down the line. I’m very much afraid that he isn’t. When he says that starving people don’t make Banzai charges, he’s right. But hungry people do. And have. And will. There’s a difference between being hungry and starving. I don’t want you to have _ the opportunity to find out first hand exactly what that difference is. Assaults and hordes and mobs come when people are desperate. Starvation comes a bit later. I have some thoughts of my own regarding the American Dream. I think it might be reborn. Perhaps next time around it'll havea happy ending. For the record, I don’t advocate a bunker in the mountains with a machine gun on the roof. Neither do any of the other survivalists 1 know. = No, you will not be safe if you live twenty or thirty miles from Watts, Harlem, or central Detroit. If the worst happens and you are that close, the only thing you can depend. on is having groups of unwelcome visitors, and of becoming part of one of two other kinds of groups. These groups have names. One is called “‘refugees.”” The other is called “‘casualties.” You want to be a minimum of 150 miles from the edge of any large center of population, and 300 miles would be distinctly better. That’s how far the average tank of gas will take the average automobile. Very few of those automobiles which leave the cities will have full tanks. You’ll still be getting those unwelcome visitors, but many of them will be walking. The crowds will be much smaller, and with more collective brains.

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

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They’ll be hungrier and weaker than they were when they’d _ been on the road an hour or two, covering the first thirty miles. You should be an equal distance from the nearest military installation. There’ll be deserters, and don’t forget those raided _armories. And never, never forget the government, which, if it’s still functioning, will by then be looking and acting like Big Brother. Stay away from military posts of all kinds, and that _ Includes National Guard armories. Avoid nuclear reactors. Most especially, get upwind, uphill, and upstream from them. If we experience total collapse, I would hope that the technicians at a nuclear reactor would have the dedication to stay on the job, but I wouldn’t count on it. If a nuclear reactor is abandoned before being shut down, meltdowns can happen. Find out what the prevailing winds are, and the water sources of your proposed location, and make sure there are no reactors in between. Exercise equal caution, I ‘might add, regarding nuclear waste disposal sites. Keep out of any area of high population density. That includes well-known areas of food production, such as the San Joaquin Valley of California. When people do get hungry, they'll head for where the weather is mild and where the food is grown. Everyone on Earth knows by now that the San Joaquin Valley came through the last depression with flying colors. We have something in front of us that is a different animal altogether from the last depression. It is the difference between a house cat and a Bengal tiger. Do-look for a small town, preferably under 10,000 people. Make sure it’s an agricultural community which is varied enough to supply its inhabitants with fresh food. There should be as little industry as possible to forestall massive unemployment when the bottom falls out. Your small town should have schools, law enforcement, med-

ical facilities including dentists, a hospital—if not in town, then in the surrounding area close by—and firefighting personnel and equipment. A volunteer fire department is okay; make sure you join it. ‘It’s all right to have your small town near a forest. Not all right to have it in a forest. Who'll fight forest fires during social

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disruption? Not the National Guard; they will be occupied elsewhere. It shouldn’t be near a national border, sspebialine Mexico’s. Two million Mexican nationals a year is nothing to what will be coming across after the hammer falls. Remember, they’re worse off than we are, and they’Il still be worse off after our economy goes thud. As this ‘nation goes, so goes the rest of the world. Stay well away from our southern border. You should be careful about getting too near a coastline. There will be all kinds of things happening on the seas. Piracy, for one. Mutinies and desertions from various of the world’s naval forces, for another. Coastline communities are handy places to land and raid for supplies like food, water, fuel, arms, ammo, and personnel—not to mention simple, robust pleasures ae

like rape, murder, and plunder. And do you remember the Boat People? You haven’t seen anything, yet. This nation is still known as the Land of Plenty in virtually every underdeveloped country in the world. Expect invasions of all kinds, large and small, mostly unofficial and ra ges da but invasions just the

same. Of course, don’t settle down on any famous fault lines or known earthquake zones. Those are the broad limits. If you’re thinking that it doesn’t leave you much in the way of choices, you could be right. Check it out yourself. I’ll help you locate your new home. You might be living in it right now. If that’s the case, you can consider yourself worlds ahead of practically everybody else. The best way to narrow the field is to get out your current U.S. Atlas. Haven’t got one? You tee one. I'll wait while you go pick it up. Okay, now open it to the map of the U.S. and consult the mileage scale at the bottom. With the scale as your guide, use a ruler and drafting compass to draw a neat circle around every — major city on the map. Three hundred miles, remember? Don’t. miss a single one. Use the index in the back if you need help with population figures. When you’re done, sit back and take a look. It looks, doesn’t it, like the northeastern United States is out as far as a survival retreat is concerned. xv

As a matter of fact,

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those circles tend to do an awfully lot of overlapping east of the 100th Meridian. You might be able to choose between a handful of potential safety areas if you stretch matters. The eleven western states look a lot better—with the exception of California, of course. There are blank spots between the circles, some of them fairly large. So go ahead and pick a spot that appeals to you. Then turn to the large map of that state and take a closer look. You bought a good Atlas, so you’ll note, since you’re looking for them, that military bases and nuclear power plants are clearly marked. Is there one in the area you’re looking at? Uh-oh. Better keep looking. You may be discovering at this point that the alate of geographical safety—at least on a basis of pure mileage—does not exist between our national borders. Keep looking, anyway. . When you’ve finished looking, don’t give up. Just sit back and think a minute. If there is no place which is outside a 300-mile circle around a major population area, military base, or nuclear plant, then you may have to settle for an area which is as far away from those dangers as possible. Look again. And think about something: roads and highways don’t follow perfectly straight lines for hundreds of miles. They twist and turn

and curve. They go up steep grades, over narrow passes, down winding grades which use up precious fuel. You can shorten those circles around the danger areas. Take a closer look at the terrain. Check the codes on the map as to altitudes and features such as forests and rivers and mountains. You should also be observing such things as the types of roads leading in and out of potential safety areas. Not all of them are superhighways. Many times they’re not even four lanes. That means that some places are tougher to get to than others from the viewpoint of masses of people. Look at_ your map. Take some time with it. Can some of those narrow roads be cut? The prospects are looking better, aren’t they? Now you have some new communities to check. Turn back

to the index and look at those population figures. Make a list of the communities which interest you. Then find out more about ‘them.

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THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

Your next consideration is climate. Since you’re looking for an agricultural community, you have to consider climate, because climate determines growing seasons. Go buy The Sunset New Western Garden Book. You can find it at your local book store. If they don’t have it and can’t order it for you (highly unlikely), write to Lane Publishing Company, Menlo Park, California. Last time I looked, the price was $9.95. Well worth it.

There are 1,200 plant identification drawings in it, a plant selection guide, a western states plant encyclopedia, and—most important for our purposes in this chapter—climate zone maps for all eleven western states. Once you’ve examined the climate zone maps and compared them to your Atlas and your list, you’ll probably discover that most of your safe communities are in Climate Zone 1, which means that your potential safety areas experience the coldest winters in the west. Which means that the growing seasons are liable to be brutally short. If you’re thinking at this point that even God has something against you, don’t despair. It really isn’t that bad. There

are, afterall, some

areas outside those circles you’ve

drawn which are other than Zone 1. Some of them are very pleasant places indeed, climate-wise. Unfortunately, they’re in a minority, and their real estate prices are liable to be higher than you'll find elsewhere. That’s only natural. You’ve already noticed that California has more favorable climate zones than all the other eleven western states combined. That’s why California’s population is the biggest in the country. That’s why real estate is so expensive in California. Pity about California. In other words, if you’re looking to buy a home:in one of those safe areas with a favorable climate, you’ll more than likely be paying top dollar for it. You may not be able to afford it. Sorry about that, but I didn’t make up all this bad news. I’m just delivering it. We’re not through looking yet, though. Check the encyclopedia section of your Sunset Garden Book. Start with A and examine each page carefully until you complete the Z entries. If you list every fruit and vegetable which is capable. of being grown in Zone 1, you might be surprised. I was. My own list filled four pages in a legal-sized tablet, and I just listed the things I like to eat, not everything possible. There

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are wide cross-sections of many, many fruits and vegetables which are hardy in cold climates, and many of those thrive on low temperatures. No, you can’t grow limes for your vodka gimlets in Zone 1, but you can grow one hell of a lot of other things. And if you utilize a greenhouse, the possibilities increase dramatically. Given a proper greenhouse, you can grow those limes, and a whole lot more.

So, while your budget and income may not allow you to settle in the best climate zones, you can still live in a safe place and be able to afford it, and you can grow more things than just potatoes and apples. Think about it in any case, but especially if

your income is not a high one. For what it’s worth, the winds in this country blow from west to east, following a definite drift to the south from the Pacific Ocean

and continuing until the Gulf Stream influences

them’‘in a northeasterly direction toward the Atlantic. If you want to take this information into account when choosing your ‘homesite, please do. It’s hard to see how you can be too careful when you’re planning for your survival. _ By now, you should have a list of small towns to investigate more closely. To do that, the best way is to visit them per-

sonally. If you can’t afford to visit all of them, the next best thing is to write to the various Chambers of Commerce for information. Subscribe to the local newspapers to determine job availability, cultural climate, and the housing, agriculture, and industrial situations. You can also get some idea as to how

much that town depends on help from outside its own area. -Don’t look for complete self-sufficiency in any town, because you’ll be looking forever. Try to determine if hunting is popular there. If so, that’s a plus mark. It means a good percentage of that town’s citizens will be armed. That can’t do anything but help you. Once you’ve picked out the one community (with alternates) that you want to actually look at, do so, Go there. This may seem childishly elementary, so forgive me for putting it down on paper. Don’t decide on a move anywhere until you’ve gone there, walked around, looked at property, talked to the other people living there, and taken a good look around the surrounding countryside.

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12

If this is going to cost you some money, plan on finding it

and spending it. Otherwise, any money you spend stands an excellent chance of being lost. You must visit your spot before you move there.

A book to help you greatly in this regard is Finding And Buying Your Place In The Country, by Les Scher. Absolutely the finest, most complete book on acquiring rural land I know about. He covers everything, including how not to get stuck by

unscrupulous sellers and realtors, and how to find your way through the legalistic maze and emerge unhurt. The author is a practicing attorney and consumer advocate, and his book is obviously a labor of love. He’s included pictures, charts, maps, sample forms and contracts, and as many other things as you’ll need, which are too numerous

to list here. Buy it, read it, and

keep it for reference, even if you aren’t planning to buy. You should, incidentally, plan to buy. Cash it out if you can.

Buy five acres minimum and more if possible. It’s true that you can raise a garden on a half-acre that should take care of your family’s fruit and vegetable needs and still leave you a surplus | for putting by and trading, but you’ll want more than a garden on your land. Assume you’re going to buy, even if you haven’t got two dollars to rub together right now. Your small town should have small, adjoining farms and pastures lying immediately outside it. They will provide a buffer for the town

itself from

outside

commotion,

in addition to

providing that town’s food supply. When you look for your land, look for it among those small parcels. Start your search five miles out and work your way in. This will take you some time; a five-mile radius around the edge of

any given town is a lot of land to drive past and miles is best because anything lying beyond that of getting cut off should the worst happen. You ten miles away fron your small town’s city hall,

walk over. Five stands a chance can be isolated and that can be

just as serious as being isolated a hundred miles into a wilder-

ness area when social disruption comes to call. The optimum situation is to procure a small parcel of land which is surrounded by neighbors on all sides. Those neighbors should be live-on-the-land farmers and ranchers, preferably gun-

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_

13

-toters. Guns, incidentally, are commonplace tools on farms and ranches. I’ll get to that more completely later on. If your land has a dwelling on it, well and good. If not, you

can build one. Or you can live in the present house while you’re - building your new home.

Getting There. Depending on your present situation, particularly with respect to your financial circumstances, it may or may not be _easy for you to pick up and move to your new community. I’m going to suggest some different courses of action which, I hope, you may find useful. _If you’re already living in a community such as the one I’ve described in this chapter, then you’re fortunate, because you don’t have a major move in front of you. You need only improve your present situation, such as acquiring land, or—if you already own land—by developing it toward self-sufficiency and making it and your household energy efficient.

If you’re not living in the right kind of town at this moment, then you face the necessity of having to leave your present surroundings to move to new ones. That being the case, you have a number of decisions to make. . Are you buying a home at the present time? If you are, then you can sell it and, perhaps, make a substantial down payment on your new home—or, better yet, pay cash for it. This will depend on the real estate prices in your present location as well as in the community you’ve chosen for yourself. The best situation would be to sell in a high cost-of-living area and move to a low-cost section of the country. You may not be that fortunate. Real-estate sales could be in a slump where you’re living now and be on the upswing where you want to move. You could, in other words, be moving from a buyer’s market into a seller’s market. In that case, you'll have to grit your teeth and make the move anyway, getting the best

deals you can. Seller’s points, escrow fees, realtor’s commissions, and interest rates being what they are, you may not have

14

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

|

“a lot left over after you sell your present home. If you don’t have enough to pay cash for land, you’ll have to make a down payment on it and struggle with the payments like almost everyone else is doing. Or you may not qualify for a loan, and have to face the prospect of renting for a while. Even if you have to buy a house on a half-acre in town, do it if it means the difference between buying and not buying. The important thing to do is to get there. Once in place, you can look around for someone who'd like to swap,some country land for a place in town. When the worst happens, that town and the surrounding small farms will draw together in the process of forming an enclave. You’ll be a part of it, if you’re living there. But get there now, so that you have time to become a working part of the community. Social disruption is the wrong time to be an outsider. If you absolutely cannot buy, don’t rent. Lease. And teil with an option to buy. Try to arrange for a percentage of your payments per month to go toward the purchase price. Again, try for.a place with as much land attached to it as possible, and ‘secure from the landlord permission to use the land for self-sufficiency. If you make improvements on the property, make sure you can get their cost taken off the rent. The same argument applies here as to buying: become part of your new community as soon as you can before Bad Times. It doesn’t matter how

desperate your situation is then, compared to those people who are going to be displaced in other sections of the country. If you have to lease a house in town, do it. Make sure the lot it’s on is as large as possible to allow you room to grow. food, and even

to raise small

animals,

such

as chickens

or ducks.

Check carefully with the individual who will be your landlord before actually signing a lease agreement, to make sure you’ll be — able to do these things, and don’t forget to check the local ordinances, which may prohibit your keeping small animals or raising certain crops. In this type of scene, a small house with few modern conveniences on a large lot would be preferable to a large, modern house on a shirt-sized piece of ground. Now that you’re living in a safe place, what do you do to make a living? How do you keep a roof over your head and food on the table? Well, before you moved, you examined those

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

15

newspapers and saw the jobs available. When you visited the area preparatory to moving, you saw what opportunities were open to you. You’ve probably prepared resumes for prospective employers and might have already sent them out. That leaves matters up to you, your abilities, your skills, and your willingness to work. If you’re self-employed now, can you move your business to your new location? If not, can you sell your present business and use the money as working capital to set up all over again in your new home? If you can, great; if you can’t, you may have to make some changes in your business to adapt, or you may have to enter a new business altogether.

If you’re on salary right now, is it a vital occupation? Vital in terms of survival during Bad Times, that is. A merchant seaman _may not be in a good position to retreat to Idaho or Montana.

‘I’m talking about essential services in a small town. Law enforcement is a good vocation. So is anything con‘nected with medicine. Your small community could probably use another teacher. If you’re a handyman—a good all-around handyman—you can probably make out all right in a small town. Be warned, though: if your experience is limited, and you tend toward shoddy workmanship, it won’t take long in a small -community for the word to get around. Locksmiths and barbers can

find work

for themselves,

I’m sure.

So can

refrigerator

repairmen, especially if they have a respectable inventory of ‘spare parts. If you’re trying to find a skill to learn, look at the present situation and extrapolate from available data; what would people be missing most, needing most, willing to pay for, in the event of large-scale social disruption, followed by loss of services which have been taken for granted?

If you’ve been an insurance salesman all your adult life, you

could have a problem. Likewise if being a credit manager is all you know how to do. If you work for a company which installs swimming pools, perhaps you could make a small change and excavate fish ponds and holding tanks. If: you’re a jewelry salesman full-time and your hobby is restoring old cars, you might consider switching things around. If you are good at restoring those old cars, there’ll be lots of work for you to do during Bad Times.

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16

Self-employment is a much better position to be in than working for others during Bad Times, especially if you’ve to’ chosen your business well. For help in this area, subscribe the for magazine The Mother Earth News. It’s a self-sufficiency homestead family, in case you’re not already familiar with it. One of its primary missions is to find and publish any successful home-owned family business. This is a big magazine, and it’s jammed with ideas for the person who wants his own business. You will also want to look at The Mother Earth News Book of Home

Business

Plans and Ideas.

MOTHER’S

Bookshelf,

the

book catalog from Mother Earth News, offers numerous other books on:self-employment. Get into it now; don’t wait until

you move.

—

.

If you’re young and are still looking for might be just as easy for you to look in one towns. In any case, you probably won’t nearly enough money if you go looking for

your niche in life, it of those small, safe have time to make your fortune in one

of the big cities. If you’re no longer as young as you used to be, and have ~ suffered some financial reversals, take stock of your present situation. Do you really have to stay where you are in order to ~ recover? A fresh start elsewhere may be the answer in this case. Consider it carefully.

Land Use and Development. When

your motive

is self-sufficiency

rather than making

money, your values tend to be a shade different. Land which

would be worthless to anyone else may be perfect for your purposes. For example, hilly ground tends to be cheaper on the average than flat land. If your land includes a hill, you might be able to drill.a horizontal well and use gravity to fill your holding tank and to supply your household with water. A hill would also be a good place to locate a wind generator. Wind generators |

tend to be expensive to purchase and to put in place, but after that, they supply you with free electricity. It'might be prudent ~ of you to check into the prevailing wind velocities before you buy. If a moving stream runs by your property, a simple gadget |

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

__

17

called a hydraulic ram can supply you with water lifted amazing distances from the pressure supplied by the water itself as it moves from a high place to a low place, something to keep in mind when you’re shopping for land. _A hydraulic ram or a hillside well can provide a steady flow of water and make fish ponds feasible on your land. If constructed correctly, they won’t attract mosquitoes, but in case any of them show up, certain fish introduced into your pond would be most happy to make any mosquito’s acquaintance. Fish ponds will attract migratory waterfowl, who also help control insect populations. If you stock your pond with fish, you might also think about frogs, turtles, wild rice, watercress,

mint, and other natural food sources. A properly-managed fish pond will allow you to pull out several hundred pounds of protein per year, and if you have more than one pond, you can drain one into the other to make use of the rich fertilizer which has collected on the bottom. Fish ponds make fine holding tanks and will assure you of a large water supply in cases of emergencies. Where livestock is concerned, you may not.be able to afford horses, cows, and chickens. If you’re on a strict budget, forget it. They require large amounts of land, plus feed must be brought in from outside at extra expense. You should consider other animals, like goats and ducks. They are foragers and don’t compete with one another, as they like different kinds of food. Your ducks will need the water you’ve supplied for them in the fish ponds, and will work with the fish and frogs in controlling insects. Duck’s eggs are usually larger than hen’s eggs, depending on the species. Goats will help you get rid of the woody, weedy plants on your land. They’re natural wanderers and work best when not in a cage or a pen. And—I feel funny saying this, but here goes—they are lovable. Irascible, stubborn, and frustrating, yes, but lovable. No, they don’t eat tin cans. Yes, they'll eat

your garden, so keep them out. The premiere book on self-sufficiency has to be The OwnerBuilt Homestead, by Barbara and Ken Kern. You’ll find coverage of such things as soil and water management, various methods of growing crops, tree crops, a different approach to livestock raising, the owner-built workshop, and much more. This

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

18

book is a must for your library, especially if you haven’t found your land yet. The Kerns also have a retail outlet and book

store designed forthe owner-builder. Check Chapter Seven for . $ details on contacting them. No matter how large or how small your property is, you can’t

afford to lose any of it through erosion or through having the wind blow your topsoil away. Learn about mulch planting and organic gardening. Don’t buy a plow. Plowing was responsible for the Dust Bowl in the midwest early in this century. There are other ways to use your land. To

learn

them,

subscribe

to MOTHER.

Also, don’t miss

Organic Farming And Gardening Magazine. It’s the father of the back-to-the-land movement, and contains enough useful infor-

_mation in one issue to pay for a whole year’s subscription. See why I wanted you to buy as much land as possible? When you look for your land, keep these factors in mind. You may find yourself paying a little extra for land with a stream moving through it, and that increase may be offset by a price break because the land itself isn’t level. Take advantage of these factors, and others, by gathering as much information on the subject as you can before you relocate. It will pay you in good dividends. .

The Dwelling. If you can build your own home, you should do so. No one else will design it as well, because you. know your own wants,

needs, measurements, and specifications. No one else will build it as cheaply as you do, either. If you do the work yourself, you need not provide contractors’ profit margins, or lenders’ interest. If you do the work yourself, you can work at your own speed without the need for hand-wringing during labor strikes, or the frustration of watching jobs go slower than they have to.

_ And no one will build it better than you do. Think about it. Are you going to mess up, cut corners, look the other way during difficult processes, when it’s your roof over your head? If you’re an average urban cliff-dweller, you are doubtless getting ready to turn to some other page, because you “know” |

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19

- that you can’t build your own home. After all, everybody knows that a man can’t build his house himself. Ask any journeyman carpenter, bricklayer, stone mason, cement finisher, roofer, plumber, electrician, or glazier. They’Il tell you. I have a question. Where were all the carpenters, bricklayers, stone masons, cement finishers, roofers, plumbers, electricians,

and glaziers in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607? Or in Montana _ circa 1850? Or in Virginia City, Nevada in 1859? The plain fact is, people have been building their own homes for thousands of years, and at least one-third of the world’s population still does. They’ve done it without modern tools and have, in most cases, been ignorant of modern building methods, but they’ve done it,

anyway.

Apparently

none

of them

talked to the carpenters,

bricklayers, stone masons, cement finishers, roofers, plumbers,

electricians, and glaziers of today. Perhaps it wouldn’t have made the slightest bit of difference had they done so. There’s one more reason for you to build your own home: No one else can build it with your survival in mind quite as

well as you can. Does that make sense? A survivalist’s (or anyone else’s) home should be: Fireproof Bulletproof Weatherproof Termiteproof Well-insulated (warm in winter, cool in summer) Comfortable Functional Esthetically pleasing, at least to the owner

Strong, long-lasting . Cheap There are several building methods open to the owner-builder which will satisfy all of the above requirements. They are: Rammed earth Adobe block - Soil-cement block Rubble-filled walls And (given a certain building method) underground homes. The above building methods make use of the materials readily at hand: the ground your home will be sitting on, or the

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20

rocks you clear from your fields before planting. Almost all of them can be accomplished without the use of heavy equipment. Some of them take more time than others. Some of them are more expensive than others, but take less time. Most of them can be accomplished using simple, inexpensive hand tools with a minimum of skill needed by the builder. Are you interested? Good. The very first thing you should do is to gather more information about these methods. You can get a good start on that by reading The Owner-Built Home, by Ken Kern, Build Your House

Of Earth,

by G.F.

Middleton,

and Low-Cost,

Energy-Efficient Shelter, by Eugene Eccli. Other valuable sources are Shelter, by Lloyd Khan, and any of the editions of The Last Whole Earth Catalog, especially the most recent one,

The Next Whole Earth Catalog. If you’re thinking about belowground shelter (and I think it’s an excellent idea), then you must read The $50 And Up Underground House Book, by Mike Ochler. Rammed earth sounds primitive, and I suppose it is, in the sense of being labor-intensive. But if you think that a rammed earth home has to look like an overgrown clod, or the cross section of a cave which has been put on exhibit, you might check issue #61 of The Mother Earth News. The ranch-style home featured in the cover story has 14-inch rammed earth walls,

looks

excellent condemned

like a showpiece,

and will probably

shape long after the homes and abandoned. Rammed

around

still be in

it have been

earth walls, even when

untreated with cement or emulsified asphalt, will stand for hundreds of years. They get stronger with age. They don’t>use timber from our vanishing forests except for the roof beams and a few other areas. You can even make a floor from rammed earth which can be sealed, waxed, and polished. You can plaster and paint rammed earth walls, or you can leave them their natural shade. You can have a fortress which doesn’t look like a fortress, but like an ordinary house. Rammed earth walls provide enough solar mass so that other insulation is unnecessary. Given the proper design featuring wind scoops, air vents, and placement of windows, a rammed earth home needs no air conditioning in the hottest months and comparatively little heat during cold weather.

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21

Rammed earth is a method to investigate if you want to build cheaply and you have a lot of time. Reduced to basics, it requires a piece of land, some water, scrap lumber for forms,

shovels, and a ramming tool which you can make yourself. The forms are of an ingenious design which you’ll find laid out for you in The Owner-Built Home and in Build Your House Of Earth. They are easily disassembled, moved, and reassembled. Set the forms up, get them level and plumb, shovel in a damp mixture of screened earth and water, and tamp with the tool. When

the tool says ‘Clank, clank,” instead of ‘‘Thud, thud,”

it’s time to add more earth mixture and begin tamping again.

When the form has more earth mixture, sive. That is, it’s low which is why it’s

been tamped full, move it down, shovel in and keep going. This method is labor-intenon cost of materials and high in man-hours, practical for owner-builders and not for

contracted labor. If you have more time than money and aren’t afraid of hard work, and you want a structure which will outlive you and your children, this is the one. Incidentally, you can shorten the labor ihicived by investing some money in a large air compressor and a back-filler such as telephone companies use when tamping in around newly-installed telephone poles. When you’re through with the building of the house, you can use the air compressor for other things, such as spray-painting, spraying your fruit trees, filling your vehicle’s tires, operating your air-powered impact tool, or supplying air to lubricate the chassis on any of your vehicles. You can also loan the rig in exchange om. goods or services with your neighbors. If you haven’t got the time required for rammed earth, but still want to build cheaply, try rubble-filled walls. The idea is to knock together a lot of wooden forms consisting of two planks

wired together so as to form a long, narrow space between them. Set them up level and plumb after framing your doors on top of the foundation.

Place the forms end to end in courses,

with wire holding them apart. Fill the insides of them with rocks of all sizes taken from your land (or wherever you can find them free for the taking). Pour in a mixture of cement _ (Ken Kern gives you details on the mixture in his book). While that first course is drying and setting up, place a second course

|

22

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

on top of it. Level, plumb, attach wires to hold them apart, fill with rocks, slop in cement. Cut the wires on the lower course,

remove the boards, wire them together on top of the upper course, and start the process all over again. Keep going until your walls are completed. This is also a labor-intensive method, but much of the labor

consists of locating, moving, and stacking rocks. It will go quite a bit faster than the rammed earth method. If you wish, you can build a double wall with a dead-air space between for insulation, simply by building twice as many forms and placing them accordingly. Be sure to frame your doors and windows as you go, so as not to be faced with the unpleasant chore of knocking holes in your brand-new-rubble-filled walls. That will be tough. Plan ahead. Read the books. They’ll show you how. And if all you can afford is rocky land, this method is waiting for you to use, and to turn even rocky land to your own advantage. If you’ve always longed for a Spanish-style adobe house, consider it. It isn’t beyond your reach. It’s only an apparent paradox that adobe dwellings are lived in by the wealthy and by the very poor, with little or no middle ground. This is because the method. is—you guessed it!—labor-intensive. The adobe blocks themselves cost nothing but time. You can make a great quantity of adobe blocks over a period of several weeks. Ten days to two weeks is the normal time required for these blocks to set up and cure in the shade, after which time you can pick up your level and your trowel and start slapping on the mortar. Adobe

blocks are made

from a mixture

of dirt, water, and

straw, which is poured into wooden forms and scraped flat with a board. The forms are then lifted off to receive another pouring. This obviously isn’t costing you any more than your labor and the time it takes you to do it. If you have that time, you can build yourself a home worth living in.

Adobe blocks are of a usual size of 18 inches by 12 inches by 6 inches. These are the measurements of versatility. If you want to get done quickly, lay the blocks lengthwise in their courses. If you want to take a little more time and get a thicker wall, lay them side by side and get an 18-inch-thick wall. You can have an even thicker wall by laying a double course. Either length-

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

:

23

wise or side by side of double-course walls will give you walls two or three feet thick, respectively. How’s that for thermal mass? Don’t bother insulating with such massive walls. You’ll remain cool in the summer and warm in the winter with very little effort. To approach adobe blocks a slightly different way, you might _ acquire a CINVA-Ram block press. This gadget was developed for South American peasants to provide them with a method of making their own low-cost building materials. Three people can operate it with optimum efficiency, but blocks can be formed using two people or even one in a pinch. The method is so simple it’s described with pictures in the handbook. You dig up some ground, run the loose earth through screening to remove clods and reduce the soil to an even consistency, add dry cement

or lime, mix, moisten

with water, shovel it into the

press’ hopper, swing a long handle to compress the block, swing the handle back, lift out the block, and set it in the shade to

cure. Soil-cement blocks of this type can be formed in several different shapes and sizes, including floor and roof tiles. Lay them out in courses just like any other cement block. You can have your choice of grouting or not grouting, depending on whether you form solid or hollow blocks. This is also a handy little machine to have around after you’ve finished your dwelling. You can build blocks for walls, sheds, privies, or for sale or

trade to your neighbors. You could also lend them the block press itself in return for goods or services. Think about it. You. might decide it would be worth including in your plans. Finally, there is the matter of the underground home, which is especially feasible if you buy sloping or hilly land. For a running start into the subject of owner-built underground homes, Mike

get The $50 And Oehler.

Up Underground House Book, by

In it, the author

presents

a lucid, entertaining

argument for below-grade homes as well as a thorough discussion of his own PSP building method. You'll find plans for both plain and fancy designs including flatland homes and a beautiful layout for a very special house on a ridge-top. The book will take you through a step-by-step explanation of procedures iin building your own underground home, and the author is not

24

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

kidding about the low cost. You'll see a section of color: photographs of the PSP. house the author built himself, the one he has lived in for most of a decade. The letters PSP mean Post Shoring Polyethelene. I’ll let Mike Oehler tell you about it in detail, but suffice to say that his PSP method requires no foundation, no reinforced concrete, and no use of heavy equipment or skilled labor. The PSP method will give you lots of natural light, is weatherproof, bulletproof, leakproof, defensible, energy-efficient, and is a natural fallout

shelter. It will also give you a number of special features such as the uphill patio, Royer foyer, and bachelor bar. Read the book. It’s fun and it’s a bargain. Especially if you use it. No matter which method you choose, consider a sod roof for your home. A sod roof is the finest insulation known to exist anywhere, especially if you plant it with good tough grass. A sod roof means more thermal mass for holding coolness in when you want it, and for not letting heat escape when you want to keep it. And, when planted with grass, it’s self-maintaining. Note that a sod roof is fireproof and bulletproof too, depending — on the thickness of the soil layer. It’s also pretty, but you have to keep it trimmed. If you don’t want to mow your roof, plant it with limited-growth clover, or let your goats wander around

up there on a regular basis. Plan for skylights and/or clerestory windows in your aboveground home. Light coming in from a source higher than eye level offers more brightness without eyestrain and totally elimi-

nates reflected glare. You’ll get several times more natural light than you would with conventional, eye-level windows. Just remember to double- or triple-glaze your skylights and clerestories; no sense letting all your good thermal mass go to waste by allowing heat. to escape through the windows. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to install bullet-resistant acrylic instead of glass on those windows’ outsides, either. You can plumb your house yourself using PVC pipe, which is inexpensive and easy to work with. Using a hack saw, glue, a plumb bob, and a very few other simple tools, anyone capable of reading simple instructions can plumb a house. You may be prohibited from such an obvious course by local building codes. Check first, then make your own decision.

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

25

Along these lines, I have to recommend that you read Ken Kern’s

The Owner-Builder

And

The

Code,

which

effectively

demolishes the arguments for building codes in this country and exposes them for what they actually are. It will give you some ideas on how to go about avoiding the codes wherever you may find them. He’s included examples of owner-builders throughout the country who have built their own dwellings without the blessings of the local building inspectors, and given you photographs of those homes to look at. If you want to be free to build your own home, you should buy this book, read it thoroughly, and keep it handy. The Owner-Builder And The Code. If you cannot build your home yourself or are unwilling to do so, you should seriously consider making modifications in whatever kind of house you move into. If it doesn’t have asbestos siding or other non-flammable material on the outside, you’d do well to look into having it installed. If the house you

move into was built by the sledge-hammer method (that is, with no regard to positioning for natural light or prevailing breezes, and featuring dependence on fossil-fueled electricity for heating, cooling, lighting, and cooking, with no insulation but that required by building codes) you could be facing a major remodeling job. That, or depending on sweaters, blankets, and sleeping bags to keep you warm during the winter; and fans, shade,

and

inaction

to ward

off heat

stroke

in the summer

months. That’s not to mention the higher probability of fire when you’re using light and heat sources other than electricity

in a structure that was designed for electricity and nothing else. When you are in the process of choosing your new home, make your choices according to the alternative likely to be offered you in Bad Times. You might end up doing something that’ll surprise you. When you’re looking for an existing house tomove into, look for those constructed of brick, stone, or block. Thick walls are best, and make sure that the insulation is adequate. Check the positioning of the house: if you don’t have a southern exposure with shaded windows, at least make sure that you can provide shade from summer heat by installing light screens such as lattices for vines between westward-facing windows and the

—

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

26

setting sun, and that there is an adequate amount of air movement possible throughout the house. If you’re renting or leasing and not buying, then make sure that you’ll be allowed to install wood-burning stoves, and that your landlord will cooperate in the cost of such installations. You’d better make damned sure that such installations can be safely done, and make sure of this before you sign anything. If you have serious doubts, go look. for something else. Security.

I’ll make this point again later, I’m sure, but I don’t like the idea of static defense. If you’re expecting trouble, the last thing you should want is to wait for it to come to you on its own terms. No defensive position is impregnable; usually, they end -up becoming untenable. Rork’s Drift was an exception. The Alamo wasn’t. Still, you have to make provisions for defending yourself and your property. To do otherwise would be foolish. And reckless, — in the light of what is coming down. So let’s look at what you can do to defend your home. If you’ve built it. yourself, you’re nine-tenths there already. By making it bulletproof and fireproof, you have removed— mostly—the two main causes to worry. At this point, I’d like to address a few words to the people who are thinking about putting up log cabins and log-end (or stovewood) houses. It’s true that the massive wooden walls won’t burn unless a great deal of heat and fuel is present. But the roof will (unless it’s sod, of course), and so will the floors and interior walls. It’s true that the outside walls are bulletproof (except in the cases of the chinks in the log cabins). If you must have wooden homes, even if they are log cabins and stovewood houses, well, go forward and good luck. They are rustic, efficient, healthy homes, and almost anyone can build them successfully. I only ask you to remember that it takes less than five minutes to mix a Molotov Cocktail, and that any functional illiterate can mix and use one. Please think about this, and use the trees on your land for

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

27

something else. When you are away from your log cabin, the walls are not resistant to chain saws. Getting back to the bulletproof, fireproof homes, you are almost as secure as you can get. Now what about the doors and windows? The best thing, when installing your doors and windows, is to do it right the first time. If you can, use the money you saved by building your home yourself to install heavy-gauge steel frames for all the doors and windows. Hang heavy-gauge steel doors and overlay door and frame with a nice wood veneer. Your double- or triple-glazed windows and skylights should be fitted with sliding steel shutters—also heavy-gauge—which can be closed quickly. If you wish, put decorative, functional bars over the windows, especially if you build an adobe-block Spanish style. It goes with the architecture, as do heavy shutters. You’re no doubt aware of this, but the early Spanish missions built in the Southwest were meant to do double duty as

fortresses. Not only did they look nice, quaint, and picturesque, but they were also fireproof, bulletproof, weatherproof, etc. Use good, heavy-duty latches and locks in your doors. The

windows shouldn’t be designed to be opened. Screened openings for air vents designed to promote air movement within your home should also be designed as firing ports. Make sure that, on all windows at eye level, there are small hatches in the shutters which may be opened and looked through, and that

goes for the doors, too. These precautions will protect you from armed assaults from most untrained civilian groups or mobs. Guerillas, unless wellarmed and well-trained, can’t do much with them, either. If an

Army combat unit wants your house, they’ve got it. You can either surrender (if they’ll let you), or you can leave. When you’re designing and building your home, design and build yourself a way out.

This can be tricky and will depend to a great degree on the terrain on which your home is built. If you have a basement,

you’ve got a start on it already. While you were excavating for the basement, it would have been a good idea to have found someone with a backhoe who was willing to let you have the

28

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

use of it for a day or so. Backhoes dig trenches and deposit the dirt neatly along the sides for backfilling later. Yes, we’re talking about a tunnel. Tunnels are easier (and safer) to dig if you can support them from grade level and fill them in later. ‘Large-diameter pipe— large enough to crawl through—is a natural for supporting an escape tunnel of this type. Lay in the pipe, bond it together,

shovel the dirt on top of it, tamp it down, and plant whatever vegetation you’ve displaced in digging the trench. If you can’t get or can’t afford culvert pipe, you’ll have to use whatever you can to support the dirt on top of your tunnel. Wood will work, but new wood is expensive. Try and salvage good wood if you can. Many times people will pay you to demolish a frame building and haul off the debris. If you’re careful, what you’ll be hauling off will not be debris at all. You can use a lot of what you pry loose from a building, provided the wood itself isn’t rotten. Use framing members to skeletonize your tunnel in the shape of a long, open-ended

box. Fill in the sides, bottom, and top

with siding (not decorative aluminum, or plasterboard), or roofing material (not shingles, but load-bearing pieces). Make sure it’s wide enough and high enough to accommodate you and any member of your family on hands and knees. I wouldn’t worry about standing upright; this project is hard enough as it is. Leave yourself room—especially at the ends—to handle tools.

You'll see why pretty soon. Put at least one bend in your tunnel. Don’t leave a straight path for bullets and other projectiles to travel unimpeded. If you put two or more kinks in your tunnel, shots fired from the entrance won’t hit you if you hustle. Leave the end unfinished. Make sure it’s no more than about — a foot or so from where you want the tunnel to emerge. This is to prevent anyone from finding your exit and using it as an entrance. Where should your tunnel emerge?

Good question. It depends entirely on where your home is built, and upon the land immediately around it. Try and make the tunnel end at some natural cover—a gully, among a copse of trees, in the middle of a thicket—you’ll have to use your own judgement, here. You wouldn’t want to come up in the middle of a bare field, I’m sure. This is one of the factors to consider —

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

;

29

_when you’re pacing off the land to determine where to raise your house. Leave digging tools at the end of your tunnel. If you have to use the tunnel as a means of escape, you will in all probability not have time to stroll out to the workshop and select a couple of shovels, a post-hole digger, pick, axe (for cutting roots), entrenching tools, etc. Make sure that these excavating tools are where you'll want them when you need them.

Now.

If you’re thinking that all this is just a bit much, it

could be you’re right. I certainly hope so. After all, the whole idea behind moving was to move to a safe place, right? Someplace where you won’t have to worry about those advancing, desperate hordes. So why all the concern about defense and evacuation? Because I want you aware at all times that, if the world turns upside down, literally anything can happen. And probably. will, if Finagle and Murphy have anything to say about it. You could conceivably find yourself, even in your safe town, part of a ragtag sort of militia. Oh, I know: the day of the militia as an

effective force is at an end, at least according to the people who want to protect government from citizens instead of the other way around. I can think of one modern militia who didn’t mind digging tunnels at all. They were called the Viet Cong. They were tunnel-digging fools. They are still there, and so are their tunnels. If you can be ready for anything, you should be ready for anything, especially if it seems likely to occur. If you’re thinking; “If things are going to get that bad, I wouldn’t want to live in a world like that, anyway,” it’s okay. That’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it, bless your heart. I wouldn’t want to die in a world like that. If you’ve taken all of the above precautions, your house should be safe from burglars, firebugs, accidents involving fire (provided you do your part), assaults by civilians, guerillas, tigers, or vikings. I repeat: if a military combat unit wants your _ house badly enough, they’re going to get it. If things arrive at that point, you’ll want more choices than said military unit is going to give you. It’s up to you to provide yourself with that extra choice, but you have to do it before the need. If you move into an existing house, then making it secure is

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

30

apt to be another proposition altogether. As I said, it’s just as easy to build a secure home as it is to build one without provisions for trouble and Bad Times. Remodeling an existing structure is something else. It might cost you more money than you are prepared to spend, maybe more than you’ve got or can get. In such a case, you’ll just have to do the best you can with what you’ve got. Do extend yourself to make your household secure from burglars or other unwanted intruders. Install those steel-framed. heavy steel doors with wood veneers. Install those heavy shutters. Get good locks installed throughout your home, and make

sure they feature deadbolts. You can have a local law-enforcement security specialist help you with this chore, and get a good locksmith to help you, too. If you are a good locksmith, then do it yourself, of course—in between working onother people’s houses; you’re going to be busy just before, during, and after the bell rings, so get these things done early. Look to your roof. If it’s feasible to convert it to sod, do so.

This one move will assure you of vastly-improved insulation | which will reduce your heat loss during winter and save you money on fuel. It will also make your roof effectively fireproof and bulletproof. The main consideration here is the strength of

the roof. If it just won’t hold a 6-inch layer of sod, you’re probably living in the wrong house, anyway. Regarding the outside walls, you could fill sandbags and stack them along the walls, driving rebars into them every foot-and-ahalf. That, however, will make your house look like a bunker,

and

that is what you

don’t want.

Your house should

look

natural, unassuming, blending in with the rest of the neighborhood. Tearing out the interior sheeting and lining the walls with heavy-gauge steel will discourage those happy-go-lucky souls with axes and chain saws, but it will also break you financially, unless you’re not on a budget. If you are on a budget, you should at least make sure you moved into a house made of brick, block, or stone. If you didn’t, look up someone who has

a CINVA-Ram and press your own. Stack them on the outsides of your walls and mortar neatly. This is a continuing weekend project which will improve the value of the house and make it more

secure.

It will also help out that guy who

owns

the

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CINVA-Ram CINVA-Ram,

31

block press. If you are the guy who owns the congratulations,

and

make

sure

the neighbors

know you’ve got it.

Clothing. Clothing, I think you’ll agree, is shelter, a fact so basic we

probably never think of it in those terms. All of us have a supply of clothing on hand, but much of it is specialized and not really suited to survival. Even if you’re a rancher or home-

steader at the present time, chances are you don’t have a supply of clothing on hand which is adequate for the purpose of surviving an extended period of Bad Times. When one of our articles of clothing wears out, we go to the store and replace it, and we can usually find a store which has the article we want, in

the style and color we prefer, and in the size we need for a good fit. During Bad Times, the stores could well be closed, and you

might be ill-advised to go anywhere during Bad Times anyway. Some stocking up is obviously in order.

Let’s start this section from the ground up and talk about footwear. Most city- and suburban-dwellers wear shoes which are decorative, thin-soled, and in many cases uncomfortable.

Some of them are downright unhealthy. Survival footgear should be tough, comfortable, and long-wearing, besides being insulated and/or waterproof where those qualities are needed. For indoors and light duty outdoors in good weather, I suggest tennis shoes. You can decide if they are high- or lowtop, but make sure your tennis shoes are made of canvas, to permit you to wash them once in a while. Nylon, suede, or leather tennies don’t wash well and are usually more expensive anyway. A half-dozen pairs wouldn’t be out of line, and more would be better yet. I don’t think they’re getting any cheaper, so you’d save money buying in quantities. Watch for sales. When you’re poking around in old buildings scheduled for demolition, scrounging, or doing any kind of salvaging, make sure you’re wearing boots which won’t let rusty nails up through them when your weight is on them. Genuine GI Vietnam-issue boots have steel shanks and are fine for this kind of

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32

!

duty. Or you might want to purchase some commercial work boots with steel shanks and steel toes for extra safety. Buy at least two pairs.-Don’t let anything happen to your feet during Bad Times. Tetanus toxin may not be available, and it’s cheaper to buy safe footwear now. For wet work in mud or snow, especially where temperatures are low, check out the line of boots made by Sorel of Canada. They feature rubber soles and lowers bonded to leather uppers, and they have thick felt inner liners which keep your feet warm, and which can be pulled out and replaced with fresh liners to keep your feet dry. I’d suggest getting fitted with more than one pair of these, especially if you move to Climate Zone 1. Sorel even puts steel toes into one model of their boots. If you’re going to be doing long stretches of walking or standing on your feet, try to make sure your boots’ uppers are not too high. Ten inches is probably maximum, and less than that is better. High boots tend to bind the muscles in the calves and produce fatigue. If you need protection from snakes, thick brush, excessive wetness from drifted snow, etc., get leggings or waterproof gaiters made for the purpose. Whatever you do, make certain that you have more socks than you need. All your socks should have cushion soles and be of good quality. For everyday workwear, try GI surplus socks; they’re cheap and plentiful. Your cold-weather socks should be high, thick, and warm, and at least some

of them

should be

wool. If your skin is sensitive to wool, there are thin undersocks for sale which will help your problem. No one I know likes to buy underwear, with the result that practically everyone is continually running low. Buying underwear is an onerous chore—it’s more fun buying almost anything else including dog food—but it’s necessary, especially winter underwear.

ae

I like the Scandinavian

fish-net underwear,

which

permits your skin to breathe, holds in body heat, and doesn’t act as a perspiration trap. You can buy sets of tops and bottoms for about ten dollars a set. Buy plenty of them. Did you ever try making your own underwear? You may be contemplating it during Bad Times, unless you stock up now.

The subject of outer clothing is much more interesting. The idea is to store away clothing which, like your footgear, is

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33

tough, comfortable, and long-wearing. The ubiquitous Levi’s are an excellent choice for everyday wear, except when the weather turns very cold and/or wet. For those times, you need something which will keep you warm and repel moisture. Wool pants made especially for outdoors are a good choice, since wool sheds moisture naturally and keeps the wearer warm. There is a disadvantage to buying wool, even if you’re not allergic to it. If the dry-cleaners are out of business during Bad Times, you will have to wash, block, and dry your woolens carefully by hand. If you don’t want to bother, there are cotton/synthetic blends which are treated with a moisture repellant, and which are

machine washable. Many of them are cheaper than wool. Hardly any of them are quieter than wool. Synthetics tend to be noisy when

rubbed

together or when pushing through obstructions

like grass, brush, or branches. I believe I’d get a good mix of woolens and cotton/synthetics in an effort to frustrate Finagle

; and Murphy. The same advice holds for shirts as well as pants. Wool is quiet, warm, and sheds water, but can be obstinate when you

want to clean it. The cotton blends don’t absorb perspiration in an effective way, but most of them are easily washable. My fellow survivalist, Joel Brodkey, believes that blending with your surroundings is helpful to survival in any situation, and, of course, he’s right. Joel applies that principle to his

clothing storage program. The standard uniform of the day in his part of the country is Levi’s and a Pendleton shirt, so Joel dresses that way. He hits garage sales, flea markets, rummage sales, and is often able to buy good Pendleton shirts for two or three bucks apiece. His practice is to have them dry-cleaned and bagged before placing them in storage. It’s possible to amass a great deal of usable clothing cheaply in this manner, and I would recommend Joel’s procedure to any serious survivalist— or to anyone interested in stretching their income, for that matter.

A few survivalists feel the need to dress up when choosing survival clothing. It’s like a costume party. They outfit themselves with jungle hats, rip-stop nylon camouflage-pattern fatiques bloused over imported-from-Korea-and-manufacturedto-U.S. Government-specifications-Vietnam boots, add an

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34

“Alice” pack and frame, pistol belt, entrenching tool, ammo pouches, first aid kit, flashlight, and AR-15, and they’re then

ready for anything. At that point, they step outside into high

desert terrain where the dominant vegetation is knee-high sagebrush, and they stand out like a bureaucrat in a bunch of angels. Ten miles away: “There’s something

odd

over

there,

Willie.

Hand

me the

binocs.”’ Genuine GI surplus clothing and equipment is usually worth the money. I’ve got some of it, myself, and I’m going to have more. It’s made for rough usage outdoors, and, from the stand-

points of price and quality, you could do a lot worse than military surplus. But it’s best to use caution and good sense. For example,if you live in an area heavily overgrown with, say, Madron oak trees, then leaf-pattern camouflage might work well for you. My personal preference is for solid, quiet colors. In

pine forests, olive drab is a good choice. In grassy regions— especially dead grass—the khakis work best. Stay with greens, browns, and tans, and if you live in snow country, some white

parkas wouldn’t be out of line. Depending on the weather, headgear can provide shade, help you avoid sunstroke, keep your head and neck dry, or keep you warm. Do not neglect headgear. I’m still searching for the perfect hat, in full awareness

that I may

never

find it. My

collection of hats sometimes drives my wife to fits of emotion, but I’m dedicated. I have Irish tweeds, crusher hats, baseball

caps, Navy watch caps, Balaclavas, jungle hats, and several villainous types which defy classification. You may not want to go that far, but you should provide yourself with hats for all seasons. Haunt the sporting-goods stores and check mail-order catalogs relentlessly. Most hats are cheap enough, and if you do a little accumulating, you'll probably find yourself adequately supplied with headgear in a short time. For gloves, I like Army surplus leather shells with knitted inserts. And there are the cheaper cotton gloves for gardening -and the heavy canvas gloves for rough jobs. Be sure to get an extra pair of welding gloves if you have an arc welder. A few packets of disposable latex gloves could be very useful when handling toxic or messy substances, and insulated rubber gloves

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

35

shouldn’t be overlooked. During Bad Times, your hands will be at least as precious as your feet. Don’t assume they’ll be okay. Protect them. Stockpile a generous sampling of vests, sweaters, jackets, windbreakers, coats, and parkas. The idea is to fit the garment

to the prevailing weather conditions to keep yourself warm, dry, limber, and comfortable. Military surplus offers some fine values here, and some of the commercial designs are outstanding. Down-filled nylon shells are light, warm, noisy, and can be hard to clean. Synthetic-filled nylon is almost as warm, almost as light, just as noisy, and easier to clean, as well as being cheaper for the most part. Good old wool is warm and quiet, but heavy wool coats require dry cleaning. I love my old wool duffel coat, and plan on wearing it extensively during Bad Times, while my long-suffering wife keeps muttering something about an old unsheared sheep spending the winter in a leaky barn. I favor the concept of layering your clothing, which permits you to shed layers as you warm up. It isn’t good to do an _ excessive amount of sweating in cold weather, and if you dress warmly, you’re going to sweat. By adding or omitting layers, you can keep your body temperature constant by controlling your personal environment. An example would be fishnet underwear,

a cotton

chamois-cloth

shirt, wool sweater, down-

lined vest, and a shell treated with some windproof, waterproof substance such as Gore-Tex film. Gore-Tex is something you should consider as an essential item in your clothing stores. It lets water vapor out but doesn’t let water droplets in. It’s expensive—a Gore-Tex parka will cost over $80—but well worth hit.,

Shelter—your shelter—is important enough to take the time to do it right. The location and construction of your shelter should be the very best that you’re capable of providing. So take some time with it. But don’t waste any time, either.

Chapter Two:

SUSTENANCE

Now that you’re into your house in your carefully-chosen, safely-located small town, you'll want to take steps to make sure you have enough to eat when the economy collapses, the ships sit dockside with no one to unload them, the trucks and trains stop rolling, the food runs out in the cities, and people’s _ stomachs begin to growl. Wait a minute! says you. The whole point in moving to this small town, besides physical safety, was because it’s agricultural and capable of supplying its own food, So what’s to worry - about? . Properly warned ye be, say I. I already told you about - Finagle and Murphy. You still have to eat something after crops have been planted. If it isn’t harvest time yet when the hammer falls, you’ll get hungry fast if you haven’t put food by. Remember, your town gets shipments from outside just like every other community in the U.S., large or small. When those shipments stop coming in, many—if not most—of the town’s inhabitants are going to be competing for available food. When that happens, you’ll be helping them as well as yourself if you have already removed yourself from competition by storing up enough food to last

37

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

38

yourself and your family for at least a year. That’s what this chapter is all about. That, and a couple of other things. So I want you to get ready. I do not want you to be hungry during Bad Times. It’s tremendously stressful to watch your family suffer hunger pangs while they’re trying to get along during the post-collapse days. Stress like that is something to be eliminated, not lived with. There will be plenty of areas which will be giving you stress. Don’t let personal hunger be one of . them. Stock up. Now. The optimum situation is for you to have three or four years’ worth of storable foods—freeze-dried and air-dried, packed for long-term storage in nitrogen-atmosphere cans—along with the skills, methods, and equipment needed to prepare them for your consumption. So take your twenty thousand dollars and get going. There’s not a—what? Oh. Well, come to think of it, I don’t have an extra twenty grand, either. Still, there must be something we can do, musn’t there? You bet your sweet bippy there is. Let’s start by gathering some information on the subject from reliable sources.

This is the place where I should mention Howard Ruff’s first book, Famine And Survival In America. It’s one you should get and keep handy, even after you read it. It’s a great book in itself on nutrition, preparation, sources, and priorities. It’s also a book you should have handy for reference. You’ll be going back to it again and again. It covers basic food groups, how to combine them to get the best nutritional combinations, vitamins natural versus vitamins chemical and which ones you need, the differing methods of preparing foods for storage and the nutritional

losses—if any—each

method

causes, how much

of

each kind of food an individual needs, and lots of other good things.

Send a dollar to SI (which stands for Survival, Incorporated), P.O. Box 4727, Carson, California 90746. They’ll send you their latest catalog, which usually runs over 60 pages. Much of it is given over to freeze-dried and air-dried foods packed for long-term storage, but there are numerous other items in there of interest to the survivalist. It will tickle your fertile mind. After you get into the spirit of this thing, it’ll be more fun to look through than the Sears Roebuck catalog.

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39

Subscribe to The Mother Earth News, P.O. Box 70, Hender-

sonville, N.C. 28739. Rates are $15 per year. The magazine is made especially for the small homesteader. Deals with looking for and buying cheap land, raising houses, barns, crops, and animals. Presents home-run businesses, alternate energy sources, recipes, toolmaking, and many other things too numerous to list. It’s hard to imagine survival preparations without MOTHER. There are other books and periodicals which will be useful to you, and I’Il mention a few of them as we go along. You should supply yourself with those I’ve named to use as a base for your food storage program. Don’t forget to read them.

Storable Foods.

Air-dried foods are cheaper than freeze-dried foods. They will last longer after being opened. They include such things as ' fruits, vegetables, and TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein) which resembles meat in appearance and sometimes taste. Air-dried foods

don’t

include real meats.

When

I say “air-dried” I’m

talking about foods which have had their moisture removed by drying. Freeze-dried foods offer some of the same fruits and vegeta-

bles as the air-dried method of preserving foods. They also offer real meat and eggs. Freeze-drying is accomplished by quickfreezing foods and then removing the resulting moisture crystals. Freeze-dried foods are more expensive than air-dried foods

and don’t last as long as air-dried after being opened. Both freeze-dried and air-dried foods are unbelievably light and compact. You can store a large quantity of either type in a

small space, as they come packed in cans which are then packed in cases of a uniform size to permit stacking. They'll last a number of years, depending on who packed them and where they are stored (cool, dry places are very good; hot, damp places are very bad). No one really knows exactly how long they’ll last unopened and still be edible and nutritious, but it seems safe to say that the best brands will go up to 15 years if you’re careful about where you keep them.

|

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Canned foods are not a good idea for long-term storage. A year, maybe a year and a half, seems to be the longest time you can wait before opening and using them. After that, you could be committing suicide by eating canned foods. The only exception to that statement I feel like making is in the case of U.S. Army C-Rations. I’ve eaten 14-year-old C-Rations—served to me by the Army—with no ill effects past the feeling that I was committing suicide. I hear the newer C-Rations have more variety and, in some cases, a better taste. Some military surplus outlets have C-Rations, for an average price of around $30 fora case of 12 meals. Be that as it may, supermarket canned foods are expensive, heavy, bulky, and don’t last long. They’re okay for short-term storage for short-term emergencies, but shouldn’t be considered a primary part of your food storage program. Frozen meats, fruits, vegetables, beverages, breads, and des-

serts aren’t good items to include in your storage program for obvious reasons. Namely, they require electricity. Even then, they won’t last very long, depending on the type of food involved. Normally, canned foods will remain edible longer than frozen foods. Also, frozen foods, like canned

foods, have the

water and the juices still in them. You’re paying for that water. Besides, like canned foods, they’re bulky, heavy, and take up too much room.

Starting Your Food Storage Program. You should provide a minimum one-year’s supply of freezedried and air-dried foods for each member of your family. The freeze-dried foods should be real meat and eggs, as well as those foods which you have tried and pronounced better-tasting than their air-dried counterparts. You should have air-dried fruits and vegetables for the balance of your stash. All your foods should

have been selected on the basis of nutrition, variety, and taste, which means that package deals are not the best way for you to go. Your family’s food supply should be tailor-made for your family. A package deal isn’t, although it’s usually cheaper.

Expect to pay upwards of $1,500 for such a tailor-made food

—

|

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41

supply per person. If you are a family of four, your year’s supply will cost you a minimum of $6,000, provided you’ve planned correctly regarding nutrition, minimum caloric intake per day, variety, and taste. Six. Thousand. Dollars. If you have it, spend it. It will be worth it. You’ll need the bulk, variety, and nutrition that such an expenditure will give you in a properly-chosen food supply. If you don’t have it, then you’ve got a problem—but not the kind of problem which can’t be overcome.

For further information on this subject, refer to

SI’s catalog, which carries an excerpt from PS Letter dealing with food storage requirements in much greater—and better— detail than I’ve given you here.

Basic Foods.

We start with basics. Basics include proper vitamins and minerals, plus bulk to keep you feeling filled up, plus enough calories to keep you going under stress. So I'll begin by discussing what you no doubt expect me to discuss: wheat, powdered milk, honey, and salt. The case for wheat may be so obvious as to be overlooked. A

good way to cause wheat’s importance to come home to you is to sit down and make a list of those food items which you eat on a regular basis, and then cross off everything which has wheat in it. Or you might just want to list everything you wouldn’t care to do without. Chances are that wheat has something to do with it. Try to eat a sandwich without wheat. Without wheat, hamburgers and hot dogs wouldn’t be the same anymore, and neither would beer. And there are some people who couldn’t face life without pizza. Cakes, pies, tarts, turnovers, and dumpl-

ings would become things to tell your grandchildren about. Quell your urges for crackers and cheese; you can’t have crackers without wheat. No more spaghetti, vermicelli, linguini, macaroni,

manicotti,

canneloni,

ravioli, or lasagna. No

more

flour tortillas to sop up beans, make burritos, eat with cheese as homemade quesadillas, or slide under beans and a salad in the

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

42

form of a tostada. No more biscuits. No more gravy. How do | you make batter for french toast, chicken, fish, chicken-fried steaks, chile rellenos, or pancakes without wheat flour?

If you’re not willing to do without all those things and more, then you’d better plan to include wheat in your food storage program. It’s cheap. It stores well. And, in case you didn’t get the message in the preceding paragraph, it’s very, very versatile. By now everyone knows that the wheat found in the tomb of the Pharoah was thousands of years old, yet perfectly edible when ground into flour and baked into bread. Keep wheat cool and dry, and it will last you a very long time. Heat and moisture are its chief enemies. And since normal atmosphere contains moisture, it’s best to buy your wheat in sealed, nitrogenatmosphere containers, preferably cans. I bought my wheat from a local source, and so should you. But you have to be careful. Make sure your local source is reliable, honest, and deals in good merchandise. Make sure your wheat is hard red winter wheat. Just any old variety of wheat won’t do. Hard red winter wheat is what you have to have for storage.

My wheat came

to me mostly in cans. Number

10 cans,

which are the large ones, packed six cans to the case. Make certain, as I did, that the wheat is vacuum packed in a nitrogen atmosphere. Some of my wheat is packed in five-gallon plastic: . containers which were injected with nitrogen before being sealed. The lids on those containers seal so tightly that I had to purchase a special tool for opening them. I bought it that way because, among other reasons, I wanted to try different ways of storing my wheat, but, as I say, the majority of it is in cans. There are three people in my family. We have about a half-ton -of wheat, enough to last us a year if we eat nothing else.

You'll need a minimum of 300 pounds of wheat per person per year. I’d quote you a good price if I could, but inflation would make that a useless exercise. Any prices I could quote will be looked upon as a curiosity in later days. Get the best price you can without shorting yourself on quality and preparation. Hard red winter wheat. Nitrogen atmosphere. The cans should be double-enameled for best storage results. SI can sell you wheat if you can’t find a local source you trust. You can

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43

trust SI, but you’ll have to pay shipping fees, and it may cost you more than other sources, and this is supposed to be a budget book. If nothing else, use SI’s catalog prices as a guide when shopping around close to home. Your wheat will be in little kernels resembling popcorn before it’s popped. These are called berries. You’ll have to find some way of cracking and crushing those berries to make flour, Bulgur, and other products. You could use two flat rocks, I guess, but the best way is to buy a stone wheat mill. Get the best mill you can afford. This is because 300 pounds per person per year is a lotof wheat, and a low-quality mill may not last you very long. If your mill breaks down during Bad Times, and you haven’t got a spare, you certainly won’t be able to send your mill back to the factory and get it replaced. You'll be without a necessary tool, and you'll still have to grind up all that wheat. This brings us back to my original point. Get the best mill you_can afford. It will be worth it. The best and most expensive mills are powered affairs, able to grind out large quantities of flour in a short time. They are adjustable for coarseness and fineness of grind, and for graduations between the extremes. Many of them can be converted from electric power to manual operation and back again. SI stocks them. There are other sources for them, too. Expect to _pay several hundred dollars for such a mill. Expect to get your money’s worth, too. If you can’t afford one of the fancy, expensive, powered mills, then look at the hand-operated models, which are much cheaper. There are reasons to go this route even if you can afford the higher-priced models. But you have to be careful.

Many of the cheaper hand mills are made of pot metal which has been plated with ‘chrome or something else. They may break when you need them the most, and probably will (Finagle’s Law, you know). SI (I may sound funny mentioning SI over and over, but I have my reasons: they’re good people to deal with, they offer good products, and they are survivalists and understand the problems you’re facing; you could do a lot worse)—where was I? Oh: SI handles these cheaper mills, too, and they are good ones. I bought a model which suits me just fine. I can mount it

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on a bench, the end of a table, or on the wall. I bought a gadget with it which will allow me to power it by using a bicycle. There’s another attachment to convert the mill to run from an electric motor. I grind two hoppers full of wheat per day during the week. One hopper will yield almost two cups of flour. On weekends I grind a half-dozen or more hoppers of wheat per day. This keeps us in flour and also keeps my arms toned up. I’m using the mill bolted to my work bench in the garage. When it’s not in use, a Zip-Loc bag is draped over it to protect it from foreign matter. If you need exercise, I’m here to tell you that grinding flour will give it to you. When my arms stop looking like a blacksmith’s and start looking like a gorilla’s, I’ll hook up the bicycle and exercise my legs. The eleven-year-old redhead in our family grinds wheat whenever he can, because he’s convinced that doing so will give him a body like Conan the Barbarian. He could be right. When you have your wheat, use it. Start using it at once. Replace it as you go, making sure that you always have a year’s © supply. You’ll be accomplishing several things when you do this, not the least of which is saving money. You can use that extra money for other things in your survival program. By making your own flour and using that flour to make your _ own bread, you'll be saving money immediately. When you check the prices on bread next time you go to the market, check the quality of the bread while you’re at it. The bread you make yourself from your own flour will be much better for you, and much better-tasting, too, once you get the hang of things. By baking a half-dozen loaves at once, you'll save money on utilities. It doesn’t take any more fuel to bake six loaves

than it does to bake one. While you’re at it, bake biscuits, pie crusts, coffee cakes, cinnamon/raisin rolls, and whatever else suits your fancy for desserts, breakfasts, and meal adjuncts

you’d normally buy ready-made. We usually do this on weekends. Make sure that at least some of your wheat can be sprouted. If you can sprout it, you can plant it and grow it on your land. If you can’t sprout it, you can’t grow it. I’ve heard that treating wheat with dry ice to force out the air will also sterilize the

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Send

8

wheat and prevent it from sprouting, and that’s another reason I had for buying it sealed in those plastic five-gallon containers. I wanted to make sure that at least some of my wheat could be sprouted in trays kept on windowsills. You should be thinking about growing your own wheat from sprouts, but don’t depend on homegrown wheat to supply your family with all its needs for grains. Not unless you have a lot of land and a lot of money and time. A piece of ground ten feet by ten feet will grow enough wheat—after you’ve planted, weeded, tended, harvested,

threshed, washed, dried, and ground it into

flour—to bake five or six loaves of bread. If your community

doesn’t have wheat growing around it, perhaps you could interest some of your neighbors in starting a communal wheat field, using sprouted wheat. With enough of you responsible. for planting, tending, harvesting, and processing, it might be a going concern. But don’t forsake your stored wheat for a wheat field. Take care of Number One first, and that includes your family. Store your wheat first, then sprout some of it. Now you’ve bought wheat for storage and are using it daily and replacing it as you go. You’re grinding it, baking bread and pastries with it, and sprouting it. Now try some things you ‘haven’t tried before. Make crackers with it. Buy a pasta maker— a hand-cranked model will do—and make your own spaghetti, egg noodles, and macaroni. Set your stone mill for the coarsest adjustment and crack your wheat berries to make Bulgur. With Bulgur wheat, you can make wheat pilaf, a delightful side dish which I prefer to rice pilaf. What you’re doing is cutting those new neural channels. You’re making sure that future shock won’t affect you in the area of supplying your family with meals. You’re gradually changing your family’s eating habits over to what they’ll be during Bad Times—and it’ll be painless. It’s even fun. Don’t stop now; you’re doing too well. Preserve your momentum for other things. “You’re going to have to buy powdered milk for long-term storage. Consider all of the things you can’t cook if you don’t have milk to add to the recipe. I wouldn’t trust powdered milk in the paper envelopes and cardboard cartons offered on supermarket shelves. Too many things can happen to it in containers that are flimsy, and it’s too exposed to conditions which could

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harm it. Get it packed for long-term storage. this—that’s right—is SI. After you’ve bought start sending you flyers advertising certain prices. Often powdered milk is one of them.

A good source for from them, they items at reduced The air-dried milk

is cheap, especially when it’s on sale. Take advantage of those

reduced prices. Or check around your area for a source. If you found onee for your wheat, maybe they also offer milk. If so, compare quality and cost with SI’s. If prices are comparable with quality, get the milk locally. And if you do find a good source, tell your

neighbors about it. You’ll need 100 pounds of powdered milk per person per year. That’s minimum. I’d get much more than that if I were you. Don’t take chances with something so necessary, yet so perishable. Use powdered milk daily to get used to it. If you drink powdered milk, then you know that it tastes a lot like . . . well,

powdered milk. You can sneak up on an acquired taste for the stuff by mixing it with cartoned milk from the supermarket.

Your store-bought milk will go farther that way, and if you keep the mixture in the carton, maybe the rest of your family won’t notice. In any case, use powdered milk in any cooking recipes. calling for milk. Get used to using it, because it is cheaper, and besides, when you need to break into your stored milk, you’ll be accustomed to it, while almost everybody else won’t be. Another method of avoiding future shock. You’ll need 100 pounds of honey per person per year. This is something you can buy locally, as long as you make certain that it’s the quality you want and the price is right. Shop around. Get a deal for buying in quantity. Honey will store indefinitely as long as you keep it sealed up tight. It tends to crystallize with age, but that’s nothing that can’t be solved by placing the container in hot water for a while. Honey is a natural sweetener which is much better for you than refined sugar. Because it’s sweeter than sugar, you use less of it. However, it does take some getting used to when you cook with it. The proportions are different. You can adjust for this by getting cookbooks designed especially for cooking with honey, and by collecting the receipes using honey which are popping out all over the place now. Try MOTHER for a start in

—

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those recipes. There

|

47 are also tables of conversion

from sugar to honey which should be useful in this area.

_

To illustrate the value of wheat, powdered milk, and honey

to a survivalist’s food program, you can, for about 2¢ a serving, eat a good hot breakfast consisting of cooked wheat cereal served with milk and a dollop of honey for flavor and energy. I could be wrong about that 2¢ per serving. It might well be less than that. Salt is so inexpensive, there’s no reason not to buy a lot of it. Twenty-five pounds of salt shouldn’t cost you any more than five bucks maximum, and since you need to put away a minimum of 10 pounds per person per year, you might as well put away more. You can use it for other things than seasoning your food. You can use it for trade. You can use it to attract wild animals. You can use it to sterilize ground where you don’t want things to grow. Don’t short yourself on salt. Make damned sure that you store your salt in sealed containers to keep the moisture out of it.

Growing And Preserving Your Own Food. One of the best ways I know of saving money is to grow your own food. A garden is one of the most rewarding things you can

do right now, at the cost of a few dollars in seeds and some time well spent. A garden is a learning experience that you should undergo now, while you can afford to make mistakes. Your garden will teach you things about soil and water management you can’t really get from books. You’ll learn things at little cost

to you now which could spell the difference between hunger and plenty during Bad Times. If you’re unfamiliar with gardening, or even if you’re not, it helps to read up on the subject. You’ve already got The Sunset New Western Garden Book, so if you live in any of the eleven western states at present, use it. Use it even if you live east of the 100th meridian. There are sections on soil, water, planting,

transplanting, grafting, cross-pollination, and all manner of other subjects related to growing plants. You should also subscribe to Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine, 33 East

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48

Minor Street, Emmaus, Pennsylvania 18049. If you’re going to grow anything, don’t be without this one. And if you still haven’t subscribed to The Mother Earth News, what are you waiting for? Where producing your own food is concerned, the magazine is stuffed with ideas for you. Even if you live in an apartment right now, you can start a

garden in pots and window boxes. If you have a patio or a balcony, no matter how tiny, you can make use of it by growing things to eat. If your patio is fairly good sized, utilize it. Plant in barrels. You can get whiskey barrels which have been cut in half for about ten dollars. There are books in your department store’s garden department designed especially for

growing things in containers. And if you have a back yard, you’re home free. Five or six dollars will buy you enough seeds to plant a garden the size of a basketball court, which is more than enough to feed your family to visit the produce section when Instead of flowers alongside Instead of growing wisteria up

and eliminate the need for you you go to the supermarket. ~ the house, plant strawberries. that pretty latticework, plant

grapes or beans and let them climb. Get your staples in the ground. Grow your own potatoes, onions, tomatoes, peas, rad-

ishes, cabbage, corn, beets, peppers. If you have the room, plant some dwarf fruit trees and get them started. It will improve the value of the place you’re living in now and give you valuable experience with the first stages of a young tree’s growth, let you learn insect and pest control, pruning, grafting, and other matters you should know. You can dehydrate (air-dry )many of the foods you grow yourself; it’s easy. Buy or build a dehydrator and use it on a regular basis to start your storage program going in different directions and keep it going.

A dehydrator can be an electrical appliance costing hundreds of dollars, or it can be something you’ve knocked together yourself from light wooden lathing and inexpensive screening, using solar power as energy. You can even use the inside of your automobile as a solar dehydrator. Especially if the interior is black. Just park it in the driveway, set your fruit and vegetables—on trays is the best way—on the seats, dashboard, and

©

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} 49

_ rear window shelf, roll up the windows, and let the sun do the _ rest. You can also let your oven’s pilot light dehydrate your produce for you. If you want to buy a dehydrator, SI’s catalog offers them. _ You’ll see them advertised in Organic Gardening, The Mother _ Earth News, and quite a few other magazines. I would advise getting a solar-powered one, just so you can see how simple _ they are, and then building your own. Even I can build one, oy if I can, thks can. Try it. _ When you’re dehydrating foods regularly, you’ll learn to visit fruit stands and get good buys on the fresh produce you aren’t growing yourself. Bring it home, wash it, cut it up, arrange it on the trays, and expose it to sunlight. Have you priced raisins, dried apricots, and prunes lately? You’ll save a lot of money by doing it yourself, and you can store your dried produce in _ Zip-Loc bags or mason jars for up to a year. Use a straw to suck - out most of the air. This winter you can rehydrate your produce by soaking it in water a minute or two, and use your fruit in pies, cakes, compotes, and salads. You can use your dehydrated vegetables in soups and stews and casseroles. More future shock avoided. More stress sidestepped. More confidence deposited in your personal account. More money saved. _ Can your own vegetables and fruits. A pressure cooker-canner _ costs around sixty dollars, but the price is definitely not going _ to go down. Invest the money now and get started. Mason or Kerr jars are everywhere in stores, but don’t count on them hanging around too long after the economy goes from a power dive into an uncontrollable

spin. Stock up on jars, lids, and

seals. SI has plastic, reusable canning seals at a modest price. Buy at least 12 dozen of them. For help in canning your produce yourself, there are several good books to give you a hand. Stocking Up, by the editors of Organic Gardening and Farming, is exceptional. Get that one first, as it covers more than just canning; you'll be able to use it in a big way once you get on your own land. Try 12 Month’s Harvest in the Ortho Series National Edition found in your

neighborhood book store. That one covers preparing food for - freezing, canning, pickling, drying, and smoking. It will also give

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:

you information on making a cold box, making your own soap, making your own cheese, pressing fruit for juice and cider, and more. Let’s pause for breath. So far, you’ve stocked up on the basic four foods, namely

wheat,

powdered

milk, honey,

and salt.

You’ve started using your wheat, grinding your own flour, making your own bread, expanding your self-sufficiency horizons and saving money. You’ve planted a garden and started to produce your own fruits and vegetables. You’ve begun canning and dehydrating those fruits and vegetables. You’ve accumulated a fair-sized pantry full of canned, pickled, and dried foods, probably more than most people have set aside. You’ve made great strides in just a short time, and you haven’t spent much money doing it, have you? Good foryou. You’ve also crammed a lot of useful information into your head that wasn’t there before. This will be more valuable than

you can imagine during the times ahead. Don’t stop now; keep going.

Vital Supplements To Food Storage. You still need to do something about those items you use daily but can’t produce or preserve yourself—yet. I’m talking about butter, shortening, cheese, and eggs. You’ll want to lay in a supply .of these commodities as soon as you can. They’re getting more expensive as you read these words, and if you put off the problem of buying and storing them, you might be letting yourself in for some real difficulties later on. So look around for the sources and start planning your budget to accommodate them. You can buy butter, shortening, cheese, and eggs in air-dried forms. I’d get the eggs freeze-dried if I were you. More versatile and better tasting. You can rehydrate them and have them for breakfast in the forms of scrambled eggs or omelets. Add bacon bits, chopped onions, tomatoes, cheese, sour cream, or whatever

you like to make them interesting. You can also use them in cooking, and you literally cannot get along without them for

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some

dishes.

Invest in freeze-dried

51

eggs. They’ll make you

happy. If you must worry and be under stress and strain, worry . about something besides the lack of eggs. Eggs will be available during Bad Times, to be sure, but you probably won’t be able to buy them regularly. Eggs sold for one dollar each during the mining boom in the Klondike 80 years ago. That was before

taxes and inflation. Inflation had nothing to do with the price of eggs, but the laws of supply and demand had everything to do with it. Let Bad Times come, and the trucks stop rolling, and

see what happens then. You'll need butter for most recipes. Butter falls into the same classification as eggs. There is, to my knowledge, no other way to preserve butter and eggs besides air-drying them. You can’t dehydrate butter yourself. You can’t can it, pickle it,orsmoke it. You have to buy it packed for long-term storage. I suggest most strongly that you do so. Shortening is something else you’ll need. It’s one of the needed fats and oils. You can buy it air-dried. Buy it, store it, use it, replace it. You’ll be glad later on. si Cheese is something you can make yourself if you have the proper animals and equipment. If you don’t have the animals or equipment yet, you'll want to stock up. Aijr-dried cheese powder will last for years. You can rehydrate it, heat it, pour it over vegetables as a sauce, include it in casseroles, add it to eggs for extra zest, or form it into blocks for a product much like Kraft Velveeta. You shouldn’t leave something as versatile as cheese out of your plans. Even after you can make your own, the air-dried stuff will provide variety and a welcome change from time to time.

Meat Storage. Now what about meat? There are some things you can do to preserve it yourself. You can jerk it—that is, cut it into strips, season it, and dry it with your oven or the sun. Jerked meat is lightweight and travels well. You can stick a length of it in your mouth and chew it while leaving both hands free for other

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things. You can chop it up and mix it with potatoes, rice, or other vegetables when cooking them. No, it won’t last for years,

but it will last you for many months.

.

Smoking meat is a great way to preserve it. If you have a commercial smoker or a smokehouse you built yourself, you can

smoke

fish, fowl, beef, pork, venison, or just about any

kind of meat you want. You should invest in a small smoker now if you haven’t found your land yet. When you’ve made your move and gotten started developing your land, you should definitely build a smokehouse. Do not, however, depend on your smoked meat lasting years. For long-term storage of meat, go to freeze-dried foods. Get them packed in cans for years of storage life. You can get your beef both raw

and cooked,

in many

different forms—sliced,

ground, chunked, and chopped. You can get beef steaks, pork slices, diced chicken, chunked ham or turkey. You can get sausage, ground beef, meat in the form of entrees like beef stroganoff, shrimp creole, chicken and rice, chili. The variety is pleasing, tasty, and—in a few instances—incredible. It will last you for years if left unopened. So which method should you opt for? All of them. While you’re smoking and jerking meat yourself, pick up some of the freeze-dried meat dishes in sporting goods stores and try them. Some you’ll like and some will be strange. Some will taste fresh and delicious, and some will taste freeze-dried.

Pick out the meats you like, and also the ones you can stretch

out and make last. Plan to lay in quantities of these meats. If you're really strapped and can’t buy them by the case—and don’t feel bad; many people can’t afford to—then buy them a. can or two at a time, for use during special occasions, or when

you need a break from routine. Get your priorities straight when you buy. Don’t for instance, buy steaks first. Instead, buy ground beef, sliced pork, diced chicken, things you can improvise and economize with. Do the best you can by your family, but don’t get yourself into trouble financially. Not now. When you’ve done all this, and you still haven’t moved, then you’ve put yourself into a position of advantage over virtually everyone else in the country. You’ve supplied yourself with staple foods to last your family for a year if necessary. You’ve

A simple, low-cost dehydrator ava able from SI.

A year’s supply of food providing 2,300 calories per day takes up no more space than Mark Zahner.

A benchful of grain grinders ranging in price from $50 to $400.

Some variety.

examples

of freeze-dried foods packed

The Water Washer. :

in nitrogen-atmosphere

cans.

Note

the

Two sizes of cans used for long-term storage o vegetable seed. These are true-strain seeds and may b. used up to 10 years after storage.

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55

learned how to use those stored foods to good effect. You have started producing and storing food yourself. You have managed to cut a bunch of those strings tying you to the system. From a posture of dependence, you have gotten to your feet and moved a long way toward self-sufficiency. You’re not through, yet. You’ve only just begun.

Food Production At The Retreat.

Still haven’t moved to your new home yet? Time is running out. You must have some idea where your new home is. Have you written to the Chambers of Commerce? Have you subscribed to the local newspapers? Have you read Les Scher’s book from cover to cover? When’s your next vacation coming up? Plan to go to the most likely of the towns this time, instead of playing around down on the beach. Can’t afford a trip to look for real estate? Sure you can.. Try camping instead of staying in a motel. Campgrounds have facilities for washing and other amenities, so use them. Camping can be fun, and if you’re not a camper, it’s time you started finding out about it. Get out there and find your new home. You’re overdue. Once you’ve moved, you can heave a sigh of relief. Now aren’t you glad you moved when you did? It was a real chore,

packing, moving, and unpacking all that stuff, wasn’t it? Now imagine what it would have been like, had you waited until your storage program was even farther along. Now, you can accumulate possessions without that nagging worry of where to put it until you move, and how much shipping is going to cost you. Now you can put all this knowledge you’ve been picking

up to good use. If you’re on some acreage, dig a fish pond. That’s your first chore after securing your water source—as far as sustenance is concerned. Your fish pond will also be your holding tank. It will supply you with the best protein you can get. The kind of fish will depend mostly on the altitude and temperature where you’re living. A safe bet might be bass and bluegill. The bluegill feed on the insects and the plants, and the bass feed on the bluegill. Both species are good to eat, albeit the bluegill are a

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little bony. When building a fish pond, consult with your community’s water master, as well as the nearest office of the U.S. Soil Conservation Service and the state fish biologist. These people can give you a great deal of help here. Plant wild rice in your fish pond, and don’t forget watercress, mint, and cattails (you can eat parts of the cattails, and also use them for fuel and compost). If frogs haven’t found your pond yet, find some and introduce them. The same applies to turtles. You could do worse than have a few families of turtles adopt - your pond. Now that things are going well, dig another pond if you have the room. That will allow you to drain one into another to save the animal life while you scoop up all that good fertilizer at the bottom of the first one. Your ponds will attract wildlife, starting with migratory. waterfowl, but not stopping with them. What you’re doing is assuring yourself of a reservoir. And how many people do you know who can fish and gig frogs in their swimming pool? With proper management, as mentioned in Chapter One, you can pull hundreds of pounds of fish from your pond per year. That is better than money in the bank, because those fish are fruitful, and multiply. All you have to do is keep the water fresh and non-polluted. Next thing you should build.is a smokehouse. For smoking those fish, of course. But also for other kinds of meat. Stocking Up has plans for a smokehouse between its covers. Now you can use them. Aren’t you glad you bought that book? Is your land fenced? If so, buy a couple of goats. Milk goats. Goat’s milk is more easily digested than cow’s milk, and contains more complete protein, too. Goats will forage for their food, and help you keep your land clear of those woody, _ fibrous weeds you detest. But be warned: they’ll go for your garden. Keep your garden fenced, too. Keep your nanny happy, and she will give you milk. You can drink it, cook with it, and

turn it into butter and cheese. Now I have, another warning for you: you won’t be able to just go out and do everything right the first time. Your billy might ignore your nanny to the point where you question his morals. Nanny may not want to give you her milk. And you probably won’t be able to milk her effectively for a while,

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either. Goats have a disturbing tendency to let their attentions

wander while being milked. They love to kick over milk cans,

especially if they’re full. You’re going to need help with them. From books which I’ll list for you in a minute, from magazines which I’ll also mention, and from some of your new neighbors. They will be glad to help you if they can, and if you’re nice about it and not standoffish. People are different out in the country than they are back among the cliff-dwellers. They’re nicer. Check SI for books dealing with raising small farm animals. I draw your attention to Jerry Belanger’s Raising Milk Goats The Modern Way, and Homesteader’s Handbook to Raising Small

Animals. MOTHER’S

Bookshelf has good titles in this regard,

and there’ve been excellent articles on breeding, caring for, and

generally raising milk goats in The Mother Earth News. The one

in issue #60 dealt with designing and building a low-cost goatmilking stand. Worth looking at. You can order back issues of MOTHER, and you should. Get valuable hands-on experience by finding a nearby agricultural college and taking some classes designed to help you understand the raising of homestead animals. This kind of training is the very best you can get. Of course, start your garden. Plant what you like, but plant well and be sure to plant enough. If you’ve done your homework before moving and you gardened.in your former home, this will be fairly simple. Whatever you do, fence your garden. It would be a damned shame if you didn’t turn ducks or geese loose on your fish pond. They’d take to it like—oh, never mind. Ducks and geese are also foraging animals, and since they don’t like the same foods goats do, they don’t compete with them for food, and the different species will get along. You won’t have to build cages if you raise ducks and geese, although they do need shelter from the elements, as do the goats. They are all fine, self-sufficient, admirable animals, and

they will be more partners to you than anything else, but you should not neglect their shelter any more than you'd neglect your own. Ducks and geese will need your help from time to time, especially when hatching young. Incubators are often necessary, but that’s nothing you can’t take care of yourself;

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there is hardly any need for you to buy a lot of expensive : equipment. Learn about the different species of ducks and geese. They’re . ’ tremendously versatile. Many of them will outlay chickens hands down, or feathers down, or whatever you want to use as a

comparison. Some species will substitute for watchdogs on your property, and as such are valuable in that respect. Some species of geese will dress out at forty pounds, which puts them into the turkey class as far as meat on the table is concerned. All of them supply you with liver for pate, liver oil, and down. Priced -a down-filled vest, jacket, comforter, or sleeping bag lately?

Check SI’s book catalog and MOTHER’S Bookshelf for books dealing especially with ducks and geese. And don’t forget to look at your university’s classes for valuable OJT. Consider the pig. He’s smart, a lot cleaner than you think

(the stereotypes don’t do him justice), and a forager. As it happens, pigs forage for different kinds of foods than do goats, ducks, and geese. A set of pigs will supply you with fertilizer, meat, lard, leather, and more pigs. It is possible to use a pig in total, without throwing anything away. From the meat standpoint alone, you can have bacon, ham, ribs, steaks, chops, roasts, pig’s feet (pickled), head cheese, cracklings (pork rinds), and that’s only scratching the surface. You can use his intestines as casings for sausage, the meat for _ which he’ll also supply. You can smoke any part of him you wish. If you don’t care for brains, other people do, and might be willingto buy them from you when you butcher. Tongue tastes a bit like corned beef and may be prepared many different ways. Save his blood and grind his-bones for use in your garden. Blood meal and bone meal are plant foods. You can render him for lard. You can use his residues for making soap. If you want to revive a venerable old profession, you can tan his hide and make things from it, like sandals, wallets, gloves, belts,

hats, purses, aprons, and shoulder holsters. Get Jerry Belanger’s

Raising The Homestead Hog for further details. Stocking Up will also help you in stretching your porcine assets.

Go looking for toads. When you find them, invite them to come and live in your garden. Insist on it, but treat them gently if you have to kidnap them. They are going to be your very

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good. friends. Some of the bugs, worms, and caterpillars which will be competing with you for food will hate to see your ‘friend, the toad. As a matter of fact, he may be the last thing _ they ever see again. A toad is cheaper than insect repellant (he’s free), and renews himself, if you make sure he has the right ? kind of company. Praying mantises are also good to have around. They are on your side. Take good care of them, and encourage them if they _ settle where your food is growing. Soon you’ll see the tall fellows standing around munching on careless insects. When you clear your land for planting, remove stumps and other obstructions. Clearing land doesn’t mean attacking it with a bulldozer and scraping off the all-important surface layer. The kindest thing you could do to your land is to plant with mulch.

It lets the topsoil do its job without exposing it to the elements which will scatter it and render it useless. Mulch planting encourages crops to grow as nature intended them to. It will save your back, your time, and your pocketbook. It will also give you an absolutely bewildering variety of crops. The bigger your parcel of land, the more brands you can choose from, for

it’s your own personal supermarket and nothing less. Single crops, planted in enormous stands, forced out of plowed, tired earth with machinery and chemicals, are self-defeating. When did you ever seé a single stand of anything in nature? There’s always a mixture. Leave some virgin pastureland if any is on your property.

That land is working for you. It’s providing food for grazing and browsing animals, and homes for others. By preserving it, you are preserving more than just land. You’re preserving lives, and a piece of the Earth, and those things are worth saving. If you don’t already have trees growing on your land, plant some. Plant fruit trees, nut trees, eucalyptus, carob, hardwoods,

softwoods, deciduous, coniferous. Trees will provide you with

windbreaks, food, fuel, shade, and beauty. They will anchor

your soil and keep it where it belongs. They will provide homes for birds and animals. They’ll replenish the oxygen you breathe. They will improve the value of your property. Planting trees will improve your worth as a human being. What you'll be doing by following these suggestions regarding

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. }

livestock and land use is giving yourself the benefits of sub‘sistence farming with only a percentage of the expense. It will cost you more for dairy products if you depend on cattle for them. Cows take up more land, require more food, and can’t care for themselves nearly as well as can goats. Chickens usually

have to be penned, and I don’t like the idea of keeping animals in cages. I suppose that’s why I’d rather hunt rabbits than raise them. You have to bring in food from outside your own land for cattle and chickens, and you might not be able to afford — that. Surround yourself with animals which are self-sufficient as well as useful. You’ll respect them, and you’ll respect yourself. By respecting the land, it will give you dividends. It will save you time, money, and hard labor. You'll still have to put in time, money, and hard labor, but not nearly so much as by using other, conventional methods in caring for your land. Now that you’ve progressed to this point, you can pat your-

self on the back. You’ve seen to your family’s food supply and made sure that it will continue. I can’t fill in all the gaps Pve left—I haven’t the room or the time—but I would like to plug a few of them for you:

Greenhouses.

Whether or not you’ve located your retreat in Climate Zone 1, you should give serious consideration to using at least one greenhouse. Greenhouses will let you grow more crops than even the best American climates will permit. You can grow more crops in cold weather than you would otherwise obtain. Greenhouses will give you more variety than would otherwise be possible. And, if we do happen to be heavily involved in a nuclear war, greenhouses may be the only things standing between you and starvation after your stored food runs out. The best preparedness manual dealing with nuclear survival is Life After Doomsday, by Bruce D. Clayton, Ph.D. This highlyacclaimed work covers all the important aspects of the problems we are likely to encounter. For the purposes of this chapter, I point to the fact that large numbers of thermonuclear explosions may seriously damage the ozone layer in the atmosphere,

_ THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

;

61

~ letting in excessive amounts of ultra-violet solar radiation. This will have the effect of turning surviving animal life—including human beings—into nocturnal animals. Such an occurrence will

_ hot be permanent, and we may expect to return to a normal

existence of sleeping at night and daytime activity in a few years. The matter of our crops is not to be solved so easily. Most food crops will not be able to successfully adapt to increased doses of UV, and thus will create a serious gap in the food chain. By utilizing greenhouses which are constructed of plastic coverings which are UV-resistant, it’s possible to continue growing food staples during this difficult period. There are plastics available which are capable of blocking 80% of ultra-violet radiation, and Clayton recommends that every survivalist stock some and be prepared to use it. 1most emphatically concur. If you want to build a permanent greenhouse with glass or fiberglass panels, do so. Have plenty of that UV-blocking plastic on

hand,

however,

to be used

if necessary

to cover existing

panels and to make whatever repairs might be needed. We are talking about what may be years of excessive UV, should a calamity happen here, so make sure you buy and store more than you need. If you overbuy, and nuclear war happens, you’ll have a trading commodity literally worth its weight in gold. And never forget who Finagle and Murphy are. There are many good books treating the subject of building and using greenhouses. Some of the ones most worth the price are: How To Build And Sun-Heated Greenhouse,

Use Greenhouses, Ortho Books; Our Helen and Scott Nearing; and The

Complete Greenhouse Book, Peter Clegg and Derry Watkins. The only warning I want to extend to survivalists regarding greenhouses has to do with the attached greenhouse, which is becoming popular as a means for heating homes. In normal times, my warning wouldn’t be so important, but this is a book _ about Bad Times. Every greenhouse is subject to infestation by insects. This isn’t normally that big a problem, since the solution is so

obvious: when it happens, you simply call in the bug-sprayers and get rid of the pests. When a greenhouse is attached to your

home, especially when that greenhouse is accessible from inside

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your home, the problem becomes more severe. If your attached greenhouse becomes a home for insects, they are shortly going to be sharing your living quarters. When your entire house has to be fumigated, the inconvenience may be intolerable, especially during Bad Times, when the fumigators may well be out of business. So, by all means, plan on using greenhouses, wherever you’ve chosen to live, but I urge you to think about it carefully when you choose that greenhouse’s location.

Keeping Your Water Fresh.

In the event your water supply becomes polluted, you’ll want a filtering system to assure yourself of clean water for drinking and cooking. There are several filtering systems available, among them a nice little dingus called a Water Washer. You can buy it from American Water Purification, 1990 Olivera Road, Concord, California 94520. SI stocks them, too. It uses charcoal

and silver in its filters to clean the water for you visually as well

as making it safe to drink. It’s compact and will filter 1,000 gallons of water. Extra filters are for sale for about $10. Use them to replace the original filter in your Water Washer and it’s good

for another

1,000 gallons. Yes, I’ve got one, and three

extra filters, but it’s not enough. I want one plus extra filters for each of the other members of my family. I also want to get some extras for trading purposes. Make sure you have a supply of drinking water on hand for emergencies. If, for some reason, you can’t go outside your home for a sustained period of time, and don’t want to make use of your escape tunnel, you’ll need a stash of water to keep you going. Waterbeds are a great place to store water for drinking in emergencies. Add some bleach to it to prevent it

from going flat. Or you might want to keep it in those same 5-gallon containers in which you’ve stored some of your wheat. SI sells them if you can’t find a local source. My local source gets $2.50 per container. If you buy them, be sure to get one of those reverse-type pliers to get the lid off. Otherwise, you’ll break fingernails, skin your knuckles, and turn the air blue during the ten or fifteen minutes it takes you to do the job with

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a screwdriver. Fill each container full, add a half-teaspoon of bleach, and seal it up. These containers stack very well, and a lot of them take up only a little space. Build a composting privy if you can get away with it. Subterfuge is not only permissible here, it’s moral. By doing a good job and staying on top of things, you’ll be converting your family’s wastes into humus to return to the soil. You will not be risking contamination of your groundwater—and your neighbors’—by using one of those damned septic tanks. You can, if you wish (and you should), construct an anaerobic waste system for filtering graywater—that is, wastewater which is not urine but which is dirty from the presence of soap, dirt, hair, skin, grease, oil, and other items from daily household

water

use—filtering that graywater back into the earth where it came from, only clean this time. It can be done. Check Goodbye To The Flush Toilet, edited by Carol Stoner, for further information on alternatives to sewers and septic tanks.

Vitamins.

Stress will gobble up the vitamins in your system. Provide for that eventuality by laying up a good supply of vitamins, taking them daily, and replacing them regularly. Get a date stamp and a stamp pad. Stamp the lids and store the bottles away. That . will let you use the oldest ones first. Consult Ruff’s Famine And Survival In America when you’re shopping and making vitamin lists. Some of the mail-order sources in MOTHER offer cheap, natural vitamins, but you should order in small quantities first and satisfy yourself that they are what is needed before ordering in quantities. I recommend five grams of natural vita-

min C per person per day, especially when Bad Times come and the big troubles start. Five grams is five thousand milligrams. Many people think that 500 milligrams of vitamin C 1s a lot. It isn’t. It will keep you from getting scurvy. You need ten of

those little tablets to keep your nerves steady and maintain the level you need in times of stress, Five grams a day will help you heal faster when you’re hurt, will help you recover faster from illnesses, and will prevent excessive bruising. Your body uses

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vitamin C at an alarming rate if you’re smoking, drinking, breathing polluted air, working hard, or worrying. Don’t short

yourself.

;

Get a good complete B-complex vitamin. The brand called Plus will supply you with a balanced B-complex, and I recommend it. Some people don’t know this, but a B-complex vitamin improperly balanced will cause you to have a vitamin deficiency. Do it right. Natural E is good for your an nails, teeth, skin, and sex drive. Take as much of it as you like; it won’t hurt you. Take a minimum of 400 i.u.s per day, and much more if you can afford

it. Get

small-but-adequate

amounts

of A and D. Your body

stores these vitamins, so you don’t need them in the quantities you would of C. I wouldn’t take much more than 50,000 i.u.s per day of either of these, and you’d probably get by just fine on less. Buy some calcium tablets. They’re cheap, and you need them for what they can do for you. If nothing else, they’re natural sleeping pills. Take a handfull at night with a glass of warm milk just before bed if you have trouble sleeping—take ’em even if you don’t have trouble sleeping—and try not to worry about things you can’t change. (And stop looking for things you can change, dammit; it’s bedtime!)

An Alternative Method Of Food Production.

If you can’t buy acreage in the country and must buy, lease, or even rent in town, then you can still follow the suggestions I

made

in this chapter, only you’ll have to pursue a slightly

different course if you live in close contact with others. First, find other people who are in the same boat. Start a

food co-op. This is simply a group of people—the more the merrier—who use their combined buying power to buy food in quantities direct from the wholesalers and thus eliminate the middleman. Everybody’s monthly food bill is less that way. In this context, I recommend a book called Food Co-Ops For

Small Groups,

by Tony Vellela, available from Loompanics

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65

Unlimited. See Chapter Seven for ordering information. Stay with your co-op for a while, at least while you’re stocking up and looking for a likely-looking corner of real estate on somebody’s farm. When you’ve found it, approach the owner. Tell him that the group would like to use that corner of land to start a communal truck garden. You’ll all have to be together on this, so make sure that all of you are on the same train, so to speak, on the basic premise of such a venture. If the owner of the land is willing, work up an agreement with him. Take it to an attorney if you feel it’s necessary, but remember that it will be just as binding on you as it is on the owner of the land. Payment should be in the form of a share of the crops, ideally. I’d go for that at first, anyway; it’s better than a monthly cash obligation—especially when Bad Times arrive—for all parties concerned, including the land’s owner. Now you’ve got land to mulch, to plant trees in, to dig a fish pond in, to fence off and raise goats and ducks and pigs and fish. You and the other members can take turns caring for the plot. Equal shares would be nice as long as everyone contributed equal work. Otherwise, a proportional deal will have to be

worked out, if only for simple justice. You can help each other learn and build your skills accordingly. The benefits of such an arrangement would, in my opinion, far outweigh the work involved. Remember, you’re work-

ing for your food supply. You also have a ready-made nucleus of working, cooperating neighbors when times get rough, and that is exactly what you want. All of you will have a common asset to protect in that little plot of five acres, ten acres, or whatever it is. And this is an excellent time and place to start building a common defense organization, as well as a common association for exchange of goods and services including tools,

but I’Il have more to say about that in later chapters.

~ = @e

Chapter Three:

ENERGY

Energy

in the context

of survival is dependent

on many

things. The general idea is to provide yourself with a life-style as close as possible to what you had before Bad Times, and to do it with power which you supply yourself. If you have a lot of money, and you settle in the right spot, you’ve got it made. All of your power, light, cooking, and heating can be provided with electricity from your own generator. Fuel for your vehicle(s) is another problem altogether, but most wealthy survivalists simply store away thousands of gallons of gasoline, treated with additives for long-term storage. They’ll come through Bad’ Times with little or no change in their day-to-day comforts and conveniences. For those of us who haven’t the resources to supply ourselves with a continuous flow of electricity, the problem. becomes a little complex. We have to learn a lot of things we didn’t know before, acquire some skills we never thought of having, spend money which we probably can’t afford to implement those

skills with various pieces of equipment, and take a lot of and hard labor to put them into operation. The problem going to go away, so let’s take a closer look at it. When you’re on your retreat land and producing your ’ food supply, you have to have a means of cooking it. You 67

time isn’t own have

68

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to have light to see what you’re doing. You haveto have a way to pump water, either out of the ground or from a surface

source. You have to have a means of heating your home when it gets cold outside. You have to find some way to dispose of your bodily wastes. You have to determine the best and easiest method of keeping yourself and your clothing and bedding

clean. These are things you’re used to having now. They are things which you should provide for yourself after the bell rings. The difference is obvious: these things are provided for you now by others. You’ll probably have to provide them for yourself, by yourself, after things fall apart. The means of getting to those ends are apt to be strange, or at least unfamiliar. The standard of living in this country has changed greatly since World War Two, so much so that many of us seem to have the idea that we have always lived this way.

If you have that viewpoint, events will change it for you— unless you change it now by yourself and save yourself some stress, heartaches, and real problems just a little farther up the road.

Electricity.

How do you produce artificial light? Simple. You flip a switch and the light goes on. Sometimes it doesn’t, but that can be taken care of, usually, by replacing a light bulb. Sometimes that doesn’t work, either, so you replace a switch, which most people can handle without difficulty. If that doesn’t work, most of us think to check the fuse box. If replacing the fuse doesn’t work, and resetting the switch doesn’t help, the next thing is-to call an electrician. “It’s in the wiring,” we say, and wait for

someone else to fix it for us. I’m thinking of a time when the course of action described above will be inadequate to produce light. When the power goes off, it might stay off for days. Or weeks. Or months. It might stay off for years in some places, depending on the situation. Maybe it will never come back on again (I doubt that, but I have to concede the possibility). For most of us, if power stays

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off for a day, it’s been off entirely too long. A week without power is unthinkable. You are going to have to do something yourself

to provide

light, and

all the light bulbs, fuses, and

switches you have in your garage aren’t going to provide-it for you. You’ll need another source of power besides the utility company. For a few hundred dollars, you can buy an electrical generator powerful enough to give you enough electricity for not only electric lights, but also your electric range, refrigerator, freezer, _ radios, washer, dryer, dishwasher, disposal, hot water heater, air

conditioner, and power tools .. . provided you use those powerusers in shifts and not all at the same time. If you use them all

at once, that generator will cost you more than just hundreds of dollars. For the sake of continuing this discussion, let’s say you have a generator. How will you power it? It won’t run on air. You have to provide your generator with some sort of SEY, so it'll function as it should and generate electricity. Most electrical generators are gasoline-powered, using internal-combustion engines. They’ll run for a finite length of time, usually between one and four hours, as their fuel’ tanks are normally not large at all. Then they shut themselves off because they’re out of gas. There’s a reason for those small fuel tanks. Those little engines are not designed to run around the clock. They are designed for short runs, short-term emergencies only. Most of them are the same kind of engine you have in your gasoline lawn mower, the Briggs & Stratton type of engine. If you try to run your electrical generator all day, every day, it’s going to break down and refuse to function. Then you’re back to square one.

Still, this is a viable way to provide electric power for short amounts of time, and I’m in favor of most serious survivalists investing in gas-powered electrical generators. There are quite a few good brands, but I would recommend you check, in the following

order, Pincor, Honda, Kohler, Winco, Onan. Check

your yellow pages for local dealers, or check some of your

issues of MOTHER for Pincor advertisements. It’s possible to supply your household’s electricity from a bank of batteries in your garage or workshop. Then you can use

quapuadapuy fo ksazinod o,0yg) ‘suryqjas jo.nqou $92 Ul 40}DL9UIS JDI244Ia]a Pasamog-purm PY

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4010 -q-uay saauorg fo ksaqino0z 0,0Y4q) “s4stvaasns 4of annoys poos D‘“OIUIg D St aUuO Sty] “404DIIUAS 10921399]2 pasamog-auyosos

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THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

your

electrical

71

generator on an occasional basis to recharge

those batteries. Good idea, but it’s going to cost you more money. Hundreds of dollars more, perhaps thousands, depending On your energy needs and the quality of the batteries you buy. Remember, you’ll want the best batteries you can get, plus spares. The batteries plus the generator plus the stored gasoline to run that generator are going to run into thousands of dollars, ’

make up your mind to it. But it’s a way to get the job done. And you are still going to have those electrical problems from time to time which you normally don’t handle yourself. When

light bulbs, switches, and fuses fail to get the power on, what happens? “It’s in the wiring,” is how the saying goes, and you call an electrician. And you will, please note, still have to have

spares on hand to replace bulbs, switches, fuses, wiring, elements, and other products of a high-tech society. You could, alternatively, use the bank of batteries in your garage to give you electricity, but, instead of a gas-driven. generator, use another source of power to keep those batteries charged. Like a wind generator. These things come in all sizes

and produce varying amounts of electrical power. The generator is located on the tower directly underneath the blades which look like an aircraft propeller. The wind blows, the blades revolve, the generator generates, electricity flows, the batteries

charge up, and your household has power. Simple. For a few hundred dollars and a lot of time and work, you can build your own wind generator, complete with tower, power lines, and battery bank. You’ll be using scrounged batter-

ies and other materials and improvising a lot, but if youdo it right, you can produce your own electricity, provided you have the wind on a regular basis to help you. Such a low-cost outfit might give you as much as 400 watts, enough to light a few light bulbs at night, or perhaps a small refrigerator. If that isn’t enough, you can spend more money and get more power. The amount of money you can spend on a wind generator is literally open-ended when you consider the enormous towers and gigantic props being swung at various locations around the world. These projects are usually constructed and operated by governments or research foundations. If you want the best wind generator for a one-family home, one which will

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72

produce more

than 3,000 watts of electric power, figure on

spending between $5,000 and $10,000. That’s for the tower, generator, prop, wiring, batteries, delivery, and installation.

That’s not including spare parts, have to prevent this from being a you get from such an expenditure long as the wind blows and as long

which waste is free as the

you should definitely of money. The reward electrical energy for as _ system works.

That’s a good investment, considering the best wind generators are highly dependable and long-lasting. A Jacobs wind generator went to the South Pole with Admiral Byrd and was still functioning when next visited many years later. If you have the money, this:is the way to go, provided there’s enough |

steady, dependable wind where you plan on settling. If there isn’t, you’ll only be building an expensive landmark. If you haven’t got the money, there’s no now. However, it wouldn’t hurt you mind. Wind generator companies seem those which supply genuine Jacobs

use worrying about it right a bit to keep this system in

to come and go, especially generators, but one which has gone from selling reconditioned Jacobs to their own brand which is based on the Jacobs design is Independent Energy Systems, Inc., 6043

Sterrettania Road, Fairview, Pennsylvania

16415. They offer their own 4,000 watt wind generator of the Jacobs type, and I recommend them. Drop them a line and ask for more information. You could use water to generate electricity, if there is a fast-flowing stream running through your property, or even next to it. Just install a hydroelectric turbine, hook up the wiring, and stand back. Flip the switch. Change the light bulbs, fuses, switches. Still won’t work? It’s in the wiring. Call an electrician. If you’re an electrician, you’ve got it made. . ’ Water-run turbines are a lot more involved than are wind generators, and require more initial planning, work, and afterconstruction maintainence to keep going. But if you have that source of flowing water, you might think seriously about this method. Before you begin taking measurements, conducting surveys, working out the formulas, building the dam, and installing the power station, read up on the subject. You can get a

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good start on that by buying and reading The Mother Earth News Hand-Book Of Homemade Power. It will supply you with basic information, plus a list of other publications designed to make you more conversant with the method, plus various manufacturers and supply houses who deal in the required hardware. It’s expensive, both in time and in paperbucks. This is a budget book. I’m going to have to assume you haven’t got the money to invest in expensive wind generators or hydroelectric turbines. But don’t give up yet. There are other ways to produce electric power. Let’s go back to that simple little electrical generator sitting next to your bank of batteries in the garage. If you can afford such a setup—and you probably can, if you do it right—then you might consider producing your own fuel to run that generator. Homemade fuels include methane gas and alcohol.

Methane.

Methane gas is produced by the natural process of decomposing organic waste materials. That process can be accelerated and contained. Presto! Methane gas. Methane will work in propane lanterns, gas ranges, gas furnaces, and natural-gas hot water heaters. It can also be utilized in electrical generators, provided the fuel tank is large enough. Methane is a “light” gas, requiring much more room for storage than other types which are “‘heavier.’ Which is why methane-powered vehicles still haven’t caught on in a big way. Their range is too limited and so is their power. However, something stationary, like a gas- or diesel-powered electrical. generator, can be hooked directly to the source of methane power and run indefinitely within its own operating limits. You could convert one of those commercial Briggs & Stratton-powered electrical generators to methane, or you could use an engine from a junked car or truck. Either way, methane is perfectly feasible to use as energy for home- Le electricity.

The tricks involved are getting your methane converter built and operating, keeping it supplied with enough organic

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waste to function properly, and keeping it running with a minimum of breakdowns. — Methane digesters may be homemade. Too many of the ones in operation now are homemade and thus remove the subject from the area of argument. The digester, stated simply, is a tank which holds a slurry composed of organic waste products—both animal and vegetable—which iis then sealed air tight and kept at a constant temperature in order to allow anaerobic bacteria to do their job in converting said waste products into methane gas. There are various ways to build such a digester. If you’re interested, there are no less than 59 publications dealing with

this subject, and you’ll find them listed on pages 365, 366, and 367 of TMEN Handbook Of Homemade Power. Low-Impact Technology, Ltd., sells methane-powered generators. MOTHER’S

Bookshelf sells books, manuals, and do-it-yourself

plans. Read up on it. Until you get the chance to do so, I’ll give you some facts which you might consider while making your — plans: : First you have to have an airtight tank. Anaerobic bacteria can’t survive in any other environment. You'll need a way to feed the slurry into the tank. The slurry, by the way, is based on manure,

any kind including human,

to which other things

like grass clippings have been added, and mixed with water. Once the mixture is inside the tank, you’ll need a way to agitate it, or else the bits of straw, wood, paper, grass, twigs, and other

debris is going to form a cap on the top and prevent the gas from rising. You’ll need to keep your mixture at a temperature above 60 degrees. 90 to 95 degrees would be best. If you can’t do this with solar energy, you'll have to do it using other means, which usually aren’t free. You'll need a way to collect the gas. _When

all the mixture

is converted, the tank can be drained,

scraped, and the residue applied to the earth to enrich the soil. It’s possible to use everything in this process, which makes it desirable from an ecological point of view. Needless to say, if you live in town, you’ll find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue this project, which is one of the reasons I’m urging you to get on a decent-sized piece of ground.

The advantages to such a method of producing your own energy are: it’s cheap; it’s effective; it allows your homestead to

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER form a recycled; residues for you growing

|

75

closed system within itself, with everything being everyone should have a no-waste system like this. The which are returned to the earth will make it possible to wake up that dead ground where only thistles are now. You’ll be returning to the earth more than you

took out of it, and for that, you should be proud. It’s about

time someone started paying off that particular debt.

Alcohol.

If you have a large crop of corn—or anything high in natural sugar content like beets, grapes, or the like—you might think about making your own still and producing your own alcohol. Not for drinking. For burning. In your vehicle, in your chain saw, in your lawnmower, in your furnace, in your hot water heater, in your electrical generator. Solar-powered stills are possible but not really that dependable, since the sun doesn’t

shine all the time. Woodburning stills are a little more practical, and they can be built at home by practically anyone. Before starting your still, apply to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,

and Firearms

for a permit to do so. Thanks in

large measure to The Mother Earth News, BATF is now pretty lenient in granting these permits. But only, please note, if

you’re going to use the resulting alcohol for energy in your house or on your farm, and not for drinking or selling. You’d be ill-advised to drink it as it’s usually unfit for human consumption. It can kill you. But it’s fine for fuel. Check your latest catalog from MOTHER’S Bookshelf for plans and supplies. No, I’m not going to tell you how to build a still. The space here is too limited. But please be advised that you will need to practically live with it while it’s in operation, mostly to control the temperature, which is vital. Let the temperature become too | high, and the bacteria involved in creating alcohol will die. Let the temperature drop below a certain level, and those bacteria will go dormant. Fall and winter might be a good time to run your still, as it’s much

easier to introduce heat to an environ-

ment thanit is to remove it. For that reason, grains—including corn—are good bets for alcohol production, since they can be

|

| z

i:

OR

Fuel-grade alcohol distilleries which can be made from plans ordered from The Mo Earth News. The small still on the left can be made for less than $500. The larger s on the right is for large-scale production and would be appropriate for a sur community’s association’s needs. MOTHER EARTH NEWS)

(Photographs reproduced with permission from ,

|

‘THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

a7,

stored for long periods, unlike other items with higher sugar contents, like fruit. | Sour mash has an exciting odor. It attracts attention. If you've ever lived near a brewery, winery, or distillery, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. You’d be making something of a social blunder to whip up a large quantity of sour mash and fire up a still while you’re liying in the middle of a town’s residential neighborhood. If you try it, you’re going to be interrupted. Frequently. And you won’t be able to grow enough on a small -plot of town land to make alcohol production economically worthwhile. This project is for those with land around them, and is still another reason to try harder to get on some acreage. I’m sure you can think of some advantages in growing your own. fuel supply. Most of the recipes for sour mash start with a corn base, and I think that’s good. Corn can grow practically anywhere in the United States, and it’s also a staple food. You can feed the cobs to your woodburning still as fuel. You can shred the stalks and leaves to use as compost. The mash left in your still is a very good animal fodder. Alcohol is clean-burning and practically non-polluting. The insides of vehicles’ engines tend to stay much cleaner and require oil changes less frequently. There are some changes which have to be made in converting gasoline engines to alcohol, but they’re not really a

problem. Since alcohol burns hotter than gasoline, some people add a little water to cool it down somewhat; performance doesn’t seriously diminish with such a step. A couple of acres of corn will probably supply a small homesteader with enough alcohol fuel to last his family for a year.

Electricity Alternatives.

If you can’t afford a battery-powered setup or a round-theclock generator, there are alternatives to electricity. Before this century,

after

all, electricity

wasn’t

in general use.

And

in

pre-Ben Franklin days, hardly anyone had ever heard of it. Yes, Virginia, it’s possible to get along without electricity. Some people do it as a way of life in this country when they don’t have to. Like the famous Pennsylvania farmers—Quakers, Shak-

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER |

78

ers, Amish, and others—who live on those gorgeous whitewashed farms and do everything manually or by ee horses and oxen. Their light is provided by kerosene lanterns and candles, their heat by fireplaces and wood stoves, their cooking by those same fireplaces and wood stoves, their tractors are draft horses or oxen, their pickup trucks are wagons and buckboards pulled by teams of horses, and those gentle people seem to be doing very well indeed. They don’t live in squalor—quite the contrary. They live better than most city-dwellers live in this country. They eat a lot of natural food, because they do a lot of work. They produce this food themselves, and they are very good at what they do. Some of them shear their own sheep, card their own wool, make their own thread and yarn, weave their own materials, and sew their own clothing, blankets, sheets, and

quilts. They dip their own

candles, make

their own

soap,

slaughter, butcher, and process their own meat. They churn their own butter and make their own cheese. Their root cellars are usually full of produce. Their smokehouses almost always

have hams and sides of bacon hanging in them. Some of them have their own ice houses on the premises to keep them supplied with ice year-round, after they cut it from frozen ponds and streams in the dead of winter. Their ancestors may have built the houses they live in from hand-made lumber. They have to.trade for such things as paper, pepper, yeast, ink, baking soda, certain spices, needles, nails, and other things which they can’t produce themselves. But they are largely self-sufficient. Not because they have to be. Because they want to be. If you want to go all the way as these people have, you’ll need some money to get started. Draft animals like horses and oxen require a lot of land for grazing, and the animals themselves haven’t run wild for the catching in many, many years.

They cost money, too, just like the land. Since most of us are on budgets, most of us will have to compromise. Keep your vehicles. You can grow your own fuel for them. Do without draft animals and get by on smaller parcels‘of land. Go ahead and provide yourself with wood burners of all kinds. They’re good investments if you pick and choose. Wood stoves

are generally

one

of two

types: heaters or cookers.

The ter.

Aladdin

Blue

Flame

kerosene

The Pet, Aladdin's peuest ee Ltke the Blue Flame, cooking is possible on its flat top.

The Earth Stove, an efficient airtight wood heater which can also be used for some stovetop cooking.

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THE BAD TIMES PRIMER >

Sometimes a stove will do both. If you have timber growing on your land, or you live in an area where it’s plentiful, then you’d be foolish not to avail yourself of this renewable source of energy. You can burn wood in fireplaces, Ben Franklins, Swedish fireplaces, wood heat stoves, wood cook stoves, and numer-

ous other specialty stoves for heating flatirons, doing laundry, and other functions. Did you know that there are wood burning

hot water heaters for sale? In cases of emergencies, you can —

continue with normal living without missing a beat as far as heat is concerned. There are some fancy airtight wood heaters, both domestic and imported, which will produce a lot of heat on very little wood. Modern designs and materials have raised the quality of such stoves tremendously. You can also spend tremendous amounts of money for them, but, as I said, there are all kinds of

prices. There are still wood burning ranges being made which can do just about anything the modern gas and electrics can do. These

big black beauties can handle at least as many stove-top duties as their gas and electric counterparts, plus providing other features such as ovens and warming shelves. Stovepipe ovens are an option, too. One of the best examples of the ultimate _ woodburner is the Stanley cookstove produced by Waterford Ironfounders. It can be had in white enamel finish or the traditional black. Waterford is an old, respected name in wood stoves, and I can recommend their products to you without qualification. You’ve seen their ads in MOTHER. If there’s no dealer in your locale, write Waterford Ironfounders, Inc., 2801 N. W. Nela, Portland, Oregon 97210.

Plan on spending in the

neighborhood of $1,500 for a good stove like the Waterford. Of course, as things get more difficult, and more people see the virtues of wood burners, you can expect the supply-and-demand factors to drive those prices up.

Some stoves designed as heaters will also handle cooking chores of a stove-top nature like soups and stews. Such a stove is The Earth Stove, which is an ingenious development to heat your dwelling at a more or less constant temperature using less wood than older types. The front of the stove can be removed and replaced with a screen, turning the stove into a fireplace.

_THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

81

And, yes, you can cook on the top of it. I’ve seen these stoves and definitely recommend them. Prices vary along with sizes, of course. $500 is average for a good-sized Earth Stove. See a local

dealer or write The Earth Stove, P.O. Box 8, Tualatin, Oregon

. 97062. You can build your own wood heater from either 55-gallon drums or old water heater tanks. There are numerous plans for

making such conversions yourself. There are also kits to be had (legs, door, damper, etc.) to make it easier for you. Most ‘homemade projects like this can be accomplished for less than $100. Or you might want to build an adobe oven in your back yard or patio. They aren’t that hard to put together, they are quite

cheap to build, and they work. Hundreds of millions of people still cook their meals in ovens similar to this. Sunset’s Jtalian Cook Book has illustrated instructions for building such an oven along with various recipes and cooking methods. Well worth looking into for anyone, but especially those of us on a budget. SI sells a little emergency cooker-heater called a sheepherder stove, which burns. all solids including cow chips. The legs and

chimney come off and store inside for portability, and it’s cheap, about $80. If your home has a fireplace in it, you can use it for cooking as well as heating and. atmosphere. If you have pot cranes and chains built into your fireplace, you’ve got it made. If not, you can still cook in your fireplace using dutch ovens and grills. If. you’re building your own home, Ken Kern has some fine

ideas for fireplaces in his book, The Owner-Built Home, ‘also in Fireplaces, which he wrote with Steve Magers:

and

Non-Electric Light. While we’re on the subject of owner-built homes, if you build your home yourself, make sure you include provisions for plenty of natural light from glare-free sources like skylights and clerestory windows. I know you saw this admonition in Chapter One, but it’s important enough to mention again here. Give yourself as much natural light as you can. It’s better for your

This Aladdin kerosene lamp can be converted to electricity and back again.

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83

eyes than artificial light, and saves you fuel which can then be

used for other things. But you still have to provide some sort of artificial light. If you have a generator system for supplying yourself with electricity, you should still have a backup means for light. You know why. For when it’s in the wiring and you have to call an electrician. We’ll talk about lighting a wee bit, now. A good substitute for electric lighting is propane burned in lamps or lanterns. Propane is a clean, fairly cheap fuel which comes in tanks of varying sizes. If you use propane, get the largest tanks you can. They last longer, are better buys, and can be refilled. If you want to build a methane digester, you can convert a propane lamp to a methane lamp by enlarging its orifice and refilling those empty propane bottles with methane. If you already own a propane lamp, chances are you like it. I like mine, too. They hiss, though, and the mantles need replac-

ing periodically, but they’re so inexpensive that anyone can stock up on them and barely notice the outlay. Kerosene is another excellent method of providing yourself with artificial light. It’s clean burning, odorless, silent, and safe.

You do have to provide each room with a vent of fresh air when using kerosene, however. The lamps which burn it can range from under five dollars for a cheap lantern to over a hundred dollars for a ‘beautiful brass job which

can be converted to

electric power and back to kerosene. Kerosene lamps can be placed on a table, on a mantle, mounted on wall brackets, or

hung from the ceiling. The bases may be made of brass, alumi“num, or glass. I’d stay away from glass for safety’s sake, but the other two are perfectly acceptable. The aluminum-based lamps are among the cheapest you can find and still provide good service. If you can afford the brass lamps, they’ll enrich a room to an unbelievable extent. Kerosene can be stored safely either above or below ground and will last a long time. Moreover, you can heat your home with kerosene. There are a number of kerosene heaters on the market, most of them cost below $100,

and some of them can be used for cooking in a pinch. You could do worse than choosing kerosene. One fuel source to handle your lighting and heating requirements is something to think about. And there’s nothing wrong with using it for pri-

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84

mary light or heat sources. A good kerosene lamp is adjustable for up to 100 watts equivalent of good light. The fuel is cheap enough to make storage of large quantities feasible. Consider it, by all means. Some people think candles are charming, and I’m one of them. Some people wouldn’t mind using candlelight for all their afterdark enterprises, but I’m not one of them. There are better ways. However, candles are cheap and plentiful, and if you disperse enough of them with enough reflective surfaces, you can generate a respectable amount of light. You can make your own

candles if it comes to that, but the traditional method of

dipping candles is an evil, backbreaking chore. There are better ways to make candles, too. I would think of candles strictly as an emergency lighting proposition, but everyone to his own . taste.

Water.

If you have your own water source—and you definitely should—then you have to have some way of pumping it out of the ground, or pumping it from the stream or pond to where you want it.

Gravity is by far the cheapest and most dependable way of moving water. Nobody has succeeded yet in repealing the law of gravity, and it’s absolutely free to anyone who takes the time and trouble to use it. If you have a fast-moving stream—a moving stream, period, will do, as long as you have access to enough of it on a linear basis—near your land, consider a hydraulic ram. You can buy one from several different sources,

or you can make one yourself to your own specifications and suit your own needs. Hydraulic rams need no maintainence and will run continuously as long as there is water moving through

them with sufficient force. The motive power is the moving water itself, so your water gets pumped with free energy. When my parents and I moved from California to Las Vegas "way back in the forties (I was just a kid then; little kid), I helped my father dig our own well. We had forty acres of sagebrush surrounded by virgin desert country which was abso-

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85

lutely magnificent. Now it’s covered with doughnut shops, gas stations,

coin-op

plywood

money

ummmmm...

laundromats,

can

buy,

apartments

and

made

other evidences

oh, what the hell...

of the finest

of our...

culture. Our well is now

covered up, too. Our nearest neighbor (he lived a half-mile away) ‘“‘witched” it for us, using the regulation forked willow wand. My father, who wasn’t very well educated, didn’t know such things were nothing but superstition. When the water witch pointed and said, “Dig,” the old man dug. And he struck water. He broke through the hardpan—using a pick, shovel, and some great cuss words I’d never encountered before—and then started drilling in earnest. He used an augur about the size of | my head which he attached to lengths of galvanized pipe as he got lower and lower. A simple T-handle was on the top, and he just grabbed it and turned. It was slow going. He didn’t hit water until the next day. Yes, I helped: I kept the flies off him and acted as his gopher. I learned basic cursing and saw how a well was drilled. I thought it was a fair exchange. After capping the well with cement, the old man attached the pump. You’ve seen them, I know, at least in pictures. Gracefully-curved handle, simple spout. You planted your feet firmly, took a deep breath, grabbed that curving handle, and pumped. I was so little, I flailed. But it pumped water, and it was good and clear and cold, and if you’ve ever been in Las Vegas during the warm weather, you know what an asset that was. We kept a galvanized bucket with a dipper nearby. They were good days. You could dig your own well if you wanted to, in all probability. Get someone to witch it for you first if you can. A good water witch is right more than half the time, and if he’s wrong, you’re out some time and hard work. If you have more time than money, that’s not too bad (not too good, either, I know; but at rates of ten dollars and up per foot, professional well-drillers can cost you a lot of money in a very short time). ‘You can always pick another spot and dig again. There are - various ways of determining the likelihood of water running beneath your land: various types of plants, mostly. It helps if your neighbors all have wells, too, but that’s no guarantee,

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either. Consult Les Scher’s book on finding water and making sure it’s there before you buy land. Once you have your well in place, you can use a hand pump and do all right, unless you’re going to irrigate, wash a fleet of trucks, or take a shower every day. In that case, you'll need a better way of pumping your water than flailing that gracefully-

curving handle. If you’re in an area where the wind blows regularly, consider a windmill. They work. Take a drive across rural America and be convinced. They’ll cost you more money

than a hand pump—around $1,500 and up—but they run for free after the initial expense. If you can afford it, let the wind pump your water for you. Or you could install a submersible electric pump which runs from a motor enclosed in a pumphouse over the well. You could power it from a gasoline-driven engine kicked on and off by a self-contained starter powered from a battery. Make sure you have holding tanks on your land for water. They’ll provide reservoirs during dry seasons and allow you options which a hand pump won’t give you. If one of the holding tanks is on the roof of your house, you can allow gravity to deliver your household water for bathing, cooking, washing dishes, washing clothes, and drinking. As long as you’re building a water tank on your roof, expend a little more time and money to build a number of solar collectors for a passive solar water heating systeni. If you make sure that the tops of your solar collectors are 18 inches below

the bottom of your water tank, and you’ve plumbed everything correctly, the water will flow down into the pipes in the solar collectors, become heated by the sun, rise up the pipes to displace the cold water in the tank, which is then forced downward into the solar collector to be heated by the sun, and so on, and so on. That water, incidentally, is hot.

You can use a simple little solar collector mounted outside a. window to heat a room on the south side of your house. Get

the details from MOTHER: the gadget is called a Heat Grabber and costs less than $50 to build yourself. It’s totally passive, naturally, with no moving parts, and operates entirely from the sun.

~

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Waste Disposal.

Let’s talk about sewage for a minute. I don’t think it’s necessary. I think it’s an unnecessary evil which should be abolished. Septic tanks aren’t just as bad, they’re worse. A septic tank can rupture or overflow, and contaminate not only

your own groundwater, but your neighbors’, and their neighbors’. Septic tanks use anaerobic bacteria to break down the waste products into sewage. That’s all, just sewage. Aerobic chambers,

on

the

other

hand,

destroy

the lethal strains

of

bacteria and turn organic waste into humus—given time, temperatures, and proper management. In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m leading up to recommending that oe build yourself at least one privy. This is a recommendation which you may find distasteful at

first. But look: what’s so tasteful about a sewage system or septic tank? You can saunter into the bathroom, deposit half a pound of waste, and use five gallons of fresh water to turn it into sewage which can’t be used for anything else. You will throw away 7,500 gallons of fresh water per year in this manner, and so will every member of your family. That situation is aggravated when you empty your waste into a septic tank. Septic tanks don’t allow outside air to enter, and they foster the most virulent kinds of germs. They’re not safe, being subject to overfilling, leaks, cracks, and ruptures, thus threaten-

ing the community’s groundwater. They have to be emptied and their contents dumped before they can be used again once they’ve been in use a while, or they must be abandoned and new tanks sunk and hooked up. They are “expensive, too. _

There’s a better way. Much research has been spent in recent years, and much work has been done in refining and improving the privy. The privy no

longer has to be a clapboard shack knocked up over an open hole. Respirators no longer have to be furnished. when guests use them, nor do flyswatters. A properly-designed, well-built and well-managed privy will not smell any worse than the average American bathroom, and many will smell a good deal better, especially if they’re lined with some fragrant wood like cedar. Flies are unknown in them.

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| They will perform

an important

service, because they are

composting privies. They’re healthier for you to use than a regular toilet, because they permit the natural position of elimination. They—unlike the toilets we’re used to—don’t promote constipation, irregularity, and other unpleasant side effects which we don’t associate with—but for which we can thank—the average toilet. Your toilet is the worst design possible for a human: being. Extraterrestrials with a warped sense of humor could have designed the ‘“‘modern”’ toilet. A composting privy will turn human waste, when combined with other organic materials in an aerobic chamber, into humus

comparable to the best to be found in any garden shop, perfectly safe for use in garden, greenhouse, orchard, or pasture,

because

the harmful

bacteria

have

been

destroyed

and the

chemical composition has been altered. The average person, over a year’s time, produces enough waste to fertilize half an acre. While anaerobic chambers (septic tanks) shouldn’t be usedto dispose of urine or feces, an anaerobic chamber can be used to deal with the so-called “‘graywater” residue from hand washing, showers, baths, dishwashing, clothes washing, car washing, and

so forth. Such a chamber with a suitable leach field beneath it - will remove the hair, skin, dirt, grease, and those germs which don’t thrive in human intestinal tracts, and should be used for

that purpose. The resulting clean water-is then leached into the soil to replenish the groundwater. If you open your copy of Goodbye To The Flush Toilet, you'll see a drawing of Ken Kern’s multistory tower, which can be made of poured concrete, concrete blocks, adobe, rock-and-

rubble-filled walls, wood, or stone masonry. The topmost level holds a water tank, with solar collectors and plumbing on the south side to catch the sunlight required to heat the water. Beneath. that is a combination bath house, shower, and sauna. Below that is the privy. Beneath the privy is a double-walled aerobic composting chamber which opens into the integral

sunpit greenhouse, where the humus can be removed and used directly. Below ground level is the anaerobic chamber and leach field for purifying the graywater used in the bath, shower, and privy/washroom. A very tidy system which in my opinion

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89

would be perfect for a homestead,

or even a suburban home,

since it could easily be built as part of the main structure and entered from the inside. Of course, our forward-thinking city planners and building inspectors would never think of permitting such a thing to be built. Keep it in mind, though. And be sure to read The Owner-Builder And The Code. You never can tell what opportunities will arise. If you simply can’t countenance the thought of using a privy, you might check into the other alternative to sewage systems and septic tanks. I’m referring to the composting toilets, such as the Clivus Multrum. These are made in Sweden, are self-contained, are expensive, and are practical enough to be worth the

expense. They cannot be told apart from a regular toilet, but the toilet is only the tip of the iceberg; the large holding tank is under the house. It isn’t uncommon for new houses to literally be built around a Clivus Multrum. They really work, and without a trace of smell. New communities in Israel are installing them with great success, and using the resulting humus in agriculture.

Gasoline Storage.

Rather than spend hundreds of dollars—perhaps more—to convert your engines to alcohol or methane, and to produce your own fuel, perhaps you’d rather use the money to simply store away large amounts of gasoline. I certainly couldn’t fault

your decision in that case. Even if you are already growing and making your own fuel _and have converted every engine you have to run on alcohol, you’d still be ahead by storing a supply of gasoline for yourself. For one thing, some of the engines you’ve converted will be difficult to start on methane

or alcohol, and must be started

and warmed up in the conventional way, with gasoline. That | being the case, you’d be wise to take yourself out of competition for gasoline by stocking up now. Don’t wait until the mad rush starts. Those mad rushes and panicked buying sprees are coming, make no mistake about that. Now you'll just be stock-

The Sheepherder cooking duties.

Stove, a cheap, compact source of emergency heat. Handles stov

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ing up. Then you'll be hoarding. Protect your peace of mind, and your mobility. For another thing, you’ve probably noticed that gasoline costs more this year than it did last year. Next year, you can depend on it costing more than it does now. Any gasoline you buy now will hold its value, and I’m being conservative in making that statement. When I bought my gasoline stash, I paid 90¢ per gallon for it, and I thought it was highway robbery. How much is unleaded regular going for now? Uh-huh. See? If you run your vehicle on alcohol (and your chain saw, and your lawnmower, and your generator, etc.), you’re making an investment by stocking up on gasoline. If you run your vehicle on gasoline and don’t plan to convert, you’re running out of choices. If you don’t put by some gasoline fairly soon, you're going to be facing the problem of what to do with your car once no gasoline is available at all. It might be only a matter of weeks in duration when no gasoline can be had at any price. I think that months will be more like it, and it may well be years, depending on where you live. Unless you want to turn your car into an improvised greenhouse, stock up on gas. For a third thing, gasoline will turn into a valuable trade item sometime during the 1980s. People on budgets can’t afford too many trade items, but almost everyone has something they can trade. If it’s gas, you might,be able to trade it for some things you really need. Think about it. For five gallons or so, you could get tremendous returns during Bad Times. Don’t even think about storing gasoline anywhere but under the ground. Above ground, it’s subject to fire, gunshots, domestic accidents, expansion due to temperature changes, theft, and

Finagle’s Law. Would you really be willing to stash a thousand gallons in your garage or out by the back fence? Go underground with it. It’s the only safe way, and besides, it’s less likely to get tapped by desperate people when it’s out of sight beneath the turf. SI sells storage tanks for gasoline made from something called acry-glass, which is formulated for storage of volatile fuels. It won’t deteriorate by being underground. It’s non-metallic, so it can’t be discovered by someone with a metal detector, and it won’t spark like steel will. It costs about $300 for the smallest

Two v z€wWs

and Pat Mahr)

O GS 3

s > v

A

S:

a 3 2 tc h

runs on natural gas. (Photo courtesy of

James Washer. Wringer aitac. hment not

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size (160 gallons), which is 32 inches wide by 23 inches deep by 65 inches long. The sizes go all the way up to 2,250 gallons, and so does the cost; the largest size goes for more

than $1,500.

These tanks are drop-shipped to you from the factory and you pay the shipping costs. Contact SI for further details. It’s a good way to go if you have the money. I didn’t have the money, so I had to figure out my own system. I used 55-gallon drums. My source was a local business which specialized in used drums for every purpose. The ones I bought were

|

reconditioned, repainted, tested for leaks, and bore the inspec-

tion seal of the Department of Transportation which indicated they were approved for storage of hazardous substances. My cost was $12 each. I also bought a handy little tool for $10 for opening and tightening the caps (one large, one small) on the tops of the drums. You can use a screwdriver or the handle of a pair of pliers instead, but it’s not as easy. I may have made this point already, and I’ll certainly make it again, but anything is easier to accomplish if you have the proper tool for it. I like things to be as easy as possible, so I bought the tool. For my first gasoline patch, I decided on 165 gallons, which meant I had to find room beneath the ground for three 55- | gallon drums. Before getting into Cobb’s amazing adventures in his back yard, I should point out to you that there are more advantages than reduced cost in planting your fuel stash in this | manner.

By using many

smaller

containers,

you

lessen the_

chances of losing all of your fuel should something happen underground to puncture one of those containers. Granted, it would take a hell of a jolt to poke a hole through a 55-gallon steel drum, but Finagle is looking over my shoulder as I write this, and I think this way is better than one large tank. It’s also harder. I had some half-baked idea of saving the grassy sod and replacing it over my completed gasoline patch, so foxy old Cobb removed the top layer in neat squares and laid it off to one side in order of cutting it loose. Then it was pick, shovel, scoop, throw, sweat, curse, dig this lousy hole. Two six-packs

later, I ended up with something looking remarkably like a grave. Eight feet long, two feet wide, between five and six feet deep. You have to get fairly deep, because those drums should

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94

be in an upright position when you plant them, and it’s not a good idea to have them too close to the surface. I bought a sheet of plywood in the standard 4 by 8 foot size and cut it lengthwise with my circular saw. I’d tried to square off the hole as best I could, but I still had to do some shaving and chopping on the sides to get that two by eight piece of plywood to drop in and fit, lying flat the way I wanted it. Then I carried my empty drums over and gently eased them in. They rested nicely on the plywood, with all the caps in the same position. It’s important to line up those caps. After some careful measuring and fitting with the other half of the plywood sheet, I marked the spots and slipped the biggest hole saw I could find into my

electric drill and cut three holes in the

plywood where they’d fit over the large caps. I used a smaller hole saw to cut the holes which would allow me access to the smaller caps. If you save the plugs and drive a couple of wood screws into each of them, you’ll have something to grip when you remove the plugs. (I didn’t think of that until later.) Shortly afterward, I discovered that nobody wanted to sell me gasoline if they had to pump it into the 55-gallon drum sitting in the back of my pickup. So I took two days to drive from station to station, fillmg my aft tank, driving into my garage, siphoning the gas from the tank into the extra drum (and that isn’t easy to do with a “siphon-proof” tank), and repeating the drill until the drum was more than half full. Then I used a hand truck to move the drum into the back yard, where I siphoned the gas for the last time, into the drums resting there below grade level. I’d advise you that, if you have to do it this way, you’d better not fill your intermediate drum too full, because it’s HEAVY. I used a heavy-duty hand truck, which may be the only reason I was able to get the gas-moving done this way. Fill your evaporation

drums right up to the threads. This will prevent and also help to keep your fuel from breaking

down while in storage. If you’re going to store gasoline, buy some Gas-Saver from SI. If you don’t, your stash will break down into an evil-smelling collection of gums and. lacquers, and won’t be fit for pouring on the ground, much less into your tank. This break-

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down process takes about six months, and sometimes less. Gas-Saver will keep your fuel from going bad for up to five years. You can treat it again at that time and keep it for years more. I had already purchased a half-pint of Gas-Saver for $8.50— incredibly cheap: that half-pint will treat 800 gallons of gasoline. Just before each drum was completely filled, I mixed a small quantity of Gas-Saver into a one-gallon can I’d mostly

filled with gas, then poured it into the drum. When the gasoline was slopping over the opening, I replaced the caps, cinched them tight, and went on to the next drum. After replacing the plugs in the sheet of plywood and fitting it over the drums, I laid some heavy plastic film over the top and filled up the hole. I poured sand over the last few inches up to grade level and set scalloped red brick around the edges. Then I added a redwood planter box to give it a pleasing, innocent look. The grassy sod I’d set aside had already died. So much for camouflage. If you can’t do it one way, try another. Provide yourself with at least one pump for when you need to use your stored gasoline. You won’t be able to lift those drums out when you excavate, and siphoning won’t work for you again when they’re below grade level. It’s essential that you buy a pump. Fifty dollars is a reasonable figure. Actually, my Black & Decker Jack Rabbit Pump, a $20 item, works just fine. Get more than one pump, and make sure they’re recommended for. pumping gasoline. A couple of five-gallon Jeep cans wouldn’t be a bad investment, either.

Clothes Washing.

As far as washing clothes is concerned, you could be facing some real drudgery if you’re not providing your household with

electricity. You aren’t restricted to kneeling at the bank of a stream and beating your wet clothes with rocks, but some of the other ways are apt to be almost as grueling. My mother had to make do with the washtub/washboard method during the two years we were building our own house in Vegas during the late forties. The principle is very simple and easy to understand.

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Soak your clothes in hot soapy water, pick up one garment at a time, and scrub hell out of it against the corrugated surface of the washboard which is braced between the bottom of the tub and your midsection, Dunk and scrub repeatedly. When it’s clean, rinse and wring it out by hand, then toss it in a basket for

hanging on the line a little later. This method is arduous. It does wonders for your arms, stomach, back, and sometimes your vocabulary. I’m not saying my mother is tough as Mammy Yokum, but she always came out winner during the few tangles I had with her.

There is something called a James Washer. It looks like an inverted Quonset hut on legs, only smaller, of course. There’s a

pendulum agitator mounted inside its belly, operated from outside by a handle at one end. Measure in water, dump in soap, drop in your clothes, close the lid, and swing that handle from side to side. This isn’t as tough on you as polishing that washboard. It isn’t even as hard as hand-cranking the old icecream freezer. I'd guess about ten minutes of this would suffice to get most things clean. There’s a hand-cranked wringer on the end opposite the agitator handle. When your clothes are clean, rinse them and feed them through that wringer into a washtub on the other side. Then hang them out to dry. This is the best alternative I’ve found for an electric washing machine. I don’t know who manufactures James Washers, but SI sells them. Last

time I looked, the price was preferable to that washboard.

$175. It would be distinctly

Refrigeration.

A few years ago, my family and I moved into a house, and

Finagle noticed. My wife cut her foot so badly it had to be sewn up. Our electric dryer quit and had to be repaired. We discovered a gas leak in the lines and had to turn all our power off until it was fixed. The air conditioner quit shortly thereafter— and, of course,

this was

in August—and

we

sweltered

for a

while. Then, ohboy! the refrigerator died. If I had my druthers, I druther go without electric lights, because you can always light candles or propane lanterns or use

SY

/

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flashlights. I druther lose the washer-dryer, because you can either take your clothes to the laundromat with a pocketful of change, or wash them by hand in the kitchen sink. I druther lose the air conditioning, because you can crack windows and circulate air with fans while you shed clothing. I druther lose all those things at once then go without a refrigerator. I believe I . mentioned something like this in an earlier chapter. Please think about it now, when your refrigerator is working. I had to think about it for a few long, long days. If you have a generator or a battery bank setup, you don’t have to worry about the lack of a refrigerator—until yours dies like mine did. It could be something simple you could fix yourself in a jiffy. Then again, the compressor might be kaput, and, in that case, you’ll need another one. Or another refrigera-

. tor. That’s no real problem now to speak of, but how about during Bad Times? I suspect that there’ll be a surplus of refrigerators which are perfectly operable, but which aren’t doing their owners any good because the power will be off. You might be able to trade for one of them, assuming you have something the owner wants, and the two of you can get together on the dicker. That was easy, wasn’t it? Now suppose that you haven’t provided yourself with your -own source of electricity. Your problem is now immediate. What are you going to use for a refrigerator when you haven’t got electricity? There are gas refrigerators out there. They run on natural gas. They are called Servels, a brand name which hasn’t been on the market for about the past thirty years. They are still running because they are very good refrigerators, and because there is very little to go cats with one of them. Get one now, today, this week if you’re reading this at night, next week for sure if you’re reading this on a weekend. If yon wait for Bad Times, the present owners of those Servels won’t part with them, no ‘matter what you’re offering. Some of them are good-sized, running up close to 20 cubic feet, and it’s possible that you could get a good bargain if you went hunting now. Look in’ rural areas and in the older, prewar sections of cities. Once you have your Servel, hook it up to your natural gas lines, and you

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can stop worrying about your food spoiling when the electricity goes off. If you also have a natural gas stove, you’re cutting on a fat hog.

Also, when shopping for appliances-like gas ranges and old Servel refrigerators, keep in mind that methane is another name for natural gas. doesn’t it?

A methane digester sounds better all the time, .

There’s an alternative to the gas refrigerator. It is the oldfashioned icebox. There are some disadvantages to buying one, and I’m sure you’ve already figured out most of them. Here’s

one which isn’t readily apparent, but which will make itself known to you immediately when you start shopping: they are expensive. I’m talking about originals, now, in good shape. Most of them

were made of oak. When I was a kid, our icebox was painted a horrible pale green, but it was solid oak underneath. If you can find one, even a small one, you’ll probably find it in an antique

shop and be asked to: pay lots of paperbucks for it. And the large ones, those beautiful things of polished, glowing wood the size of a modern refrigerator, will run you around a thousand

dollars. You could get a good finish carpenter to build you one, but - the wood and the labor will run into money. So there just does not seem to be any inexpensive way of getting into this, does there? Well, there might be.

You could mass-produce them yourself. No, not right away, and not in a big way, but in a small, garage-sized shop. A small business thing. There no longer seems to be a reason why they ~ should be made of solid oak. Modern insulation permits thinwalled construction of refrigerators, so why not apply that principle to iceboxes? The body of the thing could be fashioned in pieces on a table saw using templates and then rapidly fitted together. Seal in the insulation with rubber or plastic molding, screw the hinges and hasps and other hardware on the doors, slide in the tray, and spray-paint with a good enamel. Let me hasten to add that I can see no real market for them

at present. My suggestion would be, if you live in a town where winters are freezing, and provided you and a friend have the experience and the tools to do it, to make one for yourself, and

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an extra one for use as templates. Stash the extra and wait for Bad Times. If they never come (bet me that they won’t), you still have an icebox all your own, plus a spare. When Bad Times arrive, haul out those templates and start producing. You’ve got a ready-made market for iceboxes, and a brand-new home business. I’m betting you won’t lack for takers. If you have an icebox, you’ll need your own icehouse. There is probably an ice company in your town, but fuel will be scarce enough that it may prohibit you from making daily trips for ice. If you can cut your own ice in the winter, or set out wooden frames filled with water during sub-zero nights, you should do so. You people headed for retreats in Climate Zone 1 might want to pay particular attention. If you can, make your icehouse from rammed earth or by using your CINVA-Ram, and make it with the thickest walls and roof you can manage. Make it big. You can use the extra space for other things, or you can use it commercially. Why not sell ice as well as iceboxes? During Bad Times, the existing ice house won’t mind the competition;

there’ll be plenty of business to go around. I think that I would opt for that gas refrigerator if I weren’t planning on providing my own electricity, and I recommend that everyone else do so, too. But everyone else won’t. Everyone else won’t have their own power source, either. Somebody is going to sell those people iceboxes. And ice. Along the same lines, it might be possible to convert an electric refrigerator to run on natural gas. At the moment, I really don’t see how, but assume it’s possible. If so, someone in your town is going to do it, and make a living doing it. And someone else—or perhaps the same person—will deal in gas for those refrigerators, either by making his own methane, or by collecting and distributing methane from others in his area. Just as someone is going to be making a living by converting gasoline engines to run on alcohol, and then by distilling fuelgrade alcohol and selling it to people. During Bad Times, I doubt if BATF will notice. Someone else is going to be teaching people to build their own stills. And to make their own sour mash. There’ll be lots of things to do after the bell rings; don’t worry about that. You won’t be bored. Just remember who told you all this stuff. I might need a favor from you sometime.

Chapter Four:

TRANSPORTATION

~Do you own a vehicle right now? If so, what type is it? Bicycle, moped, motorcycle, passenger car, sports car, station wagon, van, or pickup truck? Do you own it outright, or are you making payments on it? Can you service and maintain it yourself? Is it economical? Does it have a prima donna history -of breakdowns and visits to the dealer or mechanic? Are spare parts plentiful and readily obtainable? Would it give you good service—given proper care, of course—ten years from now? Or twenty? Or longer? Some of these questions aren’t normally asked of automobile owners, much less thought about or answered. These are ques-

tions to which you’d better give some serious thought. Otherwise, you will probably not evaluate your position, make decisions regarding your means of transportation, and act on them. And if you don’t act in this area, you could find yourself on foot during Bad Times. The types of vehicles you’ll need are determined by what you’re going to be transporting. If it’s only yourself, a bicycle

might suffice, or a moped, or a motorcycle. All of the abovenamed are energy-efficient and provide good, dependable transportation. Unless it’s raining and the roads are flooded. Or 101

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unless it’s freezing and the roads are icy. Or unless you have to” make long hauls. You can make long hauls on bicycles, mopeds, and motorcycles, but there are easier and safer ways of. doing it.

Still, any of transportation perhaps, some another during

the three are good choices for close-to-home when all that’s required is moving yourself—and, small and compact cargo—from one place to good weather.

If the weather and the roads are nasty, or if you need to transport passengers and/or cargo more bulky than you can manage on your person or a small luggage rack, then a fourwheeled motor vehicle is the obvious answer. It’ll keep the weather off you, allow you at least one passenger, and give you a place to carry cargo. Here the question begins to get interesting. You can get more passengers and cargo into, say, a Volkswagen beetle than you can into a Triumph Spitfire, and the VW will give you mileage which is just as good. The performance is respectable, too. If you need more room than what a VW offers, there. are bigger passenger cars, and there are station wagons, but be prepared to sacrifice fuel economy. If you’re hauling a lot of people or valuables you don’t want exposed to weather, a van may be the answer. And, of course, a pickup truck will carry high loads, tall loads which wouldn’t fit into a van, and messy loads like topsoil, sand, and gravel. Where motor vehicles are concerned, you have to fit intended usage to. type and proceed accordingly. Where surviving Bad Times is concerned, your vehicle should possess the following qualities: | *It should have good fuel economy within its vehicle type. *It should be as practical, as downright utilitarian, as possible. *It should be tough enough to be able to stand up under adverse conditions and still function. *Spare parts should be easily obtained in your immediate area, even if that means cannibalizing junkers, which means your car should be: *A common model, a popular model, one which a lot of

other people drive. Not a rare, exotic bird which was hatched overseas. *It should be easy to work on.

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*It should be a simple as possible, and that means a minimum of optional equipment. *The engine should be internal-combustion ‘ gasolineoperated, not a diesel, not a wankel-type rotary. *It should be versatile. *It doesn’t have to be new; sometimes it helps, but many times a restored vehicle is better than a new one. *It doesn’t have to be paid for, but it helps. If it isn’t paid for, you may have to take precautions against the legal owner taking it back from you, should you lose income during Bad Times. Run your eye down. that list one more time. Does. your present vehicle measure up? If so, then you’re in the catbird . seat. All you have to do is lay in a supply of spare parts and

keep your vehicle running properly. On the other hand, you might have to dump your present vehicle and get another one. If you thought some of the factors I listed unimportant, perhaps you’d better think again. Some may turn out to be more important example, if your car isn’t easy to work trouble. . Remember those trains and trucks

of those considerations than you realize. For on, it could mean real

which won’t be rolling when the economy collapses? The drivers and operators won’t be working because their paychecks will be worthless. Keep in mind that servicemen in automobile dealerships won’t be exempt from that situation, either, and neither will garage mechanics. You could conceivably find yourself in the position

of having to service, repair, and maintain your vehicle yourself. You'll be the one responsible for trouble-shooting it and correcting the problems which Finagle and Murphy will be tossing your way. If your car is easy to work on, that’s one less obstacle in your path, one less source of stress contending for your A very been

attention. friend of mine owns a Toyota Corolla which has been a dependable source of transportation for her. That thing has across the country and back twice. It has driven through

snow, mud, rain, floods, dust storms, and it has done it without

being particularly pampered or fussed over. She owns it free and

clear.

It gives her excellent

gas mileage. She can cram

an

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incredible amount of cargo into it, considering its small size. She’s slept in it over the course of cross-country trips because oe It’s versatile. It’s a the front seats fully recline. It’s BON

popular model, and even though it’s an import, she’d be able to find enough abandoned junkers around to supply her with spare parts if the need arose. The engine, although it’s a good engine, is not the easiest in the world on which to perform routine maintenance. For example, to loosen the oil filter, the car has to be raised off the ground. To remove the filter, the car must be lowered back down so that the filter can be lifted out of the top of the engine compartment. The process has to be reversed when replacing the filter. It may be that she’s willing to live with it, since it has so many other good qualities. But it would be much easier for her if she didn’t have to run that thing up and down on the hoist several times just to change the oil filter. Remember, most hydraulic hoists may not be operating during Bad Times, and she’ll have to make do with jacks and jack stands. Changing the oil filter could take her up to an hour of hard, dirty, sweating, knuckle-busting, bleeding, weeping labor. It could be worse. She could own a Chevrolet Monza with V8 engine. To change the plugs in one of those little beauties, you simply disconnect the engine and lift it out of the engine compartment...

Don’t just assume your present vehicle will pass muster. Take a good look under your hood. If you can see large amounts of engine through the pumps and plumbing of the smog control and air conditioning systems, there may be hope in performing

even the simplest kind of maintenance. Can you, for example, change battery cables while standing beside the car? In many instances you can’t. Sometimes you have to crawl underneath and disconnect the cable from the engine block down near the °

crankcase, and sometimes the cable is fed through a housing to protect it from road damage. Sometimes you can’t even crawl underneath without jacking up the car. For ie cee a battery cable? Put a socket wrench on the spark plugs and see for yourself if they’re easily accessible. You may have to borrow your neigh-

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bor’s socket wrench to do this, but go ahead. Now, can you reach them all? You can’t? Well, go on then, balance yourself on the radiator with your feet off the ground; that isn’t really a problem. What zs a problem is the possibility that you might not be able to reach those plugs at all... what’s that? You can’t find them? Uh-oh. And you say your battery is a maintenance-free job, which means you weren’t meant to fool around with it, and you’d have to disconnect the heater hose to even reach one of the terminals? And you say you’d have to disconnect and remove the power steering to change -that lower set of fan belts? And you can’t

replace

all your

radiator

hoses

without

minor

automotive

surgery? And it takes you fifteen minutes of unscrewing pipe

fittings, popping hoses loose, and rearranging the smog control devices before you can get to the air filter? Hmmmm. Well, come on out and wash your hands, and arms, and face,

and the back of your neck, and you’d better do something about that np in the back of your shirt. While you’re at it, you’d better do something about your automobile. Like replac-

ing it. Or at least thinking about it. This isn’t at all unusual. Every two to four years, American drivers traditionally think about replacing their present vehicle with something new, shiny, and smelling good. If you are thinking about that right now, here are some considerations to include in your thoughts:

Features and Options.

Much of the equipment offered with automobiles today, and for some years past, is not needed. If you’re looking for a survival velticle, keep in mind that you should not get what you don’t need. Many times unneeded accessories and options make it difficult for your vehicle to operate efficiently. In some cases, when those options fail, your car won’t operate at all. Like

power steering, for example. On some'cars, failure of the power steering means you can’t steer, period. Which means your car isn’t going anywhere until it’s fixed. In Bad Times, your car could become an instant barricade.

~

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You don’t need power steering. Please don’t get it unless you simply have no choice in the matter, and then think hard about choosing another model. As a matter of fact, you probably don’t need any power equipment at all. Like power windows and power seats. They are as necessary as paying someone to help you get dressed. Don’t get air conditioning. We’ve become so spoiled in the last couple of decades that some of us believe that there never was a time when automobiles did not have air conditioning. People may think you’re crazy when they learn you didn’t get A/C on your new car. Let ’em. Air conditioning is often the first option to fail, the most difficult to keep functioning properly, and the most time-consuming and expensive to work * on. It requires tools which are unusual, expensive, and sometimes bewildering. Air conditioning will reduce the performance of your engine, as will power equipment; your engine will work harder with all those systems going, and won’t live as long as it would without them. I can see I’m having trouble convincing some people. The | lack of air conditioning, it seems, will cast doubt over their degrees of success. And air conditioning does make you comfortable. Lack of it makes driving intolerable, it says here. Bull. The things which make driving intolerable are heavy-traffic ‘situations and stress sources. Like long periods of sitting at badly-timed traffic lights. Like the aggravating incidents of stop-and-go city driving. Like the frightening, dangerous, maddening, irresponsible actions of other drivers. Those things make you sweat. So does hot weather. But if hot weather was intoler-

able, humanity would have died out shortly after the last ice age. Air conditioning. doesn’t provide a service important enough to justify including it on a survival vehicle. It can cause you a lot of trouble during Bad Times. And, if it can, it will. Ask Finagle. Of course, there are those who’ll point out that air conditioning promotes good health by removing you from the smog and air pollution found in large cities and other high-population areas. If those individuals are planning to stay in those areas, then they will shortly have more problems than ace smog or air pollution.

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Air conditioning costs hundreds of dollars extra. Can you think of some things you need more, for which you’d rather spend that money? . Excuse me a minute. I want to change position and get my feet off the floor. Now: your vehicle should not have an automatic transmission. I know: automatic transmissions are sealed units and don’t break down very often. There are those who maintain that an _automatic transmission is more dependable than the standard ‘varieties. I know: automatic transmissions have been so

improved and refined over the years that they are almost as versatile as standard-shift outfits in most normal situations. I have heard all that stuff. I repeat: your vehicle should not have an automatic transmission.

Even if it’s true that automatics break down is than do standards—and I don’t know that it’s true—they do break down, or go out of adjustment, or require looking after past checking the level and adding fluids. That is a fact. If it were not a fact, there would be no such thing as a nationwide chain of automatic transmission repair specialists. Go tell them that automatic transmissions never need working on. When your automatic transmission does fail, you will in all probability not be able to do a thing with it yourself. You'll require strange, expensive tools and a lot of specialized training. It’s much easier not to get one in the first place. Automatic transmissions will not do everything that a standard transmission will do. Racing drivers don’t use them as a general rule, and while I’m not recommending that you buy your survival vehicle with racing in mind, I am pointing out that racing drivers need as much control over their machines as they can possibly get. It’s much easier to use a granny gear and a clutch to ease your vehicle over a boulder than to try it with an automatic. Automatics cause the cars they’re attached to to get generally poorer mileage than those same cars using standard transmissions. - Standard transmissions have a great advantage over automatics:

they

can

be

dropped,

pulled,

disassembled,

and

reassembled by practically anyone with the proper tools and set

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of instructions. The tools required are not esoteric, but are of the standard mechanic’s variety.

Standard transmissions are cheaper. Most of them come as standard equipment—at least on the vehicles I’m going to be recommending. It doesn’t make sense to deal yourself trouble just because you may not be inclined to fool around with a clutch. It is true that poor drivers tend to bang up standard transmissions,

and to do real hatchet jobs on them in some

cases. But poor drivers shouldn’t be driving. Good drivers have no trouble with standard transmissions, and who else should be

behind the wheel? Four-wheel-drive capability is always nice to have, but you may not need it. Many people don’t, including a large percentage of those individuals who own four-wheel-drive vehicles. You’ve

seen

those Jeeps, Blazers, Broncos, and Scouts tricked

out like limousines, with custom-flake paint, pin-striping, eleventy-’leven hundred pounds of chrome, automatic transmission, Quadra-trac, power steering, power brakes, power windows, power seats, air conditioning, tilt-meter, electric winch,

brush guard, skid plate, roll bar, gun rack, compass, altimeter, tachometer,

gyro-mounted

beer can holder, whip antenna, CB

radio, and grizzly upholstery. Very, very few of those vehicles ever get off the road. For most of them, a dirt road will be the extent of roughing it. Their owners have too much of an investment in the custom flake paint, pinstriping, chrome, etc. to risk messing it up. But, as I said, four-wheel-drive is nice to have ify you’ve got it.

There’s nothing quite like it for getting a vehicle through certain types of terrain without hiring a hundred of the Pharoah’s slaves to tote it for you. A vehicle with four-wheel-drive is going to cost you more than the same vehicle would with two-wheel drive. Four-wheel-drive vehicles are a bit more complex underneath than their two-wheel-drive counterparts, take a bit more maintenance, and stand a higher chance of something going wrong. And some four-wheel-drive vehicles won’t even get you out of a snowy driveway, if the driveway is steep enough. If you’re going to own a four-wheel-drive vehicle, get a good one. Your survival vehicle should not have a diesel engine or a Wankel rotary engine. Unless you’re a mechanic, specializing in

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either of those two engine types, and unless, in the case of the diesel, you have an absolutely sure-fire never-miss dependable

won’t-run-dry source of fuel. Did I get you when your pen was poised, ready to sign that contract? Good. Hold up a minute. I know that the salesman just got through assuring you that diesel fuel is available anywhere, but humor me. Let your fingers do the walking. What do the Yellow Pages tell you about diesel sources compared with gasoline outlets? Okay? Okay. And if. you’re thinking of buying a diesel-powered car or truck because you want to do your bit for energy conservation, think about this: while diesel engines do get better mileage than

do gasoline engines, it takes several times more petroleum to produce one gallon of diesel fuel than it does to produce one gallon of gasoline. So, unless the car you’re looking at gets 150 miles per gallon, you’ll be using more petroleum with a diesel than if you got a standard gasburner. Besides, as more people believe the hype and purchase diesel-powered automobiles, the more diesel fuel will be required, and the more people will be competing for it. The availability, especially during Bad Times, has got to go down. If you’ve already purchased a diesel-powered car, you already know the arguments against them. You know by first-hand experience that performance from a diesel is sick compared to a gasoline engine, that diesels are noisy, that they smell bad, and that they are difficult to start on cold mornings. They require different driving techniques than do gasoline engines. They | require specialized training for maintenance and repair, and the great. majority of us don’t possess that kind of training. For your sake during Bad Times, don’t get a diesel-powered vehicle. Try to get a heavy-duty cooling system when you buy. This

isn’t another

word

for air conditioning

(DON’T

GET

AIR

CONDITIONING!). It performs a more important function, to help insure that your engine won’t overheat while pulling heavy loads up long grades, or while doing long hours in hot country. Get the biggest radiator you can, with a heavy-duty water pump . and a big fan with a half-dozen blades. _Not only should you get a standard type battery, you should also get a dual battery system if you possibly can. That will

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assure you of always being able to start your vehicle, because one of those batteries will always be charged, Finagle or no Finagle. The accessory battery, which supplies juice when the. engine is off and recharges from the generator or alternator while the engine is running, can supply your CB radio with power while you’re stationary, among other things. And if your primary battery fails to start your engine by virtue of being dead, you can always switch batteries. By standard battery, incidentally,

I mean one of the kind which have removable lids,

thus allowing you to inSDEGE and service your own battery. Give

yourself this option; it’s valuable. Get either an oversized fuel tank or dual fuel tanks. The advantage of increased driving range is so obvious, I can now move on to something else. Don’t fail to get a cigarette lighter when you buy your vehicle. Even if you don’t smoke, you can plug all kinds of things into your dashboard lighter. Your 200,000-candlepower spotlight will plug right in. So will the small air compressor you'll have along to pump up your tires, should you need to. There are electric shavers which plug into your dashboard lighter, and the two best models of multi-channel reprogrammable police scanners also have that capability. For just a few extra dollars, you’re buying handiness, so be sure your vehicle has a dashboard lighter. When picking out a color scheme for your vehicle, make sure you get a light-colored interior. Whatever you do, don’t get a black interior. Black collects and holds heat. During warm weather, a drive in a black-upholstered vehicle will turn into a group encounter session held in a sauna. Delicate fabrics aren’t a good idea for survival vehicles. Get either a good tough vinyl (which can be covered with something more comfortable), or a strong, durable weave that breathes. And I would definitely not get a conspicuous color for the outside. In particular, metalflake paint tends to lift off, and will start to peel in a few years. Regular enamel will do, preferably ‘in an earth tone or one of the natural greens. Make sure the heater works well in your chosen vehicle, and

if extra insulation is offered, get it. Perish the thought, but if

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you do have to use your vehicle as a getaway car, there’s an even chance that it’ll happen when the weather’s cold.

Vehicle Choices.

For basic transportation, or for a second car, or for a family car (for small families), I’d suggest one of the following four cars, taking care to keep your choice simple, and getting the features I just enumerated for you: The Volkswagen Rabbit. It’s well-built, has good features, lots of room, good visibility, and good handling. Performance and economy are good, and it’s been around long enough that spare parts are widely available. Front-wheel-drive is an advantage. Of course, don’t buy a diesel Rabbit. Jeep CJ. You’ll have to pay extra for the back seat. If you can afford it, get both hard and soft tops. Because this little vehicle has four-wheel-drive, expect to pay more for it than other cars its size. Expect to get more, too. If you’re looking at used cars, look for a VW beetle that isn’t gussied up with extras. Parts are everywhere, and bugs will run forever. You might also try to find a VW Thing in good shape. This will be tougher than finding a beetle, but a Thing is roomier, tougher, and more versatile. Doors come off, top comes off, windshield folds down, back seat comes out, and there’s a little

_ Jeep-like machine which can double as a small truck. Do not buy any of the Rabbit imitations which are currently being sold by just about everybody in the world. None of them are as good as the original. Don’t, in other words, get a Dodge Omni,

Renault,

Ford

Fiesta, and on

and on. If you want a

Rabbit, spend a little more money and get a Rabbit. I’ve always had a yen to own a Toyota Land Cruiser. It seems to me to be the epitome of a simple, robust design that doesn’t have to change to fit changing styles. No, I don’t own one.

Why? I thought you’d never ask, My brother-in-law is the quintessential hunter. He’s never at home on his days off. He carries a small arsenal in his vehicle

1i2'

=2 3 =

\

Hunting/utility knives. From top: the Wyoming Knife, the Bowen belt knife and a Victorinox Swiss Army Knife shown with a pack of trade goods to indicat Size.

A Gerber folding knife; a Buck sheath knife; and a Gerber Mark I combat knife.

One of the small emergency stoves from SI.

:

The Bushnell 8-power monocular, rettes. ~ Z

which

can be carried as easily as a pack of

case. The ingenious Walle Hawk (Life Tool) with instructions and carrying

‘An assortment of high-quality flashlights of various sizes, functions, and prices. These are all available from SI Equipment Co.

7

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

.

261

For this purpose, get a Wyoming Knife. It’s the oddestlooking thing you ever saw, but it will split, gut, skin, and dress game

in a way

that is unbelievably

efficient. There are two

_ surgical steel blades mounted on a frame designed to provide an exact fit for the fingers. When you’ve got this thing on your fist,

it looks like the ultimate set of brass knuckles. Beware of the _ imitations which have only one blade; the true Wyoming Knife has two blades, one of them wide, curved, tapered, and pointed.

Both these blades are sharp, so be careful until you’ve got a good grip on it. The Wyoming Knife sells for about $20, which includes extra blades, belt sheath, and set of instructions. More

extra blades are available from the factory, too. Be sure_and get this one. _ One knife of which I’m particularly fond is the Bowen Belt Knife, which is a short (2-inch blade) knife of stainless steel that serves as your belt buckle most of the time. The handle is the _ buckle, while the blade slips into a sheath in the specially-made ~belt

which

comes

with

the knife.

You

never

know

you’re

wearing a knife, and neither does anyone else. The advantage to this knife, of course, is that you put the knife on with your pants and can be sure of never forgetting it. The short blade takes a good edge and is fine for dressing game. You can also use it for other things which knives are used for, as long as you keep in mind that it isn’t an axe or machete. The Bowen Belt Knife sells for about $35, and the belt can be either black or brown. I have two of them. Numerous sources including SI sell _them. Worth the price. Everyone has seen a Swiss Army Knife. Fat red grips with a white cross on the side and containing the equivalent to a drawer full of kitchen utensils. They run from a simple fourblade knife to a sublime, impossibly-wide model which has everything in it, and which causes people to stare at you when you have it in your pocket. Prices start at about $10 and go up to over $50 for the tool-box special. Be sure to get a Victorinox Swiss Army Knife, if you’re going to go this route. Of the big lock-back folding knives, Gerber makes knives which are at least as good as anyone else’s. The single blade is strong, takes a good edge, has a positive lock, and even looks good. It’s expensive, around $50, and comes with a belt case.

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262

There are many, many sheath knives, and practically all of them are good ones. Buck Knives are representative of goodquality sheath knives of reasonable prices, and have been around longer than I have. They come in many sizes, blade types, and prices. You’d pay between $20 and $30 for an average Buck, which is a good investment. I’ve got one. For those who like double-edged daggers, Gerber makes their Mark I belt/boot knife. This is clearly a fighting knife for those who know how to use one (no, I don’t know how, and I don’t have one), but it will also do good work on the post-hunting functions of an outdoor knife. It’s currently selling for over $40. There is an ingenious thing called a Walle Hawk which is 2%by 3¥%-inches and has dozens of different uses, including knife, file, can

opener,

screwdriver,

wrench, punch,

mirror,

bottle

opener, compass, ruler, and burning lens. It’s made of stainless steel and is small enough to fit into your wallet, thus assuring you that, barring pickpockets, you'll have it when you need it. Comes with a plastic case and set of instructions and costs about $20. It’s well worth the price, and you should have at least one. This, in my opinion, is a better value than a Swiss

Army Knife/Tool Kit. SI sells them, of course. Burning lenses aren’t always the best means of starting fires, as the sun only spends half its time shining on us, and there are always overcast days, rainstorms, and blizzards. Matches get wet, and disposable butane lighters run dry and are sometimes dangerous. One of the best fire-starting tools you can buy is something called, logically enough, the Fire-Starter. It’s a bar of magnesium which is scraped on one side with a knife, Walle Hawk, piece of broken glass, or anything with a sharp edge. The little pile of magnesium shavings is then ignited by striking the bar with the small striker which is included. The whole thing is mounted on a chain, weighs only a couple of ounces, is good for hundreds of lights, and is small enough to carry with your keys. Price is just under $5 from most sources or directly from the maker, Doan Machinery & Equipment Co., P.O. Box 21334, South Euclid, Ohio 44121.

We rarely carry cooking gear around with us, but emergencies usually call for some means of heating water and cooking food.

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER There are numerous

263

emergency

stoves available which fold up

_ into small packages, but which can be used for the aforementioned boiling and cooking in small amounts. Most of them use compressed

fuel

tablets,

which

will usually heat water, but

seldom hot enough to boil it. Still, it’s better than nothing when all the available fuel is wet. SI sells a combat stove kit for $11.95, which includes pan, cup, fuel holder/cooking surface, - and handle which doubles as a spoon. Ten fuel bars are also included. Or, for $1.35, you could buy a military surplus wing stove, which folds up to a very small size and accomplishes the same effect as the more expensive models. The same sources usually have hexamine tablets three dozen for $2. You can use a canteen cup as a pan on these little wing stoves. If you can’t find them locally, write B. W. Trading Company, Box 692, - Newark, Ohio 43055.

If you’re hunting, or if you’re lost, or if you’re just a curious person, then you probably need optical equipment'to help you see things at long distances. This usually means a good set of binoculars. You can pay as much as $750 for a pair of Zeiss rubber-armored binoculars. On the other hand, you could buy a

set of Bushnell’s and pay much, much less, about a fourth of that amount in a retail store for either 7 x 35 or 7 x 50. And if you wanted to save even more money, you could order your binoculars through sources listed in Shotgun News and get them

at dealer prices, which are often under $100. How’s that? Spotting scopes are another of those instruments which you want most when you haven’t got them. Check Shotgun News for spotting scopes of 20-power with 50mm lenses for as low as $99.95. Tripods for these Bushnells may be had from the same sources for about $60. Getting back to emergencies and emergency kits, Bushnell makes a tiny monocular which is eight power, yet small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. You can also use the lens by itself as a magnifying glass. It’s light enough—4 ounces—to be carried

almost

anywhere

and

under

almost

any conditions.

These items can sell for as high as $50, but there are cheaper sources. One such ‘source is Cabela’s, 812 13th Avenue, Sidney,

Nebraska 69162. monocular. .

They get $31.50

for the 8-power Bushnell

264

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

|

Perhaps the most dependable source of good light—especially during emergencies—is a high-quality flashlight. You can buy $5 military surplus flashlights, but I don’t recommend you depend on them. They’re plastic, as are some of the commercial flashlights which can sell for considerably more.

If you’re buying

flashlights, you might as well spend a little more money and get a flashlight which will last you for many years. The best ones are manufactured from aircraft-grade aluminum and are shockproof, waterproof, and come with extra bulbs. Safariland (1941 S. Walker Avenue,

Monrovia,

California 91016)

sells the Kel-

Lite which is an excellent example of this type. Other lights which are similar are the Mag Light and the Code Four. They _can be had in varying lengths and heads, and in types using either C-cells or D-cells. I’d suggest you buy D-cell lights for the most part, with a few smaller lights using C-cells for special purposes like emergency kits. You can expect to pay from $20 to. $35 on the average for a good flashlight, but a good one is definitely worth the money. Besides Safariland, check Shotgun News and the SI catalog for high-quality flashlights. One light which you might consider for an emergency kit is the Back-Up Light sold through SI. It looks like a short black nightstick with a leather lanyard. The switch is recessed into one end and it can

be easily slipped into a pocket or thrust into a pack. It comes in ~ either 2-cell or 5-cell versions (both use C-cells) and produces good, dependable light.

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Chapter Seven:

INFORMATION

.

Name the most important invention in history. The one which caused the most impact on subsequent events. Was it the utilization of nuclear energy? The telescope? Microscope? Gunpowder? The internal combustion engine? The electronic computer? The functioning spaceship? Probably most people would just shrug and say: ‘The wheel.” They’d be wrong. The most important invention, the one which changed the very course of history, brought men up from the mud, gave them choices, and raised more hell than

’ gunpowder and nuclear fission combined, was the brainchild of one Herr Gutenburg. That’s right: the printing press.

_There’s a good reason for this conclusion. It has to do with the laws of supply and demand as well as human progress. The most valuable commodity in the world is not real estate, gold,

platinum, weaponry.

diamonds,

uranium,

drugs,

or

sophisticated

The most valuable commodity is, always has been,

and will continue to be: information.

It figures that, the more information you can cram into your head, the more valuable you will be. This under the stipulation that the information is relevant, has a practical application, and is not generally known. Simple arithmetic is relevant and has a (267

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

268

practical application, but who in the world doesn’t know that two plus two make four? Ah, but let there be a shortage of toilet paper, and a demand is created. Let there be a supply of it which is not generally known, and let: that information rest between your own two

ears, and you have only to drop a well-chosen, well-timed word to become in demand yourself. “In heaven’s name, man, where

can I get some?” Let money become worthless, and many people will begin to barter their jewelry for essential goods. Shortly thereafter, synthetic stones will come pouring out of the woodwork. Goldfilled base metals will suddenly be stamped 14K. If you have a gemological degree, guess who’s going to be the clearing agent for such transactions? For a piece of the action, of course. Let local gasoline supplies dry up, and a general demand is created. If you know how to convert gasoline engines to run on alcohol, and have the know-how necessary to build a woodburning still and make fuel from a sour mash made from local grains, guess who’s going to have people lined up outside his door? Of

course,

as

knowledge

is disseminated,

it becomes

less

valuable as the demand for it decreases. So it figures that, if you have a lot of this type of scarce, desirable information, you’ll be more valuable, and will stay valuable longer. You’ll make more contacts according to the amount of information you will have available to you. Your position should continue to improve. You might conceivably enter Bad Times with little or no money and a headful of good information, and come out on the other side a wealthy individual as wealth will be measured then, a pillar of the community. A mover and a shaker, perhaps, if that takes your fancy. Almost certainly, you’ll be better off than most other people, depending on the quality and quantity of the information you possess. The

more

information

you

can

cram

into your head, the

more valuable you will be. The best way to gather this kind of valuable information, and to keep it readily available to you, is

by building the most complete library possible to your means. Your library cannot and should not be entirely outside your head. The knowledge you can keep locked up in there is often the most valuable of all, especially if you become separated

_THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

269

from your library. So it behooves you, not only to collect books, manuals, pamphlets, clippings, but good solid knowhow, preferably with some OJT (on the job training) attached to it. Learn how to do things, things you don’t know how to do now. Take welding, for an example. There are lots of people who can weld, but if you aren’t one of them, that means that you'll have to depend on someone else when a job requiring welding becomes necessary. Welding classes are offered almost every year in adult classes across the country, if not in your town,

then in one close by. These classes don’t cost much, don’t take up much

time, aren’t difficult for anyone who wants to learn,

and will give you a start in the right direction when you buy your own welding outfit and start to practice on that first wood heater you’re going to build, or that composter you saw in the article in MOTHER. This type of knowledge is especially valuable, because it leads quite naturally to other forms. of knowl -edge to which welding experience is a prerequisite. The same can be said of carpentry, upholstery, auto mechanics, or sewing. That’s right, I said sewing. Look for an upsurge in sewing after Bad Times begin. If you have not only some good practical experience in sewing, but also a good supply of material, buttons, zippers, needles, and thread, plus—oh, boy!—

a treadle-operated sewing machine in good working order, you’ve got it made. So begin taking classes, just as soon as you can. Check the adult education programs issued by your local school system. Look for those classes teaching practical subjects which are relevant to self-sufficiency, and sign up for them. Learn them. Then go home and practice them. Get used to the knowledge in your head sluicing out through your hands. Build a respectable — inventory of tools and supplies related to the knowledge you’ve just acquired. Then go looking for another class to take. Look for classes in rock climbing and rappelling. These are skills you won’t know you need until you really need them. Anything which increases your reach and your abilities will increase your confidence, your value, and your self-sufficiency. And that, of course, will make future knowledge that much easier to come by.

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

270

Learn first aid, and then learn more than just first aid. Take a class in CPR (Cardio Pulminary Resuscitation) and get your certificate. Keep your knowledge updated every year. Learn the different methods to alleviate pain. Learn the proper ways to use a stethoscope and a sphygmomenometer. While you’re doing all this, build your medical library and your paramedic kit. Make sure your loved ones know these skills, too. Every single one of you should be a medic. Learn the difference between strategy and tactics. Learn the different types of strategy, including the bad ones. You should take particular pains here to get a book called Strategy, by Sir Basil H. Liddell Hart. Of all the treatises on strategy, this one is my favorite. Liddell Hart’s thesis is called the strategy of the indirect approach, and I’m here to tell you that it works. It works, not only in warfare between

armies, but also between

individuals. It works in human situations from, chess games to. industrial intrigue. Learn the elements of tactics. I can think of no better way to begin this endeavor than by reading a small pamphlet called — Principles

of Personal Defense.

This is nothing

less than a

distillation of tactics down to their essential parts. Sugar Ray Robinson could have written this book, or George Patton, or any other master tactician. As it happens, the master tactician in this case is Jeff Cooper. For those few of you who’ve never heard the name, Jeff Cooper is the recognized dean of combat handgunners, the Odin Allfather of pistoleros. While you’re at the business of taking classes, try to arrange to. take the basic combat handgun class at Jeff Cooper’s Gunsite Ranch

at Paulden,

Arizona.

It lasts about

several hundred dollars. If you can -it will be the most worthwhile of extend your life amazingly. There Gunsite, all relating to personal interested.

For

details,

send

a week and costs —

possibly handle the expense, all your expenses, and might are other classes available at defense. I think you'll be

$1 to API, Box

401, Paulden,

Arizona 86334. Learn backpacking and orienteering. Get used to being on foot with a compass. Learn how to hide things and how to find them again. Learn how to hunt and fish if you don’t know already. Learn how to dress game, and what to do with a fish

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

271

when he’s yours. Learn to find water, and how to make shelter from available materials, and the many ways of producing fire without matches. Some knowledge of demolitions would be helpful, especially if you’re a homesteader. Learn foraging methods and plant identification. Learn the methods of building houses, surveying land, clearing land, planting crops, husbanding animals, drilling wells, damming streams. Learn plumbing, wiring, carpentry, masonry, auto mechanics. If you’ve never had the experience of combat training, much less combat itself, undertake to learn the principles of small unit tactics, sniping, escape and evasion, concealment and camouflage, fortifications, booby traps, nighttime maneuvers, fields of fire, patrolling, and other elements of Bad Times. Learn the strategy and -tactics of guerilla warfare. If you ever need to know about this subject, you probably won’t have the time to sit down and study up on it. Which brings up an important point: it’s not enough just to buy books, catalog them, and store them away in your bookcase. You have to read them to gain the knowledge in them. I know that this is a silly, elementary statement to make, but it has to be made. Owning a complete set of tools, doesn’t make you a mechanic. Owning a $3,000 custom rifle doesn’t make you an expert shot. The simple fact of owning a Ferrari won’t make you one with Stirling Moss. Owning the best library in the world won’t make you knowledgeable in itself. In each of these cases, you have to use those tools. Of course, many times—if not most times—reading a book on any given subject doesn’t make you an expert, but it will give you a starting point, a place to stand while you gather more knowledge on that subject. Owning a book on unarmed combat will not make you proficient at unarmed combat. Reading that book will give you some principles and plans of action, but you'll find in the event that some practice is needed. Very few people do important things right the very first time, and you’d be best off assuming that you aren’t one of them. Learn your knowledge in the best way possible: by doing it. That will place the knowledge where it will do the most good: inside your head. They can steal your books or burn your

272

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

library to the eesand: but stealing or destroying the knowledge in your mind is impossible short of massive drug-assisted brainwashing or outright murder. Do what’s right in this case. It means a lot of work, but you know that already. It will also be fun and will give you some rich rewards, but you know that, too. A lot of people simply jam their books into a bookcase. They don’t want to miss the fun of searching through several dozen books for a particular reference, piling them up on the floor during the process, finding the reference, and replacing the books in places other than where they took them. This process can be exciting, especially when you’re under pressure. For those of you who prefer to take your excitement from other sources, I recommend that you organize your library and keep it organized; moreover, I recommend that you keep a separate index relating to the different subjects, cross-indexed by author and title, so that you know where to find certain references quickly when you need them. There’s no need to get elaborate about this, unless your library is awesome in its size and complexity. A friend of mine has such a library, and he saw fit to catalog it with a process closely resembling the Dewey Decimal System. You may not have to do that. If you do, I can’t help you, because I’m not a

librarian. But I can give you some simple-minded hints which I worked out all by myself. I’ve already read most of the books on my shelves, usually before they go on the shelves in the first place. The ones I haven’t read are almost always the ones which just came in. Because I’m familiar with the contents of my books—and because I happen to have a pretty good memory—it’s easy for me to catalog them. My library is organized by subject in categories roughly corresponding to the table of contents in this book. Within each subject, the books are arranged in alphabetical order by author’s name. So far, I haven’t had the need for a separate cross-indexing system, but that time is approaching. You don’t have to arrange your books in this order. Pick your own system, according to your plans and situation. But I’ve found that this way works best for me. For instance, if

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

ra

you’re could could ment,

planning to start with bare land and go from there, you have a section of books under the subject of Shelter. You have sub-sections entitled Land Use and Land Developand a third sub-heading of Construction. Within those sections, you could locate such subjects as building methods, building materials, building designs, tools, excavating, and so forth. Remember, though, that subjects overlap into others within certain books, so if you aren’t thoroughly familiar with the contents of each of your books, you’re liable to have some trouble finding the references you need when you need them. This is another reason for reading your material as well as collecting it. It’s also a reason for preparing an indexing system as you go. Such a system could be done on three-by-five cards. It could be expanded with each book you acquire as that book goes on the shelf—that way, the information you just read is still fresh in your mind, and it only takes a few minutes of your time in each instance. I’d index these things by subject, first, adding the title of the book and the author. For instance, if you wanted to find references to rammed earth construction, you’d flip through your file and find a card referring you to The OwnerBuilt Home, another to Build Your House of Earth, another to The Updated Last Whole Earth Catalog, and several more. For a

subject like firearms, you’re likely to have headings, subheadings, and sub-sub-headings, plus a bunch of cards. It may seem like a lot of trouble to you now, and perhaps it is, but if it saves you time when you need it, then it can be counted as several pounds of prevention versus a ton of cure during Bad Times. What

follows

is a listing of books, newsletters, magazines,

catalogs, and other sources of useful information. Some of them don’t have authors listed, being the products of companies, governments, or foundations. Almost without exception, all of the works listed can be obtained by ordering from the catalogs I’ve included as book sources. If something is hard to find, I'll tell you, and I’ll tell you the best place to look for it. Many of these books and magazines can be purchased at your local book store, and some of them are on the paperback shelves of your local supermarket. Most magazines cost less when you subscribe to them, and since this is a budget book, I recommend you to

_ ‘THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

3

O74 subscribe

whenever

possible instead of buying right off the

shelves and paying more.

Save your magazines for obvious reasons. Much of the infor-

mation contained in them will continue to be relevant to you no matter how much times and prices change. In the cases of newsletters and specialty periodicals, such as Shotgun News, I

save them, too, even though pricing information and other matters all too often go out of date before the next issue comes out. There are lots of reasons for saving them, among them the one that it’s a good way of keeping track of the ascending value of certain commodities. For some eye-openers, check dealer prices in Shotgun News from two years ago compared to last week’s. Besides, I believe that many of these things will be collector’s items if kept in a series in good shape. If nothing else, Shotgun News is a lot of paper for the money. 200 pages’ per average issue adds up to about 5,000 pages over the course of a year, and if push comes to shove, you can always grit your teeth, roll ’em up, tie ’em tight, wet ’em down, let ’em dry, and burn them in your fireplace or emergency stove. If you can

©

afford it, get binders for your magazines and newsletters; make ’em easier to stack and keep track of. : In most cases, I won’t list prices for you, since they change iin an upward direction so fast that my list would be obsolete by » the time you read it. Just get the books; they’re worth it, Please note that I’m not listing all of the books which you should get for yourself, nor by any means am I listing all the ones available. A list like that might fill a book the size of this one. What

I’m giving you will be enough to get you you’re on your own. Many of the books _ following lists have book lists of their own, enlarge your sources of information in new along. Ready?

started. After that, I’ve included in the and will help you to directions as you go

SHELTER The Sunset New Western Garden Book, Lane Press

Finding And Buying Your Place In The Country, Les Scher The Owner-Built Home, Ken Kern i

—

a

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER The

Owner-Builder And

275 The Code,

Ken Kern, Ted Kogan,

Rob Thallon Basic Construction Techniques For Houses And Small Buildings Simply Explained, Bureau of Naval Personnel Low-Cost, Energy-Efficient Shelter For The Owner And Builder, edited by Eugene Eccli The Owner-Builder’s Guide To Stone Masonry, Ken Kern, Steve Magers, Lou Penfield . ‘ Fireplaces, Ken Kern, Steve Magers Build Your Own Stone House Using The Easy Slipformed Method, Karl and Sue Schwenke

Build Your House Of Earth, G. F. Making The Adobe Brick, Eugene Earth Sheltered Housing Design: References, The Underground Space

Middleton H. Boudreau Guidelines, Examples, And Center of the University of

Minnesota Underground Homes, Robert L. Roy The $50 And Up Underground House Book, Mike Oehler Building The Cordwood Home, Jack Henstridge ~ The Integral Urban House: Self-Reliant Living In The City, Farallones Institute

How To Inspect A House, George Hoffman How

To

Select And

Renovate

An Older Home,

Gerald

E.

Sherwood

SUSTENANCE The Owner-Built Homestead, Barbara and Ken Kern

Five Acres And Independence, M. G. Kains Grow It! Richard W. Langer The Complete Greenhouse Book: Building And Using Green-

houses From Cold Frames To Solar Structures, Peter Clegg and Derry Watkins How To Build And Use Greenhouses, Ortho Books

How To Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine, John Jeavons The Gardener’s Guide To Better Soil, Gene Logsdon

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

276

Getting Food From Water: A Guide To Backyard Aquaculture, Gene Logsdon Backyard Livestock: How To Grow Meat For Your Family, Steven Thomas Ducks And Geese In Your Backyard: A Beginner’s Guide, Rick and Gail Luttman Goat Husbandry, David MacKenzie Raising The Homestead Hog, Jerome Belanger Butchering,

Processing, And Preservation Of Meat,

Frank G.

Ashbrook Stocking Up: How To Preserve The Foods You Grow, Naturally, Organic Farming Magazine A Veterinary Guide for Animal Owners, G.E: Spaulding Tan Your Hide! Phyllis Hobson Food Co-Ops For Small Groups, Tony Vellela Feasting Free On Wild Edibles, Bradford Angier

ENERGY

Handbook Of Homemade Power, Mother Earth News Alternate Energy Directory, Vincent and Robin Robertson Dowsing For Everyone: Adventures And Instruction In The Art Of Modern Dowsing, Harvey Howells Village Technology Handbook, Volunteers In Technical

Assistance (VITA) Hydraulic Ram, VITA

The Arusha Windmill: A Construction Manual, Dick Stanley ~ Goodbye To The Flush Toilet, edited by Carol Stoner The Woodburners Encyclopedia, Jay W. Shelton and Andrew B. Shapiro

The New, Improved Wood Heat, John Vivian Wind And Windspinners, Michael A. Hackleman and David W. House The Home-Built, Michael Hackleman

Wind-Generated

Savonius Rotor Construction: From Oil Drums, VITA

Electricity

Henaboor

Vertical Axis Wind Machines

Practical Building Of Methane Power Plants, L. John F ry

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THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

279

Methane: Planning A Digester, Peter-John Meynell Brown’s Alcohol Motor Fuel Cookbook, Michael Brown Mother’s Alcohol Fuel Seminar Workbook, Mother Earth

News Direct Use Of The Sun’s Energy, Farrington Daniels Consumer Handbook Of Solar Energy For The United States

And Canada, John H. Keyes The Nicholson Solar Energy Catalogue And Building Manual, Nick Nicholson

TRANSPORTATION Why Trade It In? George and Suzanne Fremon How To Buy A Used Car Without Getting Gypped, Peter Mann Off-Road Handbook, Bob Waar Emergency And High Speed Driving Techniques, John M. Clark, Jr.

COMMUNICATION

Catalog Of Military Suppliers, Karl B. Schwartz The “Top Secret” Registry Of U.S. Government Radio Frepers Tom Kneitel, K2AES

TOOLS

Survival Guns, Mel Tappan No Second—Place Winner, Bill Jordan Home Gun Care And Repair, P. O. Ackley Survival Poaching, Ragnar Benson

Small Arms Of The World, E. C. Ezell

Speer Reloading Manual #10 Auto Repair For Dummies,

Deanna Sclar

How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive, John Muir Poor Richard’s Rabbit Book, Richard Sealey

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER

|

280

How To Convert Your Car To Propane, Jerry Friedburg Tools And Their Uses, Bureau of Naval Personnel

Alexander

The Recycling, Use, And Repair Of Tools, Weygers Shop Tactics, William Abler Barns,

Sheds,

And

Outbuildings:

Placement,

Design,

G.

And

Construction, Byron D. Halsted, editor Fences,

Gates, And Bridges: A Practical Manual, George A.

Martin

Making Building Blocks With CINVA Ram Block Press, VITA Illustrated Indoor Carpentry, Graham Blackburn How To Be Your Own Home Electrician, George Daniels Do-It- Yourself Plumbing, Max Alth Chain Saw Service Manual, Fifth Edition

Barnacle Parp’s Chain Saw Guide, Walter Hall Tools

For

Homesteaders,

Gardeners,

And

Small-Scale

Farmers: A Catalog Of Hard-To-Find Implements And Equip-

ment, Solar Age

;

The Owner-Builder’s

Guide

To, Stone Masonry,

Ken yes

Steve Magers, and Lou Penfield . Concrete Masonry And Brickwork: A Practical Handbook For The Home Owner And Small Builder, U.S. Department of the Army |

The Forgotten Art Of Bictding And Using A Brick Bake Oven, Richard M. Bacon Foxfire, Books 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Elliot Wigginton, editor

INFORMATION Sources For Books:

The Next Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand, editor (This one is a best-seller as I write this, so if your book store doesn’t have it, they’re probably sold out. Contact The Whole Earth Truck

Store, 540 Santa Cruz

Avenue,

Menlo

Park, California

940250 )5 MOTHER’S

Bookshelf,

P.O. Box 70, Hendersonville,

28739 SI Equipment, P.O. Box 4727, Carson, California 90749

N.C.

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Owner-Builder

281

Publications

(Ken Kern), Box

817, North

Fork, California 93643

Loompanics 48854

Unlimited,

P.O.

Box

264, Mason,

Michigan

Paladin Press, P.O. Box 1307, Boulder, Colorado 80306 Delta Press, Box 5093-A, Shreveport, Louisiana 71105 Survival Books, 11106- Magnolia Blvd., N. Hollywood, Cali-

fornia 91601 Other Catalogs: Brookstone Company, 127 Vose Farm Road, Peterborough, New Hampshire 03458. Unusual and hard-to-find tools. Brownell’s,

Inc. Route

2, Box

1, Montezuma,

Iowa 50171.

Complete gunsmithing supplies, tools, books, equipment, guns reloading supplies and components. B. W. Trading Company,

Box

692, Newark,

Ohio 43055.

Surplus gear, especially good for cleaning equipment and supplies. Brigade Quartermasters, Ltd., P.O. Box 108, Powder Springs, Georgia 30073. Surplus and commercial apparel, camping gear. Milt Sparks, Box 7, Idaho City, Idaho 83631. Outstanding holsters, belts, ammunition carriers. Choate Machine & Tool Co., Box 218, Bald Knob, Arkansas

72010. Finely-made accessories for certain firearms. P & S Sales, P.O. Box 45095, Tulsa, Oklahoma Outdoor equipment and supplies, some surplus. Gander

Mountain,

Inc., P.O.

Box

248, Wilmot,

74145.

Wisconsin

53192. Sporting equipment; good source for reloading supplies. L. L. Bean, Inc., Freeport, Maine 04033. The famous house of outdoor clothing from boots to hats and everything in between. Cabela’s, 812 13th Avenue, Sidney, Nebraska 69162. Hunting, fishing, camping equipment and apparel. S I Equipment, P.O. Box 4727, Carson, California 90749. The survivalist catalog. Books, food, tools, first aid, more.

Periodicals: Wind Power Digest, published quarterly by Michael Evans, 54468 CR 31, Bristol, Indiana 46507. Self-explanatory. The

Shotgun

News,

published

Hastings, Nebraska 68901.

twice

a month,

Box

669,

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282

The Mother Earth News, published six times a year, P.O. Box 70, Hendersonville, North Carolina 28739.

published monthly by Petersen Publishing

Guns & Ammo, Co., 8490

Sunset

Boulevard,

Los

Angeles,

California 90028.

General firearms magazine, quite good. Combat Handguns, published bi-monthly by Harris Publications Inc., 79 Madison Avenue, N.Y. 10016. Jeff Cooper, Mike

Harries, Chuck Taylor, other top men write regularly for this ' magazine. Organic Gardening And Farming, 33 East Minor Street, Emmaus, Pennsylvania 18049. The daddy of the live-naturally school and forerunner of the back-to-the-land movement. Title says it all.

Personal Survival Letter, P.O. Box 598, Rogue River, Oregon 97537. $125/12 issues. Mel Tappan, Jeff Cooper, Rick Fines, others.

Covers retreating, defense, transportation, communica-

tion, medicine, other topics for the express benefit of survivalists. So far, the best of all the survivalist newsletters. Be sure to —

order the bound back issues #1 through #12 for $75. Invaluable. The

Ruff Times,

P.O.

Box

2000,

San: Ramon,

California

94583. $145/year. Investments, proferred for you by Howard Ruff, who is enjoying a good track record. Get a subscription to this one after you’ve subscribed to all the others recommended. Investments are nice. Survive first. The Survivor, compiled and published by Kurt Saxon. No longer printed regularly, all back copies may be ordered in their entirety, bound by volumes, for $40. Atlan Formularies, P.O. Box 438, Eureka, California 95501. Once you have this, you won't let go of it. Late 19- and early 20-century formulas, shop techniques, tools, and more, all geared for the individual crafts-

man. Exceptional. PMA

(Poor Man’s Armorer),

Box

586, Eureka,

California

95501, by Clyde Barrow (a pseudonym, of course). Inflammatory, scary, and very interesting. Volume One (bound): $14.95. Volume Two (bound): $20. Detailed instructions, pictures, diagrams, everything you need except tools and materials. Stephens Press, P.O. Drawer 1441, Spokane, Washington

a

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ae aee a ee ——

283

99210. Some first-class offerings from Don and Barbie Stephens include The Up-Dated Retreater’s Bibliography (GET THIS ONE), Retreater’s Maps, Civil Defense Underground Construction Reprin mucht, more. Write to them and get on their mailing list, or call (509) 838-8222. Don is available for consultation on survivalist matters if you want to make prior arrange-

ments. In addition to being nice people, they are genuine The Gulch survivalists. Tell Barbie I said hello. Ask about _ Gazette, which is the newsletter for the Stephens-founded group retreat, Mountain Haven. I think you'll find the idea interesting. Books—General Information: Henley’s Twentieth Century Book Of Ten Thousand Recipes, Formulas, & Processes The Formula Book, Volumes 1, 2, & 3, Norman Stark

Be Your Own Chimney Sweep, Christopher Curtis and Donald Post : _ How To Cut Your Own Or Anybody Else’s Hair, Bob Bent Be Expert With Map And Compass, Bjorn Kjellstrom

The Stash Book, Peter Hiersman The Code Book, Michael Marotta Total Resistance, Major H. von Dach Bern

Strategy, Basil H. Liddell Hart (I’ve never seen this offered anywhere besides the Military Book Club as part of an introductory package. The introductory price is very cheap, and the club is worth joining, anyway. Check the pages of most nationallydistributed magazines for ordering information, or write: MiliBook Club, Customer Service Center, Garden City, New York 11535. The usual introductory offer includes this book. Grab it.) The Make-It-Yourself Shoe Book, Christine Lewis Clark Soap, Ann Sela Bramson Weaving With Foot-Power Looms, Edward F. Worst

Natural Dyes And Home Dyeing, Rita J. Adrosko Survival With Style, Brad Angier Principles Of Personal Defense, Jeff Cooper

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284

HOW BAD IS IT? How

You Can Profit From The Coming Price Controls, Gary

North (Order from American Bureau of Economic Research, 3536 N. Wellington Avenue, Suite 700, Indianapolis, Indiana 46226; $11 including shipping) How To Prosper From The Coming Bad Years, Howard Ruff (If you can’t find this one on practically any bookshelf in your area, you must be living in Calcutta) Famine And Survival In America, Howard Ruff Survival Guns, Mel Tappan

Life After Doomsday, Bruce D. Clayton, Ph.D.

PRIORITIES

Where There Is No Doctor: A Village Health Care Handbook, David Werner A Barefoot Doctor’s Manual, The American translation of the official Red Chinese paramedic’s manual How To Become Dentally Self-Sufficient, Robert O. Nara, DDS, and Steven A. Mariner

Money—By The Mouthful, Robert O. Nara, DDS, and Steven A. Mariner Gray’s Anatomy Physician’s Desk Reference, current edition How To Be Your Own Doctor (Sometimes), Keith W. Sehnert, MD

The Merck Manual Of Diagnosis And Therapy, 13th edition Symptoms, edited by Sigmund S. Miller The Pocket Medical Encyclopedia & First Aid Guide, James Bevan Fiction: Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand Luctfer’s Hammer, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (Either of the above fiction novels may be bought or ordered

from any good book store) Although it may seem at first glance that fiction for a survival library is superfluous, it does deserve more than a first glance.

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Good

285

fiction can put the driest of textbook concepts into

human terms to which the reader can easily relate. Good fiction brings ideas home to you and impresses them upon your personality—your soul, if you will—in a far more effective way than can a craft like non-fiction. Fiction—good fiction, dealing with

ideas—can give the most abstract concepts flesh and blood. _

And besides, your library is designed to get you through Bad’ Times. When you feed your stomach, it needs more than just a steady diet of pasta, or steak, or salad, or soup. When you feed

your head, give it a well-balanced diet. By all means, get fiction relating to survival, but don’t stop there. Treat yourself to those books you’ve always wanted to read but have never gotten

around to, as well as stocking up on your favorite novels and collections of short stories which you'll probably want to read again. From light reading to deep reading, fiction in the printed word is still the finest, most entertaining art form yet devised by the mind of man. Get as much of it as you possibly can.

Chapter Eight:

TRADE GOODS

Pity about the U.S. dollar. There was a time when it was the standard of the world. But, thanks to a number of factors—the Lyndon Johnson administration being the most obvious—it now resembles the Titanic: big, grand, still the most impressive thing around . . . but look fast, and try to find a lifeboat for the safest -

kind of observation.

Money still talks, but yesterday it yelled. The time is coming when the U.S. dollar will be as silent as the Continental or the Reichsmark. It is because that time is coming that we have to

talk about trade goods. No matter how thorough your personal survival preparations, you cannot be completely self-sufficient, as mentioned earlier. You need friends and neighbors in the safe-enclave which a small town provides. You, and your friends and your neighbors, are going to have to help one another in various ways. Until some

universal coin becomes accepted by, and available to, all

of us, we are going to have to pay one another with bartered | goods and services. If you can afford to buy items which are purely-and-simply trade goods, then you’re fortunate. I hope you took care of all the rest of your survival preparations before buying those items, though. And if you bought silver, gold, or diamonds, then you 287

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:

might be a wealthy individual ... provided you can hang on to those things and unload them at the right times. But if you’re into self-sufficiency, you shouldn’t buy gold, silver, or diamonds even if you can afford them. You should be buying hard goods which can be used by yourself and your household on a daily basis, and which can be traded for other things you need. A good rule of thumb for acquiring trade goods is to make sure that you can use the items yourself. If peace breaks out and the economic laws are repealed, you haven’t wasted your money at all, but merely stocked up on some needed goods. There are some things which are going to be very much in demand during Bad times, and probably for a long time after- — ward. We'll take a look at them now.

Information.

You

already know

that the most valuable commodity

is —

information, so it would be of immense benefit to you to acquire as much of it as you can. I mean good, vital information that people would be willing to trade things to get. This area _ includes vital skills (plumber, electrician, gunsmith, locksmith, carpenter, mason, farmer, reloader, mighty hunter, and so

forth) and also a role peculiar to the barter system, especially when it’s combined with government controls to create a black market. Gary North calls this type a broker. It’s as good a name

as any. The

information

broker

is the man

who

knows, who

can

bring buyer and seller together. He carries his office with him in his head, the purest species of entreprenuer, and he, as mentioned, knows.

*

What does he know? Well, he knows where the toilet paper supply is, a veritable dragon’s hoard of bathroom tissue. He waits until the shelves are bare in the stores and the loading docks

are

empty,

waits

until the townsfolk

go about with

uncomfortable, irritable expressions on their faces. Then and only then will he distribute some well-placed words into the correct sets of ears. Of course he’ll put you in touch with the

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289

right party, but it’s going to cost you something. Precisely because it’s going to cost you something, you won’t be willing to reveal to anyone else who the broker put you in touch with. If the broker is cagey, he won’t put you in touch with anyone at all. He’ll be the go-between, and he’ll be the only one you deal with. For all you know, he’s the one who really owns that big stash of TP, and you’re paying him twice, for the information, and for the TP itself. What else does he know? Well, he knows that you have a case

of Jack Daniels in your basement, and he knows that your refrigerator just quit and your food is spoiling. He also knows who'll fix that refrigerator for you in exchange for a bottle of that genuine sippin’ whiskey. It might cost you two bottles, but your reefer will be working again. The second bottle, of course, goes to the broker.. As more of the broker’s contacts are revealed and become

general knowledge, the less valuable he is as a broker in those areas. But this man, if he’s true to his calling, will be making more contacts and gathering more information as he goes, well as picking up some trade goods of his own. He won’t hurting. He’ll sell information as long as there’s a need for Try to get along without him if possible, but don’t fail

as be it. to

determine who he is and where to find him, because you just

might need his services yourself someday. Just knowing who the broker is is valuable information. Don’t give it away.

The Role Of Tools In Barter.

As I brought out in the chapter dealing with tools, there are certain tools and equipment which, once used, can be used again for other things, and their services loaned out for a price—usually bartered goods or services. The CINVA Ram is one of them. So is an air compressor and back-filling tamper. So is an arc welder, especially if you also have an electrical generator. If you can afford these tools, they'll do double duty for you as trade items. Not everyone will have the foresight to provide

themselves

with block

presses,

arc welders, air com-

pressors, or electrical generators. In fact, most people won’t

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have those things, but many of them will have power tools, and no electricity for them. If they can’t pay you for your generator’s use for a few hours, they can at least supply the fuel and owe you a favor. That’s almost like money in the bank. Finally, we get to the trade goods themselves, the ones which come closest to being money substitutes. I’m betting that the

first such item to emerge as a money substitute will be:

Cigarettes. Oh, I know:

there is no such thing as cigarette addiction,

only the cigarette habit. Tell that to a two-pack-a-day man who’s been smoking since he was fifteen years old, and who is under stress right now in a way you wouldn’t believe (unless you’re a smoker, under stress, and out of cigarettes), and who is seething silently inside because there is not a pack of cigarettes to be had at any store in town. He’s been told that it’s only a habit, but he doesn’t really believe it. He probably would not kill for a carton of cigarettes, but he’d try awfully hard to find something you needed if he knew you had a carton and wanted to get rid of it. At this point, it wouldn’t even have to be his brand. Bad Times will reduce the supply to zero in almost nothing flat. The accumulated habits of years stacked on years will supply the demand you need, provided you are stocking up on cigarettes for trade. Cigarettes come in at least three different lengttis, four if you count the long skinny brown ones. They are filtered and otherwise, menthol and regular, and come in packs or boxes. If you. can afford it, you can stock up on all brands and types, but I’d settle for just the most popular brands in the area if I were you. Winston, Marlboro, Salem, B & H, and, if you’re a chauvinist, a

specialty brand or two, just so you can watch those ladies come a long way for their Virginia Slims. Consider the cigarette: it comes twenty to a pack, ten packs

to the carton. cigarettes for shortly. More, each. cigarette

Right now, if you shop carefully, you can get about 2% cents apiece. They’ll be twice that during Bad Times. For simplicity’s sake, treat as a nickel. That being the case, each pack is a

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291

dollar. Each carton is a ten-dollar bill. You can buy things with cigarettes and get change back—in cigarettes. Cartons can be broken down into packs, and packs can be opened to allow singles to be distributed. Best of all, cigarettes will tend to increase in value. During Bad Times, there will be only so many of them. When they are smoked, they can’t be replaced, and the remaining supply of them becomes that much more dear. Think _ of it as inflation in reverse. You would do worse than cigarettes "as a trade item. But remember that, with the passage of time, cigarettes will disappear, so it behooves you to stock up on other trade items to replace those little white cylinders. And there is also the matter of cigarettes losing freshness and going stale. When it’s time to trade, use up your cigarettes first, while they still taste good. Stock up on a few cartons, even if you don’t smoke. If you do smoke, you’ve been warned, and you’d do well to buy a few cases and start to taper off. Do you really want to set your money supply on fire? When you buy your trade cigarettes, buy

them direct from a distributor to insure freshness. Keep them in a refrigerator to keep them fresh longer. If you can afford to fill up a reefer or two with cigarettes, we’d best assume that you can afford an electrical generator or other emergency power - source for Bad Times.

Rimfire Ammunition.

Hard on the heels of cigarettes as a money substitute will come .22 rimfire ammunition, for several good reasons. Like cigarettes, they are inexpensive right now, but figure to go up in value in the very near future. The present retail cost of .22 Long Rifle ammo (your best choice for trade) ranges between 3¢ and 5¢ per round, depending on brand and where you buy it. A carton of .22 LR ammo contains ten boxes of fifty rounds each, _ for a total of 500 rounds. That carton is small, compact, and

easy to store. The ammunition itself will last indefinitely. Like cigarettes, .22 LR rounds can’t be replaced after they’re shot—

you can’t reload rimfires yourself—and hence will gain in value as time goes on. They have another plus going for them, too. \

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At some time in the near future, the chances are good that the government in its wisdom will make it unlawful for anyone to manufacture, stock, or sell any kind of ammunition unless specifically for law enforcement or military purposes. That edict will no doubt include 22 rimfire ammunition. This proclamation will undoubtedly be made in the name of the public safety, the euphemism of our times, and you can make anything out of that you like. The fact remains, once it becomes officially forbidden, 22 rimfire ammo will go up in value. No

government has ever succeeded in repealing the law of supply and demand. | Each 22 LR cartridge might be worth a quarter. Or a half-dollar. Or six bits. Or maybe even a dollar. Practically every household in America owns at least one 22 rimfire firearms. Most people have ammunition, but most of them don’t have enough. When that fact becomes apparent, your rimfire cartridges are going to become very valuable. If you think of

cigarettes as nickels, you’d better think of 22 Long Rifle cartridges as silver dollars. Don’t sell them short. Hang on to them as long as you have to. You’re not going to believe what you'll be offered for them. As far as brand names are concerned, the best investment for

trading purposes in 22 rimfires are the new high-velocity cartridges—CCI Stingers, Winchester Xpediters, and Remington Yellow Jackets. I’m partial to the Stingers myself, with the Yellow Jackets coming in second and the Winchester ammo third, but they’re all good rounds. They are a little more accurate than the rest of the LRs, and they are also the most expensive rimfires you can buy besides the 22 Magnums. Don’t let that bother you; their prices will never decrease, so go ahead

and buy as many as you can. Store them away in a cool dry place and chuckle to yourself now and then when you think about them.

~ Reloading Components.

When you exetabte your reloading equipment during your survival preparations, be sure and overbuy on primers and

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293

powder. You already have the brass cases in your stored ammo, and if you’ve provided yourself with the proper tools and sets of molds, you can cast your own bullets from scrounged lead. But primers are things which reloaders never seem to have enough of. They get oily, or dropped and lost, or the reloaders don’t buy enough except for more or less immediate needs. I would get ten thousand minimum of each kind of primer you - can use—large, small, rifle, pistol, and magnum primers if that’s

_what you’re shooting. After the bell rings, reloaders are going to be popping out of the woodwork. They’ve got Rock Chuckers and All Americans and Lees and dies and powder tricklers and scales and electric ovens and burring tools and chamfering tools and micrometers, and I don’t know what all, and they’ve just Yun out of primers. You can’t think of everything. Who could _ know that the sporting goods stores would shut down because no shipments of any kind are coming in? They—the reloaders— have got all that expensive, highly-useful equipment going to waste for lack of—what’s that? Who’s got ’em? What’s his address? The same thing applies to powder. Modern smokeless powder can’t be fabricated in your own back yard. Black powder can, and practically everyone knows the ingredients and proportions, and that’s all I’m going to say about it, because it can be dangerous to make your own black powder. If you want to use black powder cartridges in your Sako Vixen, go right ahead; it’s your gun, not mine, but I don’t want to watch. Certain smokeless powders are popular and versatile. Hercules, for example, manufactures a dandy powder called Bullseye,

which is a favorite with handgun reloaders. Chances are you have some for use in your own handguns. If you overbought, you also have a good trade item. Check through your Speer or Lyman reloading manual, or whatever good reloading manual you have, and see which cali- bers use the same recommended powders as you are using to reload your rifles. If you have weapons chambered for 7.62 NATO, for instance, you might have a supply on hand of IMR 4064. If so, look through those pages and see what else it can be used for. In the case of IMR 4064, youll find it cropping up a lot, from .17 Remington all the way through 375 H & H

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294

Magnum. I personally don’t think you can buy enough powder, but make sure that you can use it yourself first.

Cleaning Supplies. You'll recall, back in the section dealing with firearms, that I

" recommended you buy at least enough cleaning supplies to last you the rest of your life. You'll also recall, from the chapter on shelter, that I recommended you pick a town where hunting is popular. If you picked such a town, and supplied yourself with more ‘cleaning gear than you'll need, you might find yourself the only one in your town in that particular position. Shooters have become used to droppimg into their neighborhood sporting goods store to pick up a small bottle of Hoppe’s No. 9 solyent, or a box of patches and a can of gun oil. They'll replace their can of WD-40 when it runs out. This stuff is available everywhere. Things change, especially prices and availability. There are no

guarantees that Hoppe’s No. 9 and WD-40 will always be available. Certainly not if Bad Times come for a year or so. Those same shooters who depend on the stores being open are going to cringe when they realize that they no longer have the means to clean up their pet shooting irons, and to protect them from rust. Oh, sure, they could cut up bed sheets for patches, and use 3-in-1 oil to prevent their pieces from rusting, and heat water to

boiling, pump those homemade patches through the bores,.and dry them like mad, but the spectre of rust will haunt them forever. If you have bore cleaner, gun oil, and patches available for trade, you'll get takers during Bad Times. Bet on it.

Liquor.

Good liquor is big business and an intemational commodity. Never mind what we export; let those other countries worry about that. We import Canadian whiskey, Scotch whiskey, English gin, Mexican tequila, French brandy, Italian vermouth, Irish liqueur, Puerto Rican rum, and a host of others. The

:

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295

domestic stuff might as well be foreign without the distilleries to make and bottle it, the warehouses to store and age it, and the transportation to ship it across the country, let alone the farmers ‘growing the grains and grapes, and shipping them off to be processed into good booze. Bad Times will dry this country up—insofar as the good stuff is concerned. We’re a nation of drinkers. No, not all of us drink, but most

_ of us do, if only on special occasions like a Buying our booze bottled in bond (say that fast) has become an accustomed thing for us, be questioned, something to be taken for

Yuletide wassail. three times real something not to granted. Let the

farmers stop farming, the trains and trucks stop rolling, and the distilleries shut down, and we are going to see scarcities in this area. It doesn’t matter how much Haig & Haig is sitting in warehouses at the port of New York, that scotch whiskey won’t be finding its way across the country to, say, Nevada. It doesn’t matter how much Korbel brandy is racked up in the San Joaquin Valley, it probably won’t be going to Montana. A few of us won’t mind a bit. A few more of us will be climbing the walls for any kind of drink. Most of us, I think, will miss it.

Enter the local bathtub bootleggers and the foothill ’stillers. These guys are a fact of life in the hill country of Tennessee, Kentucky, the Ozarks, a few other places. Not so much in other

sections of the country. There’ll be some World War Two vets who still remember how to make jungle juice, and some other serious folk will have recipes and good equipment. Most of the homemade stuff will be just a little dangerous on the average, and you know what averages are. Some of it won’t be fit for lighting fires. People are going to be dying from some of it. And none of the homemade booze will be as good as the quality liquor from the good old days before Bad Times. If you think I’m saying that liquor is a good trade item, you’re right. If you don’t drink, you should still consider laying in a supply soon, becauseI believe it’s going to increase in value no matter what happens. Especially if wage and price controls are announced.

Since

liquor will almost

certainly be controlled,

there’s only one way for the distillers to pass on the extra expenses to the consumer, and that’s by decreasing the quality

of the product. Buy liquor now and store it away.

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296

I wouldn’t buy cheap liquor like the supermarket brands.. Buy top-of-the-line brand names. It doesn’t cost that much more, and it’s much more valuable in the long run. Buy the basic

five: whiskey

(straight bourbon,

Canadian

blended, and

Scotch), vodka, gin, brandy, and rum. With these types, you can make practically any kind of drink you wish. If there are some . lifetime Martini drinkers in your town (they’re in every town), you might add some CinZano vermouth to go with the Gilbey’s gin. If you can afford it, add a few bottles of Galliano, Kahlua, Creme de Menthe, and other popular ingredients for drinks, but don’t go overboard. Stick with the basic five, get the best stuff. possible, and buy by the case. Put it down-cellar and protect it. It will appreciate for you at least at the rate of inflation, and much more than that during and after Bad Times. Depending on : _ how bad Bad Times are, some of these brands will no longer be made. Your stored liquor will then enter the realm of treasure.

Coffee.

They’ve got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil, Uganda, and other places outside this country. Coffee is grown and shipped to civilized and uncivilized countries all over the globe, but no ~ country buys or drinks as much of it as the United States of America.

It comes to us sealed in vacuum-packed cans, in jars,

in bags, and in beans. When Bad Times come, expect certain — imports—if not all imports—to dry up for a while. People are going to be running out of coffee. Americans don’t like to run

out of coffee. Buy your trade coffee in cans. They can’t be broken like bottles can, and they last longer, of course, than bulk coffee. Find out which brands are most popular in your area and stock up on them. Buy them by the case. Pay attention to the grind types. Go, ahead and buy your favorite grind, but be sure to include grinds that can be used on top of a wood stove or over a barbeque grill. I don’t think people will be using electric coffee makers for a while after the bell rings.

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297 Food.

You didn’t think I’d forgotten about Finagle and Murphy, did you? They might well decide that, even though you’ve moved to an agricultural community, Bad Times should descend on you in the dead of winter with not a crop in the ground and two weeks worth of food for everyone in town. Everyone but _ you and a few others who were prudent, that is. People tend to ' be more prudent in small towns, anyway, but hardly anyone has enough food to carry them an entire winter, much less a bad year. Is food a trade item? Hoo, boy! If you started your food storage program with the basic four foods—wheat, powdered milk, honey, and salt—then you have enough to provide yourself with bulk and calories and some basic nutrition, although eating will be almighty dull. If you’ve supplemented your storage with home-canned and dehydrated vegetables and fruits, and with pickles and tomato sauce and

pasta and cider and jerky and a smokehouse full of meat, then chances are good that you’ll enjoy eating up your stored food supply. You might not have enough left over for trade, but it ~would be an extremely good idea if you planned for that eventuality and made sure you did. When your neighbors are ~ hungry, you'll want to help them, believe me. It’s much better for yourself as well as for them if you have some extra food on hand. This is where your association can help you, too. This idea of a communal association does not originate with me, by the way, although I did think it up all by myself. The Mormons have been practicing it for generations. I can’t help it if they thought it up before I was born. Nobody’s perfect. Seeds are excellent trade items. Even the ones in paper packets you find in stores will usually last for about a year. If you buy them in cans packed for long-term storage, they’re a much

better—and

safer—investment,

however.

SI sells them in

cans of three different sizes, but you already know that if you’ve sent for their catalog. Those cans of seeds will last up to ten years. I have close to thirty cans myself. When Bad Times come, people who have never turned a spade of earth in a garden before, and who think that potatoes come from the

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produce department, are going to be trading for every seed they can get their hands on. You should be ready for them.

Toilet Paper.

So far, I’ve made two references to toilet paper by way of providing examples. You must have a theory by now that I think toilet paper is a good trade item. I don’t really think anyone would disagree with me. Come the big shortages, paper of all kinds will be disappearing for various reasons, but as toilet paper disappears from the shelves, paper of all kinds will be — used more and more for one particular purpose. There will come a time, I predict, when some people will trade a box of ammunition, or a ham, or an extra tool, for a roll of honest-to-

goodness, genuine, soft, non-crinkly toilet paper. That’s the advantage in buying it now for trade. There are some disadvantages to storing it. For one thing, it’s bulky. There’s just no way I know to compress it without running the risk of subjecting it to the elements. The other thing is, it’s fragile, bless it. It comes packed in clear plastic wrap inside of cardboard cases, but the stuff can still get wet. You have to keep it indoors out of the weather and off the floor in case of floods. And, as mentioned,

it’s bulky. You are going to have to live with that if you store toilet paper, and I warn you, you’d better store some, if only for your own use during Bad Times. Bring this matter up at your next association meeting and suggest using your communal garage/workshop to store the association’s communal toilet

paper.

Spare Parts And Consumer Items.

Try and get manuals for any kind of consumer goods, especially appliances which people depend on, like refrigerators, washers, and dryers. I mean repair manuals, not instruction manuals. People are going to be turning into do-it-yourselfers,

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and if you have a shelf full of repair manuals, and one of them happens to be the one your neighbor needs, that’s a trade item. _ Same with spare parts. If you’re a refrigerator repairman, you’re going to be very busy. That’s good. If you run out of spare parts during Bad Times, your business will be hurting. That’s bad. Stock up on spare parts you’ll be needing the most. This principle can be applied to almost anything. Consumer items which are mass-produced and sold at low * prices, especially throwaway items, are good for trade. I mean things

like

deodorant,

needles,

razor

blade

refills, nylons,

thread, batteries (in all sizes), light bulbs, anything you pick up on a that offer from

regular basis while shopping. Stock up on them. You’ll find you can use them during Bad Times, and someone might you something you need for a chance to take something your private stock.

_ Trade Goods For Defense.

Before I get into this category, I want to remind you that, when you barter for anything with anyone, you have the right to refuse service. Please keep that in mind, especially as you read this next section. There will be people who have never felt the need nor the inclination to arm themselves—until Bad Times come to leer at them, that is. These people will be rushing to the sporting goods stores, but all of them won’t be lucky enough to get something they can afford or can use well. In some cases, there won’t be

any firearms available for them to buy. If you can afford it, I urge you to set aside some firearms for trading purposes during Bad Times. This does not have to cost a lot of money, especially if you make sure that you buy in calibers that match your own working battery. People will be looking for 22 rifles and 12-gage shotguns, mostly, with a few opting for handguns for various reasons. If you have some set aside for trade, you can do business. Single-shot shotguns are some of the best bargains in shooting. You can almost always buy one for fifty dollars, and I saw

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one brand advertised for $39.95 last week. They do go up to. more than $75, but I don’t think it’s necessary to pay that much. What makes them bargains is that they work, and work well. They’re dependable, accurate, simple to operate and maintain, and they’re cheap. Let the supply of new guns run dry, and the value of your trade guns goes up. Pick up a few cheap shotguns. You can always sell them for at least what you paid for them, and usually more, even during “good” times. Don’t forget to buy ammunition for them while you’re at it. Add it to the price of the gun when you trade or sell it. Make sure your trade shotguns are either 12-gage or 20-gage, improved cylinder or modified if you can get it. Otherwise, you'll have to settle for full choke. When you buy shells, get #6 or #7% in high-base loads.

When you buy 22 rimfire rifles, you’ll have a wide field to choose from in the area between

fifty and a hundred dollars.

Most people prefer semi-automatic rifles when they buy 22s, and there are some good ones in this price range. The Ruger 10/22 and the Charter Arms AR-7 are good choices, as is the Remington Nylon 66, although all three of these rifles approach $100 in price, even when on sale. Mossberg and Marlin make good low-priced rifles in 22 rimfire, although they’re not as popular and sought-after as the ones I named. When you sell or trade your 22 rifles, let your buyer know that you might have a few boxes of ammo left for him after he shoots up the box you sold him with the gun. He’ll be back. Handguns have to be an exception to my statement of never stocking what you can’t use yourself. Most novices approach handgun shooting with the aim of purchasing a revolver chambered for .38 Special. There is seemingly no dissuading them from this course, no matter what kind of logic you lay out for them to the contrary. Be warned: if you want to sell handguns to novices at bell-ringing time, you’d better have some 38 Special revolvers ready for them. Actually, 357 Magnum is much to be preferred, and 38 Special ammo can be shot in them without difficulty, but a good 357 Magnum will cost you much more than a good 38 Special, which might defeat your purpose if you’re on a budget. Check your latest issue of Shotgun News

for used Colt Official Police Special and Smith & Wesson Model

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,

301

10 revolvers in good shape for around a hundred dollars. Several other sources sell Rossi 38 Special revolvers for about $85. The Rossi is made in Brazil and is actually a pretty good gun. It’s a handsome

piece, and might be your best bet for trade, since

you’re getting a brand-new weapon at a low price. Buy cases of 38 Special ammo from sources in Shotgun News (which pay

shipping) if you can. ‘In general, I have to stress at this point what I said at the ‘beginning of this chapter. Do buy trade goods, but only if you can afford them. If you can afford them, buy those items which you can use yourself. If you follow those simple rules, you can’t

lose, no matter what happens. |

Chapter Nine:

HOW BAD IS IT?

Good question. It’s possible that the bad times ahead won’t affect us much past a little belt-tightening and a few inconveniences to gripe about. On the other hand, they could be Bad Times

worldwide,

with 90% casualties in certain areas and the

end of our whole way of life. Or—let’s not dwell too much on this—it could even be worse than that. What we should do first is examine the possibilities and determine which ones are most

probable. _ And, for the umpteenth

time, we should never, ever forget

Finagle’s Law: if something can go wrong, it will go wrong, usually at the worst possible time. Economically, militarily, idealogically, agriculturally, morally, ecologically, and common-sense-ically, it seems that humanity in general has been helping that simple maxim come to pass for most of this century. Imagine a village built directly beneath a slope which is prone to avalanche. Now imagine the inhabitants of that village deliberately undermining that slope, not only larger and more thereby making the pending avalanche

‘devastating, but a virtual certainty. I think it surpasses all reason. If I lived in that village, I would get out. Let’s take a

doser look at what our own village has been doing. 303

304

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Economically, we’re sliding into a deep, dark hole. From an

:

average yearly rate of around 2% during the Eisenhower days, — inflation has blossomed into 14% plus during 1980, and it looks just as bad for 1981, perhaps worse. If you think this situation can go on indefinitely, perhaps you’d better think again. Of all — the possible scenarios leading to social disruption, economic — collapse is the one most likely to happen. Economic laws have been broken, ground up, pulverized, and scattered to the wind. There are those who

think, even now,

that economic laws can be broken with impunity, that money —

doesn’t have its own integrity, that it’s possible to have their cake and eat it, too. Surely a glance over the last ten years would dispel that opinion: 1971, when Nixon imposed his wage-price freeze; 1972 and 1973, when Nixon

devalued the dollar; 1974, when the width

of a razor blade separated us from a monetary disaster; from 1975 on, the spectacle of our largest cities going bankrupt and _

having to beg the Federal government for assistance; the last two years of the decade, when inflation was regularly clocked

|

by two digits, and gold hit $800 per ounce. And, from 1970 on, ~ the steadily increasing proliferation of warnings by people who are experts in their fields. For example, consider Isaac Asimov. Doctor of biochemistry, historian, scientist, writer, lecturer. A very intelligent, perceptive man, renowned

for his wit and warmth, honored, prolific,

respected. Back in the sixties I read one of his essays which said that everything we take for granted is going to disappear and be replaced by everything we think can’t happen here: deprivation, starvation, loss of essential freedoms. Cause? Overpopulation.

The good doctor couldn’t see any way of preventing the worst from happening, because population is out of control. He estimated that the first signs of social breakdown would appear—along with the first of the plagues and famines—during.

the early eighties. That essay bothered me when I read it, but I soon forgot about it because 1980 was a long way off—then. But other people started showing up with the same opinions. Too many other people, some of whom knew what they were

talking about.

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Harry Browne wrote a book called How You Can Profit From The Coming Devaluation. I read it in 1971. He said that Nixon would have to devalue the dollar, probably more than once, that it would hurt the economy, but that certain people who prepared for it would clean up: by opening Swiss bank accounts and buying Swiss francs before devaluation, and by buying Canadian and South African gold stocks and hanging on to them until the markets hit their highs as they were bound to ‘do when the dollar nosedived, and by buying gold coin and bullion as well as certain imports like Volkswagen and Datsun which would double in value after the devaluation. Wild-eyed, scary stuff like that. Hardly anyone, comparatively speaking, took his advice. So guess what? Nixon devaluated the dollar in ’72 and again in ’73. Holders of Swiss francs were able to sell them for many more dollars than they paid for them. Owners of South African and Canadian gold stocks who sold at the right time made 300% and 400% profits. People who bought gold were able to make killings when gold went from $75 an ounce to almost $200 (and you know what would have happened had those same people held on to their gold until the end of 1979). People who bought popular, low-priced imports like VW bugs and Datsun 240-Zs for $1,800 and $3,000 respectively suddenly owned cars worth $4,000 and $6,500, practically overnight. Remember the $1,800 Beetle?

Gary North predicted that Nixon would impose wage and price controls sometime in 1971. No one would publish his opinion until it was almost too late. He said that most people would welcome the controls-as a way to keep inflation down, “not recognizing that they would only build up the pressure and make things worse when controls were finally lifted. So in August of ’71, Nixon imposed wage and price controls; nearly everybody cheered (except a few senators who said he should have done it a year earlier), and, sure enough, things were worse than ever after controls were lifted. Asimov said that New York City’s economic disaster. presaged the sinking of the entire boat. I believe him. Browne thinks that there will be a financial collapse in this

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country and that it will affect the world in Sade ina very bad | way. I believe him. nation’s this of collapse total a be there’ll North thinks economy, preceded by wage and price controls of a kind that'll ~ make Nixon’s freeze look like a short walk on a warm day, that — the government will assume total control over every part of our © ‘ lives, and that our freedoms will disappear. I believe him. Mel Tappan said that after the collapse of the economy there’ll be widespread violence in and around major population centers, wholesale looting of police and military armories, pockets of anarchy and even civil war throughout the country, urban casualties approaching 90% in certain areas, and that this situa- — tion may prevail for six months to a year after the collapse. I don’t like it, but I can’t deny the logic. You can see the common denominator here: economic collapse. The economy ties everything and everyone together. _ When it goes, everything goes. And it’s going to go. That’s

probably the one thing in today’s world you can take to the © bank. Probability of that passed the 50% mark some years ago. ~ By 1982 the probability of total economic failure will be 95% plus. Notice the plus. Howard Ruff has described the national economy in a unique, clever, and spooky way. He compares it to a heroin addict. When unemployment reaches a certain point, the government revs up the presses and prints more money with nothing to back it. When the new money appears, there is a mad ‘rush to catch up with the prices which increased before the latest surge of new money: a boom. When the government eases

off and stops producing the new money, inflation eases off, too. And unemployment has leveled off for a while. But they have both leveled off at higher levels than before the last funny money cycle. So the addict experiences withdrawal symptoms (unemployment) and gives himself a shot (new doses of paper money with nothing to back it: inflation). Then, like magic, he feels better. His heart and lungs are thudding like a wood-burning locomotive (higher prices accompany the boom), but he feels generally good. Pretty soon, though, the euphoria passes, and here comes withdrawal again (recession).

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Each time, the withdrawal period is more severe, more painful. Each time, the shot has to be bigger, the fix more potent. Eventually—inevitably—the shot is too big. The addict ODs and dies. : .Gary

North

maintains

that, before we reach that point, the

President will impose wage and price controls. The reasons are spelled out in his book, How You Can Profit From The Coming Price Controls. Buy it and read it; it will be an education for you. North will lay out the reasons why these controls are

inevitable. He’ll show you what comes after controls, and that isn’t very pretty. Then he’ll show you how to profit from the ordeal. Since it isn’t my purpose to suggest ways for you to make a profit, I’ll skip those points. Besides, you aren’t ready. You have to be prepared to survive before you can prepare yourself to be rich. Read the book anyway. When the junkie starts kicking and choking and flopping, the — President will appear before the nation. Before more businesses

_and banks close their doors, before even more people are out of work, before the prices burst through the ceiling, someone has to take action. You know who. The President’s scapegoats could be anybody, from big business to the oil companies to the Arabs to international money speculators, to ordinary people like you and me. But I think that you can depend on this: he will not admit that it’s the _government’s fault for printing counterfeit money. So, with great reluctance, he is imposing “temporary” restraints on wages,

profits, prices, rents, interest, and dividends

(but not,

please note, on taxes). He hopes the American people will unite behind this effort, and show that spirit of self-sacrifice which has made this nation so great. Of course, he won’t remove those “temporary”’ controls. If he did, the people would be able to see that the depression has finally gotten underway. By leaving controls on, the President can drop a mask across the face of depression and speak out against those awful, self-seeking black marketeers. He’ll be a hero when he makes

this move,

at least at first.

This despite the fact that, with the loss of free enterprise signalled by imposition of wage and price controls, our other freedoms are as good as dead. Enter now the black market,

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which, as you probably know, is simply the real market which has been forced underground by governmental edict. Near the end, we’ll all be doing business with the black market; The government, despite its promises, either cannot or will not get its citizens what they want, while the black market is both willing and able. The people will disregard the laws and orders. They will want to go hunting where the ducks are. This will pose a problem to the government, because the people won’t be taking the government seriously enough. So the government will crack down. More controls. Harsher penalties. More coupons and ration books. That will only make the black market stronger by drawing more people to it. A certain point will be reached. That point will be the destruction of money. It has its own integrity, remember? Now it will refuse to function. Official (government-sanctioned) markets will shrink and be replaced by

unofficial (black) markets. People will use money less and less to buy goods and services, and use it more and more to pay taxes and interest. Meanwhile, those same people will barter on

the black: market to get those goods and services they need. Money, growing more worthless every day, will be in the process

of being destroyed,

and

the government,

which

will be

shoveling it out as fast as it can, will be getting it right back in return, in the form of taxes. As North points out, this process is known as. the government fouling its own nest. It can’t possibly continue to survive under those conditions. When money becomes worthless, who will work for it? This is the real meaning of.an economic collapse. This is the meat of the argument. This is the effect. This is the consequence. This is the chicken coming home to roost. It turns out that economic laws can’t be repealed after all. Money—which has its own integrity—has simply refused to function, and what, is the result? The result is that people will not work for money in its old form. If your next payroll check won’t buy anything, how much longer will you continue reporting for work, when you know that you’ll be working for nothing? When the payroll checks of everyone in the country are worthless, when they are scraps of paper unable to buy a cup of coffee, what happens?

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In the cases of longshoremen, the ships don’t get unloaded. In the cases of truck drivers, the goods don’t move. In the cases of computer programmers, telephone linemen, and microwave techs, the equipment for which they are responsible grinds to a disorderly halt. In the cases of postmen, the mail stops. In the cases of firemen, fires go unchecked. In the cases of policemen, looters go unstopped. Armories go unguarded. Murderers go unmolested. Banks may be the safest places in the country when that happens. There will be nothing in them worth anything. Not so in the cases of supermarkets, hardware and sporting goods stores, gas stations, bulk plants, and warehouses.

The average city can sustain itself with supplies on hand for between three and eight days. Under the conditions described immediately above, you can count on those supplies running out much sooner than that. At that point, what happens? That’s correct.. People begin leaving the cities in large numbers. Rather, people begin trying to leave the cities in large numbers. Ever been on a freeway during peak traffic hours? If you . have, you’ve noticed the peculiar phenomenon of all that fastmoving traffic slowing down and, within less than a minute, reduced to walking speed, and many times to a dead stop. That is because, during peak traffic hours, more vehicles are entering the freeway than are using the exit ramps. When all traffic lanes are full and vehicles continue to pour onto the freeway, traffic has to slow down, and, in too many instances, stop altogether.

So what happens when everyone in the city decides to leave? Right again: the freeway is suddenly the world’s largest parking lot. I’ll leave it to you to imagine what all those people are going to do then. When it happens, I don’t want to be anywhere near a major city. : Many of them will succeed in leaving the cities. The first ones out will be driving their vehicles, but the ones following them a few hours later will most likely be riding motorcycles or bicycles, which may be the only means of transportation able to get through those immense clogs of stalled cars. Later still, one hell of a lot of people will be on foot, choking the roads,

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stopping traffic, in some cases commandeering vehicles. If you think that all those people will be going to the outlying farms and ranches, to where the food supply comes from, then you are absolutely right. And if you think that when they start arriving at those close-in rural. communities, the local law enforcement people will not be answering their phones (assuming phones are still in operation), you’re right again. Bad times for the surrounding countryside, friends. As bad as it will be, it will be nothing to shout about, compared to what’s going to be happening back in the cities. Ninety percent urban casualties in some places won’t be merely as a result of violence done by looters, terrorists, and frightened people. Most of the casualties will be as a result of starvation, malnutrition,

accidents, disease brought on by the

sudden disappearance of medical supplies, trained medics, and . sanitation. There will also be the matter of fires gone uncontrolled by the absence of firemen. Contributing factors to uncontrolled fires will be the absence of proper water pressure, the sudden lack of electrical power, the lack of mobility in clogged city streets, and the bewildering proliferation of fires, both accidental and those set deliberately, which will far exceed the incidents which would have obtained back in normal times. You should also consider the large numbers of people suffering from exposure owing to lack of shelter as a result of the fires,

and a whole lot more. And finally, there is Finagle’s Law. The economy

could as

easily collapse in the dead of winter as it could in the heat of the summer. When people are hot, they go find shade. When they’re cold, they will do anything within reason to find warmth, and, depending on the situation, “reason” might extend to mugging warmly-dressed people, assaulting wellinsulated dwellings with heat sources, looting clothing stores, or by burning something. Meanwhile, what’s happened to all the armaments left behind in the sporting goods stores, in the police armories, in the National Guard

armories, on the streets, and in the alleys, the

results of desertions and casualties? I can hazard a guess that, right around the time the first panics hit the cities, large-scale

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311

raids will be mounted on police and National Guard armories. When that happens, there’ll be some ugly groups of civilians— some in uniform, some not—roaming around with the latest in weaponry, including automatic weapons, rocket launchers, mortars, and even armored equipment and flame throwers. And some of those groups are likely to be leaving the cities, too. Mel Tappan concluded that this type of situation, should it occur, will likely continue for six months to a year. I think that’s a very good estimate. Intensity of violence will probably diminish with time, but organization of survivors will probably increase,

too,

with

time. In other words, simple rioting with

great casualty rates will give way fairly quickly to planned strikes against carefully sought-out targets. In an atmosphere of such. abrupt, dizzying change, only the degree of danger remains constant. That is social disruption on a national scale. As I mentioned earlier, social disruption is most liable to be the result of a total economic collapse. There are other potential causes of serious social disruption, and every one of them is likely to happen. It’s just that economic failure will probably

happen first—and trigger the others. We’ll have a look at some of those other causes now.

Famine.

If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to read Howard Ruff’s Famine And Survival In America, you should do so as soon as you can. It will cover the points I’m about to sketch out for you, only in much greater detail. I have to give you this information to make a point: that in the foremost foodexporting nation in the world, famine is more than just a

possibility. . of usage The so-called Green Revolution came about through petroleum-based fertilizers and high-growth plant foods coupled

with huge expanses crop—one

food

of farmland.

item, like wheat,

The idea is to plant one corn,

soybeans—harvest

at

maturity, plow, plant, inject the soil with high-powered chemicals to jolt the grain through, harvest again, and squeeze as many harvests as possible out of any given season. The small,

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family-run, subsistence-type farms are disappearing, bought out or forced out by the big single-crop companies. Nowadays, a - farmer is liable to be a guy who lugs his briefcase aboard a Lear jet: Agribusiness, you know. The soil is being used up and is becoming worthless. I'll repeat that. The soil is being used up and is becoming worthless. That’s because of the hard, unnatural usage to which it’s been subjected since the end of World War Two. As you may have suspected, the chemicals being slopped into our farmlands, in addition to the plowing and other methods used, have been decreasing its usefulness as living, viable topsoil. There

is less farmland to farm every year. Urban and sub-

urban sprawl along with increased industrialization have preempted farmland under pressure of—you didn’t think I’d forget about this, did you?—overpopulation. The fact that there are simply too many of us is reducing the land which is supposed to feed us. Make sense? I don’t think so, either. By the way, any remarks I make in this context are my own; Howard Ruff does

not believe that overpopulation is a problem, nor does he think that the growth of business of any kind is necessarily harmful. I don’t mention this as a putdown of Howard, but since this is my book, I feel an obligation to tell you whenever I disagree with anyone to whom I’m referring you. There’s a rumor going around that this country is dependent on foreign sources of petroleum. For what it’s worth, I believe it. Not only are we dependent on foreign oil, we'll be in a big mess in just a short while unless we develop other sources.of — energy for which we now use petroleum. You may have heard

words to that effect elsewhere. The point being made is that, should our supply of imported oil be suddenly cut off, agribusiness will droop. Without the huge supplies of petroleum needed to feed it, the Green Revolution will be over. Not only are we the largest food-exporters, we’re also the largest oil importers. This isn’t coincidence. The two facts are definitely related. The world’s weather patterns are changing. You may have heard something about that, too. It’s getting colder (or warmer, depending on who you're listening to). Expert opinion ranges from __ it’s-just-a-temporary-shift-and-there’s-nothing-to-worry-: about, to we-are-entering-a-new-ice-age. In between the two extremes is an opinion which sounds logical and seems to be

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based on evidence: that for the past fifty years or so, we’ve experienced an unprecedented period of mild weather, and the temperature changes and new weather patterns mean that we are probably about to revert to the weather patterns which should be considered normal for this planet. If I had to choose, I'd pick that last opinion. The growing seasons we’ve come to take for granted may be a lot shorter in the near future. That takes care of the natural order of the weather. Now listen to why

the world

is getting hotter—and,

no, I’m not

kidding. Left to its own devices, the world’s weather patterns would return to normal. But, because of the immense concentrations

of pollutants which we’re pouring into the atmosphere, including huge amounts of carbon dioxide, we are gradually creating a greenhouse effect which will raise the average yearly temperature as much as 2 or 3 degrees Centigrade. In case you think that’s insignificant, be advised it’s enough to move the temperate zones toward the poles, increase the melting rate of the polar caps, and raise the level of the oceans within the next 20 to 50 years. In addition, the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil—especially coal—are causing acid rains which are polluting our soils and surface water at an alarming rate. So there you are. Take your pick. Things are changing, and not for the better. Don’t look for these weather changes to improve American food production. There’s a good reason why this country is a big food exporter. There are a lot of good reasons, but the one I want to bring up has to do with international relations. To make a long dissertation as short as possible, we can prevent wars by selling food to certain nations. Should we cut off food exports to those nations, they’d have to look elsewhere for food, and if they can’t buy it, they might take it by force. I don’t think it’s coincidence that Afghanistan’s oil and natural gas reserves have been developed in large measure by personnel from the U.S.S.R., and that Russia invaded when the Afghans showed a decided reluctance to accept Soviet puppets. The principle

applies equally to food. We could conceivably find ourselves in the position of selling grain to Russia and China and ignoring our friends in the interest of world peace, should a worldwide

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crop failure occur. That would be a hard choice to make; the choice between death from starvation and death from warfare is pretty grim. But before you get to feeling too sorry for those poor people overseas, consider that we might, as a nation, have to make a choice between starvation here at home and starvation in other lands, again in the name of world peace. Think about that one during the next cold snap. Or during the next oil embargo. Or during the next demonstration by farmers in Washington. Or during the latest weekly Mideast crisis. If and when the economy collapses, don’t look for foodstuffs moving from heartlands to cities by rail or truck. The trucks and trains, more than likely, will not be rolling. Don’t look for modern agribusiness to continue as usual for the same reasons. Without

movement

of chemicals,

fertilizers,

or fuel for the

equipment, agribusiness stops dead. Food does not get planted, _tended,

harvested,

processed,

shipped,

stored,

or distributed.

Given the enormous numbers of people who are dependent upon that food being planted, tended, harvested, processed, shipped, stored, and distributed constantly, what you should look for is, in a word, famine.

Medical Famine (Plagues). Same

principle

applies to the world of medicine.

Drugs,

serums, vaccines, antibiotics, laboratory equipment, diagnostic machines, surgical aids, sickroom facilities, doctors, and nurses—

all are dependent upon a high-tech society. When that society is disrupted by economic collapse, when the vehicles stop moving, when the power goes off, then those life-saving elements cannot

be supplied, repaired, refrigerated, produced, or—in the cases of medical personnel—protected. When that happens, given the multitudes of people crowded together on little parcels of real estate, the problem of overpopulation begins to take care of itself. Sanitation goes by the board. Finagle’s Law steps out of the shadows where it’s been all along. The flu comes to live with us, unadulterated by medicine. Old diseases which have been all but forgotten return. Cases of exposure and malnutrition skyrocket. In such an envi-

THE BAD TIMES PRIMER ronment,

an

epidemic

could

315 assume

the mantle

of—well,

a

plague. Pestilence. Strangers might be greeted with fear and force, for no other reason than they could be carrying some dread disease for which people have no protection.

Earthquakes. If you live in California, you have that pale, skinny old man as a constant companion. Especially if you live in Los Angeles or San Francisco, or anywhere else on the numerous fault lines

which lace the state. You know the old man I mean. You see him a lot in traffic. He crooked his finger at you during that last

narrow escape you had from that crazy driver who almost got you killed. You feel his presence in crowded elevators. Sometimes he’ll grin at you when you catch your reflection in a sheet of glass in one of those:high-rise office or apartment buildings. You might hear him whisper to you in the midst of a tremor of 5.4 on the Richter Scale: “Is today the day? Is this the Big One?” . Californians, the Big Earthquake could come at any time. You know that. Possibly tomorrow, probably during the next ten years. We’ll have to wait and see for ourselves the extent of the damage it will cause. Depending on its severity and other factors such as the day of the week or the time of day, casualties from the Big California Earthquake could run into the thousands, or the tens of thousands. Or the hundreds of thousands. Or, in the case of the one we all fear and the one none of

us thinks will happen, in the millions. That is the one where large chunks of the state, on which Los Angeles and San Francisco happen to be: sitting, break off and slide into the Pacific Ocean. The one where certain mountains rearrange themselves. The one where the ocean pulls back and lunges. The one which destroys property and kills people hundreds of miles from the epicenter, which deposits sea water inland. Far inland. An earthquake that big may never happen. Probably it won’t. I certainly hope it doesn’t. I hear Finagle and Murphy laughing right now.

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Those of you who are not Californians had better hope that the Big Earthquake is no great shakes. The nation literally can’t get along without California, economically speaking. And agriculturally speaking, too. The loss of the two major cities would probably send the nation’s economy into a tailspin. And the San Joaquin Valley is the major food-producing area in the country. There are no major fault lines in the San Joaquin Valley, and the subsurface. material on which it sits will probably see it safely through the worst earthquake the San Andreas

Fault is capable of stirring up. That’s the good news. The bad news is that refugees of all descriptions will be pouring into the valley from all over the state. The Valley’s economy will, at the very least, be severely disrupted. Food riots may well occur. Crime, vandalism, unlawful trespass will certainly rise past all | comprehension. It may be very difficult to continue farming as before, with all those people in the way. Also, if the earthquake is big enough and bad enough, there may be salt water standing in the Valley. That would be an extreme disaster, but the chances are very much against it. At least, I hope that’s the case.

Systems Breakdown.

The system is breaking down. The “‘system”’ is simply a word for the intricate, interconnected, interdependent structure on — which this nation—and the world—carries on from day to day. The system is breaking down. You see the evidence all around you in little ways. Our days are littered with those small crumbs of evidence. You say that repairmen care more about overtime than doing their jobs, and that the jobs, when done, are not done well? You say that the

telephone network is slowly losing its efficiency when’ the network itself is bigger—and supposedly better—than ever? You say that a good secretary is almost extinct? You say that the average job applicant can barely fill out the application? You say that most kids are subliterate when they finish school? You say that people don’t seem to know how to think anymore?

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Have you noticed that, when things get bad, the government

steps in to do something about it, and things get worse? Have you wondered how long it will take before the snowball _ grows large enough to shake the ground as it thunders downhill?

Some other people have wondered that, too, a few of them statisticians. The breaking down.

consensus

seems

to be that the system is

It took Rome a thousand years to fall. The last stages of the decline lasted something like four hundred years. Note that technology was almost nonexistent then. Technology is now so advanced, so complex, that no man can possibly keep abreast of new developments. I read somewhere that human knowledge doubles every seven years. Keep abreast? Forget it, and never mind understanding the old developments before they are obso- _ lete, to say nothing of extrapolating from available data and hooking cause to future effect, which is the only real recipe for effective planning. This, as you know, is the reason that most of

us are specialists. But take someone who must keep abreast on all developments, like a head of state... The system is breaking down. If you don’t believe me, take a ~ good look through your newspaper. Better yet, turn on your television set at any hour of the day. To any channel. I doubt if events will wait for the breakdown to complete itself.

Terrorism.

As

a nation,

we

weren’t

always

familiar with this word,

except in fiction or in news dispatches from other, less fortunate countries. We’re all too familiar with the word today. Terrorism is a living, breathing force that has touched every nation on Earth in one way or another. If you can say that we live in the Age of Terrorism, you also must say that we live in

the Age of Euphemism. Some

murderers,

you

see,

are

not

really

murderers,

assassins. Or, as is now becoming popular, executioners. Kidnappers and extortionists are called freedom fighters.

but

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The

makers

PRIMER

of atrocities have the high-sounding title of

governments-in-exile, or—I love this one—popular fronts. What used to be called lynch mobs are now called militant

students. Have things really gotten so bad that I feel that title appropriate? (Whenever I see mobs in the news, I have to remember Robert A. Heinlein’s classic formula to determine the intelligence quotient of a mob: take the average individual IQ and divide by the number of people. Depending on the size of the mob, you end up with the intelligence of something between a

drooling idiot and a maggot.) Up to the present time, terrorism has not made the impactin

America as it has in smaller, weaker countries. We’ve simply been too big, too strong, and too well off for terrorism to take root here. Until lately. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) is solidly established in this country, especially im California, most especially in southern California, although it is by no means restricted to that area. Add to that the fact that we are, have been, and will continue to be a prime target for terrorists of all kinds in addition to the PLO, who want to take

their respective messages to the most powerful nation in the world. Stir in the fact that it’s disgustingly easy for undesirables to enter this country, and to drop out of sight once here. Blend in the polarization which has steadily been occurring here between the races, ethnic groups, national origins, political beliefs, idealogical differences, sexes, and just about anything else you can think of. Add the bald fact that the system is breaking down. Bake this receipe in the heat of a tottering economy and imminent social disruption until it explodes. When the economy collapses, terrorism will still be here. Then is

when it will hurt. Moral Bankruptcy.

Can there be any doubt that this nation is morally bankrupt? Do I have to mention names like Nixon, Watergate, Wayne Hayes, Abscam, The People’s Church, Synanon,

Charles Man-

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son, Bert Lance, Billy Carter, or the Ku Klux Klan? Must I have

| to point out poor Kitty Genovese? I don’t think I want to, anyway. I’ll just state the obvious: this nation is morally bankrupt. Or perhaps just intellectually lazy. But isn’t that the same thing?

The Trends Of Totalitarianism.

Perhaps this moral bankruptcy of ours is the reason we have allowed our government to assume so much control over our lives. You have to go back a long way to spot the beginning of the trend, but it can be found. From pre-World War One days when the income tax was first imposed and the Federal Reserve was established, which gave government the wedge and the license to practice economic intervention, to the leaning tower of paper promises hanging over all our heads in 1980, the trend of this country since 1900 has been in the direction of totalitarianism: The structure of IRS itself, which lends legitimacy to the unspoken premise that government has a claim on the lives of , every man, woman, and child in the country; the premise that government is capable of owning people, instead of the other way around. The draft, which is a blatant statement that slavery and

involuntary servitude can and do exist in America, having nothing whatsoever to do with punishment for a crime. Antitrust,

which

places

the

whole

of private enterprise

directly under the control of government. FCC (Federal Communications Commission), which controls all forms of electronic communication,

and which is a violation

of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The

1964

Civil

Rights

Act,

which

states, in effect, that

“human” rights are more important than property rights. How many members of Congress, in 1964, declared that property rights are human rights? The rise of the most enormous bureaucratic machine in

ae

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e a

recorded history, whose Federal Register consistently circumvents Congress in making laws. The proliferation of Executive Orders, now numbering over

12,000, among which any present or future President with tyrannical ambitions can choose to give himself power heretofore unknown on this planet. History might well praise Richard Nixon as the man who did not invoke certain Executive Orders

.

when his administration was in crisis (which, for the record, is

like praising the skyjacker for not blowing up the aircraft). The oncoming spectre of total wage and price controls, which could sound the death knell for those freedoms we have remaining to us. How much longer can this go on? Until we are controlled in all areas by the government? When transportation, communication, business, finance, education, and housing are controlled?

But they . If our we were which is breather.

already are controlled. Didn’t you notice? government imposed censorship, then we’d know that living under an oppressive government rather than one merely repressive. So it looks like we still might have a ... Oh, you noticed what the courts are doing to

newsmen, did you? When

confiscation begins, we'll know. By then, however, it

may be too late. How do you prepare for hard times when the government confiscates your food supply? How do you keep tabs on each other when the government confiscates your CB radios? How do you keep tabs on the government, when the © government confiscates your police scanners and general coverage receivers? How do you defend yourself from anyone

(including the government), when the government confiscates your firearms?

Do you think that confiscation is just a bit too farfetched for serious consideration? Recap the major events in America during the last ten years, and picture yourself imagining them

happening, way back in 1970. i None of what I’ve mentioned so far is something that you can’t figure out for yourself. The evidences are plain; they are

all around us, every day. In 1900, government control was over the horizon, maybe a faint dark line way off there. In 1981, the -

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ceiling is low, visibility is limited, the clouds are dark and blotting out the sun. No cloudburst yet, but do you really expect it all to just blow away? It hasn’t been getting better. It’s only been getting worse. A little at a time, to be sure, and nothing that we haven’t been

able to live with by tightening our belts, complaining a little, and doing nothing. So far, they’ve made it stick. They’ve gotten away with it. How do you think the trends are going?

Hostilities, Nuclear And Otherwise.

It’s my conviction that, sometime before the end of this century, and probably during the 1980s, nuclear shots will be fired in anger. I have

my

reasons,

including the fact that, while we have

reduced our military spending since 1962 (when we enjoyed overwhelming nuclear and military superiority over the Soviet Union), the Russians have doubled theirs. They reached parity with us some time ago. At present, they enjoy superiority, and they still haven’t peaked (they'll start to peak in 1982). By way of substantiation, they have the most advanced civil

defense program in the world, while ours is dead. They have upgraded

their navy from a fleet of submarines to a modern

force designed to seize and hold control of the seas, a role that used to belong to us. We, on the other hand, have allowed our

Navy to go to seed. The Soviets possess the only new strategic bomber in the world, the Backfire, while we cancelled our B-1

project. Their hunter-killer satellites are in a stage of advanced development compared to ours. While their MiG-25 Foxbat is much cruder and heavier than our F-15 Eagle, it’s much faster and apparently enjoys a better spare parts situation than does

our Eagle, and thus they would probably be able to get more of their fighters into the air than we would. Their ground forces are larger than ours, and their armored units outnumber ours about five to one. That might not be significant, except for the fact that they are committed to the concept of Blitzkrieg, while ‘our NATO main battle plan consists of a series of planned

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retreats while attempting to cut their supply lines. (That is not the way

to defeat

someone

who’s bigger than you are—or

anyone else, for that matter.) . While the Soviet Union’s military machine will reach unprecedented power in 1982 or thereabouts, our own military force is bouncing off the bottom of the barrel. If ever there was a time when the Soviet high command would be inclined to take chances, that timeisnow. Those are some of the reasons for my conviction that we’ll shortly be involved in a nuclear war with them. It’s also my

conviction

that, in the event

of a full-scale,

no-holds-barred nuclear exchange between ourselves and the Soviets, no place in North America will offer safety. Yes, I’m aware of the books which say that, contrary to widespread public fears, many areas of the country will be free from fallout. I agree with their opinions. I just don’t trust events to proceed according to plan. Yes, I’ve seen the maps which show probable fallout patterns 24 hours after an enemy attack on our missile silos and SAC bases. I know as well as you do that those maps indicate some © areas of safety from both fallout and blast. Those maps are based on prevailing winds and weather patterns, as well as probable strikes against certain targets with certain types of nuclear weapons. I just don’t trust prevailing winds and weather

patterns to remain the same during and after a massive nuclear exchange. Yes, Pve read the reports which say that Soviet missiles and bombers are aimed at our missile pads and bomber bases, and - not at our cities. I feel compelled to point out that, by definition, twentieth century strategic bombing entails eliminating a hostile nation’s means of waging war, and those means include centers of government, industry, finance, agriculture, transportation, and communication, as well as military targets. Overkill is more than just a subject for discussion. It is a fact. Now that I’ve got all that said, let me point out something else to you: namely, that I didn’t say you were going to die © during a nuclear exchange no matter where you live in North America. I said that no place in North America is safe. There’s a distinct difference. I don’t want you to give up and settle down

teat sail te

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in Manhattan because the situation is hopeless; that would be a

mistake, because the situation is by no means hopeless. By the same token, I don’t want you to read those reports and books, check

out

those

maps,

move

to a “safe”

area,

and

assume

you've got it made. It isn’t that easy, either. For the best, most complete information on surviving a nuclear attack on this country, read Life After Doomsday, by Bruce D. Clayton, Ph.D. It will explode many of the myths you _have heard for years about nuclear warfare. It will also give you a lot of sound advice regarding surviving the effects of such a war, should it happen. It’s a must for any serious survivalist. ~ You do have a better chance of survival by staying away from strategic targets and paying attention to prevailing wind patterns. But please keep in mind that the bureaucrats, generals, © and technicians on the other side are just as prone to screwing up as their American counterparts, and perhaps even more so. Some of their shots could miss their targets and hit something else (oops). You could be living in a town of 2,500 population which is nowhere near any strategic or even tactical target and still be the recipient of a 10-megaton triple-decker surprise that was meant for Chicago. Are you aware that all our test launches have been from Vandenburg Air Force Base to Kwajalein? And that we have never launched a missile from one of our operational silos? It is possible that a high percentage of those missiles wouldn’t get out of the silos. And if that’s possible for us, it’s possible for the other side to be even more messed up. Of the missiles which do get away, I find it difficult to believe that they_would perform under the controlled conditions ofa test launch, and show the same results. As I said earlier, I don’t trust

the scenarios. Those things could land anywhere. I would be

more inclined to fear the Soviet bomber force, especially since our only air defense is provided by 25-year-old interceptors manned by the Air National Guard. Therefore, I would read Clayton’s book, take it very much to heart, and assume that the worst was going to happen very near my retreat. I would then take the steps necessary to survive that eventuality. That, I think, is the safest course. The probabilities of nuclear shots during the next few years are frighteningly high. Please don’t panic, but don’t be blasé

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about matters, either. You owe it to yourself to think seriously

about this, and to consider the possibility carefully when planning your survival. How bad is it? Perhaps worse than you thought. Hopeless? No. Definitely not. But I really would prefer to be standing somewhere else. Shall we get the hell out of this mine field, now?

Chapter Ten:

PRIORITIES

Long before you reached this chapter, your thoughts probably went something like this: “Good Lord, he’s telling me that everything in this book is of the utmost importance and should

have top priority. It’s an impossible task! How the hell can I get everything yesterday? How the hell can anybody>?” You know something? You’re right. When I was getting started with my survival preparations, I _ was following Mel Tappan’s survival column in Guns & Ammo magazine and learning that I needed guns and ammo—now; I needed needed

a good retreat—now; I needed food, I needed water, I radio equipment, I needed this, I needed that, and I

needed it all—now. I lost count of the times I threw up my hands and went stomping around the house fuming to myself and anybody else who happened to be within range. Didn’t he realize I wasn’t made of money? Didn’t he stop to think that everyone couldn’t afford to make those kinds of high-rolling purchases at the drop of a hat? Surely he didn’t think that only those who could afford it could survive. Was survival a rich man’s game? Because I rarely stay mad very long, I’d always cool down and think about it. It does cost a lot of money. And you do

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have to have it before you can spend it. And if you’re dead broke and have no income, you can’t spend anything at all. Actually, all he was doing was telling me what I needed; he left the means of getting it up to me. If I couldn’t afford to spend the necessary cash, whose fault was that? So, at that point, I’d usually seat myself at the kitchen table and calmly write down everything I needed, with estimated prices. When I’d reach a grand total, my entire body would pucker up. Twenty acres in the safest area possible, with water, just outside a small town: $150,000.

Development of that property, including access, fences, water pumps, holding tanks, power sources, home built to specifications for survival, outbuildings, sanitation facilities, furnishings,

inspection fees, building fees, and all the other sons-of-fees: $80,000. That’s cheap, and doing most of it myself. Wood stoves, hot water heaters of wood-burning and solar types, kerosene lamps, kerosene, stashed gasoline, gas refrigerator, methane digester, washing machine for emergencies: $6,000. : Vehicle for transportation and hauling, with winch, accessor_ les, spare parts, supplies, tools, and repair equipment: $20,000. Stored food supply for each family member for one year including seeds, grinders, food processing tools: $5,000. Complete survival battery including defense handguns, rifles, shotguns; working handguns, rifles, shotguns; extra magazines, spare parts, accessories, ammunition, cleaning gear, reloading equipment and components: $12,000. Radio and communications equipment: $1,400. Construction, land-working, and household gardening tools: $6,500. Books and classes: $5,000.

Trade goods: $2,500. Miscellaneous purchases: $2,500. Total:. $290,900.

I felt like giving up. I didn’t. You might feel like giving up yourself. Don’t. There are two things to consider if you don’t have the means

to provide yourself with the things listed above. The first one is

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what I had to decide for myself: you don’t have to go first cabin. It’s better if you do, but if you simply have no way to accomplish it, then lower your sights. There’s a way to do it and still survive. If you can’t afford enough of the best, you’ll have to settle for less. For example, you don’t have to buy twenty acres in the very best area. You could buy five or ten acres in an area with harsher climates and lower real estate values and _ spend between $3,000 and $15,000. That’s a long way from ’ $150,000. You’ve chopped the budget almost in half right there. You can shave other items, too, like buying basic foodstuffs and supplementing it with home-grown and -processed fruits, vegetables, meats, and herbs. You can scrounge for building materials and even tools and live like a hermit during the year or two it takes to build your own house. You can work in concert with others in buying necessary items such as tools and farm animals and ammunition in quantities for wholesale prices. You can dig your own well, build your own solar collectors, recycle your own wastes, and produce your own fuel. There are all kinds of ways to knock that horrible bottom-line figure down to size. The second thing to consider is this: even if you lower your

sights and make only those preparations which are within your means, you'll be better off by doing it in the long run. I venture to say that you’ll prosper. I don’t see how you can lose by becoming self-sufficient. The more you remove your life from the control of others, the more your life becomes truly yours. To put that another way: the more you depend on others, the

less you can depend on yourself, and the less of yourself you truly own. If you put your life into your hands, where it belongs, the remainder of your life won’t be liable to influence by undesirable outside events. Put yourself entirely into someone else’s hands, and they own you, to all intents and purposes. Wouldn’t you rather own yourself? Me, too.

Self-sufficiency means more than just buying guns and food for hard times. Self-sufficiency means changing your life in such a way as to insure that you will always be able to provide for yourself, by yourself. If that statement seems at odds with my oft-repeated declaration that you need friends and neighbors to survive, then perhaps I didn’t make my meaning clear enough in

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those earlier chapters. If that’s the case, I should do some explaining. Most Peopre tend ‘to misinterpret John Downe: s famous lines. I know you’ve seen them before; everyone has; but I like to read this piece now and then. It’s nice, and has a great ring to it, : even after centuries. No man is an Jland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part. of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by, the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends were or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me; because I am involved in Mankinde

...

Donne wasn’t saying that we’re all part of a hive or an anthill. He was talking about human beings, not bees, termites, ants, or wasps. No insect ever became lonely, went insane, or committed suicide. No insect ever knew love, courage, honor, pride, or

loyalty. These are human feelings, and require human relationships to be possible in any of us. Donne’s lines are not a statement of ownership, but a statement of appreciation. Professional soldiers know what I’m talking about. So do any members of any other kind of functioning team of high morale and purpose. The cardinal, unspoken rule in a unit of that nature can be stated thusly: We take care of our own. That’s — pride speaking, not collectivism. Human relationships, along with productive work, sex, art, and recreation, are sources of human pleasure. Those five are, in fact, the only sources of human pleasure. Self-sufficiency does not mean giving any of them up. Self-sufficiency means providing the wherewithal to enjoy them to the fullest extent possible. Good human relationships, in particular, encompass family, friends, and neighbors. And when I say that you need friends and neighbors to be truly self-sufficient, the understanding is implied that you are to deal with those friends and neighbors, not on a basis of dependency, but on a basis of trade. Value for value. I believe in that. é

That’s why I’m so concerned that you give as much to the earth

as you take out of it, and that you be kind to it, that you save

some of it as it has been and should be. Value-for-value relationships have a way of rewarding everyone concerned. Raping and

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looting have a way of punishing everyone concerned, even if all (ALL!) you’re raping and looting is the planet we live on. We’re all standing in the same mine field. That makes us all involved. I know how to get out and am doing so. But if I didn’t try to help you get out, it would diminish me a little. Besides, the fact that you’re reading this book makes you a survivalist, even if you don’t know it, and we take care of our own. At least, that’s the way it should be. Shall we get to work? We’re talking about priorities. Since you obviously can’t take care of all requirements at once (even the richest among us can’t do that), you’re faced with the problem of determining exactly what your priorities are and then taking appropriate action. Take stock at this point. Having already read this far, you know what you have that you need, and you know what you don’t have.

If you are shocked at what’s ahead and by what’s happening now, fine. Emotions can be good releases of tension. Just remember that emotions are not tools for thinking. Go ahead and get emotional, and then put the moment behind you so - that you can function with a clear head. Accept certain matters as fact: there is nothing you can do about the economic situation to change it, nothing you can do about the breakdown of the system, nothing you can do to improve international relations, nothing you can do to prevent a war should one appear imminent. Now accept this as fact: as long as you have the capacity to act, you have the capacity to survive. Kurt - Saxon has coined a phrase which is becoming part of our language. “Those who prepare to survive deserve to survive.” Thanks, Kurt.

Your number one priority, assuming that you’re just begin-

ning your survival preparations, is to get your loved ones on your side. I’m talking about immediate household, spouse and children if any. If your spouse is working actively against your plans, she’s working against the survival of your family. Move heaven and earth to convince her of this, and do whatever you

have to do to remedy the situation. If your spouse is already on your side, count yourself fortunate, and move on to the next

priority.

:

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Which is health. Your health and your family’s. See to it as soon as you can. This includes physical conditioning as well as regular medical checkups; if anyone has a condition requiring surgery or treatment, get it taken care of. This includes items all | the way down to ingrown toenails. or surgery, dental bridgework, need you If Visit the dentist. preventive maintenance of any kind, see to it. If it’s been a while since you’ve had your eyes checked, make an appoint- ment today. If you need glasses, get them. If you have only one pair of eters get spares. If you’re not in good physical condition now, vou with your doctor in getting you on a program to put you into shape.

If you’re already in good shape, congratulations. Get a clean bill of health from your doctor, anyway. Then go out and pursue a course of training designed to increase your strength, agility,

endurance, and speed. Look to your finances. If you’re in debt up to your earlobes, © you have to get out of debt as quickly as possible. That in itself will increase your spendable income, but you should also see about increasing it still more. As has become apparent, you'll need all the money you can get. : At this point—and certainly no later—decide if you are living in a safe place. If not, you have to find those areas which are most safe, following the guidelines in Chapter One. Narrow the possibilities and choices, go there, settle on one, make a deci-

sion, acquire property, and move. This is very important. Your retreat will be your most important decision, and the faster you. make it and move, the easier all the rest of your preparations will be. The longer you’re in your new area, the more you'll be accepted by the inhabitants, the more you can increase your contacts, the more you can accomplish toward becoming ‘selfsufficient, the more

time you'll have to learn a new trade and

new skills if they are needed—and the more time you'll have to practice them. All your survival preparations will be much easier » when you’re already in place. I can’t stress this point enough,

because it is vital. See to it, please. You can’t be truly self-sufficient unless you own the land

you’re living on, own the roof over your head, and own the

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- various means of raising food, providing an income, and producing power. That’s why renting is a last résort. But, since survival is your first concern, get into that safe area no matter what you _ have to do. Lease, don’t rent, and lease with an option to buy. That leaves you with a future. Get on as much land as you possible can. Not only will this

give you more options as to food and energy production, but it _ will allow you—and your neighbors—privacy. A bubbling vat of -sour mash in your garage is going to be detected by your neighbors nearby, but if you try that in a housing tract, they’re going to be lined up outside your gate like Carrie Nation: s fan club. $ It’s much better to buy open land outright and build a houke on it yourself than it is to make a down payment on a house in town. You'll spend a couple of years living in a tent, trailer, or other temporary shelter while your main dwelling is going up, but once it’s up, it’s all yours, and you’ll have more room to work. But this decision, as are all the others, is yours. You'll

have to decide what’s best for you. After your retreat, your next highest priority should be a means of defense. This does not mean a lug wrench under your front seat and a sheath knife on your belt. It means firearms and ammunition, the best you can afford, in quantities suitable to your family and situation. They’re your means of protecting what is yours, of hanging on to your property. Your friends and neighbors are going to be protecting you, but not because you might happen to be a conscientious objector. They’re going to be protecting their town, and if they’re protecting you in the process, it’s because you are “a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine,’”’ and you owe them more than just your thanks: You owe them your active participation. That also means, naturally, that you owe yourself and your family the same thing. If you can successfully defend your retreat from those people who think they’re robbing from the rich (you) and giving to the poor (them), then you are contributing to the

general welfare of the enclave. The concept of value-for-value includes your means of defense. You should have either a BM62, M1A, M-1 Garand, or HK91 to defend your retreat, plus as much ammunition as you can

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get. Then, and only then, provide yourself with handguns, shotguns, midrange carbines, hunting rifles, rimfires, and reload- — ing gear. When you buy a gun, don’t buy another one until — you’ve bought enough ammo for the one you already own. Then buy reloading gear and components. Then, if you can afford it, buy another gun and go through the same drill with the ammo, only this time you’ll have to buy reloading dies and components only, not the entire set of tools. It gets cheaper as you go that way. The next priority is food. Depending on the time of year, the first thing you should do is plant a garden. At the same time, start buying wheat for long-term storage. Pick up a grinding ~ mill, powdered milk, honey, salt. Buy or build a dehydrator and start drying some of the produce from your garden. Get canning equipment and begin canning or pickling some of the other produce from your garden. Learn to make jerky. Get a smoker or build a smokehouse. If you can, buy freeze- and air-dried foods to supplement your long-term food storage. So far, on a purely physical basis, you’ve provided yourself with your top three priorities: shelter, defense, and food. We'll continue listing priorities for physical items—things—in a moment, but here’s another top priority for you: _From the very start of your preparations, back when you were taking stock, you should have been gathering information. You’re doing exactly that right now, this second, as you read

these words. That’s good. Don’t stop.

;

\

Information is your highest priority, and you should gather

information from the time you first begin to make a survival decision right on up to the end of your life. This means learning: things, practical things, things you can use, things which will be —

of benefit to you. This means taking classes, buying and reading books, and turning your life into a continuous OJT. It is worth it. There has never been a time when it hasn’t been worth it, . and there never will be, either. Tools are your next priority. Begin gathering them and using them as soon as you can. You will find that this is a gradual process, that as you progress in your preparations, you’ll become aware of the need for certain implements to make your work easier—or possible. When the need becomes apparent, find

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a way to get that tool. Add it to your inventory and go on with your preparations. Make tool-gathering a natural, expanding process. Tools, of course, include your vehicle, your communications

_€quipment, and your mind. Your mind is the first, last, and best tool you have. The more you use it, the stronger and finer it _ becomes. Pumping new knowledge into it constantly will vastly improve your physical inventory of tools. Finally, it’s important that you become aware of, and keep always in the forefront of your thoughts, the fact that you must acquire these things in the order named as quickly. as possible. Failure to do so could catch you unprepared along with possibly 95% of other Americans. In that event, improvisation becomes necessary. Sometimes improvisation is fun. But we are A

not all Rube Goldbergs, and when the choice is as elemental as Improvise or Perish, there could be a lot of casualties. We’re all going to have to do some improvising during Bad Times. Let’s make sure we do as little of it as possible. The ways to save money over the course of your preparations are found throughout this book, beginning with Chapter One. I don’t think [’d care to add anything to those sections at this point, except to point out that in union there is strength. If you

can’t afford some of the most vital things, get together with -your neighbors and form an association, one which will be of -maximum

benefit

to all concerned.

In that way lies survival,

good human relationships, and a fine, strong Promontorie. It’s time to wrap this up. You’re already on your way, because you’re thinking about it. Remember that, if you’re on a budget, you can’t afford too many mistakes in this endeavor, so proceed with caution. Think. Gather your information, make your decisions, then act. Maybe we’ll be running into each other again. Where survivalists are concerned, it happens frequently.

Until that time, have fun, good luck—and here’s one last word: Hurry.

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THE BAD TIMES PRIMER 1933—MEL TAPPAN—1980

As this book was being prepared for printing in November of 1980, word came of the sudden and untimely death of Mel Tappan at his home in Rogue River, Oregon. There will never be another Mel. Born in Texas and educated at Stanford University in California, he became a teacher at Stanford, married Nancy, founded an insurance company and a brokerage house, and became a director of other companies. As if all that were not enough, he set about almost singlehandedly to warn Americans of the approaching convulsions, coined the term “‘survivalist,’’ and began a movement which has received national attention from all major media, and which is still building momentum. His credentials were impeccable. His methods were thorough, consistent, and the epitome of competence. His words emerged from a deep wellspring of wisdom. He was a strong guide through perilous times. He has affected the lives of many, and will change the lives of many more whenever and wherever his words are read and considered. The hand of Mel Tappan will reach far into the future. No one can begin to predict the extent of his influence, but it seems safe to say that he certainly won’t be forgotten. By those of us whose lives he touched, by those of us who will continue referring to his example as a standard of excellence, and by those of us who owe him a debt which can never be repaid, he’ll be remembered. Goodbye, Mel.

Photo Credits:

Except where otherwise noted, all photographs in this book were taken by Mark Zahner. Except where photo credits indicate otherwise, all photographs are copyright 1981 by Mark Zahner.

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