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Questions to assist in creating a working inventory of mind, body, and equipment for living in dangerous or uncertain times
I have been reading the excellent book, Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood, by Barbara Demick, and thinking about other places like Ukraine, Egypt, Venezuela, Syria, Argentina, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Japan, Chile, Haiti, France, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Russia, Libya, Israel, Liberia, Yemen, Mexico, and my home state of Texas. This has caused the paranoid part of me, a part that is apparently immune to normalcy bias, to consider how one might spend some spare money and time, apart from buying sovereign bonds and attending DSK's quarterly sex parties, to prepare for TEOTWAWKI as experienced by the people in the aforementioned nations. What follows is not a shopping list, but rather a list of questions to assist in creating a working inventory of mind, body, and equipment for living in dangerous or uncertain times. These are mostly things one would want to get squared away while one has time for consideration, before one's life, or another's life, depends on it.
Mind
Whom do I love?
What do I love?
What do I have to live for?
What am I willing to die for?
What are my mental assets?
What are my mental liabilities?
What is my single biggest knowledge gap?
What are the top three habits that make up my character?
Whom can I really trust?
Who are my mortal enemies? Why? What can I do about it?
What skills do I have to earn a living?
What special tools do these skills require?
Do I know how to beg...effectively?
Do I know how to barter...effectively?
How good of a liar am I...really?
Do I know how to use a compass and map?
What is the highest point in my county?
Do I know how to make a fire...without making much smoke?
Do I know how to hunt, fish, butcher, and prepare meat?
Do I know how to gather, grow, store, and prepare food?
Do I know how to change a tire, swap a battery, and jump-start a vehicle?
Do I know how to sail a boat?
Do I know how to use a two-way radio that is not a cell phone?
When and where am I safe to be in condition white?
What is my reactionary gap at day and at night?
How do I respond to a reset of my OODA Loop?
How can I reset someone else's OODA Loop, and how much time does that give me?
What does it feel like to get punched in the face, and how does it affect me?
Do I really know how to defend myself with a knife? For example, where are the three primary arterial targets?
Do I really know how to use my rifle? For example, can I hit a man twice in the chest at two meters, in less than 1.5 seconds, while moving? What about once in the chest, at 250 meters, with my first shot, and while I am sitting on the ground?
Do I know CPR?
Do I know how to make and apply a pressure bandage?
Do I know how to treat a sucking chest wound?
Do I know how to apply a tourniquet?
Do family, friends, and I know our neighborhood, out-of-town, and out-of-state rally points?
What is the first and last name of my twenty closest neighbors (geographically)?
What is the name and cell phone number of my county sheriff?
What is the name of the commander of my local militia?
What exactly do I do if I see the flash of light from a nuclear device?
Do I know the location of several local bomb and fallout shelters?
Body
How well, relative to others, am I able to see and hear, with or without aid?
Am I able to run for my life for more than a minute?
Do I have the strength to manage my own body weight? For example, can I pull myself up over a six-foot wall?
Am I able to control my appetites, or do my appetites control me?
Am I chemically dependent?
Am I fit enough to perform sexually?
Am I able to swim 500+ meters?
Am I able to fight off everyday infection and illness, and to heal my own minor wounds?
Am I physically able to defend myself without a weapon?
Am I physically able to repeatedly manipulate and engage my pistol and rifle?
Equipment
Do I have multiple pairs of Rx glasses and hearing aids if needed?
Do I have a good light and spare batteries or fuel?
Do I have a good pair of shoes that I can put on and walk to the next town without blisters?
Do I have warm and durable outdoor clothing in muted colors?
Is my vehicle in good condition with a spare tire, tools, water, siphon, fuel container, and flares?
Do I have a bicycle, boat, aircraft, or animal (with appropriate kit) that will carry me, and my gear, hundreds of miles?
Is my dog obedient and does he or she warn me of danger?
Do I have portable, widely recognized, and durable assets such as gold coins?
Do I have a reliable and portable method to obtain clean drinking water?
Do I have a good compass and appropriate maps?
Do I have some sort of telescopic magnification?
Do I have a first aid kit?
Do I have a two-way radio that is not a cell phone?
Do I have a knife that is high quality and a small sharpening stone?
Do I have a sidearm, ammunition, gun belt, holster, spare magazines, and magazine carriers?
Do I have a rifle, ammunition, sling, spare magazines, magazine carriers, spare firing pin, and range card?
Do I have body armor and a kevlar helmet? Or will I be relying on bread?
Do I have a "spare" set of identification?
Do I have a mask, balaclava, or disguise?
Do I have at least a month's cache of food?
Do I have ammunition cached?
Do I have books cached?
There are many more, I am sure, but I hope this at least spurs a lively discussion.
Peace!
- advertisements -
Slightly on topic. This is a physician with a diet i which all calories are consumed in a 5 hour period. Keeps insulin levelslow and helps with hunger.
As an MD I think this is potentiallt very good. He claims 1 pound per week weight loss. You can eat whatever you want in the 5 hours....that's it...no other rules though there is a free ebook that gets into the dietary science.
I have found it to be NOT HARD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHQbg4xH9lw
called FAST 5 plan or something like that....
It's Lent, all you Christians. Get yourself a taste of some deprivation!
I am Chumbawamba.
Just make sure to keep one in chamber for self after all is done. Or in pocket.
Not sure why all the downvotes. Would you rather get captured to get burned alive or take your own life with your last round? Sometimes you might get put into a no win scenario, and you might be glad to have options.
doomed
You neglected to include Palestine in your list, HH. Yugoslavians have nothing on them.
-Chumblez.
Yes, Palestine is an obvious oversight on my part.
No ill intention.
I am sure that there are other places, too, with Ireland being the closest to my own heart.
< prepared
< uncivilized
Which word best fills in the blank:
When civilization ends, only the (blank) will survive.
determined
Cockroaches.
Hmmm...if that's the case, maybe getting hooked up with Dr. Bambi Berenbaum is the savvy survival play.
Now that's a relief.