General Preparedness

At any time we could be plunged into a word were we are helpless. The chances of this happening grow less and less as we grow more prepared.

...

I think my cryptic warning needs some explanation.

The future is unpredictable, we can't tell what it holds. Sure some things we can see that are unavoidable and we can say that they will happen and they will. For example I could say that there will be turmoil in the Middle East and no one will bat an eyelash. But if I told someone that someone they knew was going to have a heart attack and the only way they could save them if they had a cell phone on them and knew CPR, then do you think that person would go and learn CPR? Most people wouldn't pay attention, because I'm not a doctor, people only tend to pay attention to warnings about heart attacks from doctors, and sometimes not even then.

We never know when we will need to preform CPR; chase down a runaway train, or guinea pig; or nail that zombie about to grab your buddy with your throwing knife. This is where you say 'But there are so many things that could happen, how can I prepare for them all?' Not to worry my friends, I'm not here to teach you CPR, how to tie a bowline, or even do jumping jacks, at least not today, anyways. I just want to outline three basic ideas that everyone needs to follow to be prepared for the random stuff that can happen.

These three ideas are mental, physical, and martial preparedness. These can be broken down even further into smaller groups. Mental is the first item on the list. Being prepared mentally is half knowing what to do and how to do it, and half having the guts to do it and not give up and go cry in the corner. Seeing as I've already set a patern of going back to my CPR example and using the word "prepared" every other sentence, why stop now? If you find your friend laying on the ground not breathing what would you do? Would you know that you need to check for blockage in his throat, and to support his neck (in case its broken) while doing so? Would you have the "guts" to start doing chest compressions knowing that it will break bones? Would you know... Okay you get the point.

But despite being extremely important, knowing and determination are only the first step on the path to survival. The next is being physically fit. You know that fat kid that you're friends with? When the zombies come he better hope he has a good hiding place because there's no way that he is going to outrun even the creepers. There really isn't much to say about this one. If you aren't fit then you have to rely a lot more on the other two parts of preparedness to get you through. If we go back once again to the CPR example then we can see where this would be a problem, in two ways. First you have to break bones to do chest compressions. This being said, you just have to be heavy enough and not necessarily strong. The other problem is that it is unlikely that you will revive someone by giving them CPR. (I think the statistic is about 1 in a hundred but I'm not sure.) This means that you have to preform CPR until help arrives, this could be hours.

Finally we have martial preparedness. This would include everything from a house built in a non-flood zone, to portable generators, to the clothes you're wearing right now. As you know, my family has a portable generator, what you don't know is that our house is built on a area that won't flood, I'm also wearing clothes. Sometimes it isn't enough to be physically and mentally prepared, sometimes you need a tool or other physical object to help. My CPR example is less potent here as you do not need any items to do it. I have four items that I like to always have on me: my cellphone, my wallet, a pocket knife, and a flashlight. I find that these can come in handy quite often in day to day life and are extremely usefully in survival situations. I recommend that people at least carry a knife around with them, I use mine daily and don't leave the house without it. It's become something people expect me to have and ask to borrow it often. My dad like knives as much as I do, in fact he has two on his key chain.

Other then knives there are other items that you want to have: canned food, spare batteries, radios, tents, sleeping bags, large-caliber weapons...  Also, never go on a camp out without rain gear, I swear the sky knows when you have it and when you don't.

Well I hope this helped. Now go out there and BE PREPARED. (I am suddenly reminded of a certain singing lion...)

Zombie Killing Technique #98:A brick and a belt or a shovel.

Zombie Setting

As I'm sure all of you know zombies vary from story to story. Some zombies can only be stopped by destroying their head, others don't care if they have a head or not. Some are corpses animated by magic, others are simply diseased people who have lost their minds. The only thing that seems universal to zombies is the desire to eat and/or brutally shred human flesh. Now I want my own sandbox zombie infested world that I can tinker with and write stories in. So after a bit of thought this is what settled on. (I have also decided to only tell you what most people in the US would know in this sandbox world. This lets me make stuff up on the go and lets me sneak in surprises.)

First, this is still Earth and not much has changed ecologically or geographically. For the most part the only countries dealing with zombies are Canada and Mexico. The US is sadly only a area and not a global power. Federal government has been eaten, and was in fact, the first thing targeted.

Zombies was created by a mad scientist around the end of 2009. After this monumental, but hidden, break-through he gathered an army of soldiers and like-minded people. During the Fall of 2010 he unleashed his his disease into the water system of a medium sized city of which I have yet to chose.

The zombies are not truly dead, but rather mindless drones of terror. They seek to consume human flesh for food and reproduce by biting. They were spread by the mad scientist to all over the US from which they started spreading zombism at an incredible rate.

I will likely link back to this post often and update it as I post stories in this setting. I also want to explain some of the reasons I chose some of the details. First, the is no magic. This is for a more realistic setting to draw the audience (you) into. Make it feel like this could be you counting your remaining ammo and food.

Next, for the most part the world is the same. Especially outside North America. The reason the zombies haven't been wiped out by a joint group of world powers such as the United Nations is because no one knows whats going on and they're too scared to find out. A good part of this the doings of the mad scientist who has his own personal army and who's motto is “Today the States, tomorrow the world.”

There is a Bad Guy. This give Heroes a chance to appear. This is important to stories. Heroes typically need some goal to step above and beyond the normal man, or woman. Because I put a central Bad Guy, who has lots of smaller Bad Guys I can create Heroes to do battle with them, and not just hordes of mindless zombies.

There is some hope of outside rescue. The other countries could get off their tails and do something like save some of the survivors or take on the mad scientist. I would like to say here that I have a good deal of respect for most of the countries that I'm talking about. But for the sake of the story they have to be frightened, for good reasons of course.

I also let things open for me to chose different elements. I can say “Well this town dealt with the first wave of zombies fairly well so they don't have as many problems.” can say that because I gave nothing away as to how the zombies spread other then biting, and even with that I didn't say with what kind of regularity the bite would cause the bitten to turn.

For the most part I just left my options open so I can make stuff up as I go, because that's what I'm best at.

Zombie killing technique #99: First find a narrow ally. Then take and slaughter one, two-headed cow. Take a long length of rope and suspend the cow in a way that will cause the cow to ram into a zombie triggering a trip wire. (Please note that two-headed cows should be plentiful after long term nuclear fallout. Also note that this zombie killing technique could be non-discriminating as to zombies and survivors alike.)

I seek forgiveness for the lack of updates. Life has been crazy and I've been lazy. Now that, that is out of the way, let us get to meat of this post.

Now most of you know that a record setting winter storm blanketed Canada and most of the Norther half of the US. As it happens I live in the Norther half of the US. We knew it was coming. With every news source, from radio and newspapers to our lovely time wasting websites, was warning of the horrendous danger that we were all in. The first day that we were suppose to get snow, I knew that I would have to be prepared for anything. So I took a shower.

No, I didn't go to the supermarket to stock up on bread, milk, and eggs like everyone else seems to feel a need to. No, I didn't panic and spread rumors of how we were all going to die and that 2012 was going to be a bit early all over the internet. I simply took a shower and get dressed in what most people would only wear as pajamas, insulated underwear pants and a t-shirt.

Now before you think that I wasn't prepared (if you haven't already), let me explain. My choice of clothing was carefully thought out. When I dress for cold weather I always use a layer that is light and close fitting, this isn't to provide insulation, it's to keep me dry. Our bodies produce liquids that will act as coolant and greatly reduce our resistance to cold weather. Or if I stop pretending that I know what I'm talking about: sweat makes us cold.

So now that I was dressed in a way that would allow me to get fully dressed without getting undressed first, what did I do? I did what any self-respecting teen would do, I plopped down in front of my laptop and waited for something to happen. Well we didn't get much snow.

After all the warnings and dire predictions it wasn't until the next day that I think we got much snow. The first day all we got was ice. Nice sticky, round, balls of the stuff. Reaching outside you could grab up hundreds of miniature frozen water marbles. After a little bit of marveling at the spectacle the sky was spitting at us and the wind whipping it around, I went back to my computer. Around 6 o'clock something happened. My grandma and grandpa called my mom.

Now it is important to the story that I give some quick background on my grandparents. Neither one of them are healthy, they both smoked for years and now are paying with their health for the habit they already spent hundreds of dollars on. As it is neither of them can so much as walk across their own yard in the best of conditions.

Now the nasty weather had taken out a power line near my grandparents and the line leading from the main line to their house, denieing them power in two places. They like most people had spent most of the day getting ready for the storm, non the less, it didn't take long for them to call us. With the roads near unpassable and incredibly dangerous, more ice pouring down, and who knew how many power lines and trees could be blocking us, my family's plan was clean. It was time to activate our Boy Scout Powers.

Me and my dad both got dressed for the weather. And me and dad never feel completely dressed without being loaded with survival gear in normal circumstances, as it was we loaded our pockets and belts with everything you could imagine. Then we loaded ourselves into the Secret Mobile Survival Shelter. Well maybe we didn't, but I had to say something cooler then our minivan, right?

Here's where I explain why going out in the worst storm of my life time wasn't a bad idea. Or, not. It wasn't safe, it wasn't something I will recommend to anyone, and it isn't something I want to repeat anytime soon. Now that I've gotten that disclaimer out of the way let us continue. It felt great.

Living on the edge of life, the horde of danger and panic held back by the shield of preparedness and shear luck. Helping people. Bringing them back to your shelter. Fighting off the brain sucking zombies with your trusty twelve gauge. Oops, wrong memory.

The roads were nasty, they were so covered in ice that we could only tell were the road led was a slightly flatter area, and occasionally, only by landmarks. This mattered less to my dad then it would to other drivers. Dad is from South Bend, where 3-5 inches of snow is “just a little bit,” not only that but he also practiced driving in bad conditions whenever he could. Even with my dad's driving skills the we still didn't go more then 20 miles an hour. On the whole trip, there and back, we saw less then 5 other vehicles, and we went along a major highway for a while. When we were close to our destination we started to stop and get out of the van to check for downed power lines with flashlights, luckily, we didn't find any across the road.

Once we got there it was only a matter of deciding what to do. It didn't take us long to decide to take them back to our house. We didn't know how long they would be without power and they couldn't do without it. We then loaded them some spare clothes and their dog into our van, checked on their neighbor, and took off back home. The whole adventure took about 3 hours total.

Once we got home we stashed my grandparents inside and went out to the garage to start up the generator, “just in case.” (Or in other words, beating Murphy with a stick.) This is where I think I learned the most important lesson. Generators need to be started about once every 3-4 months to keep them ready to start at a moment's notice. It took about 20 minutes of being in the freezing cold for my dad to get the bloody thing started, and in the end we didn't even need it.

After the first day it became a wait and see. Wait for the city to clear the roads, wait for the power at my grandparents to come back on, see if they had a bust water line, see that all our friends were OK. It took most of the week for things to settle back to normal. Of course I didn't think to check my school email until the end of the week. When I did I found that I was assigned homework to do while stuck at home. That made me happy.

Next post should come sooner and involve ZoMBiEs!

Zombie killing technique #100: Shrapnel. Doesn't matter how you make it because everything is better with flying chunks of metal.