libertybelle diaries

Building your own home reference library with books is a frequent recommendation within the online prepper/homesteading community. While it’s easy to criticize the federal government about many things, one thing I’ve found is the US government, being a vast bureaucracy, produces a lot of pamphlets, documents, fact sheets, etc., with useful information, that are available free. Along with acquiring books, I’ve been printing out, not only recipes, but other information that I think might be a useful addition to my home reference library.

Here’s a link to an EPA Emergency Disinfection of Drinking Water fact sheet: https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-11/documents/epa816f15003.pdf. Having the measurements of bleach per quantity of water to sanitize water is on this fact sheet and that might be handy to have in my prepper binder.

I’ve also printed out information on herbal remedies. Here’s information on pine needle tea from WebMD: What To Know About Pine Needle Tea. According to this article pine needle tea is packed full of vitamin C. The article lists some common pine trees, like the Eastern White Pine, as a common source for edible pine needles and that pine variety is plentiful in the eastern US. This was a resource that I think would be good to know about, considering how plentiful pine trees are where I live. Of course proper identification of any wild plant or tree you use as a food source requires learning how to actually properly identify trees. Its a skill you have to work at developing.

The WedMD article advises using an online tree identification source or a local cooperative extension expert for help with tree identification, however I think acquiring some field guides is a worthwhile addition to your home reference library. There are apps that will identify a plant or tree when you snap a photo of it, however having an actual book at your fingertips is a good back-up resource. Field guides are books designed to help you identify plants, animals, and the natural world around you and often are available in a pocket-size format that makes them easy to carry along when hiking or exploring outdoors. Most have a lot of color photographs or sketches to help with identification. Peterson Field Guides and National Audubon Society Field Guides are two popular types. Field guides are a bit pricey and I’ve not found a lot of used ones listed online that are in “very good” or “like new” condition, which is what I look for in used books. I ended up with some books in terrible condition in the past, that were listed as in “good” condition, so I skip the books listed as acceptable and good condition.

I’ve been cutting down on my news and social media viewing, because frankly, I find a lot of the content isn’t helpful in my life and so much of the stuff that circulates as “vital information” is really just hysterical drivel, clickbait or part of the continuous social media mass panic stream. It often feels like the worst stereotypical town gossips now reside online and have large followings on social media… No matter how absurd or outlandish the online rumors, there are hordes ready to pass them on. The political news and analysis is mostly drivel too, so I read some news articles, scan some headlines, then just get on with my day. I did start writing a blog post about social media mass panic drama, but it seemed way too negative and I didn’t post it. The bottom-line is if we lose ourselves worrying constantly or being consumed by fear-driven prepping activities, it’s not going to make us better able to cope with crisis situations, it’s going to lead to a lot of bad decisions and panic-driven responses.

On social media I saw a liberal lady still stuck in COVID masking hysteria recently and then I saw a prepper guy, who is always hyping doomsday stuff had a video about buying gas masks for the family. They were two sides of the same social media coin. Whatever – I am sick to death of the drama. Here’s the thing, even in the midst of war, soldiers still look for small moments of rest and relaxation – they take mental breaks, as well as read books, write letters home, play cards, etc. They don’t stay worked up 24/7, because it’s not good for them mentally. They also try to maintain small vestiges of normalcy in daily tasks, wherever they can, even if it’s only a cup of coffee in the morning. They don’t live their life worked up constantly, if they hope to survive.

Yes, I believe a larger war, beyond Ukraine is likely. There’s nothing I can do about that. Likewise, I believe serious global economic problems are in motion too, so here I agree with what most of the economic experts predict about serious global economic problems. Could an EMP attack happen? Yes, I believe it could. Would it be catastrophic? Yes, I believe it would be. Beyond taking the preparedness actions that I can afford, without incurring debt (because debt can sink you fast in economic hard times), continuing to stock up basics, learn as much as I can, and work on my health and fitness level, I can’t change any of the big things that might happen. Another thing I can do is guard against letting worrying about the future rob me of the present. Each day matters and if you let worrying about the future or agonizing over the past consume the present, well, you lose the present for living.

I don’t believe people who stay worked up usually fare well in real crisis situations. I watched videos a while back with people talking about their prepping, who were worked up over empty store shelves and they bought into the belief that the government is trying to starve them and yet, these same people kept talking about how much food and stuff they had stocked up. The reality is if you have 6 months or a year’s worth of food stocked up at home and you see some empty store shelves – it’s not a crisis in your life. I just google if there are sections of out of stock stuff in my store to see if there’s some shortage situation and I check other local stores and online to see if there’s any available there. I usually have a good amount stocked up anyway, so I wait until I can get more later. So far, I haven’t had to resort to making major substitutions, but that definitely is a possibility, if shortages worsen, as predicted.

For several years, I’ve been working at wasting less food, because I realized I was still buying fresh fruit and vegetables, plus cooking like our kids were still at home, when it was just my husband and me. Now, my husband is gone and I think about how much fresh produce I buy and how to preserve it, to avoid waste. If times get worse, we’ll all have to adapt and that’s why stocking up food and basics is so important, because we can try to assure that we have a level of food “insurance” to help see us through difficult times, as we work to figure out solutions to a crisis situation.

If severe shortages do occur, well, it’s going to take some calm and resolve to try to find things, figure out substitutions and learn how to more effectively network or barter – especially locally. If the internet’s down or cell phones, or there’s a fuel shortage, well, that could make things even harder. Building bridges of goodwill can be as vital as building up a massive personal stockpile. My Pop, who had a 10th grade education taught me that – he was always helping out people and when I asked him why he would say “Well it didn’t cost me much except a little time and everyone has a little time to spare.” I wrote about this back in 2013 in a blog post and I still believe my Pop’s brand of just offering a helping hand wherever he could is better than sitting around trying to plot how to convert my home into a fortress for a future crisis. It sure seems like some people already live stuck in a self-limiting bunker mentality, seeing ever-growing threats, while seeing less and less of the blessings and good things all around. I’d rather take the “risk” of talking to all kinds of people, not just “like-minded” people.

In a crisis a whole lot of people offering helping hands will be better than people holed up in their own fortresses distrusting everyone. I’m not dismissing the importance of self-defense or having to be careful about personal safety, especially in a crisis situation. What I’m saying is that if everyone is out only for themselves, then there won’t be enough people trying to help their community survive. It might take finding people with various skills and linking them up with other people with skill sets where they might be able to figure out various technical, mechanical, vital infrastructure stuff, etc. that will help the group survive. You definitely wouldn’t need everyone to become subsistence farmers, even though farming is a vital skill. Machinists and people with all sorts of other technical skills, medical skills, logistical skills, etc. would be vital in a major crisis too. And that’s why this idea of going it alone in a major crisis is such a bad one or wasting time figuring out who you’ll help and who you won’t help in a crisis (I actually saw social media prepper videos where that was a hot topic a year or so ago). Getting people to share skills and knowledge will be critical in a major crisis. People talking to each other can be vital for everyone’s survival, because sharing information can alert others to dangers or issues. Sharing some resources might be critical too, even if you are well-stocked, because you never know when you might need a helping hand too. Accidents and illness can strike any of us, even if we are well-prepared and have diligently stocked up food, water and supplies. People who will work together always are the most critical resource, I think.

Even with my medication shortage issues, so far it’s not a crisis situation. I can still communicate with my doctor easily and we’re discussing options as this goes. Of course, I’ve been doing some research to gather some information, in case it does become a crisis situation. In some places in the world the medications I have had access to, have not been available at all – that’s something I think about often when I think about how blessed we are in America. Heck, even having a year-round vitamin C source like pine trees at hand is a blessing and I am sure there are a multitude of other resources that abound around us outdoors, if we only take the time to learn about them.

Yesterday was a lovely sunny day here and I worked at transplanting some seedlings under grow lights inside to red Solo cups and getting them outside. I came inside feeling optimistic and grateful for a lovely afternoon. Something I want to get back to soon is starting a gratitude journal again, because when I’ve done that in the past, it helped me with working daily to focus on my attitude and practicing gratitude. I also need to work on being less judgmental, I know that. I will be writing fewer blog posts for a while, because I’m sick to death of the partisan political garbage and I’m equally sick of online drama, which is a reflection of American culture, both liberal and conservative, and I find this drama, not entertaining or informative, but a bit unsettling a good bit of the time.

One last resource recommendation, where I’ve been learning all sorts of things about early American life and culture, is a series called “Everyday Life in America.” It’s a 6 volume series by different historians, who tackle different time periods as America grew and changed. I have the first three books and am working my way through them. All sorts of common assumptions and beliefs we have about early American life are wrong and what keeps striking me over and over again, as I read more, is how people, even back then, depended on trade and various supplies from other places to survive. The idea of people being able to produce all of their own food and goods is a myth. Yes, being as self-reliant as possible is a good thing, but it’s important to remember that people, even back then, developed trade routes, built communities, established local government and also built a whole lot of churches. Often they had to turn to neighbors for help. People fare better in groups – that’s the truth. We really do need more people to commit to building One American Team again.

While we are awash in information on a daily basis, especially online, most of us lack knowledge on many very basic skills for survival without all the conveniences of modern life and even worse our society has a real scarcity of people who have acquired a degree of wisdom, which is the ability to make sound judgments based on core beliefs, knowledge, and experience. Strong groups always have core beliefs, which bind the members of the group together. It doesn’t necessarily have to be religious beliefs and values because many organizations, even some governments establish core values. The US Army has core values and I believe in those, because they coincide with my religious beliefs: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage. For me having guideposts in my life, makes me feel more grounded and peaceful.

On March 10th PBS had this report with President Biden hailing the strong economy under his economic plans: WATCH: Biden hails economic progress after U.S. added 311,000 jobs in February, but on March 8th the Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell reported: The Hill’s Morning Report — Fed chairman: Job losses ‘very likely’. I don’t trust anything coming out of Washington.

On Friday there was news of a bank collapse with Silicon Valley Bank in CA, which handles deposits and loans for thousands of tech start-ups. I had seen a news report that said this was the second largest bank failure in US history, but sure, according to President Biden, the US economy is doing great. Among even the mainstream media financial pundit types, who sell Biden’s talking points, the dreaded “R” word, recession, was being spoken out loud. We’re in for some rocky economic times, in fact, it’s already begun. Fear not though, because we can still do lots of things to improve ourselves and insure that we and our loved ones are taken care of, whatever bad things may come.

So many people I know have two ironclad beliefs that are dangerous fallacies. They believe the major systems for everyday life, like businesses focused in the just in time delivery of our supply chains, will always be there. They also believe that somewhere in our government there are “experts” who have plans to handle every emergency situation and will be ready to “save us” in a crisis. The more I’ve listened to the spin way of “problem-solving” in the past couple decades, where slogans substitute for actual planning, I seriously doubt the leaders we have in either party would handle a serious national crisis well and here’s the reality check – the #1 priority for the politicians in Washington is “continuity of government,” so they’re going to protect themselves and cling to their power, above all else. Our government bureaucracy is bloated with people from academia, who all think the same way, because the surest way out of a cushy government job is to be an independent thinker and challenge the status quo.

When it comes to total abdication of responsibility, both parties in Washington provide plenty of examples of leaders who are out to lunch or go on vacation in the midst of adversity. President Biden vacations even more than President Trump golfed and in a crisis there are plenty of leaders, on both sides, who put their own interests above the good of the people they are elected to represent. A lot of right-wingers are angry at Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg’s slow response to the toxic spill resulting from the train derailment in East Palestine, OH recently, but I will never forget Senator Ted Cruz taking his family on vacation to Mexico during the TX winter storm a couple years ago, that led to a widespread power outage. My youngest grandson, in Texas, was only a few months old. I would never vote for Buttigieg or Cruz, but heck, I have long lists of politicians, on both sides, that I have zero respect for.

I also have very little trust in any of these major systems anymore and that’s why I seriously rethought my emergency preparedness efforts in the past few years and keep focusing on learning more and reorganizing how I go about things. However, I’m also thinking about how on earth my community would react to a serious emergency and how prepared my neighbors are. You’d think since 2020, just about every sentient adult in America would realize how important it is to be prepared for unexpected emergency situations and have some basic emergency supplies stocked up.

If the economy starts tanking, a whole lot of people will face sudden, unexpected job loss, so having at least a few months of basic food and some emergency water would be two ways to relieve the stress of sudden job loss. Having emergency savings, so you have a buffer, while you figure things out, combined with some emergency food and water, could turn a family crisis into a manageable very bad situation. Buying yourself time to figure out more long-term solutions, while coping with an emergency, matters and will make a difference in how well you can survive a crisis. If from day one of a sudden job loss, you’re also facing having no emergency savings and no way to feed your family or keep a roof over your heads, your bad situation escalated into a serious family crisis.

Along with basic supplies, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about medication issues, because I’m diabetic and have already encountered some medication shortage situations. I have been doing some research on herbal and other dietary information. I’m trying to stick to long-term better health choices. Along with purchasing books on herbal medicine, I’ve been gathering other information found online and printing out information – some from medical sources, because I find the safe dosage and possible interaction with other medications and other conditions good to know. I doubt I can remember all these details, especially in an emergency situation, so I prefer paper copies.

Acquiring more information seems like an important resource to me and then turning that information into learning actual skills and knowledge is critical. I am working on planting more useful herbs and learning more about herbal remedies. I started a jar of homemade apple cider vinegar and have it fermenting. Apple cider vinegar may help lower blood sugar, but it’s not a miracle cure or a substitute for your meds. I like knowing pros and cons and potential problems, like this article I linked mentions the benefits of apple cider vinegar, but also the cons, like damage to tooth enamel, increased problems with acid reflux and warns about people with kidney disease, having problems processing the excess acid. Americans are notorious for latching onto fad remedies and cures and I’d imagine in a crisis situation that tendency would intensify. I remember some of the reports in previous disasters of bad and dangerous ideas that took hold and led to more problems. Apple cider vinegar has so many benefits – including having antifungal and antibacterial properties, so knowing how to make vinegar seems like a good thing to know – hence I watched some videos on the process and I purchased books on how to make vinegars and other fermented foods.

Moringa is also touted as having a multitude of nutritional and health benefits, including lowering blood sugar, so I also bought some moringa seeds a few months ago and am going to try growing some moringa trees. I had purchased moringa tea to try a few months ago too. I’ll keep you posted on how those seeds do. Moringa should be able to be grown in my 8b growing zone.

Many of my learning new skills are small projects and they’ve been fun. From a lifetime of needlework and crafting projects, I’m here to tell you “constructing” things and even recipes are a learning process. Often the directions I followed didn’t turn out like I hoped or I ran into some issues and decided to make some changes. Many, many times I ended up going through several “prototypes” until I produced a finished product I was happy with or came out with a dish that I liked. My food adventures are the stuff of family legend, with one of my kids long ago asking if a new dish was “a real recipe or one of my concoctions.” I lied and told him it was a real recipe, but actually I had just made it up and it was awful. That’s why learning more skills is not something to put off, just like buying supplies for emergency preparedness and not learning how to use them. You don’t want to be like me, standing there under pressure, reading the directions to a product I never used before. In my defense there have been times when something broke and I ran to the store to buy something to try to fix it and that necessitated standing there, in the midst of a mess, reading instructions. I learn best by doing things and mistakes and failures prod me to rethink things and try again.

I was not some spectacular soldier. I was a kid who signed up for an office job, but in my short time in the Army I learned a lot of important lessons that have stuck with me for life. The main one my husband taught me, when he explained to me it wasn’t about “me” it was about the team and that what I failed to do could cost my team members their lives. That lesson, developing a belief in selfless service, sinking in over time changed how I live my life. When I was in the Army I remember a field training exercise in the woods in Germany, where an evaluator came up to me and told me in that simulated exercise I would have been dead and he explained the mistakes I had made. This is how training in the Army is conducted – you train and train, to develop skills, so that on the battlefield, you don’t make all those mistakes and you develop muscle memory. All those trite sayings, like “practice makes perfect” contain pearls of wisdom. My late husband was very good at training soldiers and many of the skills I learned on how to better handle my tendency to worry too much, I learned from him.

The world-wide crises brewing now and the total lack of leadership (on both sides) in Washington are legitimate reasons to be very concerned. However, the most worrisome thing is the decline in American cultural values and the omnipresent sense of entitlement that pervades our culture. This goes way beyond just the “other side,” who you don’t agree with politically, it’s about how immersed most people are in celebrity garbage or “causes” they know next to nothing about. I’m sick to death of so many people being outraged about this, that and the other, egged on by their respective politicians, celebrities, news pundits and “trusted” online sources. The phrase that raises my hackles the most is when people agitate in the media or on social media, by stating , “it’s time for a conversation” on this, that or the other, when really they’re just flame-throwing or inciting people. The daytime TV show, The View, is all about “national conversations,” that pit Americans against each other. I felt like I was an alien living on a strange planet during the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard fiasco, because I didn’t watch any of the trial or follow any of the news and blather about it. None.

I’ve seen advice online about having a protected tablet (protected from EMPs) and how to store digital information that way, even if the grid went down, but since I am not tech-savvy, I prefer having books and paper copies. Most people, myself included, are used to just googling everything. I used to print out lots of recipes, but once Pinterest came along, mostly I go to my Pinterest pins and find recipes I pinned. I’ve got several folders of sewing and craft patterns printed out too. I’ve been working on organizing the recipes I had printed out long ago into a large binder. Then I want to print out more recipes from my Pinterest pins. My local library also has all sorts of free information and while it’s probably an antiquated thing now, but lacking a tech solution, you can always use a notebook or composition book and jot down notes you think might be useful. I’ve used index cards for years to jot down notes and quotes when I read and often the index cards double as bookmarks for me.

I also started printing out articles and various things I think might be useful information again. There are all sorts of directions, patterns, etc. online that are free and can be easily printed out, so you have a copy on hand. Even back in 2020, I found a free face mask pattern online, printed it out, and sewed a bunch of face masks (I get irritated every time I think about that – we were massively lied to by “the experts” about everything during that pandemic). In a serious shortage situation or emergency, having directions and patterns to make all sorts of things might be useful – for instance, patterns to sew washable feminine pads, how to make a sun oven, a brick oven or even a mud oven. If the power’s out for an extended period of time, then fuel becomes a precious commodity, so being able to capture the sun to cook might be useful. Sure, solar power units are great too and there are amazing sun ovens for sale, but the All-American sun oven is almost $500. The internet is awash in loads of free information and free patterns and directions. The time to think about that resource is before an emergency, because even in bad storms, the power is usually down and cell phone service can become sketchy.

It’s humbling to realize that most early Americans were illiterate and yet they managed to survive in some of the harshest situations, while we demand our climate-controlled homes and have luxuries that even the wealthiest people back then could not have imagined. We have the luxury of an overabundance of resources – both material and information. People who can locate and analyze useful information is the scarcest resource in America, I think. Perhaps a large part of it is we’ve become used to fast-paced skimming through so much trivial nonsense online and sharing it, that actually taking the time to read through more serious information feels burdensome to many people. Turning information into knowledge though takes a lot more than just having a well stocked “how-to” library – it takes practicing to develop skill sets. For me the public library has always been a treasured resource to learn more and inspire me to try new things. I have always collected books for my own home library too. I’m not some connoisseur of rare or fine books, because most of my books have been hand-me-downs or used books I acquired at yard sales, thrift stores or bought online.

I want to start organizing printed out information into binders. It might be a good idea to start printing out some of the free information you would find useful and start keeping some printed copies. Using binders has worked for me for decades. Above are some of my old needlework binders of patterns I printed out long ago and needlework magazines I saved. I literally have a needlework “library” – patterns galore, magazines, and books. We’re not going to talk about my hoard of needlework supplies

Organizing paperwork has always been a huge struggle for me, because I stack up paperwork in piles, boxes and baskets, then waste a lot of time searching for information when I need it. A few years ago I began working on organization, on a regular basis, with my food storage and it has helped me keep track of what I have, rotate through food more efficiently, cut down on waste and I have a much better understanding of my food inventory. So, I decided to use this binder approach for recipes and other useful information, where I have paper copies floating around.

Last year I did a major book reorganization effort and that has helped me with keeping track of my books, so I’m hoping this effort to store paper copies of useful information in binders will help me more easily locate this information, when I need it.

If I get really ambitious, I’ll tackle organizing my garage, which my youngest daughter has done several times for me. Somehow, gradually, I always start cluttering it up again. It’s at the OMG point again.

While reading One Second After, a fictional novel about an EMP attack taking down the US power grid, I kept thinking about a 2015 blog post I wrote, If we build it; we can fix it, which cuts to the chase on where the world is at right now (although we’ve been headed in this direction for many years now). I wrote:

“So, far we’ve got most of the best geopolitical systems analysts (world leaders, scholars, statesmen, soldiers) not working on finding ways to fix the multiple, simultaneous, sub-system failures that lead to a collapse of a civilization.  They study the various sub-set systems and do some disparate diagnostics, then shrug and say, that’s just how civilizations are – “they rise and they fall”. Some try to design quick-fix patches.  Some recoil in fear and are content to be passive spectators to the collapse and murmur, “It’s always been that way”.  Brilliant geopolitics experts, almost to a man, say “that’s the way it’s always been  and I have seen nothing in history to indicate  it can ever change.” Of course, if you accept it can’t change, very few people will even bother trying to change it.”

Thinking about systems… all kinds of systems… is something I’ve done for as long as I can remember. I try to figure out the parts, pull them apart in my mind, think about how they fit into the larger systems and identify critical structure vs. fluffy extras. and then identify problems, I also think a lot about the “what ifs” and thinking about what would happen, how on earth could we avoid calamity and how could we set about fixing the parts that are broken or failing. I ended that post with this observation:

“My son recently lamented to me that he doesn’t understand why some, way more experienced, software engineers he knows settle for creating sort of patches to fix problems, instead of trying to figure out what’s causing the problem to occur in the first place and fix that.  He asked why people are like that and I told him, that in my opinion, lots of people prefer to take the easiest road – believe me, growing up in PA, our pothole-patched roads attest to that.  Because throwing a patch on is easier than repairing the entire road.  And I should know, because my father built roads for a living.”

In a recent blog post, I mentioned the train derailment in East Palestine, OH situation and how the critical infrastructure problems in America are long-standing and yet decade after decade little is done to really fix the structural problems. Despite how much government money gets allocated, we just end up with “patches” to problems, lots of wasted tax dollars, zero accountability for fraud, waste and abuse of public monies and most of all we end up with catchy political sound bites and false narratives, deflecting blame, pointing fingers at the “other side” and enough hot air to keep millions of hot air balloons afloat indefinitely.

The scenario in One Second After is about such a massive catastrophic event of a major system failure that results in simultaneous sub-system failures and life as people know it ceases to exist, leaving them adrift and trying to figure out basic survival without all those major systems to rely on. The author put a lot of thought into exploring the “what ifs,” but it’s important to keep in mind his work is fiction, not prophecy. That’s the thing with all the “what ifs” we might get concerned about – they’re “what ifs” and some are more likely than others. For instance, I live in an area hit by hurricanes and bad thunderstorms that often spawn tornadoes, so that means those sort of events are a more likely “what if” in how I want to be prepared. That doesn’t mean a world-altering catastrophic event like an EMP attack or nuclear war can’t happen, it’s just in my daily life, most of the same emergency preparations for a hurricane would be the same things – basics – water, shelter, food, personal safety. Major emergencies almost always seem to put us back to thinking about the basics of survival.

I see a lot of online homesteaders and preppers, who seem to be running around in a million different directions, starting one major project after another, as the latest online conspiracy theory or fearmongering takes hold. They’re buying this list of stuff, then that list of stuff, then it’s going from a handful of raised beds to trying to plant acres and acquiring livestock right and left too. Many seem like they’re once and done type “experts” – they try something once or worse hear someone else online talking about a topic, then they adopt that person’s take and present it on their own social media platforms. Trying to troubleshoot for every imaginable doom and gloom scenario isn’t practical and even more than that it’s a scattershot approach that can wear us out physically, leave us financially bleeding out and worst of all emotional basket cases, if we try to embark on too many projects at one time.

Today is two years since my husband passed away and after a trip to the cemetery, I’m going to try to get this blog post done. He was forever reminding me KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid and he would use that “how do you eat an elephant?” line and remind me to slow down and work on one bite at a time. When I get worked up or energized about something – I’m ready to charge full-steam ahead, often biting off way more than I can chew, so over the years I’ve worked on trying to take smaller bites at a time.

The things that worked for the small community in this novel to survive, are what has worked in groups of people always – strong leadership, building trust within the community, and people working together. That’s not rocket science. They set-up workable systems with what resources they had and learned from their mistakes, but there were still huge costs. However, it goes back to the title of that novel – “one second after” is too late to prepare. You’d think since 9/11, 2008 crash, major weather emergencies and then the pandemic, that our federal government and every state and local government would have made emergency preparedness a top priority and have emergency food, water, medical supplies stockpiled.

Last summer the UN was predicting global hunger and famine to increase dramatically: Secretary-General Warns of Unprecedented Global Hunger Crisis, with 276 Million Facing Food Insecurity, Calling for Export Recovery, Debt Relief The thing most Americans don’t understand is that we’re not immune from these same catastrophes that befall the rest of the world. Hunger is increasing in the western world too – even here in America. Geopolitical, economic and civil systems are under increasing stress around the world. There are major climate and weather situations happening too, even solar issues beyond our planet. Here’s a January 13, 2023 article, As sun’s most active regions turn toward Earth, potential for violent solar activity builds:

“Extreme space weather can disrupt space technology, power grids and communication systems, including GPS navigation and aircraft passing over the North Pole.”

I don’t have a crystal ball and neither does anyone else, but the major systems upon which our modern civilization are built have become more and more stressed over the last 20 years and in the past few years, there’s plenty of information in the news and in various reports that should serve as the “fasten your seatbelt” light is on and turbulence is increasing. In my 2015 blog post I wrote that I don’t accept the belief that civilizational collapse is inevitable and I still don’t believe that:

“I refuse to accept that belief.   I believe that if we build it, we can always improve on the design and come up with better sub-systems to build a newer, better performing model.   If your best systems analysts don’t ever even really try to find the design flaws and fix them, but instead wander off, halfheartedly fixing, only bits and pieces of some of the sub-system design flaws, of course the system will continue to reach the point where these sub-systems start falling apart and down the chute into the dustbin of history goes all that work that went into it. In the process usually many, many people perish, because most of these sub-set failures happen in midair, resulting in spectacular crashes, although some do implode and burn slowly on the runway too, so to speak.  Cleaning up the wreckage from civilizational collapses can take centuries, sometimes those people that survive don’t even bother, they wander off into the wilderness.”

With all the marvelous inventions and discoveries at our fingertips, perhaps in the midst of having too much of everything we’ve lost sight of the things that really matter – how we care for our families, how we treat each other, and focusing on the basic things. The daily online partisan outrage theater doesn’t matter. All the Us vs. Them within our own country won’t help a single American in a crisis. All the conspiratorial murmurings that fuel social media traffic about the dreaded “evil ones,” – from the left ranting about “MAGA Republicans” to the right ranting about “the Woke” and “the Deep State,” won’t help a single American in need, especially in a crisis.

For us to survive will require a whole lot more “we” and less “me,me,me.” Changing hearts changes the world – that’s what I believe. Oh, and of course it sure would help if more and more Americans started thinking beyond the moment and started seriously stocking up some water, food and basic supplies, in case of an emergency situation. Here’s the US government emergency planning advice: https://www.ready.gov/plan, but I think this is totally inadequate to just have 3 days of water and food stored as a minimum or up to two weeks. There are all kinds of good prepping guides online. In 2020, I decided to go from having a few months worth of food to working on bulking up my emergency water, food and basic supplies and that is still an ongoing effort. I haven’t stopped and I continue to make changes and tweaks, looking toward finding ways to work toward some more sustainable options.

This last point is about a common sentiment I’ve heard expressed many times by people, who take emergency preparedness seriously, about people who haven’t lifted a finger to prepare for anything or even more frustrating dismiss preparedness as something doomsday crazies do. Many people who do prep have resentment toward non-preppers. A hundred years ago, preparedness was a critical part of everyday life for most people around the world, because survival depended on it. I know how frustrating it can be to read all sorts of news and reports, then try to convey to family or friends that certain preparedness efforts are important, only to get dismissed as being too much of a worrier or “there she goes with the crazy prepper talk again.” I just decided to ignore the comments and stay focused on doing what I think is right. Back during that bad freeze a few months ago, I saw the news report of the young woman in Buffalo, who froze to death stranded in her car. I just went ahead and ordered two cold weather sleeping bags for my two oldest granddaughters and some other supplies and had it delivered to their home in IN. I told my daughter to have them throw those sleeping bags in the trunks of their cars and put some HotHands hand warmers in their glove compartments. I also told her to urge them to keep some water and something to eat in their cars too. I had sent a Mr. Heater Buddy a couple months before that cold freeze.

In a major catastrophe, the thing is all the would have, could have, should have won’t matter. The people who didn’t prepare will be aware that they should have done more, but even people who did prepare will realize there were things they should have done more of too. All the partisan political crap and wanting to be right about this, that or the other won’t matter.

What will matter is how we work together to survive, because the reality is in major catastrophes body counts grow exponentially as resources dwindle, civil unrest increases and sanitation degrades – that’s the truth. While many of the scenarios in the One Second After novel seem like worst case scenario statistics, death tolls do mount if there are prolonged catastrophes and little or no relief efforts available. I like a YouTube prepper channel, The Provident Prepper a lot and I like their line – “be part of the solution.” Arguing with or being hostile toward people who don’t see things as you do won’t help anyone. America has an over abundance of angry flamethrowers and wrecking balls. All that “we need fighters” on the right is as destructive as the “tear it all down” on the left. America needs more builders – builders of stronger families, builders of stronger communities and most of all builders of faith, hope and love.

One thing that has kept the human race going, even in the worst of times, is hope. There are all sorts of clichés like “hope isn’t a strategy,” that push hope to the side and yet, I believe that faith, hope and love will help guide us through the darkest times, but we still have to be willing to make decisions, work hard and keep trying, even in the midst of failures and adversity.

Back in 2012, when I started this blog, my intention was to write about politics and cultural topics, but even in the first weeks of blogging I was writing posts about preparedness and the importance of learning to be more self-reliant. For as long as I can remember, I’ve believed in learning more skills and trying to become more self-reliant.

For every person in America who is making efforts to be more prepared, with stocking up water, food, basic supplies and trying to learn to be more self-reliant, it’s a safe bet there are literally thousands of Americans who have never given a moment’s thought to emergency preparedness or what they would do in case of a serious emergency or a prolonged crisis situation. They believe the government will take care of them. They have complete trust that the infrastructure and complex systems that make our modern lifestyle possible will always be there. They don’t even believe major breakdowns or a collapse of these complex systems is even a possibility. While I don’t want this to be doom and gloom, this isn’t going to be a rainbows and unicorns blog post.

Back in my teens I read George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984 and some other doomsday type novels like, Nevil Shute’s, On The Beach, which was about a nuclear attack. I also went through a period of reading survival type novels like, Alive, The Story of the Andes Survivors, about a rugby team from Uruguay, in 1972 that survived a plane crash in the Andes Mountains and survived in sub-zero temperatures. I’ve read spy novels and novels about international intrigue galore and I’ve often read novels that definitely aren’t something I would ever have picked out myself, but someone highly recommended it, so off I go reading it.

With all the talk about EMPs online lately, I decided to read William R. Forstchen’s 2009 novel, One Second After. The novel is about America’s electrical grid being taken out by an EMP attack triggered by nuclear missiles launched high above the earth’s atmosphere. I’m still waiting for my used copy of the Ted Koppel book, Lights Out, and had heard One Second After mentioned many times by preppers online, so I started this novel expecting not to like it. I didn’t really “like it,” because after the chaos of the past few years, I could actually envision some of this horrific stuff happening here – especially the civil breakdown, chaos and almost everyone being totally unprepared to even have the basics of food and water stocked up to last for a few weeks, let alone months or longer.

What I will say is I am glad I read this book and it’s given me a lot of crisis and preparedness things to think about that I hadn’t thought about before or thought about in the same way as this author did. Creating a culture of preparedness and self-reliance really is a national security imperative, but our government gives wide-berth to encouraging citizens to being able to manage on their own or to be prepared. The culture we actually have is one of self-indulgence and foolish, useless people (celebrities and “influencers”) being idolized. If you weren’t sure about how our officials would mishandle a crisis, just look back to America in 2020, while their media friends spun up non-stop drama and pitting Americans against each other.

The title of the book is the most important message, because “one second after” is too late to prepare and in this fictional story all of America is thrown back into a life without electricity and a total collapse of the modern transportation and supply chains that make our modern lifestyle even possible. That total collapse creates a total communications breakdown too and people are literally clueless what is going on even a hundred miles away, let alone in Washington or the rest of the country. Rumors carried by “refugees” fleeing cities, trying to get back home, or simply stuck due to their cars no longer being operable when the EMP takes out their vehicles electronics system, are the only “information” filtering in from the outside world at first.

The novel was filled with plenty of horrific situations, but most of the characters felt like the types of people you’d find in a small, Southern college town, located in the midst of a rural area, especially the main character, John Matherson, a military history professor and retired Army officer. The author, a military historian, included a lot of historical information and statistics that sounded to me like information from military and government reports, delivered by main characters in the novel talking to each other in town council meetings and conversations between other community leaders. Tom Clancy and many other writers of spy novels and military-themed novels used this same way of including historical and technical information in the plot via characters talking to each other. The town doctor’s morning reports at the town leaders’ meetings in One Second After often sound like he’s reading the “worst case” estimates from a lot of government reports on various dire health crisis situations.

There’s a line, as the story is over two months into this crisis, that sums it all up, as Matherson’s thinking about the situation for his own family, which includes his young daughter, who has type 1 diabetes and a teenage daughter:

“Food, bulk food, just a fifty-pound bag of rice or flour, shoes, batteries, an additional test kit for Jennifer, damn it, even birth control for Elizabeth, dog food, a water filter, so they didn’t have to boil water they now pulled out of the swamp green pool… I should have had those on hand.” (pg. 367)

That said, while fiction is written to keep readers turning the pages, I came away thinking about all sorts of preparedness aspects I hadn’t given much consideration, but also hopeful that since this fictional novel reportedly generated a lot of interest at the Pentagon and in Congress back in 2009, that some strides have been made to harden some of America’s most critical infrastructure from the threat of an EMP attack. My trust with anything concerning our federal government is very shaky though and there are still so many simple things I can do to become more self-reliant and more resilient, so that’s where I want to focus my energies.

One of the interesting parts with the plot in this novel is that people quickly begin to realize they’re on their own and Washington isn’t coming to help. With all the lines of communication down, people have no real idea what is really going on and the multitude of serious problems they find themselves facing daily becomes more critical than what’s happening in Washington. Basic survival becomes the overriding concern, as problems deepen and multiply and death tolls rise. It’s also painfully obvious that almost every character in this novel, even the main ones were not remotely prepared on a personal or professional level for a serious national crisis striking America. The only characters who sound like they were prepared to survive are ones described as family/farmer clans, who live out in the mountains and survivalist types off in the woods, whom the town’s leaders refer to being people they need to approach for help to learn skills to survive.

The small college becomes a hive of activity and innovation to get some older technology functioning, a militia formed for the common defense and even a group of students, who were majoring in outdoor education and biology, referred to as the “granola crew” before the crisis, become vital at ramping up their foraging efforts to boost the community food supply.

The theme of civil breakdown and maintaining basic law and order plays a large role in the plot. A recurring part of the rumors reaching this town is about violent gangs and crazy end time cults taking hold in areas around the country. Gauging by the craziness I see online with wild conspiracy theories spreading like wildfire that take hold among America’s most politically online polarized sides (both left and right wing) this part of the plot seemed totally plausible to me.

There are other books in this series that continue the story in One Second After, but I’m going to read some other happy ending novels for a bit. I’m excited to start my spring gardening effort and some other projects. Rather than get scared or alarmed, I tried to assess situations and information in this novel and think about whether it’s realistic or reliable with doing a bit more reading on these topics.

The town’s doctor talked about making a mixture of sugar, salt and sterile water to give to patients with depleted electrolytes and this reminded me of a drink called switchel, that I read about in a pioneer novel long ago. It’s bits of information like this salt, sugar, water mixture and remembering switchel, that made a connection in my mind of, “hey, this might be good to know too.” Sometimes situations in novels seem totally implausible or I remember something else I read elsewhere that offers an easier or more realistic way to deal with a problem, but thinking about different ideas is always a good thing. That’s my main takeaway from this novel – look for useful things to learn and consider but don’t get scared or get in a panic about the possibility of an EMP event. Just take practical steps, as you have time and can afford, to be better prepared, especially with basic supplies required for everyday survival.