The Solitary Man’s Refuge Read online

  His female prepper buddy, Janice, had also been duly impressed and more so after she had seen Don interacting with the various trades’ service people in the area. He smiled to himself as he exited the car, about the last time he and Janice had been in the store a week ago.

  Janice spotted a wheelbarrow in the display rack out in front of the store and told Don they might be able to get it for less because it appeared to be a bit rusted and used as if the store had maybe borrowed it at one time. Don told her go for it, and if the price was right he would buy it because he really needed one and then proceeded to go look at the Roto tillers on display.

  A few minutes after Janice had left, she returned with an employee who looked at the wheelbarrow and agreed a discount was warranted and went to find a store manager. After a moment or two of dickering with Don, the Manager said he could have it for half price and to pull his truck up to the curb and they would load the now $50.00 industrial strength wheelbarrow for him. Don went to move the truck from the far end of the parking lot and true to her good benevolent nature, Janice snuck back in the store and paid for it. When he pulled to the curb, she had presented the receipt to him with a big grin saying, “Happy bug-out and garden building in lieu of a more traditional housewarming gift.”

  Don was very pleased with her gift and after he thanked her generosity, they both laughed at how she was so good at finding good deals and getting folks to help her.

  Between the two of them augmenting each other’s preps over the years they had quite a diverse assortment of needed, as well as possibly superfluous, items.

  What can be a source of dispute is not whether we need to be prepared, but how to prepare and what we need to prepare for. People need to understand that they must be ready to care for themselves and that it’s not the goverments’ job to save them, nor is the government capable of doing so if it totally was their responsibility. In that, they were in total agreement and tried to influence others to prepare as well.

  2

  Fair Warnings

  Don read the world news daily; you might say almost religiously. He was constantly scanning relevant sites on the internet and then exchanged ideas and chats with his prepper buddies on Twitter or on YouTube. The latest topic for today was the screwy, but very real notion that DHS was profiling Preppers as some kind of potential terrorists.

  “Things have become so messed up that DHS does public service announcements saying that you should have 72 hours to 7 days of supplies on hand in case of disaster, but then turns around and tells law enforcement that preparedness is a sign of potential domestic terrorism. I’m a little sick of the government and the media bunching preppers in with domestic terrorists, just because I have a Bible, a gun, a garden, and some food to feed my family with if a natural or manmade disaster happens. Don mused, wondering if he should try to disguise some of his prep gathering efforts and shrugged it off.

  Don, as a Prepper, just wanted to create some sort of stable microenvironment to survive after a disaster and be able to take care of himself and others without outside help. He had included some extra food stores and things to try to take care of others in his community too, but any future expense in that direction sorely vexed him as to what he was willing to or could afford to purchase.

  He had a plan, however, to try and help some of the unprepared, which is more than most folks had, preppers included. He had given it a lot of thought and discussion and it remained in back of his mind constantly how a disastrous event like a solar storm taking out the grid would play out.

  If everyone is lucky and the sun’s geomagnetic storm isn’t too huge, it would just be a major electrical power loss of indeterminate length, but vehicles would still remain operable. Of course gas stations couldn’t pump gas, but the decline to social breakdown would be much slower and more manageable.

  The first thing everyone of the sheeple and even good sensible country folk would do of course would be to clean out all the grocery shelves and snarl up all the traffic. No traffic lights and desperate folks make for a zinger of a cluster #&@^ every time. That meant even more horrific accidents occurring, as what few first responders were working were rushing vehicles to the scenes of mayhem became involved in wrecks themselves.

  The hospitals would soon be overloaded and becoming hard up for fuel to keep their emergency generators running. That is, if they would even start because of the computer control switches to automatically turn them on might of got fried and no one was about that knew how to manually override or start the GenSet systems.

  No one really knew how bad the effects would be on those with pacemakers, but most likely those who had the older models were going to greet the big man in the sky rather quickly and Don hoped they were not driving a car when their number came up to meet St. Peter.

  Supposedly, NASA was going to give us a two hour warning over the emergency broadcast system if a big Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) was headed towards earth, so no telling when the panic buying would start.

  Don had an automated notification to his cell phone for such warnings, but he more depended on his own tracking of the news and the YouTube and Twitter astronomers to give him an early heads up if a solar event was likely.

  This year Don felt like he had horse blinders on and was in a race with old Sol to get his life, as well as his new abode in order. He was blessed with his good Prepper friend, Janice, but sadly lacked a closer intimate female companion. Sites like Survivalistsingles.com had sprung up in the last year as well as a few folks making some hard marriage decisions about who they wanted to face the mainstream eerie feeling that a bad moon was rising and would join lives or separate for an anticipated looming apocalypse.

  Don had sent out some feelers himself in this department, even joined a seniors singles site. It’s a hell of a note to start checking out old ladies for a romance at this point in the game he thought, but it was time and to his calculations time was short, Don had thought. He needed a companion, but he didn’t know anyone and was making clumsy attempts to find a mate.

  Don was fully aware that to survive he had to have support on the home front. Janice had said she was bugging out to his place if SHTF and society really went down, but that was a bit sketchy to depend on. Janice had a sister and mother in the city 40 miles from him. Don’s elderly Mom lived in the same city. Janice had over a years worth of preps at her home and Don had put in a small, but functional raised bed garden for her years ago and helped maintain it. But there was a lot unsaid between the two, about many things that seemed somehow accepted and un-discussed between them that were worrisome thoughts that haunted him often enough.

  Don got the feeling that Janice was going to give up her preps and house to her sister and mother if she bugged out to his place. Janice knew that come hell or high water Don would either be with his Mom when the poo hit the fan, or expect Janice to pick her up and bring her with her towards him, or he would somehow reach them and bring them both to the BOL. (Bug Out Location)

  Some EMP based scenarios, like cars breaking down, had been discussed already, but nothing in the form of a concrete plan was ever decided upon regarding timelines to bugging out.

  It had taken Don many years to get his Mom into more than basically preparing for a disaster such as a hurricane and many arguments had occurred as he, in her words, “wasted his money” and bought prepper gear that was delivered to the house off his prior meager income.

  He had his brother who lived in Texas on the bandwagon somewhat and prepping seemed like it was his brothers’ hobby passion too until Don had bought his little prepper place.

  Don remembered the conversation on this subject all too well. He had tactfully and tactically waited for what he thought was an opportune time to advise his brother that maybe this year the family should consider celebrating Xmas a bit further south at his place.

  His brother, Bruce, had always come home for Christmas and because he lived in another state, Don wanted him to consider and plan for being away from his p
reps if the 2012 predictions had any validity at all and left him being stuck at his Mom’s house on Dec 23.

  Well, that scenario and suggestion went over like a lead balloon and his brother commenced to denounce any possibility of such an event ever happening and had a few unkind words to say about his brother spending money on his bug out location versus buying some health insurance and the sibling rivalry party denigrated from there.

  Not to be dissuaded or discouraged Don just made a few more difficult mental notes about adding some more food and which gun he would let his block-headed brother borrow if the crap really did hit the fan when he was in the area.

  His Mom’s house in the City had minimal preps at best and he was moving the majority of his he had formally stored there out to the country. He still had a locked army footlocker there that she didn’t know what was in it and neither did his brother, he had left there as a backup.

  Don was regularly driving back and forth while visiting his old hometown and spending the night at his Mom’s, so it seemed like a good idea to keep that house prepared for himself and his family as well with some extra preps stored there.

  The trunk contained a Sig Sauer 45, a short 12 gauge Mossberg cruiser and a folding Keltec 9mm carbine. If Don had his pants on, he had his pistol permit and his .380 Ruger LCP in his pocket so there was plenty of firepower available to go around if need be. If his brother was visiting for Xmas, he usually lent him his little 9mm Keltec that was now out in the country and he would have to remember to bring it in. His brother could carry it concealed legally in Alabama because of the reciprocal CCW laws in his state with Texas. Their Mom’s house had at least several extra weeks of food already stored up because Don and his brother had been getting his Mom into hurricane preparedness and possibly preparing for a pandemic mode, but that was it. Nothing for a long- term disaster was put away or stored there.

  He had plenty of preps for one person, but not enough for three people. He guessed he would just go back to stocking the old standby prepper basics of beans and rice to build up his food reserve stores and use his good stuff to break up the food monotony and that would be the best he could hope to achieve on his own economics.

  This line of food security planning had him going back over his mental prepper plans and lists which seemed to consume most of his thoughts these days. If he had received forewarning of a big CME solar event about to occur, he had decided to go on his own mission while folks were emptying grocery stores and take a few extra precautions for his neighbor’s welfare. He was going to go down to the local seed and feed store and stock up on cheap feed wheat, barley, corn, etc., to feed some of his dead-end road neighbors and himself maybe safer. He had already added an extra inexpensive cast iron flour grinder to his preps so that they could grind their own dinners if he was forced to go the handout route as the collapse lasted longer than anyone but him was anticipating in his area of operations. Add to some more plans to my PREPPER LIST Don began musing to himself:

  • Locate all the Seed and Feed stores in the area.

  • Locate the pet stores for antibiotics like FishMox, etc., as emergency substitutes for prescriptions.

  • Check the viability of his bottled herbals and add a few plants to get established his own medicine chest in his garden.

  • A years worth of legumes and wheat that was Mylar canned with oxygen absorbers from Emergency Essentials was about $400 so he needed to find 800 bucks or chip away at it bit by bit this year and maybe add regular can goods from sales plus 5 gallon buckets to up some of his own wheat and such iron rations.

  Prepper Plans change daily with threats, political temperatures, finances etc. It’s always best to think outside the box and review the “what if’s” with a clear mind when trying to choose what needs to be done next and in what order to spend funds and energy accomplishing things.

  Don kind of figured that the end of the Mayan calendar Dec 21, 2012 was not going to start with a big bang and immediate technological failure like they said Y2K was going to do for technical reasons.

  No, that was just his finish by preparations goal date, to be home, safe and sound in the house and well prepped. Kind of like heeding the wisdom of staying off the roads and having a drink at the house on New Year’s Eve. The all too real threats were known for this day and the avoidance of those threats was common sense and just seemed practical to avoid them if you possibly could...

  The way solar storms seemed to be occurring both more regularly, as well as more intensely, he pretty much stayed on his guard for the big one he expected and was content that what he had already managed to put away, placed him miles ahead of most folks in the ready for anything preparedness department.

  One thing that disturbed him though, was what if he was out in the country at his home and his mom was in the city when one of those giant CME turn-off-all-the-new model-car-engine geomagnetic storms hit?

  He had plans to buy a motorized bike maybe on his want list, but when? He had expenses out the whazoo already on his need it, got to have it, so try to get it prepper wish list. He had seen on eBay kits to convert bikes for about the cost of a normal bike. They varied from $150-$250. He could go buy a bicycle now and maybe convert it later if he found some extra funds, but he didn’t really like that idea. Assembling anything takes time and there seems to be gremlins added to the boxes of the stuff he got nowadays like missing pieces or bad directions. If his wallet was fat he would have all ready got an eBay already assembled Chinese special for about $450 or so. Too many other things needed to be considered though. Add to PREPPER LIST, Don decided, one WalMart oldstyle beach cruiser bike.

  Don had thought about in the past a few times, a certain moral dilemma that seriously worried him, but then he had quickly put it out of his mind. How long did he suppose would it take to get an 80 yr. old woman who was his mother the 40 miles to his place on the back of a bicycle? Hell, the trip itself could kill her; she was doing ok on the meds the doctor had given her for her heart, but who knows what that kind of stress would do to her?

  If he was in the country at his place when the storm hit, Don would get back to her come hell or highwater and see to her needs, but then what would he do? Getting her to leave her house under the societal breakdown conditions he foresaw would be extremely difficult at best. They could only ride out the social collapse in the city for so long and then it was just too hard to contemplate the physical and emotional outcomes of a bug out with your old mom scenario.

  What would happen to all his stuff while he was gone to see about her? He was making friends with the local neighbors who would possibly look out for his house, but what condition were their pantries in? Kind of hard to disguise the fact you are a prepper when you write books on the subject and several of your neighbors know it and had also visited his home.

  Those folks don’t really know what a real prepper is, but NatGeo and the rest of the media was making it mainstream news that Preppers “got stuff”, food and guns especially. I wonder what they think I might have. Don considered as he turned off the interstate on the county road that led towards his house.

  Don had decided he had to create his own personal kind of opsec. Hide in plain sight as it were, was basically the only choice he now had. He reminded himself not to get into any conversations on conspiracy theories with the locals. That much he knew he could still avoid. Just be himself and act like a regular good ol’ boy that happened to have a few pieces of writing published and to learn as much about his neighbors as he could, as well as try to get their thoughts on prepping. So far, everyone on his little dead-end road seemed like nice, salt-of-the-earth type folks and displayed none of the prejudices towards strangers often found in small towns that wouldn’t accept you unless your great-grandfather was buried in the proper cemetery in town.

  He wasn’t going to be letting his guard down however. He did daily recon and scenario evaluations mentally as he drove past all the neighbors on the roads leading to his house and waved to them when they w
ere visible in their yards or riding past in cars.

  He took into account many little observed details regarding the neighborhood, the number and size of their dogs. What the age and health of the houses occupants looked like. Who visited, were they family or friends, etc., and what vehicles they driving?

  There were mostly trailers on his small road ending in a two- house cul-de-sac. Not a lot of places in a trailer that the inhabitants could have a well stocked pantry to cope with the hard times. What would they do in a couple weeks after the SHTF and the cupboards got bare? There was a church not far up the road; it was likely many would seek solace there. Don was not the church going type so his recon of it just was an occasional drive by on Sundays and a visual look over of it’s parking lot. Pretty much everyone in the area would probably revert to hunting if they could and would send out every able bodied person they had to get something for the pot when the hard times came. As far as Don could tell, their style of hunting was a deer stand and sometimes the use of a 4- wheeler maybe to run some ridge lines. He doubted many of these stand hunters would have any luck or inclination to stalk hunt on their own. But, he was also surrounded with hunting club properties that knew how to organize themselves and drive game to a shooter.

  That can work for or against me, Don thought. If they stay on the hunting land, the deer most likely would migrate and hide on the smaller parcels of land so this road would have more game. That being said, the people on this road would be in the same dire straights and probably start hunting their backyards and the deer would try to leave the area. With millions of hunters on the loose in the US, the woods were going to be dangerous. The deer to survive would be in the swampiest, nastiest, briar filled areas they could find for safety. Most hunters would figure this out and have to go farther afield to have any luck at all. That meant wandering deer camps full of desperate armed men and women and it also meant many households would lose its best defenders so the criminal elements might take to looking for opportunities. Man, what are the lots full of armed trailer trash and others going to be up to living so close together? David thought, as he pulled in his driveway and shutdown the car after a quick glance around the property for invisible possible threats.