Introduction

If you are not a 'survivalist', but you would like to learn how to make some basic, common sense preparations to safeguard yourself and your family in times of distress, then this is the place for you.

If you'd like to start from scratch and turn yourself into a super-survivalist, prepared to wage war with the hordes of zombies that will shortly rise in the Zombie Apocalypse, this is still a good place to start.  You don't get to be the living legend of zombies everywhere overnight, after all. 

I interject a lot of humor in my writing.  Just because I lighten a subject doesn't mean I take the subject lightly. 

I am not a Survivalist in the strictest sense of the term, although I fit the definition.  Wikipedia defines Survivalism as 'the anticipation and preparation of a future disruption in local, regional or worldwide social or political order'.  I was raised in a strict, fundamentalist Christian family where every day the expectation was that if Armageddon did not come a little later this afternoon, then it would definitely come tomorrow morning.  Despite the daily promise of that, the world is still turning quite normally so I have come to question the basic premise of that particular anxiety.  Even so, that kind of thinking sticks with you.

Living in south-east Louisiana also had an influence on my upbringing and mindset, because everyone who lives here knows that it is wise to always have three days worth of food and water - as well as some other supplies - in the event of a hurricane.  Everyone also knows that it's a good idea to keep a hatchet in the attic so that if you end up in the attic and the flood waters are rising, you can chop a hole in the roof and get out.  Katrina changed some of our preconceptions and our attitudes about what 'reasonable' preparations are.

From a young age, I have daily thought about practical preparations in expectation for 'disasters' of all kinds and for 'hard times' generally.  I had read the books, subscribed to the magazines, visited the various websites, and more or less had myself together - until Katrina came along and taught me that not only are most of the books and websites a little misleading; a lot of times they are downright wrong. 

There is - whether you know it or not - a growing subculture of 'survivalism' in this country.  Like any other 'ism', there are good ideas and bad ideas.  There are those yet weak in the faith, some stable believers, and a fair number of 'fundamentalist' hard-core fanatics.  Wherever you end up on that scale, I invite you to Listen to Katrina.  I did, and a lot of what I learned was rather interesting to me.  If you are already a fanatical, hard-core survivalist who has all the answers figured out, this isn't going to be a good blog for you.  Sorry about that...

This blog is a collection of the lessons I've learned after Katrina.  I'm not going to tell you that all the books are wrong, but I'm going to tell you why some of them are wrong, and offer some practical advice on what to do - and more importantly what not to do - when making preparations and then actually putting those preparations into practice.  I did 'survive', but I also learned that 'survival' just means breaking even. I like to think that I did very well after Katrina, even if I made some mistakes along the way.  From personal experience, I can tell you that even though I thought about such things quite a lot, I never properly considered them, and I certainly didn't appreciate them until SHTF. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, SHTF means 'Shit Hits The Fan'. To survivalists and preparedness people, this is the big disaster. Normally this means the total break down of civilization and social order.  This should not be confused with TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It.)  If you run into any unrecognized phrases here, just type them into Google, and you should readily get a clarification.  One note I would like to make here is that I use references to zombies and the Zombie Apocalypse.  In the survivalist subculture, zombies are used two ways.  One way is that it is a ridiculous, hilarious spoof on what we do.  When someone asks why they  do this, and they say, 'To prepare for the zombies!', they're making fun of themselves.  There are many movies out today that portray various zombie horror scenarios.  The second reason is that a theoretical Zombie Apocalypse incorporates many elements of several kinds of disaster.  Biological,  invading forces, and several others are all contained in that fictional, hypothetical scenario.  When you see me refer to the Zombie Apocalypse or zombies generally, that's how I mean it.  Please don't think that I think that I am expecting an actual Return of the Living Dead...

If you have questions about what you read here, feel free to shoot me an email using the address at the bottom of any page.  At the end of all of this, I'll add some more pages and try to answer questions. 

Throughout this work there will be some coarse language, disturbing images, and frank discussions.

None of which I will apologize for in advance.

Enjoy.

Shane

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