A set of first steps, first thinking:
It is easy to become lost in the confusion of preparation. Preparation for what? When? Who knows? What to do? Of course the easy answer is wait until we see what it comes. Well shit, I'll do nothing at all then because there is nothing to do. I support you in that, but there are a few things you can do now. The first is a change of perspective. That is what I want to talk about today. Getting selfish, getting focused on you and yours, and beginning to think about your future neighbors.

Self.
We are taught in the anglo judeo-christian ethic to sacrifice self. This goes directly against the instructions they give you on the airplane. In event that the oxygen masks come down, put yours on first, so that you may then assist others. Yes. Our programming of self sacrifice works only if your goal is self sacrifice, and then because of your sacrifice, others you love are not helped. So first you must put it in your mind that you will first protect, save, and remove yourself from danger.

There is a line that always comes back to me from the “The Last of the Mohicans” with Daniel Day-Lewis (think I got that right), where he yells to his love who will be taken by the Huron's in just a moment, “Stay alive, no matter what, no matter what you must do, stay alive and I will find you!” You are only useful to your family, close ones, and tribe if you are alive. You do have some significant fertilizer value, but I would prefer to use all your many talents.

So first make sure that your personal minimum needs are met, every day. Start walking a little if you're not exercising, and get those good walking shoes and buy a good set of boots. Break them in, walk the dog. If you don't have a dog, pretend you do and that it is whining to go out. Get a couple of weights, even milk jugs with water, and work your shoulders a little when you're doing nothing. No matter what your age you can increase bone mass and muscle attachment size to every bone just by getting in motion and using a little weight work. Why, because part of the shock that kills people, and makes them dangerous to their family in any difficulty is being totally out of shape for the smallest stress. Assume you will be nervous, scared, and clumsy. If you can walk everyday and move you are of value. If you have to be transported you are a burden. Decide now which you wish to be.

Next, right now, just throw a couple 1 gallon milk jugs of water in the trunk, filled with drinking water, While you've got the trunk open how about a few old blankets or a retired sleeping bag, a box of big lawn sized garbage bags – hey, put the blankets or old sleeping bag in one of the garbage bags to keep them dry. Might as well through in a box of matches, but first put it in a zip lock bag. There, that's enough for right now. You could put lots of things in your trunk (google 72 hour kits to be overwhelmed) but let's start there.

If any disruption occurs in your community then you should take stock of of the situation and your personal ability to deal with the situation. If you have necessary daily medications that you take, go get them. Preferably, have an emergency set of those specific medications for you at home, work and in the coolest place in your car. Yes, duplicate them three times and keep them fresh. Rotate the stock. Also if you are addicted to any substances, have maintenance doses for those addictions on hand. It would be inopportune to die or be pressed into service because you had to get your cigarettes in town, or a 5th of gin. In a crisis you do NOT want to be in a detoxing state. You also don't want to be stoned or drunk or tweaking. Think maintenance does only during a crisis.

Make sure you have water, warmth, shelter and food, or immediate access to them, then see to your family.

Family or your Close Ones.
Family or as Russian's say, close ones, are those people you would die to save. If they don't meet that criteria don't include them. You can love the people of your community, your tribe, your church, even your lover, but if you would walk away from them when saving them meant possibly loosing your life, then they are NOT family, not close ones. Be clear, because in any emergency you don't want to be confused as to which people come first, and what you should do.

Side note: You must have at least two ways of contacting all family members in real time. Cell phone, phone, CB, walkie-talkie, text paging, paging, email, chat room, whatever

In any dislocation, unrest, collapse, economic or civil, you have to keep your head on straight. It doesn't matter what the problem is, if it is severe enough to make you nervous, it is time to check your supplies, load up the trunk and head to an agreed upon meeting point. What most people do when there is an emergency is tie up cell and phone lines trying to check with family and friends. Failing that they then drive, often towards the problem instead of away, to check on family physically. That is always a bad idea. Family after self. Fragmenting your family in a crisis is worse than loosing a single member of the family. I know that is hard to bend your heart around, but the heroic thoughts of "I'll save my babies, etc." isn't the best course of action when you're under pressure. Instead, really think of the welfare of the close ones, the family. If you're fall out of touch, become lost too, all because of an indoctrinated cultural demand for self sacrifice, then you may have doomed all of them, not just one. Get connected physically, ensure everyone's safety and location, then send in the best person, if it is possible, to get the missing member. If the civil disruption is really bad you have to force yourself to plan ahead and be one cold mother fucker when the time comes.

If you are to be of use to your close ones then do simple things like keep the car full of gas, never getting below ½ full. Most of the people in Houston were unable to evacuate when asked to after Katrina because the gas stations had been emptied 2 days before. Of those that did leave, most left after the announcement and were stuck on the freeways. The moment you have the thought that there might be no fuel in town for whatever reason, that is the time to take a sick day and drive out now.

Prioritizing family, close ones, and tribe (last section) means you put those people before any larger social institution, including local, state and federal government. This would not appear to be the mantra of the good citizen. It is not, it is self centered, family centered, tribe centered then and only then, other centered.

So get this clear. YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN IN ANY SERIOUS CRISIS. You, individually are not a concern of emergency workers in a crisis. They are working to keep the majority calm, safe, and moving in the right direction. Look at Katrina and you will understand that they are terrible at saving or caring for individuals. You are on your own for you, your family, and your tribe for your tribe. If you are counting on the government and insurance companies to love you and protect you then you need to be outside the gene pool of my tribe, for you will invariably be a problem that requires resources of the group at the worst possible time. If you are not preparing for anything, have no skills, and believe the government will take care of you, you are going to be a terrific problem for those that care about you. Learn to be the part of the group who is preparing, saving, instead of the part of large mass of sheep (oops people) that cry, and then demand rescuing. . You are responsible for knowing where your family is, where all of you will meet in any emergency, and have more than 2 ways to contact them, all the time.

Family communication: If your family is small, outfit cell phones for each. If you live close to each other it would be better to carry walkie-talkies set to the same channels in each vehicle with a cigarette lighter charger. CB radio for close communication works too. Have formulated a simple plan called “check in.”
Check In : In any emergency that makes any one of the family nervous, agree that one person will be the “switchboard.” Each family member contacts that person by cell phone, land line, CB radio, or walk-talkie or email and reports their condition and mobility. Generally you will be instructed by the “switchboard “ family member where to go to meet. Of course this will be away from whatever the problem is, not towards. Always make family meets OUTSIDE of cities but within walking distance is necessary. Check In also requires an outside of the area person who will serve as a message center if the “switchboard” person is not responding.
Why outside of the area? Because in localized weather, political, civil related collapse, local communications are first disrupted. Often times land lines and internet access to other areas in other parts of the country works fine. In that case the outside contact person becomes the message center until the “switchboard” person can get into position.
As a rule of thumb do NOT send family member to search for any missing member until all members have checked in and the nature of the disruption is understood.. It is more important to preserve as many of the family members together, physically together, as possible.

If both of those forms of Check In have failed – you cannot reach anyone, then you should all have an agreed on meeting place outside of the city. This should be someplace that is accessible even when the traffic is stopped and it should easily reached but outside of any city center.

You can put a simple family plan together that even the older children can agree to and memorize. Have a meeting place picked out, like home if it is outside the city center. Make an agreement on who is the switchboard person (usually the one who can make it to the safe meeting point first who is calm in a crisis), and make sure each member of the family has some sort of communication device. Within a 5 mile area, outside, the walkie talkies work fine.

These are just the framework of what you can create. Each family must design a plan and agree to it which includes all the variable elements of normal family life. Pets, special needs, family living far from home, the infirm or invalids, and little children. It is not so important exactly what you decide, but it is crucial that you all agree to it, and that you act quickly in an emergency. Check in
Move while you can towards the safety of the family

Tribe
What is a tribe in the context of social disruption? It does not have to be a group of people united by a common belief or lifestyle. In my opinion that would give you too many people, families, with the same skill sets. The tribe that Gary and I have been discussing off-blog is a group with a geographical meeting place, whose various skills are helpful to all. It would be nice to be living in such a tribe already, but I am not. I won't attempt to describe the tribe more than just to suggest a lowest common shared belief IN A TIME OF CRISIS. Tribe members should committed to the welfare of the tribe without consideration of personal gain. Each individual member of the tribe is first responsible for self, then their “close ones”, then tribe, before adherence to any other civil body. Too philosophical? If there is a tribe member or tribe family that could be assisted by the tribe (in time of social crisis), their needs would come before the desire of the law, government, or other social rules. This includes putting their needs before the needs of other people who could also use your help. Self, family, tribe, local, larger, in that order. What will be the social organization of these tribes? I'm sure it will be as varied as you can imagine. Some tribes will form around church. Some will be dominated by a strong individual and have elements of feudalism. Some will be communistic in nature. Some will be organized along the lines of hunter gatherer groups that existed in our past. Some tribes will be mobile in some sense, traders for instance, some will be stationary and focus on agriculture. Nobody will plan this, and after a crash, in a time of dwindling easy resources, there will be discord within the tribes and between tribes. So what do you want to do after the collapse?

So why want to be part of a tribe? Won't that just be another way you are told what to do by someone who doesn't know as much as you? You might not like the answer, but individuals do not fare well in any society if they are cut off from the larger group. I can exist here in the desert alone only because I have full bandwidth communication by cell phone and satellite to the largest tribe – the internet community, and friends and family. But in times of uncertainty and upheaval interruptions in my technological existence will put me out looking for parts, food, water. A tribe can provide vastly enriched resources, mental, emotional, physical that are simply impossible by the individual or the family.

Every step to larger social organization requires a loss of personal volition. Even two people agreeing to travel together so that one can sleep while the other watches, requires both to share a common destination, and a tremendous degree of trust. That is the nature of a social animal contract. Even the most iconoclastic among us (and you know who you are) shows up for coffee at the Burger King for that moment of social connection.
So accept that if a disruption is one that causes loss of job and home you will want to have a larger group to fall back on. This will be even larger than your close people, it will be a tribe. If you don't do this consciously the decisions will be made for you. Let us for sake of discussion suggest that you are a medical doctor. Do you believe that you will have freedom of choice in any large upheaval? You will become “directed” by someone, whether it is FEMA, the local volunteer fire department, or criminal elements banded together in gangs. So be choosing, joining or creating your tribe now. And I would strongly suggest that the things you look in your other members are not just who you are comfortable with, but perhaps those that bring fringe living skills and problem solving skills, materials and land to the tribe.

So how do you go about finding a tribe? The long answer is another essay that I am hoping that Gary will write. But the short answer is this.
Your fellow tribe members will bring skills that you don't possess to you, and you must share enough of a common lifestyle to be able to share openly with them and feel a sense of belonging.

I thought to stop there, but one more thought. If you judge other tribe members by what they skills may bring to help you and yours, don't you think they are looking or will look at you the same way? What do you offer any tribe? Now may be the time to learn to weld, repair shoes, sew, take a CPR class then an EMT class. Learn to play an instrument, carve a flute, make candles. Collect children's books and learn to tell stories. Learn to cook over a 3 stone fire. Besides this job you have, what good are you to others? I had originally hoped to get by because I am cute, but I suspect my actual value would be that I am I am a master organic gardener, and I can weld, both arc and gas. mcnalan on a unusually cold day in the desert.