The Dead Pool

Ed McMahon

Farrah Fawcett

Michael Jackson

Billy Mays

Yet Amy Winehouse still lives.

I think the whole "shuffling off this mortal coil" system is broken, but I don't know who to complain to.

Competing Statistics

The majority of Americans are overweight.

The majority of Americans are unhappy.

Shouldn't we be getting jollier?

Too much effort

It's absolutely amazing how much garbage six people generate every day. I'm glad we don't recycle; it'd be a pain in the ass to sort through all that.

Just a nitpick, because I have the time

When shows portray characters manually blowing up balloons, which then proceed to float (the balloons, not the characters).

My Dad can...

Is there anything more tiring/terrifying than trying to live up to the absolute faith of your children?

Uh...yeah.

I need to make better notes. I jotted down some ideas for stories a couple of weeks ago, and recently looked over the list again. Some of them are absolutely opaque to me now. They're like that dream you absolutely know you won't forget that's gone before you get into the shower.

Spell Cheque

More editorial lapses on the popular fiction front. I saw several instances of "then" being used instead of "than," as in "I get paid more then you." I also ran into the verb "lightening" in a description of a thunderstorm - "jagged bolts of lightening."

Sigh.

No Stomach for It

I caught a sliver of "Yo Gabba Gabba" the other day. The creatures were eating breakfast, and the camera had shots of the healthy food singing happily about joining the "party in the tummy." One of the characters was shown to have three stomachs. Good attention to detail, but kind of creepy.

Driver's License to Kill

I'm now one up on Ted Kennedy, in that I've killed two living creatures with my car. The first was a frog that just chose the wrong moment to leave the creek. The other was a crow, which was unusual for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the crows in the mountains are very used to tourist traffic, and usually fly off long before you get to them. Secondly, they're always warning each other Cah! Cah!

#2 pencils

We gave Kitten her end-of-year test, and she knocked it out of the park. We feel both justified and relieved in our decision to homeschool.

Judging by covers

There's a book out called Norse Code, apparently involving the search for the scions of Odin by tracing their genetic markers. While there is great potential for silliness, that is an awesome title.

They just melt away!

I found a diet that really works: Take a 3 1/2-year-old autistic kid to the mountains (make sure you have permission, first); turn him loose among the ridges and valleys for six to eight hours a day; follow him wherever he goes.

Don't Even Blink

Speaking of the Disney Channel, "Phineas & Ferb" is an awesome little cartoon. Great premise, solid characters, and just the right amount of silliness. Plus, every episode has a nifty musical number, like the one below.

The setup: P&F always build some wild contraption in their yard, and their sister keeps trying to bust them. But something always happens to the thing before she can get their parents to see it. In this episode, she's ordered everyone to keep an eye on it until the parents get home so it can't just disappear.

The House of Mouse

Thanks to Kitten, I've been subjected to so much Disney Channel programming, I can not only identify the individual Jonas brothers, I've formed opinions about them.

Kevin: Nice guy, but will always be a supporting player (either on screen or on stage).

Nick: The talented one. Should go solo at the earliest opportunity.

Joe: Will probably come out of the closet soon after their Disney contract expires.

Idle Irritation

I always know when I've been idle too long, because the weirdest things start getting on my nerves.

Stupid letter "X."

My Brain Hurts

The Urban Mythology/Chick-Lit crossover genre must be stopped. Seriously. Failing that, can we get a list of standards or something?

The affinity for dirt

Cub proved once again that he's all boy. After four straight days of 90-degree weather, he found the one remaining mud puddle and promptly wallowed in it.

I redial, therefore I am.

Nothing makes you feel like a non-entity faster than people who won't return your voice mails.

All aboard. But is it all above board?

If you run a kiddie coaster in a traveling carnival, don't encourage the stereotypes by naming it the "Lolita Express."

Just when you thought it was safe to go back online

Did you miss me?

Sorry for the extended absence, Gentle Readers, but we were computerless for a while. What follows will be a series of mini posts so I can catch up on my average.

Even though these will be short blurbs about whatever crosses my mind, I still have no desire to Twitter. Take that, new media!

A very cool word of the day

tergiversation \tuhr-jiv-uhr-SAY-shuhn\, noun
1. The act of practicing evasion or of being deliberately ambiguous.
2. The act of abandoning a party or cause.

Tergiversation comes from Latin tergiversatus, past participle of tergiversari, "to turn one's back, to shift," from tergum, "back" + versare, frequentative of vertere, "to turn." The verb form is tergiversate.

I really can’t wait to use this word in a casual conversation; it has wonderful prosody. I know it’s a soft “G” sound in the second syllable, but when I look at it, I hear Gene Wilder saying “Sed-a-give?!”, and that makes me happy.

Words like this make me glad we're making Kitten study Latin.

Press 1P

We were out the other day, and I saw a woman texting. Nothing too special about that, except this woman was texting faster than most people type, and she didn’t have a QWERTY keyboard, either.

Watching her, I flashed back to my formative years in the 80s, particularly the time spent in the local arcade, where we would gather around someone who had memorized all the Gauntlet patterns, or had achieved communion with Galaga. It was our generation’s version of Pinball Wizard.

We had an awesome arcade at our mall. They always had the latest games, and gave you plenty of warning when a game was about to be retired, so if it was your favorite you could make your peace. In fact, they would usually place a card on the console announcing that if you could beat a certain score, you would win the game. It was brilliant marketing. We would play those games for hours, hoping we’d soon have it loaded up on a truck to take home. I had no doubt that if I had Tron:Deadly Discs or Joust in my bedroom, I’d’ve been real popular with the ladies. Nevermind that the male/female ratio in the arcade was always 99/whoops-this-isn’t-Claire’s. It was all the flashing lights; I wasn’t thinking clearly.

And of course, that was always the complaint of the parents and school marms. “These kids today…spending all their time hypnotized in the game room instead of studying at the library.” They were just jealous that no one ever placed a quarter on a copy of Moby Dick to “call” it after the current reader finished. Our arcade also ran specials where you could bring in your report cards and get free games for every A and B you earned. Straight As got you $20 in games, if I recall correctly.

Remember the Dragon’s Lair bubble gum cards? Each set had scenes from the different parts of the game, and on the back it would tell you how to get through that scene. Those were cool. I probably spent $400 trying to get the Dragon card. That’s in addition to the $400 I probably spent playing the actual game. I held on to my first Mac computer long after it became useless for anything else solely because I had a copy of Dragon’s Lair that was formatted for it.

Having a personal game system is nice (Atari 2600 represent!), as is being able to MMORPG from anywhere in the world, but it’s a shame that it seems the time of the standalone arcade has passed. Anytime you see them nowadays, they’re tucked away in the corner of some pizza buffet place. It's weird going back to that mall now, because they remodeled it some years back, and the section that held the arcade isn't there anymore.

Anyone have change for a dollar? And a time machine?

You know you’re a parent when

you can identify which piece of furniture is being abused just from the sound the boy’s plastic “carrot” bat makes when it hits.

Dear France

We are very interested in speaking with you about the following quote:

"Maître Damien Celice, a lawyer for TF1, had warned the supreme court during the hearing that 'there would be no more reality TV in France' if the contestants were given work contracts."

Specifically, we wish to solicit your advice on how we might achieve the same results.

Sincerely,

American Television Audiences

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article6424331.ece

Cheers & Jeers

Cheers to: Verizon
for their excellent customer service in transitioning from old phones to new (much more powerful) ones.




Jeers to: Verizon
for making me repurchase my favorite ringtones when I know they have the ability to transfer them.

Why Does Disney Hate Breasts?

Poor Disney. All they want to do is take sweet, innocent girls, make them famous, and wring every last drop of marketing out of them until they’re too old – around 16 or so. Their latest creations are Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez (oh, and Miley…somebody or other). Having a Kitten smack-dab in the middle of the targeted demographic for the Disney parabolic mirror means that we see more than our fair share of these tween queens.

So Kitten was watching Wizards of Waverly Place the other day, and there was a scene where the parents were attending a school function. I noticed in passing what I thought was a smear on the television screen (not uncommon in our household), and started to clean it off. Turns out, they had pixilated Mom’s cleavage.

Now, you’d think that a Disney wardrobe designer working on a Disney show produced at a Disney studio for the Disney Channel might have thought at some point: Hmmm…the actress playing Mom is fairly well-developed; maybe I should eschew the V-necked sweater. But no. They go with the more expensive technical fix. Funny thing is, they just made it more obvious by doing that. You think that was their plan all along?

Speaking of expensive technical fixes, before releasing Herbie Fully Loaded, someone at Disney noticed that Lindsay Lohan had boobs, so they decided to digitally reduce her bust size throughout the movie. This wasn’t apparent during shooting?

I think this is one reason the former Disney princesses go into full tart mode once they’re out from under their contracts. Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are prime examples (along with Miss Lohan). Anne Hathaway went from Princess Diaries to nude scenes in Havoc and Brokeback Mountain (of course, her costar, Julie Andrews, did the same in S.O.B.), even Hilary Duff started going out dressed entirely in black leather after Lizzie McGuire wrapped.

I’m really surprised this is the same company that allowed Jessica Rabbit to appear on screen, but on the other hand, Disney’s animated princesses are usually pushing the décolletage.

In Fantasia’s “Pastoral Symphony” segment, the centaurs’ breasts are always obscured or covered, but If you look quickly during the “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence, you’ll notice that the harpies are bare-breasted (they don’t have nipples, though). So…breasts are evil? Is that Disney’s message?

Too much weirdness for me to puzzle out. I’ll stick to Phineas and Ferb. Not only is it really funny, but Richard O’Brien does the voice of the dad.

So let’s do the Time Warp again.

My Self-Serving Law

I think our governor, being a good little Democrat, would want to deliver on her party’s promises to improve the economy. With that in mind, I humbly suggest the following legislation:

Any business advertising an open position MUST FILL THAT POSITION, or be fined the equivalent of a year’s salary for that position.

I’m getting heartily sick of sending in résumés, only to be told during the follow-up call “Oh, we decided to hold off on hiring anyone right now; we’re just collecting applications.” What a fucking waste of time and energy. I can understand if someone else got the job; it’s an employer’s market right now. But to jerk everybody around? I hope your industry is the next domino to fall.

I’m also getting irritated by the lack of return calls. That’s not just basic business protocol, that’s good etiquette in general.

A buddy of mine got called in for two interviews at one company, and when the phone call came in, he was told they’d eliminated the slot entirely. What the fuck? You obviously have a need for someone, or you wouldn’t have started the whole process. And then you change your mind? Not only are you not going to hire anyone, you’re eliminating that space on the Org chart completely?

I’m fervently hoping that this recession will trim out a lot of the dead (read that: complacent) wood that’s been cluttering up our economic infrastructure. Maybe we’ll see a return to something resembling good customer service.

And maybe there’ll be a unicorn in my garage tomorrow morning, too.

Boys and their toys

Every so often, I see a complaint from an administrative-type person – usually in a school setting – about how children should be treated equally. On the surface, that seems fine, but then they usually blow it by trying to create curriculums or play activities that don’t differentiate between boys and girls, and that’s stupid.

I always wonder how these people could forget their own childhoods. I’m fairly certain that administrative types aren’t hatched out of some big pod farm in Iowa (though that would explain a lot), so you’d assume they’d remember that between 6th grade and graduating from high school, they developed at a different rate than everybody else. It’s called puberty.

With so many physical differences becoming evident during those turbulent years, is it really that much of a stretch to think that perhaps boys and girls are different mentally, as well? Girls are more nurturing, while boys are more destructive; girls are more patient, while boys are more destructive; girls are more engaging, while boys are…you get the idea.

This occurred to me recently when we went to the store. I distracted Cub by taking him over to the toy aisles so Mrs. Cat could shop in peace, and he headed straight for the weapons. Usually he goes for the toy cars and trucks (which is pretty standard for autistic kids), but this time, he wanted to be armed. I guess he read my last few posts.

See, none of his favorite shows are military in nature; everybody gets along and talks out their problems, so it can only be some deep-seated brainstem function tied into the Y-chromosome that drove him to take a weapon to hand. It satisfied some primal urge.

We ended up getting him a small foam sword, and he’s had a hell of a good time assaulting us all with it. He’s even got a pretty decent technique – at least a +2 for attack and +1 for defense. I’m currently trying to teach him Conan’s mantra:

“To defeat your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.”

Should make preschool more interesting.

We got the tools; we got the talent

You can spend thousands of dollars in acquiring hundreds of pounds of gear for every conceivable situation. Good luck carrying it all. As I’ve stated before, the trick is to make your gear as multi-functional as possible. It’s not just a hammock; it’s also a fishing net and a source for lengths of rope. It’s not just a garbage bag; it’s a tarp, ground cloth, rain slicker, wound sealer and water heater.

The way to build a good kit is to take it in stages, from bare minimum survival to all the comforts of home. You’re shooting for something in between, but closer to the “bare minimum” end of the spectrum.

The Rule of Threes
A handy rule of thumb is the rule of threes. You can survive:

· three minutes without air
· three hours (in severe weather) without shelter
· three days without water
· three weeks without food

This list should guide you in building your kit. A ballpoint pen case, for example, could serve as an emergency tracheotomy tube (you probably ought to read up on it first, though).

So, shelter, water and food. Off the top of my head, you should have, at minimum:

· a sturdy tarp and/or a few large trash bags
· a couple of those metallic “heat blankets” (not the cheap ones; they disintegrate too easily)
· 550 cord (parachute cord). Many suppliers weave them into bracelets or belts for easy carrying.
· compass
· fire-making supplies
· a Sierra cup
· whistle and unbreakable mirror (for signaling)
· fishing line and hooks
· duct tape (flatten it)
· Swiss Army knife or Leatherman tool
· small first-aid kit (including a suture kit)

All of that will fit into a gallon-sized Ziploc bag. Once you’ve got those, you can start adding to it as you like. I’d throw in a few carabiners, a fixed-blade knife, maps, a hand-towel, a sturdy liter-size water bottle, small-gauge wire, surgical-grade rubber tubing, a pencil, a hand-cranked LED flashlight, a small tin pot, a small wire rack, a plastic trowel, a tube tent, and a survival handbook. All of that will still fit into a daypack. Adding too much more starts trading off between creature comforts and maneuverability.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Don’t wait until the bombs drop or the plague sweeps the country before you use any of this stuff. Camp with it. Pack everything you think you might want to have along “In Case Of” and hit the trails. A couple of season’s worth of campouts, and you’ll narrow your selection down automatically. You’ll find what’s worthwhile and what’s useless extra weight. If camping isn’t feasible for you, play in your back yard. A bow drill is simple, but it still takes practice to get it to work.

Well, I can’t think of anything else at the moment, so maybe that has cleared out enough space in my head for some other topics. Hope you found it useful, or at least entertaining. Have fun building your kit.

I’ll see you in the aftermath.

The “Oops” Diet

So you got lost, and your weekend campout is now on its second weekend, or panicked looters cleaned out the local Piggly Wiggly, and you didn’t get any of those canned peaches you were counting on. Fear not. Fortunately, you can go without food for about three weeks. It won’t be pleasant, and it will affect your energy and judgment, but it won’t kill you outright until then, so you have some time to forage.

Teach a man to fish
It always amuses me to see fly fishermen with their two-hundred dollar reels and massive collections of hand-tied flies. They get all dressed up in their catalog gear and lug the forty-pound tackle box to the nearest river. To do battle with fish. Sorry, guys, but a survival situation doesn’t lend itself to your romantic recreation of A River Runs Through It.

If you’re lucky enough to have a body of water nearby, you can catch fish all day long with a minimum of effort at the beginning. If you didn’t think to pack fish hooks in your kit (why not?), small twigs can be woven into a fish basket (or if you’re scrabbling through the wreckage of civilization, try to find some chicken wire). Anything that will let water pass through but trap fish can be sunk into a river to collect food as you tend to other needs. You can even build a series of small fences to guide fish into a shallow pool. You can also string a fishing line (or dental floss!) from bank to bank, with a number of different lines pointed downstream. The water flowing past will make the bait bounce convincingly. Check the lines occasionally and replace bait as needed. There’s a nifty little gadget called a Yo Yo fishing reel that you mount on an overhanging branch. When a fish takes the bait, it has a spring-powered action that sets the hook for you.

Waiter! I made a soup out of flies.
If you don’t have a body of water nearby, you can always eat the bait yourself. Insects are nothing but protein on legs. Anything with six legs is safe to eat (though not necessarily easier). The best way to overcome the squirm-factor is to kill the bugs and let them dry a bit, then grind them into a powder and mix it into your water. Not pleasant, but it beats starving to death.

Kentucky Fried Squirrel
Do you have your dental floss or small-gauge wire? Good. Learn how to set a few simple snares. If it walks or flies it can feed you and, like the fishing, it’s something you can set and forget while you do other things like fix your shelter or find more firewood. If you want to duct-tape your big hunting knife to a limb and attempt to bring down a deer, by all means go for it. Make sure you have plenty of other food sources, though…just in case the deer manages to outrun you in the woods. The simplest way to field dress any mammal is: remove the head and limbs; cut straight down from the neck to the crotch (being careful not to nick the intestines); pull the skin off; spread the rib cage and scoop out the organs (unless you enjoy organ meat); stoke up the fire.

Vegetarians be damned
Unless you are absolutely, positively, 200% sure about plant identification, don’t even attempt to forage for greens as a food source. Most wild plants either have no nutritional content at all, contain dangerous symbiotes, or are outright poisonous to humans. Seriously. Don’t do it.

You keep mentioning all this gear, 'Cat; what should I carry?

Good question.

Not a drop to drink

How much water should you carry with you on the trail or on the run? It depends. If you’re moderately to highly active, you need between 1.5 and 2.5 liters of water per day. That’s just drinking water, too, not including what you’ll want for cooking, cleaning, etc. Now, water’s heavy, weighing almost 8 ½ pounds per gallon. Carrying that weight gets real old real fast on a hike, trust me. It’s much better to carry just a liter bottle, hike near water sources and have treatment methods to hand.

Toil and Trouble
These days, you can get all kinds of fancy filtration systems – UV wands, straws with filters, pumps with filters, drip-filter bottles, etc. The problem with all those, though, is that they either have a ton of parts, or don’t give you any indication as to when they’ve stopped working. Chlorine droplets are another method people like to use, and it’s very effective. Personally, I never could get the dosage right and always ended up throwing it out because it tasted terrible. I’ve since learned that you can add chlorine a few drops at a time to filtered water (cloth-filtered, not charcoal, though there are instructions for making your own charcoal filters if you want to be really hardcore), shake it, let it sit a while, and give it a sniff test. If you can’t smell chlorine, it’s still hazardous. The reason being that there were more microbes than chlorine molecules in the water, so the chlorine was completely used up. You want the opposite, so if there’s a faint chlorine odor to the water, the microbes are all dead and it’s safe to drink (and probably tastes a lot better, too). I think I’ll stick to boiling, though. Some people complain about the flat taste of boiled water, but all you have to do is shake it up to take care of that.

It’s not like water just falls from the sky
So it hasn’t rained in a while, and you’re thirsty. Find a stick with three prongs, like the letter Y. The short prongs should be about six to eight inches long, while the long one should be about two feet long. Hold the stick by the short prongs and turn in a circle. While you’re turning in the circle, look for a waterfall, garden hose, or car wash, because you have a better chance of finding water that way than relying on the dowsing bullshit. If you’re serious about finding water, walk downhill; you’ll find it eventually. Know why? Because water flows downhill (unless you’re in a Doc Savage novel).

Another neat way of collecting water is called a solar still, and there are several variations. Look it up, I’m not going to explain it all here. Not only does it generate water, but as the name implies, the water you get from it is pure.

Basically, if you’re not in the desert, you have no excuse for not having enough water. And if you are in the desert, you can still find water. Run across a dry riverbed? Dig down at the outside bank for a better chance to find damp soil or even pockets of water. See a tree or animals in the distance? Chances are, there’s water nearby. You might even have dew on the ground in the morning. To quote Heathers: "Lick it up, baby." Darker patches on a sandstone cliff may indicate water. Lava and limestone are porous, and may contain hidden pools. It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible, either.

Oh, and if it’s winter, or you’re above a snowline, remember that it’s about a ten-to-one ratio of snow to water. So if you plan to melt snow down to fill your liter bottle, you’ll need ten bottle’s worth of snow.

So after a hard day’s work of finding a clear route, building a shelter, starting a fire, and collecting water, you’ve probably worked up an appetite. What’s for dinner?

Man’s Red Flower

You a fan of Disney’s Jungle Book?

You can’t survive without fire (and if I hope I don’t have to explain why), so you need several methods of starting one. One of America’s pre-eminent survivalists, Tom Brown, Jr., teaches seventeen different ways of starting fires in his classes. His books are interesting reading, and you can find a bunch of his articles online. Those water-proof, wind-proof, strike-anywhere matches sure are nifty, but you can buy a five-pack of Bic lighters for a dollar. That’ll give you between 5,000 and 7,500 fires, or a fire per day up to twenty years. Keep them wrapped up in a Ziploc bag, and you’re golden. Even if they do get wet, just wait until the flint dries out and they’ll work just fine. Again, though, that shouldn’t be your only method of starting a fire. Pack a small plastic magnifying glass, too, and/or a flint & steel striker. You can also buy small blocks of magnesium to use in wet weather. (You scrape flakes onto your pile of tinder; don’t throw the whole thing in there.) You might want to bone up on the old “rubbing two sticks together” method as well.

When Mrs. Cat and I watched Cast Away, I impressed her by critiquing Hanks’ method of fire-starting. My suggestion was to tie one of the laces from an ice skate to each end of the skate, and twist a stick into the loop once. Using half a coconut shell to provide a pivot at the top of the stick (and protect your hand as you apply pressure), you could then draw the ice skate back and forth (like bowing a stand-up bass), which would spin the piece of wood much faster than by hand, and produce an ember more quickly. As you can imagine, this contraption is called a bow drill. It’s relatively untested technology, having been used for only about 7,000 years, but you may find it worthwhile to know how to make one.

Tinder-hearted
Having an ember is like carrying a soap bubble. It’s pretty, but it ain’t gonna be around for long. You need to get it onto some tinder. Small wood fibers or bits of bark are good. Cotton balls are excellent. The fuzzy parts of cat-tail plants work well, as do dead grasses and leaves. You can collect them as you travel (except for maybe the cotton balls, unless you’re in the South) and carry them in a shirt pocket; your body heat will dry them out nicely. The way to build a fire is small to large. Tinder first, then twigs, small branches, large branches, and finally, logs.

Home is where the hearth is
You’ll want to keep the fire from spreading, so make a fire ring out of stones. You can also place a flat stone upright on the side of the fire away from you in order to reflect heat back towards you. If you’re lucky enough to shelter against a stone wall (natural or artificial), sleep between the fire and the wall, as it acts as a reflector as well.

Note: Do NOT use rocks from a river or wet ground to build your fire ring. The moisture in them can flash into steam, causing them to explode. You don’t want to take shrapnel because you had a hankering for s’mores.

My favorite kind of campfire is the “lazy man’s fire.” Once you’ve got a blaze going, you place just the ends of your bigger pieces of wood in the flames. As they’re consumed, push them in further. It stays small, is easily controlled, and can be doused quickly if necessary.

Should I advertise?
If you want to be found (when lost in the wilderness, for example), build a fire and use greenery to make it smoke. If it’s a humid day and the smoke’s not rising, three fires in a triangle is the international distress sign. If you don’t want to be found (by mutant cannibals, for example), there are ways to build hidden fires not easily seen at night. In a cave is the first choice, as long as it’s not already occupied by an angry bear, pissed-off rattlesnakes, or mutant cannibals. If you don’t have a cave handy, you can try this Air Force-recommended method: dig two holes about elbow deep, approximately a foot or so apart. Diameter is up to you, but I’d estimate no larger than a two-liter bottle or small coffee can. Dig a tunnel that connects these two holes. Build your fire in one hole and light it by reaching through the tunnel. Keep it small, and you should go undetected. Be careful, though, mutant cannibals have a keen sense of smell.

Bile
This is how people in the Appalachian Mountains say “boil.” You may have heard that you should boil your water for five or ten minutes to make sure it’s sterile. You’re just wasting time if you do that. Think about this, your body starts killing off invaders (viruses and bacteria) by raising your temperature to around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit (at sea level). If it hits a boil, you’re good to go. And don't worry if you're not at sea level. Water boils in Denver (the mile-high city) at approximately 202 degrees. If your water boils at less than 100 degrees, you're almost in the stratosphere, and viruses are certainly the least of your worries.

So where are we getting all this water, anyway? Stay tuned.

Getting there is half the fun

I’m still in an apocalyptic frame of mind since that last post, so bear with me as I exorcise. I’m going to break this out into discrete categories to try and impose some sort of order on the swirling mass of tidbits I’ve accumulated over the years. The legal department requires me to state that this is by no means a complete survival guide. People way more paranoid than this cat have put together much more complete sites, so find one of those.

Location, location, location
Whether you’re hiking in the backcountry or fleeing the zombie horde, the most important part of any plan is to know where you want to end up. For instance, we know that if we ever have to make a run for it, we’re heading to Mama Cat’s place in the mountains. It’s ideal for a number of reasons:

· everyone there is family
· well water, with a spring-fed reservoir as a…well…a reserve
· gas heat, with wood-burning stoves and timber for when the gas runs out
· only one road in – dynamite two bridges and you’re cut off from vehicular traffic
· woods full of game and a river full of fish
· several large gardens, with a smattering of chicken coops
· one family member has a full machine shop beside his house
· a water-powered grist mill nearby

So you see, it’s a pretty good place to hunker down (and no, I won’t tell you where it is). But as I stated, you have to have a plan for getting there. Usually, whenever I picture “The End Of Civilization As We Know It,” I imagine my car will be useless due to the massive gridlock on our highways and byways, so what would ordinarily be a few hours’ drive turns into a month-long trek (or more).

Get the right maps
Your Rand-McNally isn’t going to help if you have to trailblaze, so pick up a backcountry map that covers the area you’ll be travelling through. Personally, I’d add a railway map, too, because you may want to follow the tracks as a compromise between joining the throngs on I-95 and pulling a Lewis & Clark 2.0.

Get a good compass
Your maps are useless if you don’t know how to orient them, so buy a good compass and learn how to use it. This is coming from a Cat with the directional sense of your average piece of drywall. I like the ones that have a built-in scale, while friends of mine prefer those with the pop-up sight. Learn how to find the North Star, but don’t plan on being able to see the sun or stars on any given day. And certainly don’t rely on that “moss on a tree” nonsense. Just for fun, I checked five trees at random: two had no moss, one had moss facing southeast, one had moss facing due west, and one had moss completely encircling the trunk, so…not that handy.

But ‘Cat, I hear you say, I have a brand new GPS accurate to within ten feet. Why can’t I just use that? You can, of course. I have one, too, but I’m not going to rely on just that. Plus, if it’s an emergency situation, I don’t want to be lugging fourteen pounds of batteries. Since my Doomsday Scenarios generally involve total Grid loss, I tend to overlook things like cell phones and other electrical devices. It’s halfway intentional. You’ll find that the two most common themes in the survival genre are redundancy and flexibility. The gear you carry should have multiple uses, and you should think creatively in using it. More on that later.

It ain’t the Ritz, but it’ll do
While you’re travelling, you’ll need shelter. If you’re sticking close to the remains of civilization, you’ll have your pick of abandoned vehicles, outbuildings and homes to choose from. If you’re out in the wilderness, you may want to blend in with your surroundings. Sure…a tent’s nice. So’s a 35-foot Pace Arrow motor home. Lacking either, you should have a few more tricks up your sleeve. If you don’t know how to build a lean-to at the very least, be sure to carry really good gear. That way, the next person to happen along the same way will find some useful stuff on your corpse. The secret to a natural shelter is to think small. There should be just enough room for you to crawl into it. That way, your body heat will be sufficient to keep it warm. And forget what the environmentally-minded say about only using dead wood. You don’t want your shelter to be made out of the same stuff you’re burning nearby, understand? One shift in the wind, and the next person to happen along the same way will find only slag.

Whether the weather is cold
You can get a small thermometer that attaches to a zipper, but why? You know if you’re too cold or too hot. Dress in layers to easily regulate your core temperature. Know what the signs of hypothermia and heat stroke are. Don’t worry about getting rained on unless you’re already cold. Easy ways to forecast the weather: look at the smoke from your campfire - hugging the ground, there’s a lot of moisture in the air; rising easily, it’s not likely to rain. If the deciduous trees are turning their leaves over, rain’s on the way. A ring around the sun or the moon means rain or snow is on the way. If you get caught out in a deluge or blizzard, the fastest way to warm up if you’re dangerously cold is to drink heated water. The fastest way to cool off (if there’s no handy stream or pond) is to pour water on yourself. You’re going to want to use clean water, though, and that means fire.

We’ll play with that next.