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.