
Confessions of a Former Apocalypse Survival Guide Writer - jackgavigan
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/i-used-to-write-apocalypse-survival-guides
======
Animats
So the current worry is an electromagnetic pulse? [1]

The "prepper" version of this usually confuses an actual EMP attack (which
requires an atomic bomb) and solar magnetic disturbances. They're totally
different. An electromagnetic pulse is a big RF pulse with a rise time in
nanoseconds. A solar magnetic disturbance results in DC currents being induced
into the ground over a period of hours.

An EMP attack is a threat, but if someone is firing atomic bombs at you, you
have a bigger problem. That's the military view. It's mostly a threat to
things which have long wires attached to them. Mobile devices are too small to
be affected. It also doesn't affect fiber optics.

A solar magnetic disturbance is mostly a problem for AC long-distance power
transmission on circuits which use a ground reference. This is a big problem
for power grids, and they have ways to deal with them. There was a big event
in 1989 which caused a blackout.[2] It appears as DC in AC circuits, causing
partial transformer saturation. If this isn't detected, it can cause
transformer overheating and burnout. But the big grids have detection for
this, and reduce power levels in some transformers when necessary. This
happens at a low level a few times every year.

[1] [http://americanpreppersnetwork.com/2016/07/emp-
electromagnet...](http://americanpreppersnetwork.com/2016/07/emp-
electromagnetic-pulse-part-one.html) [2]
[http://www.pjm.com/~/media/training/nerc-
certifications/re6-...](http://www.pjm.com/~/media/training/nerc-
certifications/re6-weatherenvironmental.ashx)

~~~
jonstokes
I know someone who is a senior meteorologist for FEMA, and this person takes
part in some interdisciplinary disaster planning events based around specific
scenarios. He told me that there actually is no FEMA plan for a very large
solar storm (like the Carrington Event), because we'd just be screwed. In a
massive grid-down scenario like that, they expect a 90% die-off in the first
few months.

This was two years ago that I had this conversation, and I'm not sure when the
actual exercise he was referencing took place. My understanding is that there
has been a lot done to prepare the grid in the past 5 years, so we may be in
better shape today. I hope so.

~~~
loteck
You should think twice about repeating doomsday hearsay like this without
citing a documented, credible source.

~~~
jonstokes
I'm not going to cite a source because it was a personal friend in a private
conversation, and it was off-the-record. I don't want to get anyone in
trouble.

~~~
loteck
Then it's hearsay and worthless and you shouldn't repeat it, frankly. If you
do, people should call you out since you're inciting FUD.

~~~
jonstokes
Feel free to ignore it. Seriously. I don't really care one way or the other.
It's a nested comment in an HN thread, and it's actually presented by me as
hearsay. (Whoever you are, I don't really need you to define hearsay for me.)
It's not like I just reported this in the WSJ. I dropped into a forum where
people have informal conversations about a variety of things, and this was my
random, downvoted, "hey I heard this thing once" contribution. I've given
about as much information as I care to, and people can interpret however they
like.

------
DoubleGlazing
My wife hails from a little rural village a few miles outside of Syracuse, NY.
A place that when the weather gets bad, it REALLY gets bad. There have been
snow storms where they have been without power and blocked in for a few days.
As a result of this my in-laws have become preppers without realising it. They
keep a supply of petrol, dried food, water, fire wood, batteries, gas bottles
and have various types of radio at their disposal. They also have a backup
generator for the house. They are in the process of fitting solar to try and
avoid using the generator when things are bad because in a snow storm a
generator sound really creepy. They could live for a week without any
lifestyle changes if the power went off and the roads were impassible.

When we were getting married and all the extended family arrived at the house
for the big do, some relatives turned out to be preppers and were fascinated
with the setup. One phrase I kept hearing was "We read in this book that if
you do this, then..." and my father-in-law would respond with "Well, when we
were actually without power during the 93 blizzard we learned that..."
Basically experience trumped mass produced prepper books.

~~~
technofiend
To a certain extent weather makes preppers of us all. I daresay people in
Syracuse can rely on harsher weather coming more regularly than down here on
the Texas coast. We get hurricanes and tropical storms but they have the
entire Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard to choose from.

Every time a storm comes we get the usual advisories to stock up on a few days
of food, check flashlight batteries, fill a clean tub with tap water for
drinking, etc. Those things are drilled into your head from grade school and
are repeated on news broadcasts before every major storm.

What's interesting is the unexpected byproduct of outages. Particularly here
in the South home construction techniques have changed over the last 100
years. Older homes have lots of large, screened windows, whole house fans and
vented attics to help move large amounts of air and help with heat. Even
without power you can open all your windows and get a cross breeze. New
construction is heavily insulated, has fewer windows and makes no concessions
for mass airflow outside the air conditioning system.

Hurricane Katrina was an epiphany for many home owners down here as power was
out for weeks afterwards; previously comfortable homes became sweltering
hotboxes. The effect on local generator supply was immediate and obvious: sold
out everywhere. I heard through the grapevine of entrepreneurs driving down
truckloads of them to make a quick buck.

Even so gasoline-fueled generators can be difficult to keep fueled after a
hurricane - people leaving the city have a tendency to deplete supplies and
gas stations may not have power to pump. But natural gas tends to stay on even
when power fails since gas distribution systems can have their own generation
and some use the fuel they're moving to maintain pressure.

All the anecdotal evidence I have points to a heavy uptick in natural-gas-
fired whole house generator sales after Katrina. In fact there was a trend for
a while of new construction actively advertising whole house generator
inclusion. I think it happened to a lesser extent again after Ike. Life really
stinks down here without air conditioning. I guess my point is most preppers
seem to concentrate on food and water, but at least down here electricity is
high on the list. :-)

~~~
maxerickson
It's pretty fascinating to me that people don't default to having a couple
days of food in the house. I guess if you have an electric stovetop dry goods
aren't so useful when the power is out, but for people with gas, $10 of pasta
will go a long way (and is easy to rotate through). I might not have a lot of
choices left after 3 days, but there'd be food whether I went to the store or
not.

I'm sure the reliability of the fuel supply in the aftermath of a disaster is
a factor for the nat gas generators, but if you are going to install one
permanently, not having to deal with deliveries and stale fuel are also pretty
big advantages.

~~~
technofiend
Oh yeah! Far superior to the hassle of dealing with gasoline and unless you
buy a monster generator you're not going to power your entire house off of it
anyway. Agreed wrt some simple dry goods. A box of crackers and some cans of
tuna will go a long way, assuming you can find the can opener. :-)

------
ValleyOfTheMtns
Anyone know of good survival/prepper guides. Ones written by reputable
authors/experts, well researched, and practical?

I'm not particularly paranoid (I suppose that's what paranoid people say...),
but I do think there's a certain fragility to our civilisation that we're
happy to overlook.

~~~
hga
The thesis of _Life After Doomsday_ by Bruce Clayton (get the Dial Press
paperback edition if you want to look at it, it has annotations following the
original), is that if you're prepared to survive a major nuclear war, you're
pretty much set for anything less than that (modulo of course each threats
particulars, like storm surge for hurricanes).

He (and I, who started becoming a nuclear war survivalist in 1968-9 in 2nd-3rd
grade when my mother became a Civil Defense Block Mother, I still have the
sign) recommend you read another book on expedient nuclear war survival, which
is a lot more timeless. It's based on serious research at Oak Ridge, up to and
including handing a set of printed instructions to an "average" American
family, video taping them trying to follow them, and iterating on them. Oh,
yeah, in the traditional fashion, the author(s) tried out this stuff
themselves: _Nuclear War Survival Skills_

Check out the official on-line copy here:
[http://www.oism.org/nwss/](http://www.oism.org/nwss/) but if you're worried
about a nuclear weapon event, get the dead tree copy, for the Kearny Fallout
Meter needs better precision than you'll get from digital -> computer printer.

For that matter, you almost certainly want dead tree (or microfiche, there's a
company that used to do that) copies for when the light go out.

After that, there's a lot more, but I don't have time to go into it (in the
middle of renovating a house built in 1910), check my previous postings on the
subject if you can find them, 5 minutes with Google and the built in search
engine were useless _and I have precise search terms_ , e.g. the obscure _Bad
Times Primer_ by C.G. Cobb. Or email me for more (address is in my info).

------
dkokelley
A related question: Where do you, as a marketer, draw the line between
producing a product to serve the needs and interests of a particular market
and enabling activities you disagree with or believe to be harmful (even if
only harmful to the consumer)?

In this case, writing for the "prepper" audience seems to fall near the line
of providing content relevant to the consumers' interests and
enabling/encouraging paranoid 'end-of-times' behavior that at best prepares
the consumer for a natural disaster and at worst entrenches distrust of
society in the audience.

Is it possible to ethically market a product that relies on a belief system or
set of values you disagree with?

~~~
maxerickson
It depends on your ethics. Which I think is more than a trite rejoinder. You
don't have to go very far back in history to see how slippery received wisdom
can be.

Here's a vaguely on target real world example: There are doctors who perform
surgeries for people that refuse blood transfusions for religious regions.
Presumably some of the doctors disagree with the belief, but they perform the
surgeries anyway.

In that situation it isn't a huge conundrum, choosing to engage the patient on
their terms can be better than letting them suffer or die (so while your
predicate is true, it's also the case that there is strong alignment of
interests). It's had an impact on how medicine is practiced otherwise:
[http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-jehovahs-
witness...](http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-jehovahs-witnesses-
are-changing-medicine)

Anybody have any better real world examples that more directly get at the
tricky part of the question?

------
gooseus
I thoroughly enjoyed this article... as someone who does believe in an
eventual collapse I really appreciated the balanced approach while still
making some fun of the fringe elements.

For the record, my belief is in a non-specific collapse based on the
increasingly built-in fragility and complexity of civilization as espoused by
Joseph Tainter[1] in his book "The Collapse of Complex Societies"[2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter)

[2]
[https://monoskop.org/images/a/ab/Tainter_Joseph_The_Collapse...](https://monoskop.org/images/a/ab/Tainter_Joseph_The_Collapse_of_Complex_Societies.pdf)

[https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-
Ar...](https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-
Archaeology/dp/B001AOZ3PM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1469399383&sr=1-1&keywords=collapse+of+complex+societies#navbar)

~~~
GrumpyYoungMan
The science historian, James Burke, had a sobering walkthrough of the
consequences of a large-scale failure of technology in the first episode of
the first of his classic "Connections" series: "The Trigger Effect"

[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnwpsp_veetle-
connections-s...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnwpsp_veetle-
connections-s01e01-the-trigger-effect_tech)

(Even more sobering is that, nearly 40 years after this series was filmed, we
have a new layer of technological dependence: telecoms networks and data
services. This would greatly amplify a lot of the things that Burke
describes.)

------
maga
Reminds me of an area historically known for its sword makers where I met
people stockpiling swords in preparation for the coming doomsday. Apparently,
there is a belief among religious locals that before the actual end of the
world, God is going to stop all the modern machinery (including guns)
effectively throwing everyone back indo the middle ages. Silly thing, but it
keeps local blacksmiths at work allowing to continue old traditions for what
it's worth.

------
Alex3917
Statistically, you're more likely to die in a post-apocalyptic scenario then
you are in a car accident, so if you worry about things like wearing your
seatbelt or driving sober then it's hardly irrational to be a prepper.[1] That
being said, given that according to JAMA only 1.2% of Americans meet all seven
guidelines for cardiovascular health[2], spending your weekends preparing for
the apocalypse isn't necessarily the best use of time for most people in terms
of increasing their life expectancy.

[1]
[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/a-huma...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/a-human-
extinction-isnt-that-unlikely/480444/)

[2]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22427615](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22427615)

~~~
ufmace
It's not irrational IMHO to be prepared to live a couple of days or so without
power or grocery stores, as that's happened dozens of times all over the US
for a variety of reasons. A total collapse of civilization on the other hand,
not so much.

I will also say that I've wondered how many of the people prepping are capable
of spending a day hiking in the woods with a decent pack on their back. Having
a ton of stuff may not be very helpful if you don't have the physical
capabilities to adapt to unexpected circumstances.

~~~
Alex3917
> Having a ton of stuff may not be very helpful if you don't have the physical
> capabilities to adapt to unexpected circumstances.

The actual amount of physical stuff you'd need to survive some sort of post-
apocalyptic scenario really isn't more than a few hundred bucks, e.g. a year
worth of crystalized iodine for purifying water and a flint & steel fire
starter costs all of $25. What's more expensive is learning the edible plants
and mushrooms in your area and their medicinal properties, plus whatever other
miscellaneous survival skills you'd need.

~~~
jessaustin
Iodine is probably a good idea, but unless you're the only one left you
probably ought to save up some ammo as well.

~~~
Alex3917
I'm not a gun owner, but at the same time I realize that it's not possible to
live as a vegetarian in a survival situation. This is because plants have
almost no calories, you can't digest them without fat, most don't have enough
protein, they take too much energy to gather and cook, etc. So without being
able to cover everything with tofu, blue cheese, nutritional yeast, etc.,
there is basically no way to survive for any period of time without a gun. I
have an interest in edible plants and mushrooms, so that's where I overlap
with the preppers, but I feel like not owning a gun is one reason it wouldn't
really make sense to label myself as such.

~~~
ufmace
IMHO, in a realistic survival situation, unless you already live in an
extremely remote area, like hundreds of miles from even a small city, the
other survivors are going to be a much more immediate concern. Unless of
course whatever the disaster is results in immediate casualties in the 95%+
range in all major cities, and you somehow survive this.

There would be a huge number of people in the area and no prospect of feeding
all of them. They would all be very determined indeed, and many would have
their own guns. Everyone would either starve, die at the hands of
raiders/thieves, or become raiders and thieves themselves, and thus have
plenty of supplies from whoever did prepare. Having a gun would help, but more
important would be to have a large group with military-like organization
strong enough to stand up to the stresses involved in surviving such an
apocalypse. If you already have that or can make it/become part of it, you'll
survive. If you don't, then your guns probably won't help you much, no matter
how fancy they are and how much ammo you have.

So IMHO, to realistically prep, you'd have to either live way, way out in the
boonies already, already be part of some kind of warlord militia in our
current mostly peaceful world (a street gang might do it), or just accept that
this is basically never going to happen anyways.

~~~
Alex3917
> There would be a huge number of people in the area and no prospect of
> feeding all of them.

I'm currently in NYC, where clearly there are way more people than edible
plants. Even if you look at only the 1% or whatever who know which plants are
edible, there still wouldn't be nearly enough plants to feed them.

But in any sort of post-apocalyptic scenario, the first thing that would
happen is that people would be unable to mow their lawns and the parks. So
within two or three weeks the amount of edible plants would go up 100x. Still
not enough food to make staying in a city viable for the longterm, but
probably enough that you could feed yourself while hiking or biking to a more
remote area.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
You think a few weeks will turn _lawn grass_ into an abundant food supply?

 _Actual wheat_ takes months before it's ready to harvest. If, on the day of
the apocalypse, every single person in NYC dug up the lawns and parks and
planted every inch with edible grains, they'd all starve to death long before
getting any bread. If they planted before the apocalypse so that the harvest
came in just before the shit went down, they'd still starve to death, because
a city doesn't have enough arable land to feed even 1% of its occupants. The
amount of land required to keep NYC fed is larger than the city itself.

That's putting aside the fact that there's nothing in lawn grass that humans
can get enough calories out of to even make up for the effort of harvesting.

~~~
Alex3917
So in your typical NYC grass you have: dandelion, chicory, common mallow,
burdock, curly dock, bitter dock, red clover, plantain, various onions and
mustards, etc. All of that stuff gets pretty big very fast if you don't mow
over it. Obviously you still can't feed yourself on only plants, but the
quantity of edible plants would probably outstrip the number of people who
knew what they were. NYC has 30,000 acres of public parks, and tons more
unofficial open space.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Just because you _can_ eat something doesn't mean it will keep you alive.
Dandelion greens, for example, definitely don't provide enough calories to
make up for what you spend gathering them. I'm not sure they have enough to
make up for just the effort of chewing and digesting them.

Everything you've mentioned there is just greens except for the plantains and
onions, which will certainly be stripped bare in days. The rest might liven up
a salad, but it definitely won't give you the protein and calories to stave
off starvation.

~~~
Alex3917
Red clover actually has a lot of protein. The folks who survived the Irish
potato famine were the ones who never abandoned the traditional Celtic
practice of eating clover in favor of potatoes.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Maybe so. You still won't meet your bulk calorie needs from greens alone.

