Survival Planning, Prepping and Bugging Out With a Handicapped Family Member

Urban Survival Skills received this request for advice concerning prepping and bug out with a disabled child. I edited the letter to provide some semblance of OPSEC for the writer but want to post this to reach a larger group for potential advice to this prepper with a special needs child.

I am a single parent of a severely disabled child. My child is wheelchair bound, tube fed, in diapers, and developmentally at a pre-schooler level. My child is on medication for seizures. I'm stockpiling Nutren, diapers, and feeding supplies at our family farm which is a fairly short drive away (approx. 28 miles) though a suburban area. I am very concerned about getting myself and my child to the famr as well as having meds for long term care in the case of disaster. Could you please give advice on:

1) How do I know when to bug out?
2) Bug out bags. My child is 80 lbs and I'm 115 lbs. I can put a bag on the wheelchair chair and carry a bug out bag myself, but what weight? What are top priority items?
3) I have a small 4 wheel drive vehicle if driving is an option. Any advice on choosing route, stopping for extra fuel, etc.?
4) I have safety concerns about walking alone with my child. Advice? I am still learning to shoot and getting a gun soon. I am in pretty good shape, but small.
5) What can I do to get seizure meds for long term?

We are working on getting the farm prepared with food, water systems, generators, etc. at the my relatives adjoining property. Getting there with my child safely is my biggest concern. Any advice you have is appreciated. Thank you!
Okay readers, lets help this person out. Here is my initial response:

When to Bug Out. This is an individual call and not a one size fits all protocol. It is based on how safe and prepared you are where you are currently at, and, how far you have to go and the associated risks involved with that movement. I can advise that it would be too late when there are riots in the streets over food, or lack of food; too late when mass of refugees flood the routes; too late when cell phone communications are down; and, too late when martial law and therefore freedom of movement is restricted.

  It may be time to Bug Out when utilities (water and electricity) are intermittent and there are long lines at gas stations and grocery stores with associated shortages. It may be time when your and instincts tell you things are not going to get better. I advise multiple means of communications between you and your family members or friends that are going to bug out and rally on the farm. Develop a brevity code as well so if and when you have comms (voice or text) you can minimize transmission times and therefore chances of misunderstandings or intermittent service cutting you off.

Bug Out Bags. I think the priority are all the meds and supplies necessary for your child. Food, water and all gear necessary to support a walk from your house to the Bug Out location (the farm). This may include food that does not have to be cooked. Depending upon where you live and the seasons, e.g..weather factors, you may need sleeping bags or cold weather gear and things like that. In your case a short walk to your Bug Out location (the farm) could be accomplished in one day, but if you are pushing a wheelchair this may turn into 2 maybe even 4 days depending again on factors outside your control such as weather, threat, etc.

If you have selected Bug Out routes you may elect to emplace a small cache or two to support the movement to your Bug Out location (the farm) as support in case you can't make the distance as planned or the threat is too much that it reduces your travel speed.         

Bug Out Vehicle. A 4x4 is ideal, especially one that's good on gas and has a short wheel base for mobility. If you never let your vehicle get below 1/2 tank of gas you'll have plenty to make the Bug Out movement, based on the travel distance you mentioned. But I would advise an extra 5 gallon fuel can or two. Keep these full and rotate fuel every month. Or you can just get them filed when you think the collapse is beginning and when fuel is till available. You should have several routes if possible. When you have to Bug Out, choose the route based on the current events and threats. You need to drive routes as a rehearsal. You should also look at several foot routes in case you have to move over land on foot. Look for routes that provide cover and concealment and will not be routes for the refugee traffic or obvious routes for anyone else.  This is going to be hard to move a wheel chair over.  Maybe you can look at an ATV with a small trailer to move your child with?    

Walking Alone/Security/Weapon Choice.   By all means learn how to shoot and buy a gun. Actually a handgun and a rifle would be good. Weight and bulk of ammunition is going to impact what you can carry overland on foot. Think about pre-positioning additional ammunition and firearms at the farm. But if you are planning on Bugging Out by yourself, driving or walking, you will need to protect yourself. A semi-auto, magazine fed rifle such as an M-1 carbine, Mini-14, M-4/AR-15 type clone - these are all lightweight (as they come) and would allow you the firepower to defend yourself against multiple bad guys. And here's a hint, almost everybody will be a bad guy.

I have recently been in contact with a lady who just could not afford a modern magazine fed rifle such as an M-4/AR-15 type.  She already had a .22 LR revolver, so she ended up buying a Ruger 10/22 semi-auto .22 LR rifle and a couple of large capacity magazines for it.   Certainly a person would not want to have their safety dependent upon a rimfire cartridge,....but the first rule of a gun fight is to have a, gun and ammo compatibility plus affordability was paramount to this lady.      

Lastly, Medications. I know this is a primary concern of yours. Medications have a shelf life, which is usually several years after the expiration date if you store it in a safe and controlled manner. Research what Vet (animal) meds could possibly be used to mitigate or treat your child's seizures.   Locate the nearest Vet. Many rural vets operate out of a truck with a refrigerator. Vets can also serve as make shift Doctors too in an emergency. You may be able to stock up some meds if you don't use them but continue to get scripts for them but be aware that this is likely illegal. 

You may need to have some silver in order to barter for some meds during a collapse.  Consider having a silver bullion in 1 ounce rounds of bars in case this is the case.  

You have tough conditions to work out, but I know you can do it as you have no other choice.  Get to know your neighbors around the farm (your Bug Out location).  If the houses are close enough you may be able to string a couple of TA-1 military phones and wire between to facilitate communications.  Make sure that stocking food, seeds and having a safe water source are taken care of at the farm as well. 

I hope readers will respond with some additional advice. Many, if not most, of the readers will have better ideas.  Good luck and be safe.       

As Oil Prices Go, So Does Silver - Prepare for Economic Collapse

An article posted on Deviant Investor makes the case that silver is related to crude oil prices. The original title of the article is: "What Crude Oil Says About Silver" - If you want to know where silver prices are going, ask crude oil! Prices are volatile, spiked high and low in 2008, and have, on average, risen steadily for the past 14 years.

Crude Oil Prices:

December 1998 Crude Oil price was under $11 (silver roughly $4.85)

January 2000: Crude Oil price was about $24 (silver roughly $5.25)

July 2008: Crude Oil price topped about $147 (silver roughly $18.40)

December 2008: Crude Oil prices crashed to about $35 (silver roughly $10.50)

June 20, 2014: Current price is about $106 (silver roughly $19.80)

Summary:

Politics: The situation in Iraq, a major oil producer, seems to deteriorate every day. The chaos and violence could easily spread and that chaos and violence will reduce supply and kick crude oil prices higher. Adding to the chaos, central banks will “print” more euros, yen, and dollars and governments will add to their mountains of debt. Price inflation will accelerate and the dollar will weaken further.

Demand: More cars in Asia need gasoline. Even if the world economies contract, demand for crude oil should continue to rise.

Crude Oil Outlook: Crude oil prices have many reasons to explode higher and few to drop lower. The trend has been up for more than a decade. Central banks will print, politicians will instigate more wars and invasions, and each euro, yen, and dollar will purchase even less crude oil and gasoline. It is business as usual, but with an extra dollop of chaos, war, and price inflation tossed into the mix….

Conclusion: Higher oil prices, more military spending, more debt, more chaos, higher consumer prices.

1) Higher oil prices, more military spending, more debt, more chaos, higher consumer prices.

2) Crude and silver have been trending upward for 12+ years. Politics and war will accelerate the price increases.

3) The 52 week moving average of crude is about $100 – below the linear trend. Market price is a bit higher with plenty of room to spike much higher as Middle-East and Ukrainian warfare escalates.

4) The 52 week moving average of silver and the current market price are both about $20 – well below the linear trend. Silver could more than double in price and not violate the 12+ year upward trend.

5) Crude oil prices are moving higher and silver prices will follow.

6) Rig for stormy weather – coming in from Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Russia, South China Sea, “amateur hour” in foreign policy, more wars and invasions, and much of Asia reducing their dependence upon the dollar and Treasury bonds.

7) Statistical correlation between crude and silver for 12+ years of weekly smoothed prices is about 0.84 while correlation between unsmoothed weekly prices is about 0.79. Crude and silver prices are closely aligned in the long term.

7) Preparation is essential.

8) Silver purchases are good preparation.

UrbanMan's Comments: I manipulated the Defiant Investors article only in re- arranging how the facts and opinions were presented, and added the Silver Price to the month and year crude oil price listing, but the facts remain the same. We will have an increase in oil prices. It will drive prices on all other commodities higher - it only remains undetermined whether or not the increase will be fast or slow and if the prices will cause a food crisis and therefore an economic then societal collapse as the Government cannot handle another 20 to 50 million on food stamps, nor would food stamps pay for much food stuffs with the increased prices. Imagine the now 50 million people on food stamps, living day to day, and another 20 to 50 million added to that population. That's close to 1/3 of the population starving and maybe more importantly, being extremely pissed off at government who they see as the entity that should be saving them.

Silver (and gold) is a safe bet as a survival prep. It's the same as having medical kit and supplies as if you need it, you really need it. It may be the only thing that is worth bartering with. As the Defiant Investor articles explains if gasoline goes to $5.00 a gallon, today's Silver at under $21.00 an ounce will in al probability be worth $50 an ounce. Imagine if gasoline is higher in price and availability is greatly reduced. What will silver be worth then? I put my money where my mouth is, I bought another 42 ounces a few weeks ago when it was around $19.50 an ounce.  

The Collapse Calendar

This article, by Mike Adams, appeared in The International Forecaster under the title: "The Collapse Calendar reveals when failures likely to occur in banking, agriculture, nuclear power, pandemic disease and more". You'll be tempted to shoot yourself in the head after reading this, but don't!  Adams obviously put a lot of work into this article, but it is still his opinion and not preordained. Use it to fuel your will to survive and your commitment to prepare for the collapse.

Adam's article:

In the movie Knowing, starring Nicholas Cage, the main character is faced with the burden of comprehending a written code revealing the exact dates and GPS coordinates of large-scale catastrophic events. The movie is outstanding and well worth watching, by the way, but could it ever be true?

Not at such precision, I would submit, but we can know when certain catastrophes are likely to occur based on an understanding of human behavior, historical patterns and modern-day trends. In fact, much of modern-day human behavior is pushing us directly into a long list of catastrophic, systemic failures which are mathematically inevitable. This article aims to help sort out the likely calendar years of likely emergence for such events, which include things like the irrigation aquifers running dry, the world's oil supply running dry, nuclear energy disasters, a global banking collapse and more.

The legacy of human civilization and its tragic self-destruction

To date, the legacy of humankind is a tragedy of chemical poisoning, nuclear weapons, short-sighted resource extraction and corporate-driven war. Humans are a species suffering from astonishing tunnel vision interwoven with insatiable greed and a thirst for violence. The fall of human civilization from its current unsustainable exploitations is not in question... only the timing of events remains unknown. As the final chapter of human civilization seems to draw ever closer with each passing crisis, many of the more observant people wonder what's going to spark the collapse first. Pope Francis (yes, the Pope) recently warned that the global economy is approaching a moment of collapse.

At the same time, many of our world's most brilliant computer scientists are warning about the rise of AI and why super intelligent machines will soon make humanity obsolete.

Those concerned about global warming say climate change will collapse the food supply (due to weather radicalization) and cause mass starvation while drowning the world's largest cities under ocean water. This scenario, fortunately, is one of the longer term predictions, taking centuries to fully unfold.

Peak Oil observers point out that the petroleum economy upon which the world is based is rapidly heading to "EMPTY." Once the oil runs out, what will power the transportation system upon which nearly everything in the economy is based? (Food, medicine, manufacturing, agriculture, employment, etc.)

UrbanMan's comment: Oil and therefore gasoline will become unaffordable long before the world run's out of it. We may see that this year for some people as gasoline is projected to hit $5.50 a gallon, which of course will drive up every single commodity,...food, clothing,...everything, and perhaps fuel a food crisis and economic collapse.

Independent economists warn that the global debt-based banking system is headed for imminent collapse that will shutter the world's largest banks and cause all customer deposits to be forfeit.

Meanwhile, environmentalists rightly warn about genetic pollution from engineered crops, the mass poisoning of our farms and oceans with toxic pesticide chemicals, and the dumping of heavy metals, pharmaceuticals and hormone disruptors into the environment. How can life be sustained on a planet that's increasingly covered in industrial poison?

In truth, every one of these groups has a valid point in one way or another. But each of these risks for humanity has a very different likely timeline of likely emergence. So for the "Collapse Calendar" shown here, I've put together a "best guess" of the likely times in which each of these issues might become a legitimate concern. These years are not entirely my own personal guesses but rather an aggregate extrapolation of trends and predictions I've observed across many fields: the scientific community, environmentalists, alternative economists, geologists, astrophysicists and so on.

The Collapse Calendar: when the events are most likely to unfold. This list is ordered from the most near-term to long-term. The year range indicate years in which the named events MAY occur (are most likely to occur based on current trends).

2014 - 2025 World's debt-based banking system suffers catastrophic debt collapse due to wildly over-leverage derivatives combined with endless money creation by central banks.

2014 - 2034 Over the next 20 years or so, the odds of either a major nuclear power disaster -- or a catastrophic worsening of the Fukushima Daiichi facility -- is shockingly high. As we've already seen, nuclear disasters can be set off by natural disasters such as earthquakes. Nuclear power plants can also be compromised by power grid failures and EMP weapons (see below).

2015 - 2035 Over the next two decades, the chances of a deadly global superbug rising out of the failed medical deployment of antibiotics is extremely high. We have entered the "post-antibiotics era," medical authorities have now admitted, and superbugs are widely circulating in hospitals and among the public that have no known treatment or cure. Just this last week, over 75 scientists working at the CDC accidentally infected each other with anthrax, proving that even the government's own infectious disease experts can't reliably contain these diseases even under strict laboratory conditions.

2015 - 2035 Nuclear war: The risk of nuclear war or nuclear terrorism is higher than ever, with new conflicts now taking place in Ukraine as well as Iraq. Tensions are heating up between America, Russia and China, in large part over the choice of which global currency will be used for petroleum exchanges (presently it is largely the dollar, but Russia wants to change that). There's also the ever-present wildcard nation of North Korea, which continues to possess and test nuclear weapons.

2018 - 2060 EMP attack on America's power grid: Once North Korea manages to figure out how to affix high-yield nuclear weapons to long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles, it will be able to fire those missiles into high-altitude detonation patterns over North America, causing a voltage cascade that will destroy the entire power grid across the nation. It's called an "EMP weapon," and the threat is very real. Fortunately, North Korea is still several years away from successfully deploying a long-range missile. Should it ever get close to actually being able to deploy such a weapon, I have full faith that the American CIA will find some covert, off-the-books method of nuking the North Korean government back into the Stone Age (and maybe even setting the Korean people free from the "Kim Kult" in the process).

UrbanMan's comment: Nuclear war, nuclear disaster, EMP attack are all very possible and doubly so if radical Muslims gain a caliphate in the Middle East. Imagine these ass wipes gaining control of Syria, Iraq and Jordan. Access to weapons of mass destruction and drawing the U.S. and a host of other nations into a giant middle eatern war - well, sounds like Aramgeddon to me.

2020 - 2120 Peak Oil kicks in, causing a century-long steady decline in global oil production combined with a steady rise in oil prices (which translate into more expensive food and other consumer goods). Look for massive socioeconomic changes across the Middle East, and especially in Saudi Arabia which is likely to experience a popular revolt and violent government overthrow before the year 2040.

2025 - 2090 Many of the world's water aquifers that irrigate the mass food supply run out of water, turning agricultural lands into deserts. The map on the right shows the Ogallala aquifer that provides irrigation for much of Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and even New Mexico. Once this water runs out, it can take centuries for it to be replenished.

2029 - 2099 Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that 2029 is the year AI machines become "smarter" than humans. Right now, Google and DARPA are developing advanced humanoid robotics that can walk, climb stairs, run, carry weapons and track humans. Once AI systems take command of these hardware platforms, many experts predict humanity's days may be numbered. If true, the remainder of this list is irrelevant unless you are a machine reading this for the historical record.

2014 - 2114 The Earth is struck by a massive space rock that destroys a major world city. Technically, this prediction timeframe is not a true indication of the situation. The reason I chose to show 2014 - 2114 is because a very large meteor strikes the planet (actually, exploding in the atmosphere and causing widespread devastation) roughly once every century. In 1908, for example, a meteor exploded over Tunguska, Russia, devastating nearly all complex life across an area of 1,000 square miles.

2030 - 2100 The chronic loss of farming top soils starts turning once-arable lands into Dust Bowl deserts. As Eddie Albert wrote in 1980 (yes, over 30 years ago!) In the past 30 or 40 years, the heavy use of synthetic fertilizers, anhydrous ammonia, nitrates, pesticides and herbicides, DDT, etc. have doubled and tripled the yield of grain per acre . . . but at the expense of the organic matter in the soil. Rotation of crops has been replaced with monoculture: corn, corn, corn, or wheat, wheat, wheat. Everyone knows this method exhausts the soil and increases pest infestation, but people are hungry and the cash register is jingling. Yet for every bushel of corn we harvest, we lose two bushels of topsoil.

2040 - 2140 Environmental collapse accelerates after tipping point of chemicals and heavy metals is reached. Mass extinction events ravage the planet, collapsing the fragile web of life and leading to the widespread emergence of infectious disease (Mother Nature's "CTRL-ALT-DEL" for rebooting civilization).

2100 - 2500 Oceans rise enough from global warming to start flooding lower elevation cities, but this disaster, if it turns out to be true at all, will happen in slow-motion, with ocean levels rising only fractions of an inch per year.

2014 - 202,014 Yes, the window of this prediction is 200,000 years, during which time the massive caldera known as Yellowstone National Park is likely to violently explode, blanketing much of North America in ash and causing extreme global dimming for 1-3 years which would result in a global food supply collapse. Yellowstone explodes roughly every 600,000 years and is currently understood to be "late." But in terms of a human lifespan, the odds of Yellowstone erupting while any of us is alive remains extremely remote.

Year 2,800,000,000 Approximately 2.8 billion years from now, the sun will balloon into a massive "red giant" whose diameter is so large, it will physically engulf the entire orbit of planet Earth.  As this happens, of course, all life will be extinguished on our planet. But don't worry... humans are far more likely to have already destroyed themselves before then.

Are Hand Tools and Hardware Included in your Survival Preparations?

I haven't been a hardware store that I didn't want to spend thousands of dollars in, and I have a significant collection of hand tools and hardware, just in case, so this article on non-power tools interested me. Very good article from Survival Cache on the 10 Non-Power Tools you will need for Survival:

• Cross Cut Saw
• Hacksaw
• Standard Hand Saw
• Large Hand Drill
• Small Hand Drill
• Battery Free Battery Tester
• Battery Free Circuit Tester
• Hand Powered Grinding Wheel
• Hand Powered Air Pump Scythe

Pretty decent list, but why limit it to 10 tools? This above list is completely diferent from my own. Survival Cache is a very good site, just disagree on this one! But his recommendation of hand grinding wheel is something I did not consider before- great idea and will incorporate it into my preps.

Urban Man's Hand Tool and Hardware List:

• Claw Hammer. Don't forget about boxes of nails of all types as well, concentrating on 8 and 16D size.
• Cross Cut Saw. These usually have a removal blade so have an extra blade or get a different type of blade.
• Hack Saw and extra blades,.....many extra blades.
• Long Handle D shovel. In fact, have a couple of these.
• Short D handle shovel,...again have several.
• Axe. Better yet a wood axes, a wedge and a fire axe which is a regular axe with a pickaxe end.
• Combination pliers/wire cutters. Include a couple of rolls of fencing wire, sometimes called baling wire.
• Box and Open wrench set, standard and metric. Have a couple of cans or buckets of assorted bolts with washers, lock washers and nuts as well. Think 1/4, 1/2 and 5/8ths diamter in legnths of 2, 4, 6 and 8 inches long.
• Screwdriver set, slotted tip and cross tip. Include boxes of medium and long wood screws, metal screws and rubber washer sheet metal screws.
• Sledge Hammer.
• Ball Peen Hammer.
• Garden hoe. Makes things easy when you have to put in that survival garden,.....which you will have to do if you want to eat and suplement your stored food supply.
• Hand air pump is a good idea. I did not think about this. These are cheap - have several.
• Hand drill - another thing that passed me, but brought to my attention by the article referenced above.
• Wire Cutters and/or fencing tool.
• Slip Joint Pliers.
• Needle Nose pliers.
• Pipe Wrench.
• Steel pry bar and smaller crow bars.

I think the thing to do is to carry a notepad around with you to write down your prep ideas as they occur to you.  One of these headings can be hand tools, hardware and material.  Work off the list as you can. 

Related to hand tools would be material such as lumber, PVC and you could probably add some metal stock to this list.  Mush like people in Florida have pre-cut plywood to cover windows to hurricane protection, having some plywood, 2x4's and PVC pipe (don't forget the connectors, etc.) can be stored in your garage.

I have flower beds around the house with rail road ties as borders.  I intended this so I can pull the rail road ties up and use them to fortify the house, provide small arms protection and/or build protected fighting positions if necessary.  Sure would piss my wife of, but it's there is needed.