Survival Chronicles of Jim – Chapter 5

Last night I went over to Neomi’s to show her the latest on the web site I am developing for her home based business which is, no kidding, Wedding Planning. Her day job is an Office Manager for a Physical Therapy Doctor. It’s hard to keep my mind on work when she’s walking around looking 100% gorgeous, but I have a story to tell.

Anyway our discussion turned to General Survival topics, with a lot of “what if’s”. I told her my general plan, was if the city or my house became untenable to live and survive at, would be to head to a old cabin in the mountains that remains belonging to someone (I’m not quite sure) in my family. It’s about 220 miles to the cabin, but I would have to plan on 50 mile detour to pickup my son from college where he is studying Computer Added Design so let’s say 275 miles. My vehicle is a ’04 Toyota RAV 4 which averages 22 mpg (city and highway) so that means I would have to have a full tank, 14 gallons, in order to get from my house to the cabin. I figure if I can get half way there, I could always walk 100 miles in about 5 to 6 days.

Neomi said, only half jokingly, ‘So, you’re just going to leave me?” I said “No, I would offer to take you, but if we have no telephones, cell or computer communications how are we going to talk and coordinate anything?” I then told her, “Look, if something gets really bad you can always come to my house. You’ll probably need to skirt the foothills of the mountain and come in the back way to avoid the heavy population. You need to have durable clothing suitable for hiking and camping, good boots, and only pack essentials – you don’t need makeup and that crap.”

Neomi looked like she thought about it for a few seconds, and then said, “Fair enough, what about guns? I have a couple of guns that my Dad left me.” She went into her bedroom and came out with a rifle and a handgun. Looking at both I figured out she had a Bolt Action Springfield rifle in .30-06 and a Revolver in .38 Special. I asked her is she had any ammunition for each, and she said no, so I told her she would have to pickup some at Wal-Mart, the local Sporting Goods store or a Gun Store and I wrote down what she needed to buy.

Neomi further surprised me by saying “she had a hand held Global Positioning System (GPS) that she had bought when she was dating a guy doing the geo caching sport.” She went and found it, so I wrote down the name “Garmin Etrex” and noticed that it used “AA” batteries. I told her to make sure she brings it with her. She said the only thing she knew what to do with it was figure out her location, input another location and use the device to walk to the cache. So I made a mental note to finds out more about GPS’s.

I finished my time last night with Neomi giving her an idea on what else she will need to bring with her, concentrating on some bottled water, granola bars, lightweight foods, matches/lighters, blanket, any medications, a toothbrush, etc. She exclaimed “Holy Cow, I’m going to need a big back pack”. I replied “that’s right Sweetie, it’s called a Survival Bug Out Bag, and I’m going to send you an e-mail with some more things to pack and keep it prepared to grab and immediately go – that’s the point”. And as much as I hated to say it, I said “…and those short pants you’re wearing aren’t going to be practical,…..so nothing but long pants.”

So now I have a possible survival partner. The boys warned me about taking on “strays” as each stray person absorbed by me will impact negatively on any survival stocks I have and may impact worse on my own survivability. They told me “to realize you can’t save everyone” as well as advised me to be careful on who I tell about my Survival Plans, and to choose my “strays” or Survival partners carefully. Their final advice on the subject was to base those choices on not only the skills sets other people would bring but how they would fit into a group.