Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

"Preparedness refers to a very concrete research-based set of actions that are taken as precautionary measures in the face of potential disasters. These actions can include both physical preparations (such as emergency supplies depots, adapting buildings to survive earthquakes and so on) and trainings for emergency action. Preparedness is an important quality in achieving goals and in avoiding and mitigating negative outcomes."
—Wikipaedia

From part one:  Things are falling apart, are not well designed, and their swift demise would be less harmful than their long slow dissipation.  Nothing we do within the existing political system is sufficient to resolve its inter-tangled problems.  Hastening its end isn't possible either.  Lacking resilience, the natural disasters which can be readily anticipated won't be overcome effectively.  In order to build a better world, we can only begin in certain ways.  To fix things we have to survive what is happening and what is coming and be here to build well in the aftermath.

 

Preparation and You

You may not have ever thought of yourself as a prepper.   You may have heard bad things said about preppers, about their " conspiracy theories."  Guess what?  It turns out many of the things they were called "tinfoil hats" for having mentioned decades ago were no mere theories.  Fluoride really is a neuro-toxin which is very bad for child mental development.  The naive way is to drink tap water, the opposite of naive (which is what we mean when we spell things backwards) is Evian.  Guess what?  They don't add fluoride to their bottled waters.  It really is poison.  Besides which, topical application of fluoride in toothpaste actually alters tooth enamel (so does strontium if you can find it in toothpaste).  There is no evidence for measurable repair to tooth enamel from systemic fluoride. 

One can go on and on in the discussion of conspiracies that have been proven to exist, including Operation Mockingbird, Operation Northwoods, the tomes of evidence implicating the deep state in orchestrating the events of 7 December 1941, assassinating JFK, RFK, and MLK, Jr., orchestrating the events of 11 September 2001, lying the country into war in Iraq, and profiting from endless war through the opium trade, the arms industries, and in many other ways.  It turns out that the USA government is deeply involved in child trafficking, drug trafficking, slavery, and torture.  There is extensive evidence that the Federal Reserve system was created to finance wars, huge government projects, and the enslavement of mankind.  The "managed society" enthusiasts of Rousseau's era have wielded enormous power to the detriment of everyone else.

Rather than go on and on, I will simply leave this topic by mentioning that the concepts of a manged society, where a small numbe of people make all the choices for everyone else, has been proven impossible.   There are many contributing elements to this proof.  Kurt Goedel proved the incompleteness theorem, which illustrates that no system of logic can be complete in itself.  Ludwig von Mises and many other economists proved that the economic calculation problem makes a managed economy into a tyranny every single time, and the more control is exercised over the economy the faster it descends into tyranny.  Nils Bohr and several other important physicists (Schroedinger, Wheeler, Deutsch) have illustrated the quantum nature of reality. Quantum physics teaches us that we cannot be certain about many aspects of reality, such as the speed and position of quantum particles or units of energy.  Quantum physics has proven that no objective observer can exist, because every observer influences what is observed.  Finally, chaos mathematics has illustrated that modelling of certain kinds of systems, including economies and weather, always reflects assumed or measured initial conditions, very small fluctuations in which result in enormously different outcomes after only a few iterations (days in the case of weather; weeks in the case of economies). 

Nonetheless, the descendants and adherents of the men who paid Rousseau to fake up the social contract have been willing to enrich themselves, pretend to knowledge they cannot have, and slaughter hundreds of millions while putting hundreds of millions more into abject poverty, torture centres, and degradation, all so they can pretend to be in charge.   None of this situation is sustainable or flexible or resilient, all of it is extremely fragile and kept going by streams of propaganda, and none of it is going to end well.  Thus, you should prepare.

 

Your Needs

You have about five minutes to live if you run out of air.  Your brain is likely to be unrecoverably damaged after ten minutes without adequate oxygen, give or take a few minutes.  You are very likely to lose consciousness and "live" only in the sense that you may be pulled to safety by someone else, but in terms of actually doing anything about your lack of air, you have right around five minutes.   Then you pass out, then you die. 

Given the existence of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, as well as vast forest fires that may be caused by weapons or meteor impacts or lightning strikes or arsonists, as well as volcanic eruptions,  it may be extremely imprudent for you to breathe the air that is outside your home.  You should be able to filter the air you breathe.  That's especially true while you are on the move, since you may have to go out into bad air and filter it as you go along.  It's also true of your vehicles in most cases.  Internal combustion engines require oxygen for that combustion to take place.  Electric and hybrid cars may be able to move for a while even in bad air.  My suggestion: get a filter mask for construction work at any home improvement store, and get the kind with replaceable cartridge filters.  You'll want a set for each person in your family.

Bad water can poison you very quickly.  You can live for about 5 days without water, though you won't be very active at the last day or two of that time.  You'll want water, and you may as well have quite a few tens of gallons of drinking water stored in your home.  You'll want ways to filter dirty water and get clean water.  Iodine tablets will kill off biologicals in water, and the nasty taste can be removed with filtering.  I recommend you look into water filter systems and tools.

Some people have lived for forty or fifty days without food, or with very limited food, but you are unlikely to be able to do much with any vigour after about 20 days of starvation.  You'll want food.   Keeping a supply on hand, and gathering or making more food after a systems collapse are important things to think about. 

With air, water, and food, you'll want to stay warm with shelter and heat, you'll want to be able to cool off with swimming or air conditioning, you'll want to be able to relocate as needed, and you'll want your family to have what it needs, including knowledge and education, and many other things.  But I've put the survival time frames above to illustrate what really matters to you: air, water, food, in that exact order.

 

PHOM CAGES

Everyone has a system they like for how to organise things, and if you have a system that works for you, great.  Use your system, and don't worry about the "foam cages."  If you are still getting organised, you have a little time, so consider the acronym PHOM CAGES.  The concept here is to break into a set of nine major categories the kinds of tools and gear you are going to want, and then in each case break things down further.  PHOM CAGES stands for Plumbing, HVAC, Ordnance, Medical, Carpentry, Automotive, Gardening, Electrical, and Sewing.  Some tools fit into more than one category.  Wherever possible, get one tool that does several jobs, and don't worry about fitting it into a particular category - save weight and cost as you are able.  If you have the luxury of a large budget, buy a copy of each tool for each category where it is needed, as it can be extremely helpful to have spares.

Plumbing includes all pipes, hoses, water filtration, sewage, water storage, bathtubs, sinks, faucets, and other systems for moving liquids, including especially water.  You'll want pipe wrenches, some pipes, vise grips, wrenches, and parts for the purpose.   I have a particular toolbox set aside for plumbing and automotive, which have similar tools in many instances.  If you don't have much experience with plumbing, get some basic texts and watch some videos and work with someone who does, and keep in mind that you have only a few days without water before you won't need it ever again in this life.

Want to know if your water is clean?  Get some testing equipment to help figure it out.  A student microscope can help you see water-borne flora and fauna invisible to the naked eye.  A pool test kit will let you know the acidity and chlorine content of water.  You can also get tests for lead and other impurities.

Some good advice shows up in strange places.  In the film "Moonstruck" one of the characters is a plumber who says there are three kinds of pipe.  Garbage, bronze, and copper.  Garbage doesn't last or work, and includes galvanised steel, plastic, and other cheap choices.  Bronze he says is very nice, "unless something goes wrong; and something always goes wrong." So use copper.   Copper is a mild antibiotic and anti-fungal and so your water is probably cleaner after going through copper pipes.  Learn to sweat a joint, learn how to solder, learn how to cut and bend copper tubing.  You'll be fine.

HVAC covers heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.  It includes air filtration systems and equipment.  You'll want to not only have the tools and equipment you need, but also a supply of accessories such as plastic sheeting and tapes (duct tape, metal foil tape, shipping tape) so you can make a temporary air-tight shelter in case of bad gasses from natural or man-made causes.  As you outfit yourself for these purposes, remember that you can live for only minutes without air.  Plan and budget accordingly.  Air conditioning may seem like a luxury you can do without, but many communications systems and nearly all computer systems require a certain range of temperatures to function, so you are very likely going to want to consider how to maintain that range.

Did you know that if you fill a ventilation pipe with gravel, some air will get through?  Clean smooth pebbles work even better.  Did you know that caves and underground dwellings can maintain their temperature range for many decades to centuries?  Did you know that you can keep ice frozen in warm weather if you build a beehive shaped building in a certain way? 

Ordnance is a big category and includes all forms of weaponry from knives, slings, bows, and guns up to and including artillery and anti-aircraft missiles.  Pretty much if it makes other people stop moving or makes other stuff go "boom" it is ordnance.   You'll want some.  "Among the other harm it brings you, being disarmed causes you to be despised," said Niccolo Machiavelli, and he would have known.

Ordnance can have a food-related function in that people can use rifles, pistols, slings, bows, and spears to kill game animals for food.  For food and for setting a defensive permiter, consider snare wire.  A coil of snare wire can feed you indefinitely since you can recover the wire.  For the same reasons consider netting.  Birds and animals can be caught in nets, and so can people.  Razor wire and barbed wire have similar uses. 

I would also group "armour" into this category, since its use is typically in the context of not wanting the other guy's ordnance to make your stuff go "boom" or put holes in you.   Again, you'll want some.  How much and in what context is up to your circumstances, and I'm not trying to tell you what's going on with you because, frankly, I don't really know.

Medical is a set of tools, materials, and consumables that you use to fix holes the other guy's ordnance have put in you or your people, and to heal other injuries and illnesses.  You'll want a good emergency medical kit.  You'll want some suture needles - the kind that look like most of a circle and let you make simple repairs to gashes.  Practice on fruits and vegetables as well as cloth to get a sense of what the juiciness factor does to your work.

Do you have medical conditions like gout, diabetes, heart disease?  Do you take vitamins or herbal supplements?  You are going to want to be able to survive for some time with what you have on hand, so stock up a bit.  Remember to rotate stock and keep the fresh stuff at the back of your cabinet or box of supplies.  Without a medical doctor, how do you get antibiotics and other medicines for your kit? Try going to a rural area and find an animal feed store.  They will have a veterinary medicine section and are happy to supply you what you need.   Doses suited to an 80 or 200 pound calf are likely to be workable for a similar sized human.  Do some research and develop rules of thumb and guides you can apply as needed.

You'll want equipment for measuring blood pressure, body temperature, heart rate, for listening to heart and lungs, for suturing, for putting pressure on wounds and injuries, for binding and bandaging wounds, and some basic emergency medical training.  Consider taking some classes to be up to date.

Carpentry is a general category for anything you would nail or screw together, like wood, sheeting, or ropes.  Rather than adding another category, I put masonry here.  Tenting, too, so all the shelter stuff is in one place.  You'll need hammer, screwdrivers, blades, saws, pry bars, drills, nails, screws, and you may want to have the equipment to make these - forge, anvil, bellows, that sort of thing.  Carpentry doesn't feed you but it can help you make raised beds for your garden.  It does house you if you need a shelter or your home needs repairs.  It can also be used to fashion ordnance, including all manner of traps and deadfalls. 

Remember, you aren't only surviving until you can make contact with other people who have things organised and are not in a collapse situation.  You may not ever find any large number of such persons.  You should have some idea of how to put things together in case you need a boat, a house, or a building for any reason, because you may not find anyone else who can make such things for you. 

About 71,000 years ago, a single volcano, a super-volcano, near what is now a lake in Toba, in the Indonesian islands, blew up and killed off all but about 2,600 human beings.  Most likely these were people living a long way away.  Roughly 12,600 years ago a substantial meteorite impacted Earth on one of the ice sheets covering part of North America and set fire to all of the forests of North America, causing the extinction of all the mega-fauna of the time.  So if you want to have a civilisation after such an event, you may have to build one.

Automotive is fairly obviously about transportation equipment.  You need to move things around.  Wagons are okay, but cars and trucks are better.  Whatever vehicle you have, you want to be able to do basic repairs to keep it running.  You'll want tools, knowledge, and supplies like oil and fuel.  You probably know people who know plenty about cars.  Talk to them.  Figure out what tools you need to jump start your car.  A car should come with jumper cables, some kind of actual spare tire (not just fix-a-flat) and a fire extinguisher.  Keep your car in good shape because it may be all that gets you away when you must bug out.  Remember, you can sleep in your car, but you cannot drive your house.

Gardening is the broad category of food, its production from seeds, its preparation in kitchens, its storage in various containers, its preservation for later consumption by drying, salting, or refrigerating, and all aspects of animal husbandry.  I also regard gardening as the set of knowledge to find edible plants and mushrooms in the wild so you have enough to eat while you wait for your garden to grow. 

In my "go bag" I have two books.  One is Petr Beckmann's book on "Pi" which nicely places a complete set of geometric and mathematical formulae in a small volume.  The other is a colour illustrated guide to edible wild plants of North America, complete with maps of their ranges and details on basic preparation.  If I were going to add a single other book, it would most likely be Joy of Cooking which has recipes and game preparation techniques for deer, possum, raccoon, squirrel, and many other animals.  Of course, I have a small collection of valued books and foreign language dictionaries that I'm likely to grab if it is go time and there is some opportunity to choose to carry more.

My "go bag" is a backpack which has basic tools, med kit, water purification stuff, rope, and those two books.  I also have a larger bag that has tents, sleeping bags, and other gear for when I have time to load the go buggy.

Electrical covers all kinds of advanced technologies like power generation, distribution, power conditioning, computers, communications devices, and anything else electrical.  Electrical tape is very useful, so have some with you.  Consider having a Faraday cage in your home, which is simply a metal box that you ground to, say, a cast iron sewer pipe that enters the ground.  Any more, you have to look at the plumbing because someone may have put in a length of poly vinyl chloride (PVC) pipe which isn't going to provide you with a ground, now is it?  A metal toolbox that you ground with a length of wire can keep a spare cell phone and a spare tablet reasonably safe from electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) so you may be able to use it after a variety of disasters.  Consider having some radio gear, too, especially for listening on many different channels such as short wave.

Sewing covers everything involving clothing and netting and tenting and related gear.  If you can sew it together, you may have to do so.  Thus, have needles, thread, scissors, measuring tape, and a supply of materials you can use for making what you need.  I put dyes and markers in this category as well.  You'll want warm clothes in winter, and clothes to protect against scrapes and scratches while hiking around looking for wild edibles in Spring.  Refer above to plumbing for what you need to keep clothes clean.

Are these the only categories?  Nope.  Do you have other categories you prefer?  Most likely.  I'm assuming that knowledge about all these topics is related to each one, so I have not put "library" or "archives" on the list.

When all is said and done, what are PHOM CAGES?  They are a set of tools, equipment, knowledge, and understanding that may allow you to go it alone, or with a small group of others, to build a reasonably comfortable situation for yourself while you grow a family or find other survivors.  If you aren't planning to build a civilisation once the current monstrosity falters and fails and goes to pieces, I really don't know what to say.  Any expectation you have to simply be around for a new civilisation that arises may seem rational to you, but it seems quaint and a little privileged in outlook, to me.

Preparation takes time, thought, and budget.  But the lives you save may be your own and those of your family. 

 

Jim Davidson is vision director for HoustonSpaceSociety.net and founder of Individual Sovereign University and the Resilient Ways Foundation.  He is currently chief financial officer for a start-up social networking and talent agency company and chief executive officer for a self-storage structure start-up.  Don't send him PayPal he won't accept their terms.