A Blog, Begin!

A lot of my friends think i’m somewhat nuts. A lot of my friends have jokingly said “if zombies attack, i’m comin’ to you!” to which I’ve always responded “thats fine, so long as you can keep up.” These days though I’m trying to play down the survivalism side of me, since realizing that advertising preparedness might not be the best thing to do in the long run, especially now that my plans have changed. 

I ‘awoke’ in 2005 when three things sort of collided. The first was my brother bought a used compound bow for me for my birthday. It was older than I was, but it still worked fine, and I started going to a nearby indoor range and getting good at it on my own.  I was in college in Baltimore at this point, and that year Hurricane Katrina hit pretty hard. I remember my mom calling me during the reports of looting and the like, and asking me “do YOU know what YOU would do, if a storm like that hit Baltimore?”

This sort of resonated with me for a while - the previous year I had been held up by a gang member who had produced a sawn off shotgun while walking to a library on a sunday afternoon, and the thought of those people roaming the streets in what I would come to know as a survival situation rattled me. As the year came to an end, for christmas my parents bought me a Katadyn Extream XR personal water purification kit for me and my brother.  They told me to throw it in my old backpack along with everything I’d need if I had to get out of the city quickly.  

It was at that moment that I began to think about what I would truly need, where I would go, and how I could get there. I researched other people’s G.O.O.D bags and thought about what I would need.  Over the next two years I tried random emergency escape plans to gauge how far I’d be able to get in a night, and what I discovered was that I was firstly very out of shape, and secondly extremely underarmed - a compound bow is not perhaps the best self-defence weapon.  My go-bag evolved, got bigger, and i began to exercise more often, i lost weight and began incorporating hiking into my weekly schedule.  After graduating and getting a job near the city I moved outside of downtown in an area that is more or less off the beaten path. My parents helped me move the remaining stuff from home in the Northeast down to my new place, and after a long day of moving I excitedly showed them my go-bag.

My plan was to firstly get out of the populated areas and get to a system of woods (like the Appalachian Trail) that I could travel up to Connecticut and reunite with the family relatively without much population interact.  I showed them the maps I had marked and written on, possible paths drawn through areas of low population density and higher wooded areas.  They were pleased that I had taken the time and thought things through but they were hesitant that I should even try to get home.  It was a long journey, and in a SHTF scenario, they told me I would probably be better off not going home, and that they would want me to go on without them.  At the time I didn’t understand and was confused, but as time passed their logic became evident: In getting back to the house I grew up in, I’d have to cross through some of the more densely populated areas in the northeast, and like i’d always been told growing up at the beach “It is dangerous to even swim across the rip tide.”

It was a tough pill to swallow, and I still think that I would disobey their wishes here, depending on the crisis that I would be bugging out to. Reassuringly though, they have made plans to move out west, so with any luck a more stable bug-out location might soon become availible.  Until that time however I began to consider my options, and after reading some more survivalism, less scout-craft literature I began to see how foolish my original ‘bug out to the woods’ plan was. 

Sure, the get to the woods might work for a few days, but I really don't have the basic, pure skills and experience to properly survive for any extended period of time. I needed a better plan, a place to go in the event of full grid-down or rioting or any of the many different possible shitstorm scenarios that could pop up in the future. 

So this blog is to be a sort of archive and repository of thoughts and excursions. In my next post I'll probably outline what my bug-out-plan has become, now that it's not simply go off into the woods and hike home.  In the future I hope to go over a variety of things, from scoutcraft, to weapons, food preparation, to recruiting people into your mindset and group. 

Hope you enjoy