The questions becomes can you fend for yourself after a disaster?
No holds barred survival guide to global natural or man made catastrophes.
Some scoff at doomsday prophecies, but this year alone, millions of people have endured catastrophes of seeming apocalyptic proportions. Consider:
- March 11 — A 9.0 magnitude earthquake violently shakes Japan, unleashing a tsunami that triggers a nuclear crisis. As of Aug. 15, Japan’s National Police Agency reported 20,364 people dead or still missing.
- May 22 — A Category 5 tornado rips through Joplin, Mo., wreaking 14 miles of havoc, including 159 lives lost and 7,000 homes destroyed. By July 23, recovery was just beginning, according to a Huffington Post report.
Those spectacularly devastating events were just two of dozens this year that left stricken survivors without the essentials of modern life: water, shelter, electricity.
Could you manage for a few days? A few months?
Author Dan Martin is confident he could — and comfortably. He and his wife, Lucia, lived off the grid for 10 years on a self-sustaining Texas ranch they built themselves. They grew, raised or trapped their food; made their own ethanol fuel and solar panels; survived on rainwater they captured and purified. Martin’s newest book, Apocalypse: How to Survive a Global Crisis (www.ApocalypseTheBook.com), details lessons gleaned from the experience with illustrated instructions on everything from finding clean water sources to performing an emergency tracheotomy.
“We have a lot of backwards to go before we can even think about going forwards again,” Martin says. “We’ve become too comfortable; too secure; too complacent with our lifestyles. I’m not saying we should abandon everything, our air conditioning, our livelihoods, our technology, and go live in a cave. But when you’re 100 percent dependent on these systems and they fail for whatever reason, most people have no idea how to cope and continue.”
To Be Continued…
