A BETTER UNDERSTANDING: After a few weekends of exploring your locale, you will have formed a solid opinion about one or more places where you and yours could survive for an extended period. Now it is time to experiment with it. Why not go camping and try it out? Stay out overnight and see what happens. Get a feel for the place, and explore it further. Do an in depth study on your chosen site and the area around it. Take along a few packs of vegetable seeds, find a suitable, protected place, clear a little ground, and plant the seeds in the spring of the year. Come back later and see what happened. Did the vegetables grow? If they did, great! If not, find out why. Don't rule out the possibility that they did grow, but that someone picked them or animals ate them. Turn over the soil in your little test garden and look for roots or tubers. Look for evidence of growth. The point is that if your vegetables would grow naturally, so much the better. If not, you may have to do something to achieve success. Talk to local gardeners and ask as to soil conditions and methods. Check out the local library and any university agricultural extensions for further information. If you really like a certain spot, perhaps a soil sample test is in order. Also, the local feed & seed store is another excellent source of ideas and information. There is nothing to it but to do it.
Think of your out- of-the-way camp site as your little farm. Go ahead, play with it, experiment with it, and learn its secrets. Improve your camp site and make it livable. Who says that you can't plant a few fruit and nut trees here and there? Get some asparagus and berries started. Wine grapes are nice too. If you have a place of shade, plant several varieties of edible mushrooms. Try squash and beans, and see what happens with corn. Try to get natural seeds instead of hybrids, as the older, original varieties of vegetables have a greater resistance to plant disease. There is no law against planting a few seeds in the wild. Think about vitamins and herbs too. Citrus, Arctic Kiwi, and rose hips are all good sources of vitamin C. Get an herb book and see which plants provide what. Why not get them started? After all, after an upheaval, there won't be a lot of drug stores open. By the way, willow bark is natural aspirin. How about a couple of nice willow trees down by the stream? Willow trees also make great shade for those who like to fish-- practical tree!
FIND A GOOD PLACE: The object here is to find one or more suitable out-of-the-way camp sites where you and your family could continue some semblance of a comfortable lifestyle even after a catastrophic event. Developing such sites can be done as a hobby without undue expense. If nothing else, at least you have a nice place or two to spend a few weekends and get away from the city. The most important thing is that you will learn to live apart from the binding ties of civilization and thereby become less dependent of it. Remember, the Great Depression of the 1930's affected the city people much more than the rural people. Neither had money, but at least the country people had plenty to eat and a secure place to sleep. Once you are comfortable with your camp sites, consider making up a cache of basic supplies and burying them somewhere near the sites. Don't bury your cache on the site proper. Instead, bury it somewhere nearby but out of sight of any camp. That way should you return and find another party using the site, you can still dig up your stash and move on to another site. That is the reason for having more than one site and more than one cache. Why have a cache? Well, should an event occur everyone will be trying to get out of town at once. Also there may not be much time to gather everything needed. Besides, hauling a lot of stuff during a time of stress would not be desirable. Even so, the roads may be choked with traffic, making vehicular traffic impossible. You may have to walk into your site. Should that be the case, you and your family could only carry so much. Doesn't it make more sense to have what you need already on site?
Your cache, consisting of basic tools, such as knife, machete, draw knife, hand weed cutter, hammer, ax, hatchet, pick, shovel, hoe, trowel, handsaw, hacksaw, bucksaw, blades, line level, chisels, files, sharpening stone crock-stick, plane, pliers, screwdrivers, crescent wrench, brace & bit, bits, plumb bob, etc. plus matches, candles, oil lamp or lantern Three sections of 6 or 8 inch stove pipe, damper & parts, food, cooking gear, grille, sewing kit, medical kit, seeds, tarps, plastic sheeting, tar paper, rope, lots of building wire, twine, fishing line, nails, screws, staples and whatever you think you need may be sealed in large diameter PVC pipes with end caps or sturdy boxes covered with water tight plastic. They can then be buried like treasure here and there in the wilderness for your later use. The tar paper can just be wrapped in plastic. Be sure to bury them near a landmark, and make a map so you can easily find your treasures. Remember, if its already there, you don't have to carry it in. By the way, most of what you need can be bought at yard sales for little or nothing. A cache is pretty good insurance.
Do you see the progression? Get a feel for the land, choose a site and then backup sites, develop the sites, and then bury a cache of basic supplies. Now, should a site be needed, its available, improved and stocked. All you and your family has to do is get there. Now that you all have spent time there, each family member knows where it is and what to do once they arrive. Because of your previous efforts, you are light-years ahead of the unprepared people on the road out there who are panic driven, mindlessly escaping into nowhere.
GETTING THERE: As mentioned before, getting to your site might prove interesting after an upheaval, so methods of travel need to be considered too. You could try to go by vehicle, but surely the roads will be blocked by traffic. Pick out several alternate routs as freeways will likely prove useless. Besides, in the event of earthquake, they will be the first roads to suffer damage due to their multi-level structure. Instead of the highways, consider the byways, the lesser roads that won't likely be as clogged with escaping humanity. Why? Because they don't know they are there or where they go. You will have already figured that out. This is akin to looking for the fire door when you enter a restaurant or hotel. It isn't nice to be caught unaware.
Even if you can't travel all the way to your proposed site on back roads, there will be some close by. You may have to walk in a few miles, but that is much better than being stalled somewhere along the super highways. Plan on walking in to your site. We know from experience that 12 miles a day is a pretty tiring walk, so plan on that or less. If there are many small children, it may take longer. Anyway, the Spanish soldiers of old were expected to walk 12 miles a day in full armor. That is why the old Spanish missions are located 12 miles apart all the way from Mexico to Northern California. You or your family may not be able to travel that far in a day. Should your site destination be more than 12 miles, better plan on sleeping out overnight. Should that be the case, consider the possibility of burying a small cache of food and water at the end of each day's journey along your preferred walking path. A better way of figuring is to break the trip up into legs or segments. Take into consideration the endurance of your youngest or weakest family member. Find out how far that family member can walk at forced march in a day, and then limit each leg of your journey to that distance or less. Remember that small children can often be carried at least part of the way.
By-the-way, don't overlook mountain bicycles as you can cover much more ground by bike than foot unless the country is mostly vertical and very rough. It is also possible to rig mountain bikes with baskets in which you may carry considerable gear. Should you choose this possibility, be sure that your bike is in good condition and that you have thorn strips in your tires to protect against blowouts. A tire patching/tool kit is a good idea too. Remember, the idea is to keep mobile. Should you choose bikes, be sure to practice riding them under the conditions that you will encounter on an actual trip. Off road bike riding is not as easy as it looks, especially if you have a load on the bike. Build up to it by first taking short trips, then longer ones. Your endurance is the deciding factor of a successful or failed journey. Oh yes, motorized trail bikes are possible too, but where do you buy gasoline in the woods?
HIKING GEAR: In any case, you'll probably have to walk sometime or another after an upheaval so why not get used to it. Do a little recreational walking to keep in shape. Start with a couple of city blocks, and increase your daily distance until you are comfortable with walking longer distances. Once you are built up a bit, start taking nature hikes. You might find that you enjoy them, and they sure won't hurt your health. After all, walking is considered excellent cardiovascular exercise. If possible, it would be well for each member of your family to have a good pair of hiking shoes or boots, some comfortable clothes, good outdoor jacket, hat, back pack, tarp, sleeping bag and a walking stick. None of this has to cost a fortune or be bought all at once. Many good adult back packs can be had in the $30.00 range. The same holds true for sleeping bags. Name brands are not necessary. Just be sure that the material is strong. Seams can be resewn with a needle and nylon thread if there is doubt. By-the-way, don't forget yard sales. Often camping gear can be bought for a fraction of its original cost. Fall and winter are the best times as they are the off season for recreational camping.
DRESSING: When living and working outdoors, always dress in layers as the temperature will vary considerably from morning to night. In some climates, such as desert climates, there may be as much as a 50 degree spread. In Phoenix Arizona it is not unusual to experience a temperature spread from the 30's to the 80's or greater. By dressing in layers, a person can add or take off layers as needed to be comfortable. A person wearing a shirt and heavy jacket has only two options. A person wearing several layers has several options and can quickly find just the right amount of warmth. Most outdoors type people dress in layers, the jacket mostly for breaking the wind and shedding water. The layers of clothing make up the correct amount of insulation. Of course in snow country, a good parka is always appreciated. There is more to be considered than just your body. You have a head, neck, hands, and feet too! Outdoors people always ware a hat, usually with a wide brim. Cowboy hats weren't just for show.
That wide brimmed hat was shelter too. In hot weather, it kept the sun off of tender skin, in cold weather, it kept the head warm. It also kept the rain and snow off the head and shoulders. You can lose an amazing amount of body heat through the top of your head or easily get sun stroke. You need a hat. You also need a bandanna or big scarf. This will keep the rain off your neck, and if the dust kicks up, you can wear it bandit style to keep the dust out of your nose and mouth. A bandanna is also handy for keeping cool. You can dampen it with water and use it as a cold compress to draw out excess heat from your face and hands. Simply twirling a damp bandanna will cool it down by evaporation and thereby keep you cooler. When you come to a stream or other cool water, you can use it as a wash cloth to cleanse yourself. You can also place it over your face to keep flies off while you are sleeping. A good pair of gloves are a necessity. Let's face it, your hands do a lot of work, and without good gloves, they will soon become pretty sore. They also keep your hands from freezing. You need good gloves.
SOCKS: Always wear two pairs of socks, and keep spare pairs in your pack. Ask any soldier about foot care. That is one of the first things the army teaches them, for a soldier with bad feet is out of the game. While traveling, clean your feet and change your socks several times a day. Often a can of foot powder can be a blessing, bringing much greater comfort. It is well to carry a package of round blister bandages too. Also, wash out your socks at every opportunity, and hang them on your pack frame to dry. The use of two pairs of socks has been found to lessen the chance of wearing blisters on your feet. Instead of a single sock catching on the boot leather and rubbing against your skin, it will wear against the inside sock. Let the sock take the wear! Place a light, soft pair of cotton socks against your skin and another pair over them. In cold weather, a pair of heavy wool socks may be worn over your light cotton socks. However, never put the wool socks next to your skin, as wool is an irritant.
