Watch Ducked and Covered: A Survival Guide to the Post Apocalypse (A Little NSFW)

Fun­ny how the cred­its say “2009”

How many REAL sur­vival experts talk about stock­ing up on ANYTHING(gold, food, etc.)? Hav­ing an excess of any­thing, in a real eco­nom­ic col­lapse, makes you a big­ger tar­get for those around you. All of these so-called “experts” that are ped­dling gold, sil­ver, seeds, food are mak­ing tons of mon­ey based on your fear. In a sit­u­a­tion where there is no elec­tric­i­ty, no law, no account­abil­i­ty, there is only ONE thing of value…YOUR own sur­vival skills. Think you can stay where you are and defend your stuff? You can’t stay awake 24 hours a day; and you won’t have enough ammo. In sur­vival, it’s not how much “stuff” you have…it’s about what you can defend. And it’s about how much you can car­ry. All of this crap about stock­ing up on sup­plies and gold is giv­ing you a false sense of secu­ri­ty. How long do you think you can last before ter­ri­fied and hun­gry peo­ple start com­ing to take your stuff? A week? A month? Even if you live out in the coun­try. How long will it be before thou­sands of hun­gry peo­ple start leav­ing the city and roam­ing the coun­try side look­ing for shel­ter and food?

If you think that “sur­vival” means that you’re to have a house in the coun­try with plen­ty of food, gold, and a solar generator…ask Randy Weaver or David Kore­sh how well it worked out for them. All they dealt with was a few hun­dred coor­di­nat­ed peo­ple with rifles. Change those sit­u­a­tions to hun­dreds (then thou­sands) of hun­gry peo­ple and then think if you have the man-pow­er to guard a perime­ter 24 hours a day, sev­en days a week.

Here’s some REAL sur­vival advice. And it’s com­plete­ly free. Learn the sur­vival tech­niques taught to the mil­i­tary (ie Army Infantry, Rangers, SF, Marine Corps, Navy SEALs, etc.). Watch shows by Les Stroud and Bear Grylls. Read books or web­sites that teach per­son­al sur­vival. Learn the prin­ci­pals of the Light Infantry (ie stay­ing off roads, avoid­ing pop­u­lat­ed areas, get­ting to and stay­ing in the wood line). Under­stand that sur­vival is NOT about how much stuff you have to defend, but about how much stuff you can car­ry. Under­stand that sur­vival from thou­sands (or mil­lions) of hun­gry peo­ple will require you to be nomadic.

Change your think­ing about sur­vival. Instead of think­ing “how much food do I have?” Think “what can I car­ry in a ruck sack that will aid me in get­ting food in the woods”? Instead of think­ing “how much water do I have?” Think “what can I car­ry in a ruck sack that will aid me in drink­ing clean water that I find?” Instead of think­ing “I need to main­tain shel­ter from the ele­ments.” Think “what can I car­ry in a ruck sack that will keep me dry and give me shel­ter?” Instead of think­ing “how many box­es of ammo can I stock?” Think “how much ammo can I car­ry”?

What about med­ical sup­plies? A stan­dard “first aid” kit has a bunch of stuff that you won’t need in it. Plus, which first aid kit should you get? The big one? The real­ly big one? Which one is best? Do a lit­tle research to find out the absolute essen­tials need­ed in a sur­vival first aid kit. Tak­ing a Red Cross stan­dard first aid class is worth a lot more than gold.

In real­i­ty, pre­pare to go mobile. Pre­pare as if you will need to go on foot. Plan the quick­est (and safest) routes from your front door to the woods. Plan at least three routes that lead OUT of town. This means you AND your fam­i­ly. Every­one on foot, qui­et­ly, expe­di­ent­ly, and smart­ly. Avoid­ing any author­i­ties (if any still exist at that point) and con­tact with oth­er peo­ple. Sur­vive on your own or with your imme­di­ate fam­i­ly.

Now if, at some time in the future, you stum­ble across a well orga­nized com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple (pro­vid­ed their perime­ter secu­ri­ty per­son­nel don’t shoot you out of fear)…then maybe they’ll take you in. But if you don’t have any rel­e­vant skills to add to their com­mu­ni­ty then they most like­ly won’t let you in. So you’ll have to be self sus­tain­ing until you come across a large enough com­mu­ni­ty that can afford to be more accept­ing. But don’t count find­ing such a com­mu­ni­ty.

Peo­ple say “pre­pare for the worst but hope for the best”. Well I just told you how to tru­ly pre­pare for the worst. And it didn’t cost you a dime.

Under­stand this…even if you’re a super, uber, com­bat ready, “Ram­bo” type…the chal­lenge of safe­ly nav­i­gat­ing the “Escape from New York” sce­nario of mak­ing it from the city to the woods will require huge amounts of dumb luck. It may take sev­er­al hours to sev­er­al days just to get out of the city. Stay­ing off the radar of hun­gry and des­per­ate peo­ple will be very dif­fi­cult. Then IF you do make it to the woods, the day to day chal­lenges of exe­cut­ing your inde­pen­dent sur­vival skills will set in. So if you’re going to “pre­pare for the worst” then PREPARE FOR THE WORST. Decide, right now, if you want to live; if you want to sur­vive. Decide if you are will­ing to pre­pare your fam­i­ly for “the worst”.

Do I think it’s worth it? Yes, I do. It may take months or years of liv­ing in the woods as a nomadic sur­vivor. But there is always the hope that things will get bet­ter.

Who am I? I was a Light Infantry Sol­dier that had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get some of the best sur­vival train­ing that is avail­able; also served in Iraq for a year. I was also an EMT/Paramedic for 8 years.

If you have any doubt as to whether or not the sur­vival infor­ma­tion that I have pro­vid­ed for you is cor­rect or not…don’t ask the ped­dlers of gold, seeds, or solar gen­er­a­tors. Ask an Army or Marine Corps Infantry Sol­dier, an Army Ranger, Army SF Sol­dier, Marine Corps Force Recon, Navy SEAL, Air Force Com­bat Con­troller, or Air Force Para-res­cue. They’ll all tell you the same thing.

Nev­er, in any of my sur­vival train­ing, did words like “port­fo­lio”, “cur­ren­cy”, “gar­den­ing”, or “solar gen­er­a­tors” ever come up. At best, all of those things MIGHT buy you a lit­tle time; that’s all. My expe­ri­ences in three third-world coun­tries (two in the Mid­dle East, one in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca) clear­ly showed me how peo­ple with unchecked law­less­ness will behave. It also showed me some of the things that I will do in order to sur­vive. NOBODY can main­tain their code of ethics when they are hun­gry, their chil­dren are hun­gry, and there’s no one around to help. You think riot­ing and loot­ing, here in the states, is bad when the lights go out for a few hours? Try a few days, or a few weeks, or a few months.

The ONLY rea­son the after­math of Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na went so well (by com­par­i­son) is because New Orleans was sur­round­ed by the rest of Louisiana and the Unit­ed States which had not lost its economy/electricity. 99% of Amer­i­ca was still intact and able to bring in aid (late as it may have been). Same goes for New York City on Sep­tem­ber 11th, 2001. But what if all of North Amer­i­ca is with­out an econ­o­my and/or elec­tric­i­ty? Who would res­cue you then?

There is one excep­tion to what I am say­ing about sur­vival. There is ONE way that a per­son (and fam­i­ly) can “hun­ker down”. But you’d have to be invis­i­ble to every­one else. Peo­ple that have those pre-built sur­vival bunkers installed (out in the coun­try) under­ground stand a good chance of stay­ing in place (for a much longer time) because those bunkers are well hid­den. When maraud­ers come (and they WILL COME!), if they don’t know you’re there then they will pass you by. But, even­tu­al­ly, you’d have to come out. If you carefully/methodically/consistently recon your imme­di­ate area then you could prob­a­bly stay there for a while. But if peo­ple see you open­ing that hatch and com­ing out of your bunker…it’s over. The whole rea­son for hav­ing such a bunker is its invis­i­bil­i­ty.

The fear of not know­ing how to pre­pare for the worst is what keeps you up at night. But after you learn how to con­dense every­thing you need into a ruck sack, and then learn what to do…you won’t wor­ry about it any­more. And it’s so much eas­i­er than try­ing to antic­i­pate the actions of oth­ers (ie gov­ern­ment, law enforce­ment, econ­o­my). By focus­ing sole­ly on what YOU plan to do, and elim­i­nat­ing what oth­ers MIGHT do, you can empow­er your­self and go on with life as usu­al. And should the worst hap­pen? You’ll tru­ly be pre­pared.

Smit­ty.. cool nov­el bro.