purpose. That is a political question, beyond the scope of this discussion. We are
concerned here with how you, unassisted, with your two hands, your brain, and your
ability to plan ahead, can keep yourself alive during and after any possible Next
War.
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If you have to live in a large city or other target area, your strategical
planning has to be a good bit more
detailed, alert, and shifty. You need an emergency home, perhaps an abandoned farm
picked up cheaply or a cabin built on government land. What it is depends on the
part of the country you live in and how much money you can put into it, but it
should be chosen with view to the possibilities it offers of eating off the
country-fish, game, garden plot-and it should be near enough for you to reach it on
one tank of gasoline. If the tank in your car is too small, have a special one
built, or keep enough cans of reserve permanently in the trunk of your car. Your car
should also be equipped with a survival kit, but that comes under tactics.
Having selected and equipped your emergency base, you must then, if you are
to live in a target area, keep your ear to the ground and your eyes open with
respect to world affairs. There will be no time to get out after rockets are
launched. You will have to outguess events. This is a tricky assignment at best and
is the principal reason why it is much better to live in the country in the first
place, but you stand a fair chance of accomplishing it if you do not insist on being
blindly optimistic and can overcome a natural reluctance to make a clean break with
your past-business, home, clubs, friends, church-when it becomes evident that the
storm clouds are gathering. Despite the tragic debacle at Pearl Harbor, quite a
number of people, laymen among them, knew that a war with Japan was coming. If you
think you can learn to spot the signs of trouble long enough in advance to jump, you
may get away with living on the spot with the X mark.
Let us suppose that you were quick-witted, far sighted, and fast on your
feet; you brought yourself and your family safely through the bombing and have them
somewhere out in the country, away from the radioactive areas that were targets a
short time before. The countryside is swarming with survivors from the edges of the
bombed areas, survivors who are hungry,
desperate, some of them armed, all of them free of the civilizing restrictions
of organized living. Enemy troops, moving in to occupy, may already be present or
may be dropping in from the skies any day.
How, on that day, will you feed and protect yourself and your family?
The tactical preparations for survival after the debacle fall mainly into
three groups. First is the overhaul of your own bodily assets, which includes
everything from joining the YMCA, to get rid of that paunch and increase your wind
and endurance, to such things as getting typhoid and cholera shots, having that
appendix out, and keeping your teeth in the best shape possible. If you wear
glasses, you will need several pairs against the day when there will be no opticians
in practice. Second is the acquisition of various materials and tools which you will
be unable to make or grow in a sudden, synthetic stone age- items such as a pickax
or a burning glass, for example, will be wdrth considerably more than two college
degrees or a diamond bracelet. Third is training in various fundamental pioneer
skills, not only how to snare and cook rabbits, but such things as where and when to
plant potatoes, how to tell edible fungi from deadly toadstools without trying them
on Junior, and how to walk silently.
All these things are necessary, but more important, much more important, is
the acquiring of a survival point of view, the spiritual orientation which will
enable you to face hardship, danger, cold, and hunger without losing your zest and
courage and sense of humor. If you think it is going to be too hard to be