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Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

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

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