you need to study up on. The Manual will lead you in time to other books. Ernest
Thompson Seton’s Two Little Savages is full of ideas and suggestions.
Presently you will find that there are handbooks of various trades you have
not time to master; books which contain information you could look up in an
emergency if you have had the forethought to buy the
book and hide it away in your out-of-tpwn base. There are books which show how to
build fireplaces, giving the exact dimensions of reflector, throat, ledge, and flue.
You may not remember such details; being able to look them up may save you from a
winter in a smoke-filled cabin. If there is any greater domestic curse than a
smoking fireplace, I can’t recall it, unless it be the common cold.
There are little handbooks which show, in colored pictures, the edible
mushrooms and their inedible cousins. It is possible to live quite well on
practically nothing but fungi, with comparatively little work; they exist in such
abundance and variety.
You will need a medical reference book, selected with the advice of a wise
and imaginative medical man. Tell him why you want it. Besides that, the best
first-aid and nursing instrvction you can get will not be too much. Before you are
through with this subject you will find yourself selecting drugs, equipment, and
supplies to be stored against the darkness, in your base as well as a lesser supply
to go into the survival kit you keep in your automobile.
What goes into that survival kit, anyhow? You will have to decide; you won’t
take any present advice in any case. By the time you get to it you will think, quite
correctly, that you are the best judge. But the contents of the survival kits
supplied our aviators in this latest war will be very illuminating. The contents
varied greatly, depending on climate and nature of mission- from pemmican to
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quinine, fish hooks to maps.
What to put in your cabin is still more difficult to state definitely. To
start with, you might obtain a Sears-Roebuck or Montgomery-Ward catalog and go
through it, item by item. Ask yourself “Do I have to have this?,” then from the list
that produces ask yourself “Could I make this item, or a substitute, in a pinch?”
If shoes wear out, it is possible to make moccasins- although shoes should
be hoarded in preference to any
other item of clothing. But you can’t-unless you are Superman-make an ax. You will
need an ax.
You will need certain drugs. Better be liberal here.
Salt is difficult to obtain, inland.
It is difficult to reject the idea of hoarding canned goods. A few hundred
dollars worth, carefully selected, could supplement the diet of your family to the
point of luxury for several years. It might save you from starvation, or the
cannibalism that shamed the Donner Party, during your first winter of the Dark Ages,
and it could certainly alleviate some of the sugar hunger you are sure to feel under
most primitive conditions. But it is a very great risk to have canned goods. If you
have them, you will be one of the hated rich if anybody finds out about them. We are
assuming that there will be no government to protect you. To have canned goods-and
have it known by anyone outside your own household-is to invite assassination. If
you do not believe that a man will commit murder for one can of tomatoes, then you
have never been hungry.
If you have canned goods, open them when the windows are shuttered and bury
the cans. Resist the temptation to advertise your wealth by using the empty tins as
receptacles.
Don’t forget a can opener-two can openers.
You will have a rifle, high-powered and with telescopic sights, but you
won’t use it much. Cartridges are nearly irreplaceable. A deer or a man should be
about the limit of the list of your targets . . . a deer when you need meat; a man
when hiding or running is not enough.
That brings us to another subject and the most interesting of all. We have