American Exit Strategy: Book 1 (23 page)

They made a separate tube with some MRE's, canned pasta, bottled water and water purification tablets. Matt would make other caches for his farm after he closed on the property and got moved in.

The two discussed what they would do for church the next day. The church was 18 miles away. They couldn't justify going every week with the current gas situation, but they realized how important it was to stay connected. They decided everyone would go to church once a month until the gas situation changed. Tomorrow, they would watch Pastor John Robinson's service online which was broadcast over the internet from Idaho.

CHAPTER 31

"With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, "Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished."

Genesis 19:15

Pastor John Robinson prayed and began his Sunday morning message.

"I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We have a lot of empty seats today. I expect a lot of folks stayed home and are watching online because of the gas shortage. I am very proud of those of you who decided to come today anyway, but I also want those of you who stayed home to know that I think it was probably a wise decision.

Our internet listeners have grown tremendously over the past three years. We have listeners every week from every state. Today's message is for those of you who are still living in major metropolitan areas. I firmly believe that the time for you to get out of there is now."

Pastor Robinson read the account of Lot leaving Sodom and Gomorrah from Genesis 19 then continued his message.

"Now Lot was considered righteous by God and the angels came to warn him to get out of the city before they destroyed it. Lot escaped only with his life. It sounds like a pretty good story. After all, Lot survived right? But what did he lose? Lot lost almost everything but his life!

Let's take a closer look at Lot's experience. His wife was unable to leave Sodom without one last look. This act of disobedience caused her to be turned to salt. Tragic for her to say the least, but now Lot was on his own, a single parent with two daughters.

When Lot and Abraham parted ways in Genesis 13, it was because the two of them had become so wealthy that they could not both graze their livestock in the same place. Abraham let Lot choose the direction he would travel and Abraham took the other direction. Lot chose to pitch his tent near Sodom. When the angels escorted him out of the city, we are not told that Lot brings one single worldly possession as he had to bug out. It is my guess that Lot lost much wealth in the destruction of the city.

Now, let's see if there were any warning sign. Is it possible that God was giving Lot some gentle nudges in the years leading up to the destruction of Sodom? Evidently, Sodom was rather infested with wickedness. After all, God saw fit to bring about quite a violent end to the city. Perhaps it wasn't so bad when Lot first moved there. Maybe the neighborhood just started sliding down hill slowly. First they opened a little bar at the end of the street. A year later there was a palm reading shop next to a smoke shop that sold water bongs and drug paraphernalia. The following year Sodom opened a strip club and the old church became a Goth night club. As you read this, the change is very obvious but perhaps for Lot, it was too slow to notice the severity of the change. He may have been the proverbial boiling frog. When you look in the mirror day after day, you are not likely to see your own hair growing but your friend who you see twice a year may say "wow, your hair grew a lot"!

Perhaps poor Lot was just never motivated enough by the slow decline to say "That is enough, I am moving out of here." Maybe it was just too inconvenient to take the girls out of school and start over. Isn't it just easier to deal with things than to sell the house, find a new job and uproot the family? Besides that, the wife loves Sodom. It ‘s really going to be a hard sell to convince her they need to move.

I am convinced, however, that God gave Lot a pretty good nudge to get out of town back in Genesis 14. In that chapter we read about Lot being kidnapped by foreign invaders. Abraham hears about the incident and comes to rescue his nephew. Lot narrowly escapes this encounter with his life. Could God have allowed this event in hopes that Lot would take it as a warning sign and sell his house to seek greener pasture?

Maybe Lot thought he was being a good husband by staying in Sodom. After all, his wife loved it so much that she had to have just one more look before they left. In the end, he failed his wife as a husband. She ended up dead. He also failed as a father by not getting his children out of town sooner. You can read the rest of the story yourself to see how the girls were affected by the loose morals of the city. They make some very troubling sexual choices at the end of Chapter 19.

Recent events should be more than a gentle nudge for you who are still living in the cities. Do whatever you can to get out now, even if you have to leave everything behind. Try to make alliances with friends or family who live in rural or lightly populated areas. If you have nowhere to go, you can come here, but I must warn you that the winters are tough and you will need to bring your own shelter such as an RV or camper. You won't make it in a tent. Also bring enough food for six months. We have a lot of farm land to work next spring for those of you who have no other alternative, but you will need food to get by until harvest.

Make your move now. Do not get stuck bugging out in the middle of the night like Lot. Remember, everyone in his party didn't make it."

CHAPTER 32

"God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging."

Psalm 46:1-3

After breakfast, everyone took turns on Adam's computer signing up for their Independence Gas Cards. Adam was sure to sign up Mandy and Carissa as the only requirement was a social security number.

Matt and Karen went to meet the attorney at the realtor’s office for the closing. The office was in London, Kentucky so it wasn't all that far. They drove there with Janice's car to save gas. Wesley and Adam would meet them at their new home with Matt's truck and trailer which contained all of their worldly possessions. Wes and Adam could then return to Adam's farm in Janice's car after they helped Matt and Karen get moved in.

The house was in good condition, but Karen insisted on cleaning before they moved anything in. She started in the bedroom. The guys got everything out of the truck and onto the porch. They moved in the belongings of each room as Karen finished cleaning it.

Everything was still in boxes, but it was in the room where it belonged. The day was soon over and everyone was pretty tired.

On Tuesday, Matt and Karen began taking inventory of their food stocks and supplies as they unloaded each box. The power was switched over to their name and Matt put in the order for internet service. There was only DSL out here, but it was OK at Adam’s, so they were sure it would be fine. The phone company told them it could be several weeks before the technician would make it out to turn on their internet. Matt didn't like being in the dark. He was an information junkie and used to being very connected to news and events.

They could not get any of the local channels on their television either. It would require a digital converter antenna to pick up local channels unless they got satellite service. To top it all off, the phone signals were inconsistent. At times, they had two bars, and at other times, only one. Matt would have to acclimate to a simpler lifestyle.

For calling Adam, they could use walkie talkies. Adam had a set similar to what Matt had. The walkies had a range of 36 miles and the two farms were only two miles apart. It was three miles from Adam's to Matt's new farm by road because of the way it snaked down the hill and back up. The houses were both near the top of the hills they sat on with not much in between to stop the signal from the walkies. The 36 mile range ascribed to the walkie talkies was in a straight line with no object in between such as on the open ocean or in the dessert. That typography did not exist in Eastern Kentucky, so the walkie talkies would never have an effective range of more than a couple of miles.

Matt did happen to find a very good conservative news radio channel out of Lexington, Kentucky. It had a strong signal and came in great on his AM/FM/ shortwave receiver.

As Matt and Karen began to get their boxes unpacked, they started to write down an inventory of the stocks of food and supplies that they had. They had brought all of the rice and beans they purchased prior to the riots. Matt had those all sealed in Mylar liners and inside of five gallon buckets so they would stack up easily. Matt took the buckets to the metal work shed. The buckets were mostly old latex paint buckets that Matt had salvaged and cleaned out. He would never store food in a bucket that had held paint without the Mylar liners. The liners were impervious to air, bugs and anything else that might otherwise leech into the food from the buckets. The good thing about the buckets being mostly old paint buckets was that it camouflaged the food stores. Even though they weren't readily recognizable as food, Matt still intended to bury about half of the 30 buckets, filled mostly with rice and beans.

Matt and Karen had the seeds they had used for their garden in Florida. The plot of land they would be using for a garden now dwarfed the small raised bed garden boxes they had in Florida. The soil here was as black as coal. Matt looked forward to gardening in the rich soil. In Florida, the only soil they had is what they made from composting. Below the raised beds was just sand and rock.

The seeds he brought with him were for green beans, tomatoes, mustard greens, bell peppers, jalapenos, cabbage, mixed field greens and peas. Matt needed some more seeds for the items he hoped to grow here. He had never had any success growing squash, melons and corn in Florida. He looked for those seeds when he was in the flea market, but none were available.

He had also looked for anything that could have been used for solar as well. They only things he had was a small system. It consisted of two 130 watt panels, a charging controller, one deep cell battery and an 800 watt inverter. He had used it in Florida to keep his battery power tools charged. It was better than nothing, but he wanted more than that for solar. Besides its use as a component for the solar set up, the inverter could be used to hook up to the car battery to keep the fridge going when the power went out due to hurricanes in Florida. Now, gas was too precious of a commodity to use for powering a fridge.

Matt had always felt fairly prepared until now. He had always been so much more prepared than anyone else he talked to on a day to day basis, but now he realized just how little it took to be more prepared than everybody else. Retrospectively, being more prepared than the Joneses was not a good metric for gauging your preparedness.

Well, there was no use kicking himself now. He had always tried to keep a proper balance between prepping for the apocalypse and living a normal life. They had food, shelter, a good water source, family, weapons, each other and a God who always looked out for them. They were going to be fine.

Matt put together a wish list to take to town the next day. Hopefully Adam would be able to go with him to watch his back. Among the items he hoped to get were; a chain saw, bar and chain oil, more solar panels and several deep cycle batteries to build a battery bank. He would also like to have some night vision equipment and some motion detectors to establish a perimeter. The house could use a fresh coat of paint as well. He wanted a fish trap for the creek. Matt needed live stock like chickens and goats.

He realized how much information was no longer available to him without the internet. There were a lot of lost skills that he wanted to look up and print out from Adam's computer while he still had the chance.

A few things he wanted to know was how to raise sugar cane and make molasses, how to make soap, how to build a water turbine to generate electricity from the creek and how to build and use a smoke house. There was so much to do and to learn and there seemed to be so little time.