The Solitary Man’s Refuge (2 page)

He had this odd premonition, like some preppers
did, that there was a big hourglass of preps somewhere
and that he was in a race with it before the some weird
“disastrous event” happened.

People from all over the world had joined the
prepper movement over the years for as if some sort of
“social awakening” had strangely occurred amongst this
group. Don didn’t know why, but he had an odd nagging
sense of urgency to get things done and that something
was somehow just not quite right and eerily foreboding
beyond the daily doom and gloom news headlines.
Something seemed to be bigger and scarier on the horizon
that he could not quite put his finger on.

It was as if to him, that by not ordering something
by mail today, not going down the rabbit hole to get the
true facts of a situation or reviewing his prep gap lists
daily, he would somehow hasten a disaster by his
inactions and be left wishing he had prepared better.
Doing the best at this moment, puts you in the best place
for the next moment, he figured, and he kept adding to his
stash.

He knew this was some pretty crazy thinking on
his part. Just like the sports fanatics have their weird ways
of thinking something they wear or do affects the outcome
of a ball game, but he just couldn’t shake it, nor did he
really want to. He liked being a prepper; it was his lifestyle
and hobby. It gave him pleasure and a sense of security to
make all these plans.

Don was normally a pretty intellectual, steadfast
guy and was good at analyzing different behavioral
motivations. He once helped get a Native American tribe to
prepare for disasters in one of the most flood prone areas
in the Midwest by doing a rethink of the tribes religious
belief’s and giving them a different way to think about the
usual dire warnings the government had been telling them
for years to try to get them ready for floods.

You see this tribe had a belief that if you planned for
something bad to happen, it would. They said it was like
sending out an invitation, so they refused to plan for or
mitigate the effects of the inevitable annual floods they
seemed cursed with in the Midwest.

Talking to a village elder, Don had asked a
question, regarding if they planned on next years harvests
and time to plant things. The elder said that, indeed yes,
they did. So Don told him that if they planned for
something positive to happen by considering the dangers
or lessons from the past of not planting early, having
enough fertilizer, etc., then the crops were usually good,
but they would be doomed if these things were not
considered and that it made sense to plan for what the old
floods taught and nothing bad would happen. This made
sense to the tribal elders and they cooperated with FEMA
to help mitigate flood damage and disaster proof the
community.

Don had questioned his own motives about just
how far he was willing to go with his own personal preps
many times and he also looked at his penchant for looking
at worse case scenarios and trying to not over spend
money to prep for them. Regular life had its own needs
and expenses, for example getting a better vehicle made a
lot good sense.

He drove an old 1985 GMC 4x4 that was showing
its age, however, unless he had to meet someone for the
first time driving it, he never thought about its appearance,
just its durability. It was completely paid for, and even if he
eventually got something else, he wanted to keep it around
because it was borderline EMP proof. He had considered
converting it to a wood burner or alcohol fueled someday
as a project. Well, there were just too many other
expenses to consider now and replacing was just not
going to happen anytime soon it looked like.

“
I need to contemplate a few things here instead of
just winging it or overspending, if I can help it. Now, I can’t
really wait to get these fruit trees. But I can maybe finagle
how I get them to the house. That deer rack I got on the
back of my truck can handle 6, maybe 8, of them big
gallon plus pots. Thing is a lot of those tress and bushes I
seen are already getting leaves. Twelve plus miles
traveling on the interstate out in the wind and I bet I stress
them out pretty good and lose a lot of leaves anyway. I
need a bunch of 2 x 6 boards for my raised beds and I was
going to get all my lumber delivered for a $50 extra
charge. Damn! I was going to get a gun safe delivered
with them but can’t afford that purchase this month, or can
I? Maybe the store will up my credit card limit if this is a big
purchase for home improvement? They are always
pushing and advertising that special purchase program,
but I don’t know if that’s just certain things. I got ONLY
about $279 on that store credit card, humm, possibility.
Ok, do some math for a sec, ten raised beds to start with.
That’s 20 twelve foot treated 2 x 6’s for the sides about
$7.00 each=$140 I need 20- 8 ft. cut in half by them (one
cut free per at store) for 4 ft. ends at about $4 per so $80
plus the $140=$220 that ain’t bad. I know I need other
boxes but until I see the lay of the land, not sure about
sizes. Hell, 10 boxes more than two people can eat,
maybe, if I have a good veggie crop. Still haven’t found me
a place to haul me in a truckload of manure and I ain`t
paying 5 bucks a bag though. Ten trees max is $250, 10
blueberries $70, I need a tiller $700 and a gun safe $400.
How much does all that crap cost? Don mused as he
traveled the two-lane highway.

He eventually came up with $1570, which sort of
freaked him out, but wasn’t insurmountable if he spread
out or properly planned for the expense. He decided he
just might have to avail himself of one of those special rate
big purchase deals if they let him up his card because he
couldn’t justify even in his rush to get things done the 25%
annual interest them shysters wanted.

“Why is it that they have usury laws which say that
outrageous loan interest rates are illegal for the loan
sharks, etc., but not the credit card bankster companies in
this state?” Don thought but already knew the answer too.
It’s because they got rid of the Glass-Seagal act and
allowed banks to trade securities and form derivatives out
of notes and insurance he fumed.

Don got over in the turn lane and waited on the light
to head on into the Lowe’s parking lot. He had chosen this
little town as his proximity for a bug out location as well as
retirement area mainly because the people were just so
darn nice here. He had always stopped at a BBQ joint/bar
around the area coming and going to Florida for years and
was always impressed with the hospitability he had
received when visiting.

His female prepper buddy, Janice, had also been
duly impressed and more so after she had seen Don
interacting with the various trades’ service people in the
area. He smiled to himself as he exited the car, about the
last time he and Janice had been in the store a week ago.

Janice spotted a wheelbarrow in the display rack
out in front of the store and told Don they might be able to
get it for less because it appeared to be a bit rusted and
used as if the store had maybe borrowed it at one time.
Don told her go for it, and if the price was right he would
buy it because he really needed one and then proceeded
to go look at the Roto tillers on display.

A few minutes after Janice had left, she returned
with an employee who looked at the wheelbarrow and
agreed a discount was warranted and went to find a store
manager. After a moment or two of dickering with Don, the
Manager said he could have it for half price and to pull his
truck up to the curb and they would load the now $50.00
industrial strength wheelbarrow for him. Don went to move
the truck from the far end of the parking lot and true to her
good benevolent nature, Janice snuck back in the store
and paid for it. When he pulled to the curb, she had
presented the receipt to him with a big grin saying, “Happy
bug-out and garden building in lieu of a more traditional
housewarming gift.”

Don was very pleased with her gift and after he
thanked her generosity, they both laughed at how she was
so good at finding good deals and getting folks to help her.

Between the two of them augmenting each other’s
preps over the years they had quite a diverse assortment
of needed, as well as possibly superfluous, items.

What can be a source of dispute is not
whether
we
need to be prepared, but
how
to prepare and what we
need to prepare
for
. People need to understand that they
must be ready to care for themselves and that it’s not the
goverments’ job to save them, nor is the government
capable of doing so if it totally was their responsibility. In
that, they were in total agreement and tried to influence
others to prepare as well.

Don read the world news daily; you might say
almost religiously. He was constantly scanning relevant
sites on the internet and then exchanged ideas and chats
with his prepper buddies on Twitter or on YouTube. The
latest topic for today was the screwy, but very real notion
that DHS was profiling Preppers as some kind of potential
terrorists.

“Things have become so messed up that DHS does
public service announcements saying that you should
have 72 hours to 7 days of supplies on hand in case of
disaster, but then turns around and tells law enforcement
that preparedness is a sign of potential domestic terrorism.
I’m a little sick of the government and the media bunching
preppers in with domestic terrorists, just because I have a
Bible, a gun, a garden, and some food to feed my family
with if a natural or manmade disaster happens. Don
mused, wondering if he should try to disguise some of his
prep gathering efforts and shrugged it off.

Don, as a Prepper, just wanted to create some sort
of stable microenvironment to survive after a disaster and
be able to take care of himself and others without outside
help. He had included some extra food stores and things
to try to take care of others in his community too, but any
future expense in that direction sorely vexed him as to
what he was willing to or could afford to purchase.

He had a plan, however, to try and help some of the
unprepared, which is more than most folks had, preppers
included. He had given it a lot of thought and discussion
and it remained in back of his mind constantly how a
disastrous event like a solar storm taking out the grid
would play out.

If everyone is lucky and the sun’s geomagnetic
storm isn’t too huge, it would just be a major electrical
power loss of indeterminate length, but vehicles would still
remain operable. Of course gas stations couldn’t pump
gas, but the decline to social breakdown would be much
slower and more manageable.

The first thing everyone of the sheeple and even
good sensible country folk would do of course would be to
clean out all the grocery shelves and snarl up all the
traffic. No traffic lights and desperate folks make for a
zinger of a cluster #&@^ every time. That meant even
more horrific accidents occurring, as what few first
responders were working were rushing vehicles to the
scenes of mayhem became involved in wrecks
themselves.

The hospitals would soon be overloaded and
becoming hard up for fuel to keep their emergency
generators running. That is, if they would even start
because of the computer control switches to automatically
turn them on might of got fried and no one was about that
knew how to manually override or start the GenSet
systems.

No one really knew how bad the effects would be
on those with pacemakers, but most likely those who had
the older models were going to greet the big man in the
sky rather quickly and Don hoped they were not driving a
car when their number came up to meet St. Peter.

Supposedly, NASA was going to give us a two hour
warning over the emergency broadcast system if a big
Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) was headed towards earth,
so no telling when the panic buying would start.

Don had an automated notification to his cell phone
for such warnings, but he more depended on his own
tracking of the news and the YouTube and Twitter
astronomers to give him an early heads up if a solar event
was likely.

This year Don felt like he had horse blinders on
and was in a race with old Sol to get his life, as well as his
new abode in order. He was blessed with his good
Prepper friend, Janice, but sadly lacked a closer intimate
female companion. Sites like Survivalistsingles.com had
sprung up in the last year as well as a few folks making
some hard marriage decisions about who they wanted to
face the mainstream eerie feeling that a bad moon was
rising and would join lives or separate for an anticipated
looming apocalypse.

It’s a hell of a note to start checking out old ladies
for a romance at this point in the game he thought, but it
was time and to his calculations time was short, Don had
thought. He needed a companion, but he didn’t know
anyone and was making clumsy attempts to find a mate.

Don was fully aware that to survive he had to have
support on the home front. Janice had said she was
bugging out to his place if SHTF and society really went
down, but that was a bit sketchy to depend on. Janice had
a sister and mother in the city 40 miles from him. Don’s
elderly Mom lived in the same city. Janice had over a
years worth of preps at her home and Don had put in a
small, but functional raised bed garden for her years ago
and helped maintain it. But there was a lot unsaid between
the two, about many things that seemed somehow
accepted and un-discussed between them that were
worrisome thoughts that haunted him often enough.