Connected Podcast

Prepper Partners: Part 1

Listen Later
Prepper Partners: Part 1
It couldn't happen but it did. Now, we have to survive.

By ronde, in

3 parts. Listen to the
► podcast
at Connected.



I thought I was ready when the time to be ready arrived. I

wasn't. I was more ready than most people, but still not ready for what
happened.

To this day, I don't know why it happened and apparently

there's nobody left to explain it. It doesn't matter anymore anyway. What was
is probably gone for a long, long time, and people like us have to pick up the
pieces and get on with trying to live. I'm writing all this down in hopes that
if and when things do get back to normal a lot of people will read it and do
what all people should have done before.

I started getting ready as more of a hobby than actually

preparing for when the shit hits the fan", or "SHTF" as the
survivalists called it. There were many scenarios that would cause SHTF, none
of which I thought would ever happen. The leading scenarios were about the
world, or at least the U S, going from normal to crisis to lawlessness in a
matter of weeks or even days in some cases. You had your:

1.     

"the world economy is going to collapse" people, your

2.     

"there will be another civil war" people, and your

3.     

"another country will bomb and then invade the U S" people.

I tended to discount these for what, to me at least, were logical

reasons.

While the economy had gone belly up at least a couple times,

the world didn't descend into chaos. Even though in at least some cases it took
years to do so, governments managed to work through the depression and come out
healthy.

Another American civil war would just be stupid. Civil wars

have never worked out well. The group with the most resources always wins, and
they usually aren't very nice to the losers. After most modern civil wars, the
leaders on the losing side end up being executed for treason or some other
offense. Why would any sane person even think about starting a civil war unless
they were absolutely confident they could win?

While I supposed it was possible that some other country

could launch nukes at the U S, the result would be their own destruction as
well. It was also possible some country could load up a million or so soldiers
and ship them across the Pacific or the Atlantic with the intention of
attacking the big cities on the East or West coast, but it's very probable they
wouldn't make it. That many ships or planes would be spotted long before they
posed any real danger and the U S Air Force and Navy would end the threat
before it got started.

Right behind these were "artificial intelligence will

take over and eliminate the human race" and a global pandemic that kills
most of the human population of the world.

While these made some decent novels and movies, they weren't

all that realistic. I mean, artificial intelligence isn't really all that
smart. AI can rapidly review data from a multitude of sources, develop
conclusions from that data based upon its programmed algorithms, and then take
or recommend actions based upon those conclusions and again, its programmed
algorithms. It can further examine those actions and determine if they were
correct and modify its logical process as needed.

At the time it happened, I was a civilian electro-mechanical

engineer working on B 1 B flight simulators at Ellsworth AFB and my job
required a thorough and current knowledge of that sort of thing because I was
writing it into my machine control programs. Everything I'd read told me even
the best artificial intelligence is really good at adapting its programming to
different conditions and reporting any conclusions in appropriate language, but
in reality is maybe actually as smart as a five-year old. Though the data set
used can be enormous, any autonomous decisions are made just as a five-year old
would make them -- by trial and error.

A self-driving car can learn where it is and where it needs

to go, but it you want to transfer its "brain" to an aircraft or a
robot, that requires a software change and a human has to do that. Artificial
Intelligence can read most current languages spoken in the world and can be
taught the phonetics to speak them correctly. It can also be taught to generate
art, prose and poetry when given appropriate parameters. It can't just one day
decide to become a best selling author or poet and start writing, or begin
painting scenes that it visualizes on its own. It needs a human to ask it to do
something or to tell it what to do. Yes, there can be some unforeseen
consequences, but when all else fails, a human can always "pull the
plug" and stop the computer.

A global pandemic was possible, but even in the worst pandemics

like the plague and Spanish Flu, enough people survived to keep society going.
Yes, the disease slowed civilization down, but civilization didn't die.

There were several other causes like natural disasters such

as tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, blizzards and forest fires that could
likely happen and cause significant stress on society. The more I thought about
those causes, the more sense it made to do some preparation. It wouldn't hurt
and if something did happen, I'd be prepared.

It was also a way to get back to quasi-reality from my job.

Back then, I spent all my work days immersed in tuning the interactions between
computer code and hydraulic servo valves and the response time of hydraulic
systems, and I needed something a lot less complex to decompress on the
weekends.

Location?

I started reading about what I would need and decided my

best bet was to have a month's supply of food in my apartment and a shotgun for
self-defense. The extra food was easily affordable since I wasn't married,
lived in a two-room apartment, and worked too many hours to actually spend much
of my income on anything else. I still had the single-shot shotgun I got as a
kid so I could hunt rabbits, squirrels and pheasants on my dad's farm. I still
did that when I had the time.

I stored a month's supply of canned and dried food in my

bedroom and bought three boxes of buckshot to go with the box of bird shot I
already had. I was all set; until I read some more and watched some videos.

One article I read asked the question, "What will you

do if you're away from home when the shit hits the fan?" The answer was
something called a "get-home bag" and was a small backpack filled
with enough to get me from my office to home if there was trouble in the city
or on the road.

I bought a small backpack and stuffed it with protein bars,

six bottles of water, and a first-aid kit. Also in that backpack was a coffee
can with a candle and a disposable lighter, but I'd always had those in my car.
If you're stuck alongside the road in a heavy snow like we sometimes get during
the South Dakota winters, it's nice to have a heat source so you don't freeze
to death before the wrecker gets there. I was all set, until I read some more
and watched more videos.

The opinion of all the experts on the internet was you

should prepare to weather a crisis at home. That's where your food supply would
be and you'd be familiar with the area, but the next question was, "What
if you can't get to your home or if your home isn't there or if it isn't safe
to go to your home?" The answer, actually three answers, were a
"bug-out bag", a place to "bug-out" to, and to never let my
gas tank get lower than three-quarters of a tank so I'd have the gas to
"bug-out". I think that was when my hobby became sort of an
obsession. Looking back now, I wish it had become an obsession a lot sooner.

Keeping my gas tank filled was something I already did

during the winter. It's not unusual in my area of South Dakota to have a heavy
snow that will cause traffic to back up for hours. Having a candle in a coffee
can will keep you from freezing to death, but a full tank of gas and a car
heater will keep you comfortable.

The bug-out bag was easy. It was just a scaled up version of

my get-home bag. It was a bigger backpack filled with food for three days and
water for a week. Since I might need to make a fire to cook and keep warm, I
included a hunting knife, a hatchet, two disposable lighters, and a ferrocerium
rod and striker in a metal box full of charred cotton cloth in case the
lighters died. If I got wet or just needed some more layers, I had an extra set
of clothing, and in case something happened to the clothing, a sewing kit.

According to everything I red, it might be that I'd have to

fight my way out of something, and to do that, I bought a bigger first-aid kit
in case I got hurt and had to fix myself up. Stuck in a pocket in the flap was
an unloaded Sig P365 nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol with a hundred
rounds of ammo to keep me from getting hurt. Carrying the pistol required me to
get a state carry permit, but that was easy. After three visits to a gun range
to practice, I spent one Saturday taking a class and then took my application
and check for the fee to the local sheriff's office. A month later, I had my
South Dakota carry permit in my wallet.

The place to bug-out to was harder. The articles I read said

the place should be pretty isolated because looters would be roaming the
countryside looking to take what they didn't have from people like me who did.
Since I lived in an apartment, I'd probably at least have my neighbors begging
from me. Montana seemed to be the favored location, but Montana was a five-hour
drive from Box Elder, South Dakota where I had my apartment. Besides, I didn't
have enough money to buy even a small place in Montana.

Dad's farm was closer. The six hundred acres where he'd run

some cattle and raised hay wasn't exactly out in the middle of nowhere, but it
was a little over twenty miles from the nearest city, that being Rapid City. I
figured I'd just build a hideaway cabin to use for hunting and fishing the
small river that ran through it. I did both there every year anyway, and with a
small cabin, I could stay over a weekend instead of driving back and forth. If
I needed it to bug-out, it would be there.

I still call the place Dad's farm, but it's essentially

mine. He willed it to my mother when he passed and her will states that it will
go to me when she passes. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it when
that happened because the inheritance taxes would be huge, but I liked hunting
and fishing there, so I was playing "wait and see". The land would
never drop in value.

I was paying the taxes on the place because Mom couldn't

afford to. I didn't want to continue to pay property taxes on the old house and
outbuildings, so I had them torn down. Then I rented the place to a local
cattle breeder. His cattle and the small herd of horses he ran there kept the
old pastures and fields cropped down and the rent paid the remaining property
taxes every year with a little left over to go toward the taxes I'd eventually
pay.

Provisions.

Once I'd decided to build a bug-out place, I started reading

and watching videos about what I needed to build. I found people who
recommended just a small log cabin, people who built what would have been
called a "fall-out shelter" in the 1950's, people who built basically
a full sized and equipped house, and everything in between.

I wasn't all that thrilled about a log cabin after I read more

about the ones you can buy. They would be hard to heat in our frigid South
Dakota winters and were pretty expensive since they were intended to be
full-time residences. I thought about cutting some of the pine trees on the
place and building a cabin myself, but that seemed like a ton of work that
would take me a year of weekends to finish. I decided a log cabin was a bad
idea.

I saw some ads about pre-manufactured shelters that could be

installed in a week or so by the manufacturer. I thought that would work out
pretty well. I could buy just the steel box and then fit it out however I
wanted. They were all underground, so I'd have the benefit of some natural
insulation when it was time to heat it. There was only one hitch. I could have
bought a three bedroom house in Box Elder for what one would have cost me to
buy and install. I decided that was a bad idea too.

As I kept reading and watching videos, I discovered there

were some ideas about building a bug-out place that seemed to conflict. The
main one had to do with the need to keep your bug-out place a secret. If you
didn't and some emergency happened, everybody who hadn't prepped would come
knocking on your door for food, shelter and safety.

For this reason, I figured running electricity to whatever I

built, like a lot of people did, was stupid. I could live without electricity,
and overhead power lines running out through the middle of a farm field would
be like a road sign saying, "This way for free food." The other
problem with electricity is electricity has a tendency to stop if there are
high winds or sleet. It wouldn't do any good to have the wiring if there was
nothing in the wires.

Another thing I thought was pretty short-sighted were the

people who said they were prepared to live off the land. I'd hunted and fished
for most of my life, and my experience had taught me two things. If you depend
upon hunting, fishing, and foraging for food, you'll probably starve to death.
I'd spent a lot of long days in the woods without ever seeing so much as a
rabbit let alone a deer. It's the same with fishing. Some days, you catch
several fish. Other days, all you get is a sunburn and some mosquito bites.

Foraging for plants is interesting and fun and I'd done it

as a Boy Scout, but if that's your only food source, it won't take long to pick
all the edible plants in your immediate area. Then you'll have to move to find
more and that means giving up the security you spent all that money to build.

I figured I needed a place big enough to store a lot of

non-perishable food and enough other stuff so I could fend for myself for at
least a year. That didn't mean I wouldn't hunt and fish. It just meant I
wouldn't go hungry when the deer, rabbits, or fish didn't cooperate.

I liked the idea of an underground bunker for several

reasons. If it was underground, I'd get the benefit of the natural insulation
of the soil, and at least from a distance, nobody could tell there was a bunker
there. Concrete seemed a better alternative than steel. All the ammo bunkers on
the base were poured concrete and they'd been there since World War 2.

I thought I knew what I wanted, but I didn't know how to get

it built. I figured the cost wouldn't be a problem because it would be just a
concrete box with a concrete lid. The problem was who could I trust to build it
and not tell anybody else where it was?

That Christmas, I went to the assisted living home in Rapid

City where my mother was living to take her a Christmas gift. I told her I was
going to build some sort of cabin on the farm so I'd have a place to stay when
I went hunting or fishing. Bless her heart, she gave me the answer I'd been
looking for.

"Remember Jeff Hayes from high school? His mother lives

here and we talk all the time. He owns a construction company now, and she said
he did the same thing except he built his under the ground. I don't think I'd
like living underground, but she saw it and said it's really nice, considering.
You ought to go talk to him and find out how he did it."

I did remember Jeff. He and I had hunted and fished together

a lot when we were in high school. We sort of drifted apart when I went to
college and he enlisted in the Army. When he got out of the Army, he went to a
trade school. We were just different that way. He was very practical and I tended
more toward the theoretical.

Army Buddy.

Jeff grinned when I walked into the building where his

office was located.

"Well I'll be damned. Ted Jackson. Figured you'd

forgotten all about Lakeview High and everybody you went to school with."

I smiled.

"No, I've just been really busy. I was visiting my

mother and she said I should come talk to you about a project I have in
mind."

I told Jeff what I'd been thinking about and asked what he

would recommend and why that would be better than what I'd already read and
seen in videos. He smiled.

"When I was in Iraq, I talked to a guy from Montana

whose dad had been getting ready for the big one for years. He didn't know what
the big one was gonna be, so he tried to cover all the bases. I learned a lot
from listening to what his dad built.

"When I came back, I took a look at how politics and

the economy were going and decided maybe he was right. Like you, I read a lot
of books and watched a lot of videos, but I had my military training and combat
experience too. A lot of those books and videos didn't make any sense.

"I thought about it for a year before I built what I

built. I ain't saying it's perfect, but it's good enough. I'm not sure I want
to be around if something happens that it isn't good enough for anyway."

My question was what did Jeff build and how did he build it

without a bunch of people knowing. He just smiled again.

"I own a construction company, so I have the equipment

and skills to build about anything. I also have two guys on my crew who think
like I do, and the local ready-mix plant owner and a couple of his crew do too.
We got together and each of us built basically the same thing on weekends. The
six of us are the only ones who know where and what we have, and we aren't
going to tell anybody else. Since we go way back, I'll make an exception in
your case. You got any idea about what you want?"

When I said other than what I'd already told him I wasn't

sure, Jeff opened a drawer in his desk and took out a set of plans. The first
page said "Plans for a 1,200 square foot Ranch With Partial
Basement". Jeff flipped past the first two pages and then pushed the plans
toward me.

"The rest of this is just so anybody finding our plans

will think they're just for a house I built. The basement plan will show you what
I built. Since I know you pretty good, if you'll swear to keep your mouth shut,
I'll talk to the other guys about helping you build one. It would be good to
know there's another of us in the area in case we somehow have to leave our own
place.

Noah s Ark.

We couldn't start construction until May because the

nighttime temperatures were still dropping below freezing and the ground hadn't
yet thawed out. Once we started, it surprised me how quickly things went and
how little it cost. In a month and a half of weekend work, I had my bunker. It
was out in the middle of a pasture about a mile from the road and was invisible
unless you got close enough to see the hatch sitting in the ground. I traded my
car for a four-wheel drive pickup so I could get to it in about any kind of
weather.

It's an underground bunker twelve feet wide and thirty feet

long. It's all concrete with leak stoppers between the floor and walls and
between the walls and

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store
Connected PodcastBy Dawkins Blog