Book Review: Brushfire Plague by RP Ruggiero

Brushfire Plague is a book about a man by the name of Cooper, his family and community during a Pandemic that makes the 1918 Spanish Flu seem like a case of the sniffels. While everything falls apart our hero Cooper tries to hold things together and figure out what is going on. Onto the usual format.

The Good: I was sucked into the book and pages flew by. Most characters were pretty normal and the action was (except 1 scene we will discuss later) pretty realistic.

The Bad: The way things fell apart seemed a bit off to me. At one point the main character goes to the grocery store to stock up because of the pandemic and ends up shooting a guy. He skips paying, pushes the cart to his vehicle and goes home. This was the local neighborhood grocery store. I do not think that was at all realistic.

The Ugly: Sort of like Lights Out the characters seemed to magically stumble into enough food and weapons to be fine. For vague reasons their little subdivision was just fine while the rest of the area went all Mad Max. There was one survivalist in the bunch who conveniently had a whole bunch of guns to pass out to friends which was just too convenient.

Overall I would recommend Brushfire Plague to others. It is solidly enjoyable survivalist fiction.

When Are You Done Preparing?

FerFAL was recently asked the interesting question "When Are You Done Preparing?". I found the question interesting and it sort of stuck in my head. I don't disagree with FerFAL's answer but I do see it from a different perspective. Here is how I see it.

It is worth discussing the difference between maintenance and growth (though not strictly money, also time, energy, etc) of your preps. Maintenance of your preps would be stuff like rotating foodstuffs, practicing to keep your skills fresh, etc. Growth would be stuff like increasing your food storage, learning a new skill, taking a class, buying guns, gear, etc.

I think a certain amount of maintenance is necessary lest your food goes bad, your equipment degrades and your skills atrophy. You've got to rotate food and clean weapons. Car kits and GHB's need to be periodically inventoried and have perishable contents rotated. Even the best shot will get rusty if he doesn't touch a handgun for a year. Personally I wouldn't classify this kind of maintenance as continual preparations. Now that we have that covered.

To the fundamental question "when are you done preparing?" I would reply "preparing for what?" Everyone has different concerns and worst case scenarios they are preparing for. If we imagine white being a very limited power outage and black being a full on genuine One Second After/ Mad Max/ Jericho TEOTWAWKI scenario there are almost infinite shades of grey in between. What you are preparing for has a lot to do with when/ if you can ever be done.

Lets say you are an average guy who lives on the Gulf or southern Atlantic coast. You are justifiably concerned about a hurricane. You know it can be difficult to get fuel in the run up to evacuation time so you keep a half dozen 5 gallon cans in the shed and make sure your vehicle is topped off during hurricane season. You know that the smart thing to do is to leave and you've got a plan with your Uncle who lives a few hundred miles inland to come crash there. You have maps and alternate routes planned out just in case.

Since Katrina showed you that it can be weeks before help can arrive and services are restored you keep 90 days of shelf stable, easy to cook foodstuffs around. A couple extra propane cans will let you cook just about forever on the Coleman stove you use for camping. Keeping a few extra big boxes of batteries will let you run the various flashlights in your house for some time. For water you picked up a filter at the local camping store. After seeing the madness of Katrina you ordered 500 rounds of buckshot for your 12 gauge in addition to whatever hunting loads you have lying around. You also purchased a handgun with a few spare mags and a couple extra 100 rd white boxes from Walmart. Last year you stashed a few hundred dollars in the gun cabinet just in case. Could this guy say that he is done preparing? I think so. Of course there might be a small hole here or there but the broad strokes are covered and he is in a decent spot for the scenario he is concerned with.

Someone worried about a genuine full on Jericho style collapse is probably never going to be done. They will just move from more likely and immediate concerns such as 'how will we eat next winter' to the more obscure and unlikely 'how will my grandchildren make metal tools to replace those which wear out'. A person worried about this kind of scenario is always going to be thinking of something new and trying to deal with progressively more unlikely scenarios.

Personally I do not think I am every going to be done preparing. I am going to have times where the growth slows or stops until I get to another stage (buying a home, having more space, getting some land, etc) over time. However in the big picture over time I am going to progressively work from likely situations to more unlikely ones. It is more likely that we will have to ride out a short to mid term disaster then that we will suffer an EMP or a super aids bird flu pandemic. Assuming the world doesn't end in a few more years I will likely be focused almost exclusively on relatively unlikely scenarios. It is just my nature to want to improve my situation.

It is the very last day to enter our Awesome Ammo Giveaway Contest. Hurry up and enter now so you can get a whole bunch of free ammo.

When are YOU going to be done preparing?

Hamthrax, Vaccinations, Statistics and Paranoia.

Today I got vaccinated for Hamthrax. Hamthrax is my favorite name for the H1N1 Pandemic because it is funny. Unless I hear otherwise I will attribute that awesome title to Commander Zero. In any case while I was waiting around for the shot I got to thinking.....

It is interesting and somewhat baffling to me that so many survivalists are so horribly against getting vaccinations, particularly for the dreaded Hamthrax. We often have strong opinions on things but some folks seem aweful whipped up about this stuff.

Part of it seems to be that independent minded folks do not like being told what to do or having it suggested to them. Seriously sometimes we can be this way beyond any logic or common sense. If you say "at my house we are having all of your favorite food and drink tomorrow for dinner, you should come over" some folks will sit at home hungry just because.

When it comes to vaccinations to me people really just need to get beyond the hype and supposide "news articles" and look at the statistics. Seriously vaccinations save like a Kazillion lives a year by preventing all manner of sicknesses. Remember Polio? Yeah it was bad and stuff but it is gone (or pretty darn close and at least in the western world) because of a simple vaccination. Remember Small Pox? Ya know the stuff that pretty much destroyed an entire continent of Indians? It also killed 300-500 MILLION PEOPLE during the 20th Century alone. That stuff was real nasty but is not an issue (at least in the western world) because of VACCINATIONS.

Are there some side effects to various vaccinations? Yes. Then again pretty much anything kills a few people a year. Because Jim Fixx died on a morning run doesn't mean that it is unhealthy to run and anyone with half a brain could see that running (or certainly physical fitness in general) saves far more people than it kills or hurts. This is like the inane argument that it is better to not wear a seatbelt because you will safely be ejected from the crash. Maybe your friend who doesn't wear his seatbelts cousins sisters aunt knows a guy who this happened to but everyone else who wasn't wearing a seatbelt and got into a bad accident went through the windshield or the window and was really fucked up.

Paranoia is fine and good but try to have some perspective and apply real world examples with a healthy dose of common sense.

This might be fun.

A few drinks in and thiese things are really pissing me off

This shit is so fucking dumb. I get that in a 24 hour news cycle there needs to be some filler and all that stuff.

Congress is talking about how the BCS system is a problem that needs to be addressed. Some dude in Congress was citing the interstate commerce clause as a reason to start meddling and potentially pass some legislation to this effect. I get that the interstate commerce clause has been interpreted to mean the federal government can get their hands into anything they want but seriously WTF? We have two wars going on, our economy is in the crapper, a nuclear armed nation is within spitting distance of falling to the fucking Taliban (it worked out real well for us last time those asshats were in charge of a nation), we are potentially on the verge of a pandemic and we our elected representatives are talking about fucking college football?

Also lets give Mrs. California some peace. She doesn't think gays should be able to get married and she told Perez Hilton her opinion which did not make him happy (maybe someone should teach him tolerance). Lets all just move on.

We have a lot of important stuff to deal with so lets work on that instead of driveling crap.

Mexico's Awesome Response To Swine Flu

Rangerman or whoever is writing SHTF blog these days did a good albeit disturbing post on Mexico's response to the Swine Flu epidemic. I feel bad for Mexico, they really aren't catching any breaks these days.

I wish we had the easy going land of Taco's, big hats and great drinks back. While they aren't and will never be a serious danger to our nation their problems can complicate our lives for sure.

Surviving a Pandemic

Hey Ryan,
I don't know if you remember me, my name is Will the owner of survival-spot.com. Anyways, just thought I'd update you on my new blog post, how to survive a flu outbreak. Thought it might be helpful to you.
http://www.survival-spot.com/survival-blog/survive-a-flu-outbreak/

Hope everything's going well,
Talk to you later

William

TOR here: I would add that the post looks pretty good but will add the specific advice NOT TO GO TO MEXICO.

Shopping Trip

They had Swiss Miss boxes of 8 pouches of hot chocolate for a quarter so I bought the last 5. Yeah it is April in the deep south but that is a good deal and I will probably use them eventually. Never know when a squad sized element will come over and want some hot chocolate.

Commander Zero on the Swine Flu

Disturbingly absent from the news out of Mexico is any indication either way about whether infected people who die are or are not ‘coming back’ with a hunger for brains. I believe the media is keeping a lid on that part at the behest of the .gov. Better play it safe and unpack the machetes.