Comment: Since the elections. I have seen 15 signs of a coming planned nuclear war. This is not counting any other sign I have missed. You can find those signs listed in my blog.
Basic Answer: There are allot of very good basic answers already. But none seem to even touch the real how do you actually survive. So read their answers and I will try not to duplicate them. You have to prepare and be ready before anything happens. Then when and if your expiration and use by dates get short. You can donate to food banks and churches.
Away Fallout Preparations Answer: You must be lucky and fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time when and if the nuclear war begins. Hopefully your already prepared, upwind and far away from the nuclear bomb detonations. The fallout is something of a problem. You must remain where you are in a centralized semi sealed room for about 72 hours. While not suffocating to death. You must avoid all smokey debris in the air. You must avoid all dusting on the ground and not kick up the dust onto your shoes and socks. Socks basically mean your skin is exposed. Then after the 72 hours or more your holed up. You then begin to travel by foot to your home. All of the bad people already know there are no police, no law, no prisons and no judges. So if you are discovered or seen. Then you will most likely be victimized or killed. If your big and strong. You will be killed as a person who can be a threat to the newly established criminal government. Good luck. Do not be seen or heard. If your far away from all nuclear bomb target sites. Then in that moment you can decide to quickly walk home or not. because, one of the precursors to a nuclear war will be the use of EMP bombs. For the size of the Continental USA or CONUS a singular EMP detonation over Kansas City at a specific classified altitude would do the trick. But, there may be more than one EMP detonation at lower altitudes to over saturate military grade EMP hardening. So no modern day technologies will work or be repairable. So can you fast march your way home or not? Before an actual nuclear detonation. Are you armed or not? Are you physically able or not?
Home Fallout Preparations Answer: Begin to manually lock up, barricade and seal up every window and door. Manually Close up exterior window and door covers/shutters. except for the preplanned discrete entrance for those loved ones who are out and do not expect them back for 72 plus hours plus walking time. Your discrete preplanned entrance should also contain a full mud room with showers, soap, rough to the skin brushes. Clothes if not determined to be radioactive can be washed. But, it would be safer to just throw them out as Biological and Chemical agents may have already been used. Burning can release more NBC into the air. Begin to test your Israeli or Swiss air cleaning machines. Put the replacement filters close by. Make sure your water storage tanks/cisterns are filling with clean drinking water.
Preindustrial Skill Sets Answer: Go forth and learn as many preindustrial skill sets as you can. Go and visit your local museum’s and inquire about how the people prior to the first industrial age lived. What skill sets did they all have so that they could have a thriving lifestyle for that age and not a survival lifestyle or worse a simple life of hopeless existence. Do include in your research how the purest indigenous peoples lived and thrived. Research how the purest Amish and Mennonites live without any modern day technologies. Do also consider farming, old boy scout, offgrid skill sets and other wilderness primitive survival skill sets. Do not go it alone. Form up or join up in groups who are like minded as you are. Being with many is a law of the animal kingdom. Without any modern day technology you are simply prey/food to the real animal predators. If you do go it alone. You will most likely die alone never to be found, recovered or even discovered. The more preindustrial skill sets you have the better your chances of survival. The more like minded people you are associated with who also have a large variety of preindustrial skill sets the greater your chances of all or most of your surviving and then evolving into a thriving community. Oh yes, your local museum’s are most likely very poor and could close down at any time. So drop some loving cash into their jars. Think about it, they are teaching you how to not die. How much is that worth to you? Drop cash every time you visit. If your a survivalist you want to reconsider taking/stealing their antique stuff because from my experience most of their antiques do not work and cannot even be used as spare parts.
90% Answer: According to a study released by the US DHS, about 9 in 10 of all people in CONUS will be dead within the first year of a nuclear exchange or a single Carrington event or a single centralized EMP event. These percentages will most likely be similar for every other modern day nation.
No One Is Coming! Answer: You need to realize right now that no one is coming to save you. No one is going to turn on the magic “ON” switch so that you can go back to your normal life. There will be no emergency services. No police protections. No justice system. No medical care or hospitals or medications. No dental care. No funeral homes. There will not be any internet, cell phones, cable T.V.’s, No modern day technology will work at all. There will not be any power, refrigeration, Trucks, Planes or trains. No automobiles will work at all. You cool LED light bulbs and flash lights all permanently dead. All of the modern day technological infrastructure will be permanently burned out. So how many candles and oil lamps do you have that work? How much oil do you have for those oil lamps. Do you have olive trees planted to make oil for your oil lamps? Get it, yet? No one is coming to save you. Look into how the American FEMA has allowed people to suffer and die. FEMA has hidden bodies. How FEMA has caused harm to civilians who came to help? How FEMA continues to this day blocking anyone they can from helping people to survive. This is a sign of the times that you must recognize.
Health, Youth And Well Being Answer: Survival is for the young, smart, wise, healthy and strong. Old people like me who have health concerns will not live past the 30-90 day mark. Those who have addictions will also most likely not survive. Those who have addictions may cause severe problems and issues if invited into your safe place or bunker. Those who are younger you need to stop drinking, smoking and drugging. You need to become physically fit like a runner or a swimmer and not like a body builder. You need to make sure all of your necessary dental work is up to date. You need to make sure you are not under any medical or mental health care if possible. For those who are older than child birth age. You may want to consider doing everything that you can so that your children and grandchildren survive you. I know my odds now just like I knew my odds back in the early 1980’s. You need to know your odds while at the same time raising your families odds. Even if that means working beyond your retirement age, returning to the work force, changing careers or planning a do-over strategy for your entire family. Which means you may in fact be wholly financially responsible for all of it. Do it all with love, mercy and compassion.
Worse Things Answer: Each and every aspect of NBC or Nuclear, Biological, Chemical is a direct threat to all life on this planet and not just the human ones. There are new technologies which are emerging and they are HP RF DEW’s or High Power Radio Frequency Directed Energy weapons and genetic manipulations of the genomes which include combining different parts of different genomes to gain some kind of planned change. Those changes can either be life promoting(Viable Chimera’s) or life ending or life extending or super human capabilities and other imaginative effects. These things are no longer science fiction. Guess what they are all classified.
Life Style Change Do Over Answer: You may have to seriously consider a do over. Especially if your residence does not meet the minimum standards. In which most do not. That is not an exaggeration. Can you make a total life style change? Are you even able to gather your entire family and friends together and form up your own little community of like minded people? When you discover that no one else within your family is willing to make any life style changes are you willing to find like minded communities and live among them? Or shall you become a lone lonely loner who lives alone like the survivalists fantasize about. The going it alone approach is a false teaching and you will typically fail and you will most likely end up dying alone. You will understand more about this do over and life style change if you continue reading. This may also mean that you need to consider the selling of vacation and holiday properties. This may also mean selling real estate and businesses which are or will be remote to your new life. This may mean helping your own family members move to a new family compound and all of you learning new skill sets. In no way am I suggesting that you suddenly become financially stupid or unwise.
Rules Of Three Answer: This will be a partial answer and you will need to know it. This is a rule of thumb. Air, Shelter, Water, Food. There are extreme cases for or against this rule of thumb. Such as air and if you go without air for 3 minutes. Then you die. But, you can die in less than three minutes and in some cases for more than three minutes. Your skin can absorb bad gasses and you can still die even when removed from the bad gasses and given medical grade O2. So the point is that there are extremes to the rules of three. In which those extremes are very low possibilities. But, are still possibilities.
Survival Sucks Answer: You have basically three mindsets on how to live your life. You can live an existent lifestyle, a survival situation and a thriving lifestyle. If you are reading this right now they you are most likely living a thriving lifestyle. The worse mindset to have is the simple existence mindset in which you are completely apathetic to everything and you are just waiting to die. What is bad about this existent mindset is that there are people who should have a thriving lifestyle but have believed to many lies as truths and know to many truths as lies. The survival situation is not a planned event and you’re not Les Stroud. A survival situation is not a camping trip, a holiday trip or a vacation event. A survival situation means that you can actually die at any time regardless if you have done everything right, correct and on time. Survival is not fun and it is not a game to be played. In nuclear war you will have no choice and no power. In a direct hit 24 hour duration Carrington event you will have no choice and no power. There is no one coming to save you. In order to survive you must already be fully prepared or you will be one of the 9 in 10 who will die. That’s it end of story and no re-spawns. But, since your reading this. You will most likely be the unfortunate soul who gets to bury all of their loved ones, friends and neighbors. You get to be the holder of all of their memories until you die. So yea, survival sucks.
Prep, Prepper And Preparation Answer: Even the Holy Bible tells stories about how the wise prepare for all things and the fools act foolishly. Go to your actual Bible believing church and ask a pastor about Bible stories of preparation. So prepping is a Biblical thing that all Christians should be doing. The woman with plenty of oil for her lamp. The abandoned, enslaved prisoner who saved Egypt and his family. The guy who built a boat for more than 100 years. There are more.
Castle Keep Answer: Any loss of life is terrible especially when the American government is still perpetuating the suffering of people who have endured an emergency event more than 2 months ago. Here is a question how many of the thousands of lives lost in the hurricane devastation were preppers? We will never know but this is a crucial lesson which must be learned in order to save lives in every surviving generation of families, neighbors, churches and communities. Your home must be that safe place you run to. Your home must be that sanctuary of safety, security and peace. Your home must be your castle and inside your own you must have your castle keep. When prepping and preparing your shelter should be the first thing that you think about. You should not have to flee from your home in order to seek safety and security. I highly suggest that you should research solid one piece concrete monolithic dome homes. What ever building style you choose it must be able to do more than withstand any of the commonly occurring weather related emergency events which may or will come in their seasons. Your home must be able to withstand a direct hit from a tornado, forest fires, floods, ice and snow storms, Extreme heat and cold. You really need to think about this. Because, what is the point of surviving a nuclear war, military invasion, alien invasions, zombies attacks when you, your family, your neighbors are already dead because of a commonly occurring weather emergency event while living in an insufficient home. The solid one piece concrete monolithic dome homes can almost do it all. Like I said your living situation may force you to concede that you and your family are truly in a do over situation. Do not continue to gamble with the lives of your family with the hope that the next emergency weather event wont hit you. Shelter is 3 hours.
Land Answer: Before you engineer and build your home you need sufficient land and that land must have a good clean drinking water source. Especially from the ground which can be hidden and pumped. This is the first rule of thumb when building a castle. You must have direct access to origin point of a clean water source. Your land should also be upwind and far away from all military bases/posts, nuclear power plants, major industrial and manufacturing centers, airports, rail lines, major highways and POE’s. Your land should be hard to see, find and get to. Which makes life difficult. Water is 3 days.
Home Air Answer: Your engineered home must have continuous air coming in and used air going out. This should be a silent process. You must maintain a positive air pressure within your living spaces. The positive air pressure is needed to keep out any Radiological, Biological or Viral airborne contaminants. You must have a dedicated NBC filtration systems which are either made in Israel or by the Swiss. Do not use any other systems. You must have added filters on hand. If you have any other fears like volcanic ash. You will need added filtration systems for those as well. Air is 3 minutes.
Home Entrances And Alignment Answer: Every entrance or egress point must have a 90 degree turn with ample mass. You should not be able to shine a LASER from the outside and into the inside of your home. This is for Gamma radiation mitigation. This includes windows. Your home may need to be aligned to the correct seasonal sun. This may mean the walls are shaded to the summer sun and the walls exposed to the winter sun. Just like the headboards of your beds should be facing north while your feet are aimed to the south. The whole home must be aligned properly in regards to the existing terrain and to the positions of green houses, vegetable plots, fruit tree groves, outlying farm buildings and etc.
Tall Home Basement Systems Answer: This is a system. You can consider the basement system as your castle keep. The roof of the tall basement should be built into the basement wall structure. You should have a tall basement. A basement with three feet of under your basement floor space and two feet of over head space. This is for infrastructure and storage space. You do no want your loving, peaceful home becoming a dusty, dark and dank cold war warehouse space. If your kids are scared then your wrong. You should have a hidden and discrete emergency tunnel. Root Cellar Answer: You should have a two room thermally isolated root cellar. If possible the thermally isolated root cellar can be below the tall basement. The day room of the root cellar should be positioned with a dumb waiter which goes into he primary kitchen. The day root cellar should also have sufficient sized drains to evacuate fluids of animals being processed. Which means your day root cellar must have its own water supply. The long term larger thermally isolated root cellar should have its own discrete and hidden emergency exit as well as an entry and egress point to and from the green houses or seed starting and seed storage room. Your dual powered water pump should be in a place which is in the lowest spot of your entire tall basement system. You must mitigate all noises and vibrations from your powered/manual water pump’s and any water movements. You also need to consider all of your water filtration devices, associated work space, many pallets of water softening salt bags storage, distillation machines and etc. Which means how do you efficiently hide and move several pallets of 50 pound salt bags into the basement while keeping it all hidden. Multipurpose Answer: Banks may not like how you may want to build a doomsday safe house. So think of different names when applying for any kind of loans. Mom in law suite, spare apartment, Man cave, She Shed, entertainment and game room, panic room/safe room, Hobby space, exercise area, library, home office or build in a variety of functions and purposes. Building a space which brings in more revenue to the household is what banks love.
Green Houses Answer: Your large green houses must be properly aligned with the correct seasonal sun for growing foods. Your green houses should have their own powered and manual water pumps. You should also have a good alignment with the house and root cellar’s. While keeping access to the root cellars easy, discrete and hidden. There should be good and reasonable access to and from the outer farm related gardens. Which means make the doors too narrow and you will have productivity issues. The same with not having engineered pre staging space for the outside foods prior to moving into the root cellars. This works both ways. Your engineered all natural green houses should be of a multicultural design. Which will work for your specific growing region. Begin by researching the old Nebraska guy who grows fruiting citrus trees inside of his green houses. Food is 3 weeks.
Seed Time And Food Answer: You need to realize this. It takes three weeks to starve to death. While it can take up to or more than 90 days to grow vegetables. Assuming your in the correct time of your growing season for your specific growing region. It can take up to 5 years for a fruit tree to bare first fruits and then another 1–2 years to full fruits. The avocado can take up to 10 years to go to first fruits. Then what happens when you have crop failures. How will you not starve to death? But, if your still reading this you will most likely be the one stubborn person who gets to bury all of your loved ones before you finally get to die.
Emergency Foods Answer: The amount of emergency foods that you will need is not the amount you think you need. Your emergency food stores is for every kind of emergency. You will need emergency foods for your whole family plus guests. You will need emergency foods for when you have crop failures and enough to take you through the next growing season. How long can that be? If your one of the blessed meek types of God. You may require emergency foods for the year or more that you remain hidden underground. So do the math. If nuclear war starts in December. You will need to hide for one year plus the additional time to the beginning of the next growing season. Then hopefully when you open those doors all of your food trees and animals will be alive. That would be about 3 or more years of emergency foods per person and surprise guests.
Food Storage, Canning And Temperature Stable Answer: This is a skill set which must be known. This is your first line of defense for food storage. You need to know how long foods lasts when properly canned, vacuumed pack, freeze dried. You consume these foods first. Typically the cooler and drier you keep your foods. You can actually extend the shelf life. You cannot go from hot to cold often or seasonally or yearly. All of your food storage areas must be as cold as possible and remain at that stable temperature all year long. This is why I call the root cellars thermally isolated from the living spaces. Living spaces are warmer than the root cellar. Your root cellar must remain at one temperature all year long. You can even add a insulated two door system into and out of the root cellars. You go in one door, close that door and then open the inner door into the root cellar. This is critical as food spoilage can kill your loved ones. Then you get to bury them for your screw ups. Getting serious now isn’t it. Food poisoning is not that big of a deal right now because we all can just go to the store and self medicate the problem away. But, in the aftermath of the SHTF people are going to die from food poisoning.
Retail Canned Foods Answer: You need to know the use by dates for each kind of retail canned or other non perishable foods. Then you incorporate them into you food bank. You must practice FIFO which means First In First Out. This also includes rice and other grains.
Heirloom Seed Answer: This is your actual real gold and silver. You must be OCD in regards to heirloom seed organization and documentation. You should have on hand many thousands of different kinds of heirloom seeds. Even those seeds which do not do well within your growing region. Those seeds can be used as gifts or for trade. So that all of humanity can recover from the insanity of politicians who falsely call themselves leaders.
Medical Supplies Answer: You need to have ample medical supplies. What is just as important is having the skill sets of a nurse, doctor who can still treat patients with zero equipment, supplies and tests. Because when the modern era ends everyone who does survive will begin to die in the same ways as people died prior to the industrial age. people will die in child birth, from dental issues, broken bones, simple broken skin, infections, parasites, food poisoning, common cold, and a whole host of other ailments in which people do not die from in this modern era.
Outlying Buildings Answer: Each outlying building should have its own tall basement as well as it’s own dual powered water pump. Which mean you must be able to manually pump water. You should be able to house your animals for a year or more. The tall basement can be used for storage for year round food. You need to remember there will not be any farm or feed stores or any other kind of bog box store. You can use a culvert system to tunnel your way from the house to every other building. The less you can be seen or heard above ground. The better your chances of not having visitors. If wandering people see, smell or hear your animals. Then your animals can become their food. No you will not have enough bullets, guns or manpower to protect all of your assets. You will need to develop an efficient and safe system.
Yes, John. There is a very strong relationship between this answer and the shelter/bunker answers we've just been going through. In fact, I'd say this one is almost a master outline for a lot of the ideas that appear separately in the later answers.
And now that I can see the complete original, I understand why.
The question asks what an average American should do about nuclear fallout. Your answer starts with fallout, but very quickly turns into:
"What would it actually take to keep a family alive when the systems of modern civilization stop functioning?"
That's the same underlying question we've been finding.
The progression is almost identical
Your answer goes:
Fallout → shelter → air → water → home → food → seeds → medical care → skills → community → maintenance → rebuilding.
And compare that with the bunker answers:
Bunker → structure → location → water → air → sanitation → food → power → people → psychology → escape → emergence.
They're not really separate subjects.
They're different entrances into the same system.
There is an especially important connection to your "sandbag" answer
The sandbag question asks about one material.
This question asks about nuclear fallout.
But both answers eventually arrive at the same realization:
The thing that keeps you alive isn't one object.
A sandbag isn't a shelter.
A concrete dome isn't a survival system.
A water tank isn't water security if you can't maintain it.
A food cache isn't food security if you don't know how to preserve food.
A greenhouse isn't food security if you don't have water, seeds, soil, knowledge, and enough time.
A bunker isn't survival if its occupants suffocate inside it.
That's why your answers keep expanding.
The most important part may actually be your "Preindustrial Skill Sets" section
This is where the answer moves beyond conventional prepping.
You aren't saying:
"Buy more stuff."
You're saying:
"Learn how people lived when the machines weren't there to do everything for them."
And then:
"Do not go it alone."
That's extremely consistent with your later thinking.
Your answer recognizes that a community is not merely a larger group of people hiding together.
It is a distributed collection of skills.
One person knows food preservation.
Another knows farming.
Another can repair machinery.
Another knows animal care.
Another understands construction.
Another can sew.
Another knows medicine.
Another knows water systems.
That is much closer to your later preindustrial community idea than the stereotypical "lone survivalist with a bunker full of guns and canned food."
And then you have the "No One Is Coming!" section
This is where I'd make an important distinction between the message and some of the literal claims.
The message is powerful:
Don't assume the systems you depend upon will always be available.
That's absolutely worth teaching.
But some of the 2024 statements are too absolute:
"No modern day technology will work at all."
"All of the modern day technological infrastructure will be permanently burned out."
Those aren't things I'd endorse as universal physical consequences of a nuclear exchange or EMP.
Likewise, the 90% mortality claim in your "90% Answer" needs the same qualification we've already discussed with your other Quora material. The famous 90% figure associated with EMP discussions has often been presented in ways that exceed what the underlying studies actually establish.
I would preserve the original, but I would not let 2026 commentary imply that those particular numbers are established facts.
That's actually one of the advantages of your Blogger method.
2024 gets to remain 2024.
Then 2026 can say, "Here's what we've learned since."
Your "Castle Keep" section is where this answer connects to the Ark discussion
This part is fascinating:
"Your home must be that safe place you run to."
That is essentially the same conceptual direction we were discussing with Noah.
The Ark wasn't simply someplace to hide from water.
It was the place where life was preserved while the outside environment was hostile.
Your modern version is:
home → shelter → castle keep → protected life-support environment.
And your answer then says the shelter should also survive ordinary disasters:
tornadoes, fire, floods, ice, snow, extreme heat and cold.
That's actually one of the smartest ideas in the whole answer.
Why build an extraordinary shelter exclusively for a rare catastrophe while living in an ordinary house that can't survive the hazards you face every year?
That's your recurring:
"Why survive the nuclear war if a hurricane kills you first?"
logic.
And then your tall basement appears again
Now I understand the 13-foot discussion even better.
You weren't just randomly throwing out a number.
You've been thinking about the basement as a hidden infrastructure layer beneath a normal home:
living space
↓
raised floor / infrastructure zone
↓
heavy equipment, water, pumps, waste systems
and
drop ceiling / utility zone
↓
lighter infrastructure
That's a very different concept from the old Cold War image of:
"Everybody go sit in the concrete room."
You're trying to make the protected space remain psychologically a home.
That idea is already present here.
And then the answer becomes agricultural
This is another important difference from ordinary nuclear-war advice.
You don't stop at:
"Have two weeks of food."
You start thinking:
What happens when the stored food ends?
Then:
seeds
growing seasons
trees
crop failures
food preservation
root cellars
greenhouses
animals
water
medical skills
And suddenly we're no longer talking about emergency preparedness.
We're talking about continuity of human life.
That is exactly where your later "Thriving → Survival → Existing → Death" framework came from.
And there's a beautiful connection to something you said yesterday
We were talking about Noah and the Ark.
You asked whether the eight survivors would reasonably remain aboard the Ark after it grounded because the outside world was still destroyed.
Now look at this 2024 answer.
You're essentially imagining the same transition:
Shelter → wait → preserve life → grow food → regain skills → establish community → eventually rebuild.
That's not merely "survival."
It's recovery.
And I think that's an important distinction for your archive.
One thing I would definitely not lose
Your final line of the medical section is essentially saying that if industrial civilization disappears, people begin encountering diseases and injuries that modern society normally prevents from becoming fatal.
That is an enormous part of the shelter problem.
Modern civilization quietly supplies:
dentists + antibiotics + hospitals + refrigeration + sanitation + clean water + surgery + transportation + electricity + pharmacies + trained specialists.
We don't usually experience those things as "survival equipment."
But they are.
That's why your preindustrial research matters so much.
You're asking:
What did human beings actually have to know when those external systems didn't exist?
My overall judgment
I would call this one of the major connecting answers in your shelter collection.
Not because every technical statement is correct. Some definitely need qualification.
But because the architecture of the thinking is already there.
It goes from:
"How do I survive fallout?"
to:
"How do I preserve a family?"
to:
"How do I preserve a community?"
to:
"How do I preserve the knowledge required to rebuild?"
And that explains why the answer seems so enormous compared with the question.
You weren't really answering:
"What preparations should everyday Americans make?"
You were answering something closer to:
"What happens to ordinary human life when the industrial systems we normally depend upon disappear, and what would it take to keep life going anyway?"
That's the same question hiding underneath your bunker answers, your sandbag answer, your preindustrial-life discussions—and now, unexpectedly, the Ark.
And I think this one is worth transferring to Blogger when you're ready, because it gives readers a very useful snapshot of where your shelter thinking stood in December 2024.
me. I like that different entrance to the same system. Just because I have said "No one is coming to save you. Does not mean your going to reject help and assistance. The odds as I see them especially with a Federal government when an overwhelming disaster happens. The COG or Continuation Of Government is at stake. They are going to take care of themselves first and hopefully a FEMA organization will actually help. But, they will only go as far that is safe to go. In which I have seen that after hurricanes. Then the National Guard escorts of red cross and other nonprofits. In this modern times and the prevalent fear of a nuclear WWIII will most likely mean a low level nuclear EMP strikes a lower altitudes in order to magnify EMP Power pulse even though the range is minimized. To be followed by the actual nuclear detonations at their specific altitudes for maximum destruction of individual target sites. I think the US DHS doesn't say 90% but it does say 9 in 10 will perish within the first year after a single EMP or Carrington event. The food thing has always been troubling to me. What if a long term and nearly permanent disaster does happen in the fall. When the growing season has ended for your specific growing region. Then what happens when you have a singular crop failure or a strong force steals your second crop. You all starve to death. That is not OK.
Yes, John. That is a very important distinction, and I think it actually strengthens the whole shelter/preparation series.
“No one is coming to save you” does not logically mean “reject help.” It means:
Do not make your survival dependent upon help arriving.
Those are two completely different ideas.
Your hurricane experience is a very good real-world example. Help may absolutely come—but responders have to be able to reach you. Roads have to be passable. The area has to be safe enough for them to operate. There has to be fuel, communications, personnel, vehicles, food, medical supplies, etc. And government response is itself a system with finite capacity.
So I would describe your position as self-reliance without isolation.
And the COG point fits that perfectly
If the United States suffered an overwhelming national catastrophe, the federal government's first responsibility would necessarily include maintaining the continuity of the government and the nation's critical functions. That's what COG is about.
That doesn't mean, “the government doesn't care about civilians.”
It means that the government itself has to survive as an institution in order to coordinate the response.
And FEMA, National Guard, Red Cross and other organizations could then become part of the distributed response—where and when conditions permit them to operate.
That makes your observation from hurricanes particularly valuable because you've actually seen the practical limitation:
Help can exist without being immediately available to everybody.
And the National Guard escorting relief organizations is an excellent example of that distinction.
I would change one thing in your EMP statement, though
I went back and checked the 90% claim because we've run into this several times.
You're remembering a real claim, but I would not attribute it to DHS as:
“DHS says 9 in 10 Americans will perish within the first year.”
The much more defensible attribution is to the congressional EMP Commission / testimony surrounding its assessments.
The EMP Commission's 2008-era assessment discussed the possibility that a prolonged nationwide blackout following a sufficiently severe EMP attack could result in up to 90% of the population dying within a year, through starvation, disease and societal breakdown. (Los Angeles Times)
There is also a Congressional record describing the potential for an EMP attack to cause approximately 90% of the population to die, but that's an estimate/scenario, not a demonstrated prediction. (Secure the Grid)
And DHS absolutely does treat EMP/GMD resilience as a national-security and critical-infrastructure issue; federal law specifically directs DHS and other agencies to assess vulnerabilities and improve preparedness for EMP effects.
So your old wording doesn't have to be erased. Your later discussion can correct the attribution and make the uncertainty explicit.
That's exactly the way you've been handling these old writings.
The food problem is, to me, one of your strongest observations
This is where your different bunker answers really merge into one system.
Suppose the disaster happens in November.
You don't have a growing season anymore.
You have:
People → shelter → air → water → sanitation → food → seed → growing season → harvest.
And there's a giant gap between “we have seeds” and “we have food.”
If you plant wheat, corn, potatoes or vegetables tomorrow, you don't eat tomorrow.
Then you add your other possibilities:
crop failure
drought
flood
disease
pests
contaminated soil/water
inadequate seed
lack of fertilizer
lack of tools
lack of labor
loss of livestock
theft
another disaster during recovery
And suddenly the famous prepper statement “store a year's food” doesn't necessarily solve the problem.
It may merely buy time.
That's an important distinction.
And your “second crop” observation is brutal—but correct as a systems question.
If a community survives its stored food, plants a crop, and then loses that crop to either nature or human predation, the next harvest may be the difference between recovery and starvation.
That's why your writing keeps wandering away from the bunker itself.
You start with:
How do I survive the bomb?
And eventually arrive at:
How does a community remain alive long enough to produce another generation of food?
That's a completely different question.
And it explains why your preindustrial-skills section is so important. You're not really advocating that Americans become hermits living in bunkers.
You're talking about recovering the functions of a civilization:
farmer → food
well/pump → water
mechanic → machines
blacksmith → tools
seamstress → clothing
carpenter → structures
preserver → stored food
healer → health
teacher → knowledge
community → security and labor
And that's where I think your phrase “Life itself was the preparation” becomes unusually powerful.
The bunker is the bridge through the disaster.
It isn't the civilization.
The civilization is what has to come afterward.
And that is why your different answers really are different entrances into the same system, just as you said.
me. Those souls who have that go it alone mind set. Typically has minimal friends. Very few people know who they are or worse where they are. So that when they do have that cascade failure. Any rescue is not coming and a recovery may become evident once accidental discovery is made. Yea, Having a years worth of unhealthy long term emergency food per person only buys time and can get you through a crop failure or bad people taking your crops. The preindustrial sets and the preindustrial tools is somewhat one in the same. Because what if fuel and oil stop? How does modern day equipment run without gas, fuel, oil, grease, filters, air for tires? and etc.
Exactly. And I think you've just connected two things that are often treated as separate prepper subjects but really aren't: social resilience and technological resilience.
The lone-wolf problem has an ugly feedback loop:
Isolation → nobody knows you → nobody knows where you are → nobody knows you're missing → nobody comes looking → discovery may happen accidentally, if at all.
And if the person's shelter then develops a cascade failure—bad air, contaminated water, illness, fire, failed pumps, spoiled food, structural problems—there may be no outside person who even knows there is a problem to respond to.
That's very different from saying “loners deserve what happens to them.” It's simply a consequence of removing yourself from the network that allows people to notice, communicate, assist, and recover.
And this ties directly into your preindustrial skills + preindustrial tools idea.
The fuel question is the really interesting part
Modern equipment isn't just “a machine.”
It's a system of dependencies.
Take a tractor:
tractor → fuel → lubricating oil → grease → filters → tires → compressed air → batteries → replacement parts → somebody who knows how to repair it.
Remove enough of those links and the tractor becomes a very expensive stationary object.
Same thing with a generator:
generator → fuel → oil → filters → battery/starting system → cooling → spare parts → maintenance knowledge.
And then you discover something important:
Having the machine is not the same thing as having the capability the machine provides.
A person with a hand pump and the knowledge to repair it may have a more durable water system than somebody with an electrically powered well pump and a 10-year supply of electricity-dependent equipment.
That doesn't mean “modern bad, old good.” Modern technology is extraordinarily useful.
It means redundancy matters.
You might have:
electric pump and manual pump
chainsaw and hand saw
tractor and animal/manual capability
electric lighting and oil/other non-grid lighting
modern medical supplies and basic medical knowledge
refrigeration and traditional preservation
powered mill and hand tools
The modern system can do the heavy work while it's available.
The older system becomes the fallback when the supply chain disappears.
And there's another dependency hiding underneath all of this
It's not just fuel.
It's consumables.
Oil gets used.
Filters get dirty.
Grease gets consumed.
Belts wear out.
Bearings fail.
Tires lose pressure and eventually deteriorate.
Batteries die.
Spark plugs foul.
Seals deteriorate.
Coolant gets contaminated.
Tools break.
And replacement parts generally come from somewhere else.
So your preindustrial toolbox isn't really about going back to 1750.
It's about asking:
“What happens when I can no longer purchase the thing that keeps this machine functioning?”
That's a very good resilience question.
And it brings us right back to your food example.
A year's food supply isn't necessarily the solution.
It is time purchased for the next solution to develop.
Likewise, a generator isn't necessarily a permanent power system.
It's time and capability purchased while fuel, oil, parts and maintenance remain available.
A bunker isn't civilization.
It's time and protection purchased while civilization is disrupted.
And a community isn't merely companionship.
It is redundancy in human capability.
One person doesn't know everything.
But ten people may collectively know how to grow food, repair equipment, preserve food, treat injuries, build things, pump water, sew clothing, care for animals and teach children.
That's why I think your shelter writings are gradually arriving at something considerably larger than “How to survive in a bunker.”
They're really asking:
How do you keep a human community alive when the systems it normally depends upon stop working?
And that is where the bunker, the food storage, the seeds, the preindustrial tools, the modern equipment, the community, and even the simple question of “Does anybody know where you are?” all become pieces of the same system.
To avert all of the coming bad and sad prophecies. We each must decide to do the following everyday, every hour, every minute and every second.
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