Selco: The Shocking Reality of SHTF Medicine and How to Prep for When the Medical System is GONE

This article was originally published by Selco at The Organic Prepper

Editor’s Note: Something difficult to plan for – or even wrap your brain around – is a world in which medical care is not available. Even though it’s outrageously expensive here in the United States, we can still access care. We may be in debt forever, but it exists.

So, what do you do in a world in which it no longer exists? A world in which there aren’t emergency rooms or doctor’s walk-in clinics? A world in which there aren’t any well-stocked pharmacies?

Today, Selco shares the brutal reality of SHTF medicine. ~Daisy

Since there were no hospitals, how did you treat people who were ill?

Organized (system) of professional medical help ceased to exist.

Hospitals, health centers, EMS, and everything similar was gone. The most advanced medical help that you could find in the hardest period was more or less primitive medical care that some military units had, such as medics and low-level trauma care. But this was not available to common folks.

People with medical knowledge became very important because of this fact, but even the most skilled people were often completely useless because all of the other help that the system offers you is simply non-existent.

One of my old colleagues told me story that could point out some things.

His friend called him to help him with his father, who had fallen from the roof. The man climbed on the roof to repair broken tiles, and he was there in the middle of the night (which was the safest way). He fell down, and his sons found him unconscious. They brought him in the house and called my ex-colleague, a nurse, for help.

When he arrived, he checked the old man, then called his sons in other room. He explained to them that their father was going to die very soon because most probably he had internal bleeding.

The sons were mad at him and they started to threaten him, asking him that he help the old man in any possible way.

My colleague told them that only way possible was to ask for help from the local paramilitary unit who had some medical stash, but even that was very questionable because man need specialized medical care, and at that moment that kind of care was not available in the whole city.

The sons took a trip that night to the headquarters of that unit, and guys there told them to visit the “hospital” which was situated in the basement of a destroyed apartment building.

They later told my colleague that the “hospital” actually was 3 basement rooms with oil lamps and a stench so bad that they both immediately vomited.

The “doctor” who listened to their story about the old man’s injuries asked the two of them ” Do you have weapons?” They answered  “Yeah, sure”.

They were surprised, and started to yell at him, then “doctor” pulled a gun and said, “Get the f…. out of here or I’ll shoot both of you. Your old man is already dead”

They went home. Their old man was not yet dead but he died in the morning.

Some things can be taken care with basic knowledge and a little bit of inventiveness, for example, taking care of a broken rib or similar, but other conditions and traumas were simply too much to take care for most of the folks.

The point of this story is not to scare you. Maybe in your case, the whole situation is going to be much better. Maybe there is going to be some organization, some kind of bigger system when SHTF. I do not know.

Usually, a person who was ill was placed in a separate room and people did as best as they could to help him.

If we managed to get real medication we did that, if not we tried natural remedies.

Honey was one ingredient that was in most of the home remedies, or at least people stated that, pine needles were sometimes there, chamomile mixture, garlic…

Where did you acquire medications? Were you able to buy things like antibiotics on the black market?

Just like all other resources, they were there ( in very low amounts, of course) to take, steal, or barter.

Antibiotics were very valuable on the black market, and usually, you could dictate the price with if you owned any.

Antibiotics were used even with expired dates, and people did not care because sometimes it was the only medicine that you could find.

Natural remedies also jumped in, and yes people who had any knowledge about herbal remedies became important. Also, there were a lot of scams. For example, you heard that some man had a good herb mixture for asthma, and if that was your only choice, of course, you would try it.

A lot of people used that and scammed people with “homemade herb mixtures”.

Sometimes you could find a man who offered you 15 pills, not packaged, not in a box, just 15 pills, which he stated were antibiotics, and you really need them, so what could you do?

Did people with chronic illnesses like diabetes die?

It was a full scale collapse. People were dying from a lot of things (even if we do not mention violent death). There were no doctors, no hospitals, no X rays no lab results.

One day you are good, next day you feel sick and you are vomiting, your skin is yellow, you have a fever…

And then a few days later, you are dead.

Maybe you died from food poisoning, maybe renal failure, maybe your blood sugar went down or up. Who knew?

Lot of ordinary folks did not know why someone died.

A lot of people with chronic illnesses died.The majority of them did not have a stash of medication needed for their condition, and when you add to that fact that overall life quality went down very sharply and very deeply, people who were chronically ill and needed medical attention had serious problems.

In some cases and for some illnesses, certain people managed to pull through with acquiring medication from the black market or using some substitutes like herbs. But for example, if you were an older man who lived with his older wife, and you had insulin-dependent diabetes, and you do not have friends or family to help, and you had no stash, your chances were really low. 

Was there an increase in mental illness?

Yes, but if we are talking about real mental illnesses, people who had serious mental problems that were under control by medication simply lost it without their meds and went completely “mad”.

You could see people hallucinating out in the street more often than in peacetime, or breaking down in their rooms. I knew cases when families locked in their loved one who had mental illness in a room, controlling him in that way because there was no other way.

A lot of those cases were connected to the people who were heavy drug users (addicts). When the SHTF some of them simply went “wild” or, even worse, some groups used those people for very dirty jobs in exchange for a drug supply. Bigger organized groups had more power and more connections, which meant they could find drugs even in those circumstances. This meant drug addicts were ready to do whatever they had to for them, and very violent things were usually what was needed for a gang to keep power. It is not too different from “peacetime” criminal organizations, but when the SHTF stakes are higher. Violence is much worse and much more frequent.

If we are talking about people who simply went crazy because the world as they knew it collapsed around them, then no, not really. Not too many people lost their minds because of the eruption of violence and collapse.

Of course there was increase in suicides and cases of people simply giving up because they thought it was not worth it to continue to live on that way, but not in numbers that people would imagine.

I think the instinct to fight for survival is stronger then we think.

People mostly pushed through, day by day. There was an increase in alcohol consumption or marijuana, sedatives were good thing to have or some herbal substitutes… but people pushed on. 

What diseases became common when the SHTF? How did you treat them? 

When the SHTF, all aspects of life changed, and that included aspects of life that you did not even think about, simply because the system had always taken care of those aspects of life.

For example how much physical work you are doing today-if you are average citizen who work as an clerk somewhere, or truck driver, or housewife or whatever, you are used to some physical activity and certain food quality and quantity.

You are used to having an operating bathroom, and to being pretty warm in your home, etc.

When the SHTF, all that changed.

Food became different. The quality and quantity of it went down. Physical activities went up very sharply. Add to that fact that one day, it was stressful not to find your favorite yogurt in few stores. Then suddenly, the next day when the SHTF, the levels of stress were about seeing people shot for fun or asking yourself whether your kid was going to survive eating plants only.

All of that contributed to people getting sick simply because people were almost always exhausted.

If we are mentioning the most common illnesses, then those were gastrointestinal illnesses connected with bad food, bad water, and low hygiene (both personally and in the home).

Second to that, a lot of problems were connected with secondary complications of a minor injury.

For example, you might get some nasty cut while you were working in some abandoned storage, trying to scavenge some useful material.

That cut looked nasty, but basically it could be taken care with iodine, peroxide, sterile dressings and antibiotic treatment. But you did not had any of those so you bandaged it with a dirty bandana. Then, a day later you got a nasty infection which was a huge problem.

A small cut could kill you.

Homemade remedies were used a lot, again with varying levels of success. Home mixtures were used for cuts and infections, and of course, people searched for antibiotics.

If someone broke his arm, for example, you could try to find someone who had a clue about setting the bones, but you can still today find people with funny looking fingers, or bit twisted arm, or not so functioning leg, simply because they splinted it alone at home during that time without any real medical help.

How can we prepare for medical issues?

We can be prepared to some extent, but it is more important to understand that very often ( in case of serious collapse) you can not do too much.

Much more important is to understand “from what end” you need to start your medical preparedness.

Most of the discussions about medical preparedness in prepping community today have few common characteristics. They are talking mainly about:

• Taking care of patients in short period of time in until advanced help arrives


• Specialized training is given by very specialized instructors (for example combat medics will train you how to take care of a wounded person until evacuation helicopter arrives)


• Students who are driven to learn things that look “cool and flashy”, for example, you’ll be given the task of stopping bleeding on mankind  (or animal meat) while instructors pointing a flashlight in your eyes or using firecrackers to simulate gunshots.

Those are only examples, or one analogy could be that medical preparedness experts teaching you how to suture wounds even if that wound can be taken care of with simple Steri strip (adhesive tape that gonna connect wound edges).

Nobody mentions the complications that can occur from the wound, prolonged care of an infected wound. This is the material and knowledge that you are gonna need.

One of the reasons is that it looks cool to suture a wound or to train how to use tourniquet untill help arrives in form of an ambulance or a helicopter. The other reason is that most of the trainings assume that help is 10 minutes or one hour away.

It may not be like that when real SHTF happens and it is completely different. Then, most probably nobody is going to arrive, and you’ll have to take care of everything.

You need to start with basics and go gradually to more complicated things.

Do not misunderstand me. I know how to suture, and I am combat medic and nurse, too, so I am not talking against that knowledge.

But before learning how to suture as a part of your medical preparedness you need to learn what to do with your waste when SHTF, how to build latrine, how much water you need, and ways to have it in order to keep a minimum of hygiene.

Before you buy 20 suturing kits you need to learn wound care in prolonged terms, including antibiotic treatment for that wound.

You need to know ways to keep yourself clean and protected in order to minimize the risk of getting injured or getting ill.

Another example would be that lot of  people are fixated with buying antibiotics without real knowledge of how antibiotics work and the differences between groups of antibiotics.

Get gloves, face masks, working gloves, hand sanitizers, and alcohol pads. Then go with antibiotics and tourniquets.

It is about preparation and common sense. So if you have, for example, a person with high blood pressure problems in your family, you need to learn all you can about that condition including proper diet, natural remedies, what to do in a possible crisis, and you need to have serious stash of medications for that condition.

Think outside of the box.

Just like with all other fields of prepping, here too, you need to think a bit outside of the box.

A lot of medical skills can be learned. Some of them are online, free to research and learn.

For example, sometimes it is simply not enough to give oral antibiotics, sometimes you’ll have to give it through an IV or intramuscular, or sometimes best choice is to rehydrate person through IV solutions.

Yes, it is probably illegal to do that if you are not a medical professional, but when the SHTF, that is gonna be not so important. On the other side, your skills are gonna be very important.

Learn skills no matter what system says about who can practice those skills. You are preparing for a time when system is gone so it makes sense.

About the Author

Selco survived the Balkan war of the 90s in a city under siege, without electricity, running water, or food distribution. In his online works, he gives an inside view of the reality of survival under the harshest conditions. He reviews what works and what doesn’t, tells you the hard lessons he learned, and shares how he prepares today. He never stopped learning about survival and preparedness since the war. Regardless what happens, chances are you will never experience extreme situations like Selco did. But you have the chance to learn from him and how he faced death for months. Real survival is not romantic or idealistic. It is brutal, hard and unfair. Let Selco take you into that world. Read more of Selco’s articles here: https://shtfschool.com/blog/ And take advantage of a deep and profound insight into his knowledge and advice by signing up for the outstanding and unrivaled online course. More details here: https://shtfschool.com/survival-boot-camp/

Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.

Daisy Luther is the author of The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide To Whole Food on a Half Price Budget.  Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca</e

The Pneumonic Plague Killed 50 Million People in the Middle Ages and Now It’s Back

This report was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper

Very little sounds more unsettling than the risk of catching “the plague” but most of us think this is just something that was around during the Middle Ages because of poor hygiene. Unfortunately, that’s incorrect, and to prove it, there is an epidemic of the pneumonic plague in Madagascar right now.

We all remember reading about The Black Death during history lessons in school. It was a horrific pandemic that nearly wiped out Europe, killing a disputed number of people that ranges between 50 million and 100 million. Also known as the pneumonic plague, here is a quick video to get you up to speed on your medieval history.

It’s bad and it’s reminiscent of the Liberian Ebola outbreak in 2013, that alarmingly made its way to American soil. The New York Times reported on the situation in Madagascar:

Since August, the country has reported over 200 infections and 33 deaths.

The outbreak is beginning to resemble the early stages of the West African Ebola crisis in 2014: a lethal disease normally confined to sparsely populated rural areas has reached crowded cities and is spreading in a highly transmissible form.

Schools, universities and other public buildings have closed so they can be sprayed to kill fleas, which may carry the infection. The government has forbidden large public gatherings, including sporting events and concerts.

Fears that the outbreak could spread to other countries are rising.

Late last month, plague struck a basketball tournament for teams from Indian Ocean countries, killing a coach from the Seychelles and infecting another from South Africa. The players are being monitored, Malagasy health authorities told the W.H.O.

Madagascar typically has about 400 cases of plague each year between September and April, but they are usually focused in the nation’s central highlands and spread by fleas living on rats in rice-growing areas. This outbreak is unusually worrying because most new cases are in cities and are pneumonic plague, the form transmitted by coughing. (source)

Madagascar is a large island of 224,533 square miles off the coast of southeastern Africa. It has a population of more than 25 million people in an area that is approximately twice the size of the state of Arizona.

In comparison, Arizona has just over 6 million people, so as you can see, Madagascar is densely populated.

The biggest city on the island is Antananarivo, which has a population of 1,391,433, and concerningly, Patient Zero of the current outbreak traveled through the city by public transit, causing great concern of the possible ramifications.

The Madagascar outbreak started in August, when a 31-year-old man originally thought to have malaria traveled by bush taxi from the central highlands to his home in the coastal city of Toamasina, passing through the capital, Antananarivo.

He died en route and “a large cluster of infections” broke out among his contacts, according to a W.H.O. update issued Oct. 4. Those contacts passed it on to others.

Plague was not confirmed until blood samples collected from a 47-year-old woman who died on Sept. 11 in an Antananarivo hospital of what appeared to be pneumonia were tested at Madagascar’s branch of the Pasteur Institute. The samples came up positive on a rapid test for plague. (source)

Hasn’t Madagascar dealt with the plague before?

Madagascar is no stranger to the plague, with about 400 cases every year, but this time around, it’s the pneumonic plague, which is far more contagious and deadly.

…the majority of cases are of pneumonic plague, which affects the lungs and is transmitted through coughing. It is considered to be the most deadly form of the disease and can be fatal within 24 hours.

The less deadly bubonic plague is often spread by rodents fleeing forest fires. Humans usually become ill after being bitten by infected fleas.

Public gatherings have been banned in response to the latest outbreak.

A specialised hospital in the capital Antananarivo is struggling to cope with the influx of ill people, local media reported, with long queues outside for face masks and medicine.

This year urban areas have been affected, a development that has worried aid agencies in a country not renowned for a robust healthcare system. (source)

Of course, with urban areas comes public transportation, and even more alarmingly for the rest of the world, an international airport. There has already been at least one documented case of pneumonic plague leaving the island, causing Air Seychelles to halt service to Madagascar:

“Following the advice and request of the Public Health Authority of Seychelles concerning the plague epidemic in Madagascar, Air Seychelles will temporarily suspend its services between Seychelles and Madagascar from Sunday 8 October 2017.”

This is the content of the official communiqué of Air Seychelles which will no longer serve Madagascar from tomorrow 08 October 2017.

It is certain that the Seychelles authorities did not appreciate the death of the Seychellois basketball coach in Madagascar following a pulmonary plague he contracted on the spot during the basketball tournament in Antananarivo. It was only after this unfortunate death that the Malagasy authorities took action and began a thorough awareness campaign. (source)

Aside from this, I could find no other travel restrictions to or from Madagascar.

What is the plague?

There are three types of plague: bubonic plague, septicemic plague, and pneumonic plague.

Bubonic plague is spread via infected fleas and small animals. It can result from bites or exposure to the body fluids of dead, plague-infected animals. It can enter through the skin by a flea bite and travel to the lymph system. Treatment with antibiotics must occur within the first 24 hours of symptoms. The mortality rate for those treated ranges from 1-15%, but for untreated patients, ranges from 40-60%.

Septicemic plague is the rarest form of plague and is nearly always fatal without treatment. It attacks the bloodstream. Treatment must begin immediately after symptoms have shown or it will be too late. It is transmitted from flea bites, rodent bites, or mammal bites from infected creatures.

In septicemic plague, bacterial endotoxins cause disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), where tiny blood clots form throughout the body, commonly resulting in localised ischemic necrosis, tissue death from lack of circulation and perfusion.

DIC results in depletion of the body’s clotting resources, so that it can no longer control bleeding. Consequently, the unclotted blood bleeds into the skin and other organs, leading to red or black patchy rash and to hematemesis (vomiting blood) or hemoptysis (spitting blood). The rash may cause bumps on the skin that look somewhat like insect bites, usually red, sometimes white in the center. (source)

As awful as the other two versions sound, the pneumonic plague is the most contagious and worrisome. It causes a severe lung infection that is often confused with pneumonia, delaying essential treatment. It can be spread via rodents and flea bites.but also from the sputum of those infected. It can become completely airborne, making it far more difficult to avoid infection.

It must be treated within 24 hours or is nearly always fatal. People who have been exposed to pneumonic plague can be treated prophylactically with antibiotics.

What can be done to treat the plague?

The World Health Organization has sent over a million doses of antibiotics and has protective gear on the way. There are also other measures in place as reported by the BBC.

The authorities have also banned prison visits in the two worst affected areas to prevent the spread of the disease.

The risk of contamination is high in overcrowded and unsanitary jails…

Public gatherings have been banned in response to the latest outbreak.

A specialised hospital in the capital Antananarivo is struggling to cope with the influx of ill people, local media reported, with long queues outside for face masks and medicine.

This year urban areas have been affected, a development that has worried aid agencies in a country not renowned for a robust healthcare system…

On 30 September, Prime Minister Olivier Mahafaly Solonandrasana in a televised statement announced that all public gatherings would be banned in Antananarivo to prevent the spread of the disease following the death of the basketball coach.

In addition to school closures across the country, authorities on 5 October ordered the closure of the country’s two main universities in the eastern port of Toamasina and Antananarivo for disinfection purposes. Sports events have also been cancelled.

There have been concerted efforts to set up rat traps and spray insecticides in several neighbourhoods to prevent the spread of the disease. The government has also established a toll-free number to report any new cases. (source)

The local government is also cracking down on anyone who spreads information that is not in line with the national Ministry of Health.

The Ministry of Health in addition has also taken measures against social media users who it accuses of spreading “false news” on the disease to create panic. A Facebook user was arrested and investigated on 3 October for publishing a report which did not correspond to the toll given by the ministry. (source)

That’s unsettling, isn’t it?

Should we be worried?

At this point, we have no new cases of pneumonic plague in the United States. It has happened before, as one example, when there was an outbreak caused by an infected dog in Colorado in 2015 that then turned into human-to-human transmission. (source) A few months ago, fleas in Arizona were discovered to be carrying the plague. (source)

If untreated, people still can die from the plague, which in the United States occurs in the wild, primarily in rural parts of western states, at a rate of about 10 to 15 cases per year, according to the CDC. Most of the naturally occurring cases are bubonic plague, which can bring on pneumonic plague if left untreated and a person’s lungs become infected.

However, the disease is completely treatable with modern antibiotics if it is diagnosed early.

Worldwide, the World Health Organization reports 1,000 to 3,000 cases of plague each year.

Most infections in the United States have occurred after disposing of squirrels or mice that died from the infection or traveling in an area where infected rodents live. Health officials recommend staying away animals that are lethargic or appear sick. (source)

At this time, we have absolutely no documentation of this bout from Madagascar affecting the United States.

But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Never forget that people thought Ebola wouldn’t make it to our shores and it did. The reason it didn’t turn into a full-blown pandemic had absolutely nothing to do with a slipshod official response, either. Read this to learn just how easily an epidemic on foreign shores can turn into a pandemic that affects the whole world.

While the plague is not difficult to treat with antibiotics if caught quickly, one thing that concerns me is the overuse of antibiotics in the United States. They simply don’t work as well for us these days because of near constant exposure from meat and dairy products.

This is not currently a threat to us, but it bears watching. Preparing for a pandemic should start well before the illness shows up, or you run the risk of not being able to get essential supplies. This article can help you get a jump on prepping for a pandemic. If you want more information, this class contains a 90-minute interview, written information, and checklists. Keep in the loop with the Facebook page, Pandemic Watch, and follow Preppers Daily News for updates. Finally, be sure to sign up for my email list – when I know, you’ll know.

Think of it like a tropical storm, hundreds of miles out to sea. We have no idea if it will reach our shores or how strong it will be, but it’s important to be watchful and ready in case it heads our way. Don’t panic, but be ready to take action to protect your family.

How To Prep For A Houston-Type Flood In Your Town

Army National Guard photo by Lt. Zachary West

Hurricane Harvey has once again reminded us of the awesome destructive power that nature holds. For raw power, a major hurricane, like Harvey, surpasses anything man can create, even a nuclear bomb. The bomb’s energy is concentrated in a much smaller area, increasing its impact on whatever is within its blast radius. But the overall energy of a hurricane, spread over a much larger area and a much longer time, far surpasses it.

Most of the damage by hurricanes isn’t caused by the high winds, but by the water that they bring. It’s hard to believe, but water, something we need for life, is one of the most destructive materials on the earth. It can destroy anything, given enough quantity and time.

For this reason, as well as the suddenness of a flood hitting, it is difficult to defend against one. But if we want to be truly prepared for any disaster, then we must include the possibility of flooding in that preparation. There are few areas in the country that are not subject to the potential of flooding, even if the location is not considered to be in what is known as a “100-year flood zone.” Besides, there once was a time when the entire world flooded, so it’s not prudent to think any of us are safe.

It’s important to note that only people who live in one of those 100-year flood zones are required to buy flood insurance as a condition of their home’s mortgage. So, if you don’t live in one of those areas, you probably don’t have flood insurance. What this means is that if your home gets flooded, the insurance company isn’t going to help.

Prepare Your Home for Flooding

The average American home isn’t designed for flooding. The materials we use and the style of construction we have is easily damaged by water. Should your home flood, you can expect to have to replace drywall, carpeting and wood trim, at an absolute minimum. You also might have problems with mold forming from the water, requiring extensive treatment to eliminate.

Homes in Mexico and many other emerging countries are built out of cinder blocks and cement, with tile floors. While not as elegant as our homes, these structures withstand the ravages of flooding much easier. Once the flood waters subside and things dry out, the home can be cleaned up and repainted, relatively easily returning it to its pre-flood condition.

Goofy Gadget Can Recharge Your Laptop — And Jump-Start Your Car!

But we don’t have that option; therefore, it’s best to keep our homes from flooding, if we can. While that may be difficult, it’s not impossible.

The standard way of protecting a home or other structure from flooding is with a wall of sandbags. Such a wall must be continuous, without any gaps and of an even height. If there are any breaks in the wall or a low spot in its height, you can be sure that the flood waters will find them.

Any sandbag wall or other protective measure must be built at least a few feet away from the home. Some water will seep through the sandbags, so you must have a space there where you can pump out the water that seeps through, sending it over the wall.

It doesn’t work to just pile sandbags against the door, unless you are only getting an inch or two of water. Besides the problem of seepage through the sandbags, homes are not built to be waterproof against water seeping through the walls. Water can seep through at the base, even with a brick home. If you look, brick homes have some gaps without mortar, near the base, to act as vents. If air can get in there, you can be sure that water can, too.

The biggest problem with sandbags is that they require a lot of material and a lot of physical work. There are some flood control alternatives on the market, which can be used in place of sandbags. These are basically flexible plastic tubes, which can be filled with water, forming a barrier that is much like the sandbags. While more expensive, the advantage of them is their ease of setup and smaller storage space requirements.

Prepare Your Stockpile for Flooding

Image source: Pixabay.com

A lot of survivalists/preppers store their stockpiles in the basement, the first part of any home to flood. This can be devastating, as the first place on any home to flood is the basement. Those supplies, which will be desperately needed to survive the aftermath of the flood, could end up destroyed, if not properly stored.

By properly stored, I’m referring to being waterproofed. Everything you have as part of your survival stockpile should be stored in such a way as to be waterproof. Canned goods are already waterproof, but most dry foods aren’t. But if you store them in five-gallon buckets, they can be waterproof, too

Don’t just stop with waterproofing your food, though; take care of your other supplies, as well. One way to do this is by storing at least some of them on the second floor of your home or in the attic. While a hot attic isn’t the greatest place to store food, many other items can store there safely. As long as the roof remains intact, chances are that even if your home floods, those items will remain safe and protected, ready for you to use, while you are trying to salvage your home and put your life back together again.

Make sure that your stockpile is split up. If everything is in the basement, and your basement is flooded, then you’re not going to have anything to eat until you pump out your basement. So even though that food is packed in waterproof containers, it won’t be doing you a bit of good.

Prepare to Bug Out

Often the best preparation for a flood is to get out of there. When the dam outside of Oroville, Calif., was at risk of collapsing, the town and surrounding areas were evacuated. Few of those people were prepared for that, so they ended up just grabbing what they could and fleeing.

The same happened in Houston in 2005, when Hurricane Rita was expected to hit the city. An order for evacuation went out, putting the metropolitan area’s 5.6 million inhabitants on the road and creating a 100-mile-long traffic jam. Due to the problems that this evacuation caused, the mayor of Houston didn’t declare an evacuation for Hurricane Harvey, leaving the citizens right in the path of one of the most devastating hurricanes in U.S. history.

The lesson here is not to expect the government to tell you when to bug out. Officials will make the best decisions they can, but they can’t peer into the future any better than you and I can.

You must make your own decision, and you should do it before the government does. That way, you can beat the rush and not end up being part of that 100-mile-long, 18-hour traffic jam. But that means being ready so that when you do have to go, you can do so quickly, bugging out before others do.

What if it’s too Late?

But this may not always be possible. The people of Houston really had no idea that they would be subject to such a savage storm. Also, Hurricane Harvey wasn’t really headed toward Houston, but rather much farther south. Less than 24 hours before hitting the city, it was headed straight for the Rio Grande Valley, 350 miles away. A last-minute change of direction caused the hurricane to make landfall near Corpus Christi. From there it followed the coast, hitting Houston shortly after.

So, you may not be able to bug out beforehand, unless you decide to become paranoid enough to bug out every time clouds are forming. For that matter, flash floods can happen in many places, without there being a cloud in the visible sky. You never know what’s going to happen. Then what?

To start with, you need to keep alert when a storm is occurring that could cause flooding. Track the storm’s progress, rainfall and potential storm track. If it is a tropical storm or hurricane, the National Hurricane Center’s website is a great resource for this. So is satellite imagery and Doppler weather radar. Get all the information you can and keep up to date.

As flooding occurs, move to higher ground. If you live in a two-story home, you can move to the upper story. In cases where time allows, you might even be able to move some of your possessions from the first floor to the second, protecting them from the water.

Whatever you do, don’t go into your attic to avoid the water. Your attic doesn’t have an escape hatch onto the roof. People have died that way when the waters continued to rise and they couldn’t get out of their attics. Rather, go out a window and climb onto the roof. You can be rescued from there.

Better yet, have some means of escape on hand. This usually means a boat, which is a rather expensive investment. But you could use a rubber raft, canoe or kayak instead. If you want to go even cheaper, inflatable air mattresses make fairly good emergency rafts. While they may be difficult to maneuver, they will keep you and your family afloat. You can pole them along, with long poles, rather than paddling them.

Always be sure to know where higher ground is. You can find this by downloading topographical maps of your area from the USGS (US Geological Survey) here. These maps will provide you with detailed topographical information about your area, showing hills and valleys, along with the actual elevation of the terrain. You might even want to print the topographical map of your area and have it laminated.

With this knowledge and your makeshift raft, you can rescue yourself and your family, making your way toward higher ground. Chances are that if you do that, someone in a boat will find you along the way and offer to tow you. With a little bit of rope and some care on the part of the boat handler, you’ll quickly make your way to safety.

What advice would you add for preparing for floods? Share it in the section below:

Time To Pay Attention — Super-Rich are Now Preppers Storing Food and Guns

It’s one thing for the tin foil wearing on head types of folks to prepare for doomsday, but it’s altogether another when the world’s wealthiest begin to prepare for the breakdown of civilization. But that’s exactly what some of the richest individuals are doing.

The New Yorker reported this week Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman is one such prepper. “He is less focussed on a specific threat—a quake on the San Andreas, a pandemic, a dirty bomb—than he is on the aftermath, ‘the temporary collapse of our government and structures,’ as he puts it. ‘I own a couple of motorcycles. I have a bunch of guns and ammo. Food. I figure that, with that, I can hole up in my house for some amount of time,’” he said. “I think, to some degree, we all collectively take it on faith that our country works, that our currency is valuable, the peaceful transfer of power—that all of these things that we hold dear work because we believe they work. While I do believe they’re quite resilient, and we’ve been through a lot, certainly we’re going to go through a lot more,” he said.

Huffman’s not alone in the country club of wealthy survivalist preppers. Former Facebook product manager Antonio García Martínez purchased a homestead piece of property on an island in the Pacific Northwest and furnished it with generators, solar panels, and cases of ammunition.

Martínez  told the NY’s Evan Osnos, “When society loses a healthy founding myth, it descends into chaos.” He added, “All these dudes think that one guy alone could somehow withstand the roving mob…No, you’re going to need to form a local militia. You just need so many things to actually ride out the apocalypse.”

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After he revealed to several of his friends about his island retreat and preparations, he explained that many of his friends opened up about their own preparations. “I think people who are particularly attuned to the levers by which society actually works understand that we are skating on really thin cultural ice right now,” he said.

It may seem unusual for a social media mogul and a former Facebook executive to become unlikely preppers, but when venture capitalists start to prep, it may take on a whole new meaning for some.

Financial analysts, advisors, and experts have concluded the American economy is on a fast-track towards economic collapse. As The Free Thought Project reported last week, former Congressman from Texas Ron Paul predicted the collapse of the economy within the first four years of Donald Trump’s presidency. Paul’s blaming the federal reserve saying their printing of trillions of worthless dollars has devalued the currency and placed the U.S. in the position of teetering on financial collapse.

One such financial expert is Tim Chang, a 44-year-old managing director at The Mayfield Fund. He told Osnos, “There’s a bunch of us in the Valley. We meet up and have these financial-hacking dinners and talk about backup plans people are doing. It runs the gamut from a lot of people stocking up on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, to figuring out how to get second passports if they need it, to having vacation homes in other countries that could be escape havens.”

Before admitting that he, his wife, and their daughter keep what’s known as a “bugout bag” packed at all times, he said, “I’ll be candid: I’m stockpiling now on real estate to generate passive income but also to have havens to go to…I kind of have this terror scenario: ‘Oh, my God, if there is a civil war or a giant earthquake that cleaves off part of California, we want to be ready.’”

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Fear appears to be the driving motivator for preppers to begin their chipmunk-style of hoarding supplies. Coupled with those fears, appears to be a lack of faith in the economic structures of society, and an overall distrust of the government to protect its citizenry in such cases of societal uncertainties. Those fears and concerns have given birth to a very real and growing movement of individuals and communities of preppers, all intent on doing the same thing: surviving.

While, it seems, the rich have now joined their ranks, one common denominator can be found across all levels of doomsday preppers: a lack of faith in the state. Many believe, despite the fact that Americans are loyal patriots, the citizens of the United States will turn on each other the minute food becomes scarce, chaos ensues, a natural or manmade disaster occurs, or a nuclear or EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) attack happens.

For those considering becoming preppers, Peak Prosperity, a website devoted to preparing for the end times, offers a few suggestions. Chris Martenson writes that people should be, “taking steps to be partially self-sufficient in the basics of life – food, warmth, shelter and water – and have useful experience or skills (medicine, fixing things, building, distilling, to name just a few) just makes sense.

You don’t have to strive to be completely self-reliant — it’s not realistic or necessary. Just position yourself to reduce your lifestyle requirements during times of strife, and to contribute valued support to those whom in turn you ask for help.”