How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It - James Wesley Rawles [19]
• Buy defensive wire (military-surplus concertina wire or civilian razor wire). Keep it stored discreetly and out of sight in your garage and put it up only in the event of a true worst-case situation, in which the town must be barricaded. When you donate that wire to the local security committee you will be looked at as a forward-thinking lifesaver, not a wacko.
• Replace all of your exterior doors with sturdy steel ones in steel frames. If your house has a connecting garage, pay particular attention to beefing up the door between it and the house. Turn your garage into a mini-warehouse, with lots of heavy-duty shelving.
• Buy vehicles that will blend in day-to-day but will be eminently practical WTSHTF. See Chapter 12 for more details.
• Buy a low-profile camper shell that can be removed quickly in a pinch. Winches front and back may look cool, but they really aren’t worth the weight and expense. You are better off spending some money on heavy-duty front and rear bumpers. Recommended bumper modifications include: large crash bars in the front, a removable cable cutter post that is as tall as your truck’s cab, and ten or more sturdy towing attachment J hooks (front and rear center and all four corners). Buy two or three come-alongs (ratchet cable hoists), and a couple of forty-eight-inch Hi-Lift jacks. Carry two spare inflated tires mounted on rims. That plus shovels, a pick, an ax, a couple of rugged tow chains, some shorter “tree-wrapper” choker chains, and a pair of American-made thirty-six-inch bolt cutters will get you through virtually any obstacle, given enough time.
• Determine the amount of fuel required to get to your retreat using the slowest possible route with a maximum load of gear. Add 10 percent to that figure for good measure, and be sure to always have that amount of fuel on hand. Regardless of the fuel capacity of your rig, buy at least six additional jerry cans to keep at home. (First consult your local fire-code regulations.) Keep those cans filled with fuel and rotate them regularly.
• If there won’t be somebody who is extremely trustworthy living at your retreat at all times to secure it, buy a twenty-four-foot or larger Conex steel shipping container, and have an extra lock shroud flange welded on. Ideally, your trailer should be custom built (or rebuilt) to use the same rims and tires as your primary vehicle. That way, with two spare tires carried on your vehicle and one more on the front of your trailer, you will have three spares available for either your trailer or your pickup.
• Most important: Pre-position the vast majority of your gear, guns, and groceries at your retreat! Make sure to store plenty of fuel there. Buy a utility trailer, but leave it at your retreat to use for wood and hay hauling, or in case you need to bug out a second time. You may have only one trip out of the big city, and messing with a trailer in heavy traffic or on snowy or muddy roads could lead to your own personal disaster within a disaster.
Your Survival Community
I’ve observed that survivalists tend to fall into two schools of thought: those who are loners and those who are community minded. The loners would prefer to disappear into the wilds—somewhere they can lie low, while things sort themselves out back in civilization. In my opinion, this is both a naive and selfish starting point for preparedness. It is not realistic to expect that you can find a remote rural property where you’d have no contact with outsiders for an extended period of time. We live in the era of Google Earth, when there are few truly secret hideaways. Even Mel Gibson couldn’t buy total privacy. His private island in Fiji was “outed.” Even if you live off-grid, if there is a road leading