Survival Tips
The Survivalist
How to survive a disaster.
By David Shenk
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2006, at 6:21 PM ET
From: David Shenk
Subject: How To Survive a Disaster
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2006, at 6:21 PM ET
I never have been able to completely manage my fears, which is a drag. I get terrible stage fright, whether the audience is 500 people or 15. Walking down the street late at night, I have unconstitutionally profiled thousands of innocent people and imagined in rich detail the harm they might inflict on me. Intimates have always known me to be a tad panicky. When I was 17, I chaperoned two close friends one night as they first sampled psychedelic mushrooms. A few hours into the long evening, one of them, Adam, put both of his hands on my shoulders, looked me square in the eyes, and said, in the kindest possible way: "David—you should never do 'shrooms."
But fear and its consequences can work well for a guy. Someone has to be the first in a crowd to see or smell something funny. We always root for that person in the movies, because, even though all the other characters think he's a little nuts, we know there is an atomic bomb, or a toothy shark, or a massive conspiracy.
In history books, too, we admire people who weren't afraid to follow their fearful impulses: Jews who fled Germany in 1938, investors who pulled out of the stock market in 1928 (or '99), Minutemen who kept vigil for Redcoats in 1775. One irrepressible lesson of history is that today's paranoiac is sometimes tomorrow's survivor.
Is this an era in which we should be listening more closely to our fears? Since 9/11, few days have passed without an above-the-fold reminder that the world is a dangerous place. There are loosely supervised Soviet and North Korean nukes, smallpox and other bugs and toxins, threatened airplanes, unguarded chemical plants, and vulnerable subways—and certainly no shortage of suicidal zealots. Tom Ridge, the first Homeland Security czar, told us to expect an attack at any time that could kill "vast numbers of Americans." Several years and billions in homeland defense spending later, no one even pretends that the ports, subways, nuclear and chemical plants, and other public infrastructure are secure from a determined attack.
And perhaps Mother Nature is an even greater threat than Osama Bin Laden. Katrina, we've been warned, was not a freakish event but very likely a harbinger of more vicious storms to come, fueled by increasingly warm waters. Scientists are forecasting major changes in climate and water tables by midcentury, along with many species' adaptations and extinctions. Separately, the Atlantic Ocean tsunami forecast by some scientists could bring an Armageddon-like 150-foot wall of water crashing into Boston, New York, and the rest of the eastern United States (with eight hours warning). And then there's the H5N1 avian flu, which many experts think is likely to mutate into a human variant and cause a horrific, multiyear pandemic.
The long list of dangers—and potential preparations—is dizzying. Most people, of course, are not preparing for anything at all. Chances are, dear reader, there are no "go bags" in your life right now, or rendezvous plans, or full gas tanks or stashes of cash or bottles of potassium iodide. You haven't stockpiled food or water or printed out emergency instructions for sealing a room or dressing a wound. You and your family and friends, all of them educated, well-read, and community-minded, are more or less blowing this off. You've got enough on your plate; you're too busy keeping up with Gawker and trying to relearn calculus with your kids to plan for things that probably won't happen in this century or ever. Plus, you'd have to spend money you'd rather not spend (saving for their college educations and your Mini), take time you don't really have, and—not least—think about awful things you'd rather not think about. You register that bad things could happen, but you don't see how cramming gauze and batteries into some small duffel bag is going to make a difference if the world instantly goes all to hell.
I've been trying to figure out why I feel differently. Is this another throwaway neurosis of mine, or is there something rational in wanting to learn more about these threats and trying to prepare my home and family in some manner? Put another way: Am I worrying too much about this stuff, or are most of you worrying too little?
Unfortunately, answering this question requires a reasonably unpleasant thought-journey into the world of potential calamity, a deep, if temporary, focus on some pretty vile scenarios. Such a virtual catastrophe tour is almost like reverse meditation: Rather than turning one's attention inward and relaxing the body by thinking of nothing but your own calm breath, you focus your thoughts on far-flung bloody awfulness, your mind and heart racing with surreal images of death and destruction, empty stores, toxic tap water, neighbors turning on neighbors, people at their most desperate and least humane. You imagine having to make Sophie's Choice-type decisions, living through conditions more medieval than modern. The mere thought process almost merits its own warning label:
Caution: Persons with high blood pressure, heart conditions, kidney problems, or impaired liver function should ask their doctor before reading this series. In a blind study against a placebo series, The Survivalist caused side effects including nausea, vomiting, earaches, thumb-sucking, angina, sore wrists, severe headaches, and running for the hills.
I should add that, based on painful experience, the whole catastrophe-preparedness notion is a guaranteed dinner-party downer, roughly on par with discussing leprosy or child molestation, and only a fool writer desperate for material would risk bringing the subject up in sociable company. "Next topic, please," one otherwise polite friend spouted when I mentioned this essay in process just before dessert. "You can bet I won't be reading that one!" another shouted out when I brought it up again with a different group a few weeks later. I didn't take it personally. No one wants to dwell on terrible news or possible future catastrophes. The widespread avoidance of the issue is what interested me in the first place. Still, it is a little sad and lonely trying to interest your friends in a litany of ways to suffer and die.
Catastrophes are inherently difficult to envision. They have a built-in surreal quality that comes from having almost no relationship to our own past experience. They don't feel even remotely like the reality you and I know, but rather like someone else's dark fantasy—or something out of the sepia-toned past. It's also hard to take seriously a warning about a catastrophe that has recently been hyped in a network miniseries (10.5: Apocalypse!). In this way, the most vexing dangers of all are paradoxically the most difficult to prepare the public for.
There are a couple of ways to get past this contradiction. The first is to simply look at the facts and follow logical reasoning wherever it takes you. One million dead people in the first 15 minutes? Well, if that's what the computer model says, that's what it says. The second is to find trusted sources and to actually trust them—not just technical experts, but also nonexperts with sound judgment. It was chilling enough to see NIH's Anthony Fauci say about the H5N1 pandemic that "sooner or later … it will occur." But it was something else again to see Tom Brokaw and Ted Koppel acknowledge (on Meet the Press in December) that they are personally stocking their homes with at least three-month's supply of food and water.
The third and most surprising method for dissolving the paradox of disbelief is highly counterintuitive: It's what risk communications specialist Peter Sandman calls "riding the seesaw." In my catastrophe research, I stumbled one morning onto a video of Sandman speaking to the financial industry about pandemic flu and ended up spending the rest of the day poring over his fascinating Web site. In a field that pits jargony scientists against skittish politicians against a sensational press against a confused public, Sandman (whose name I am not making up) serves as a valuable navigator who can help different constituencies understand one another. It turns out that when trying to communicate risks and hazards to the general public, you don't necessarily want to simply stick the facts out there—third-most seismically active region, etc. Rather, you want to strategize against what the public already knows or thinks it knows. People, he explains, are inherently ambivalent and will usually compensate for whatever side of the argument is not being made: If you emphasize the low probability of a particular catastrophe occurring, for example, the listener's mind will usually rush to the other side and worry about its potential devastation. If, on the other hand, you emphasize its potential devastation, the listener will respond by lending more weight to its low probability. "When we are ambivalent," Sandman explained to me, "whichever half of our ambivalence the communicator is stressing, we resolve the ambivalence in the direction of the other half—the other seat on the seesaw. That's why, if you're worried about people thinking you are paranoid and upset, you should sort of float out the hypothesis that you're paranoid and upset. The vast majority of the time, people will tell you, 'No, you're reasonable.' If you say, 'I know this sounds paranoid,' they'll think, 'Well, you know, he actually has a point.' There are a variety of things you can say that take care of half of their ambivalence so that they're more inclined to lean toward the other half."
Seesaw psychology, Sandman said, is a bedrock principle of communications strategy. "A lot of risk communication relies on riding the seesaw in strategic ways."
So, if I'm a communicator trying to get people to take preparedness more seriously, I should begin by downplaying the risks and playing up my own paranoia. I shouldn't talk about how nervous public officials are, and the last thing I should do is describe worst-case scenarios. If I do that, they might resolve their ambivalence by emphasizing the odds against such an event. They might reassure themselves with the thought that Slate seems to have given much too large a megaphone to a real nervous ninny.
I might inadvertently convince people to prepare even less.
Next: How to survive a nuclear bomb.
From: David Shenk
Subject: How To Survive a Nuclear Bomb
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2006, at 6:22 PM ET
How does one rank hypothetical catastrophes? Which would be worse—another Katrina or another 9/11? It seems fitting to begin with the cataclysm we've all been worrying about for more than half a century: a nuclear attack on a major city. With some 27,000 nuclear warheads scattered around the world, and with, shall we say, less-than-ideal safeguards in Russia, Pakistan, and North Korea, some experts predict it is bound to happen sooner or later. They don't keep shuttling Dick Cheney to his undisclosed location (deep under Pennsylvania's Raven Rock Mountains) just for show. Shortly after 9/11, the White House was on high alert in response to a CIA report than an errant Soviet "suitcase nuke" was being smuggled into the United States. That report was eventually discredited, but given the current availability of fissile material and the shocking dearth of effort being spent to reduce it, such an alarm may eventually prove true. "If we continue along our present course," warns Harvard's Graham Allison, "nuclear terrorism is inevitable."
Here's the worst part: You will survive. Get those images of Jason Robards in The Day After out of your head. This is not that. We're not talking here about multiple-entry 20-megaton warheads wiping whole cities off the map in seconds. A single terrorist nuke, more likely in the 5- to 10-kiloton range (Hiroshima was 12 kilotons), will kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people in any big city but spare the rest. In New York, that will leave about 7.5 million of us to sort through the carnage.
Let's consider what would happen. The first 30 seconds or so will unfold like this:
- A silent, invisible electromagnetic pulse will instantly disable many computers, cars, and other electronic systems for miles.
- A blinding flash of light will bathe the area, burning the retinas of all looking directly into it. (Permanent blindness for some; temporary for others.)
- A crushing heat and shock wave, accompanied by a fierce wind, will knock down many buildings within a half mile. Beyond that immediate radius, most buildings will stay standing, but people and glass will get tossed about for many miles.
Soon fires will engulf thousands of buildings, and a large, deadly plume of radioactive dust will be carried in one direction or another by prevailing winds.
So, what should you do? For all survivors within 20 miles, the immediate task will be to stay away from fires and avoid the fallout for at least a couple of days. (The vast majority of radioactivity fades away that quickly.) The only two methods of avoiding fallout would be:
A) to take shelter until the radiation danger fades, or
B) if you have time, evacuate the area, heading in a perpendicular direction to the fallout wind.
In either case, it would be a very good idea for everyone in the exposed area to take potassium iodide pills, a relatively harmless substance that prevents your thyroid from soaking up radio-iodine and thus lowers the risk of future thyroid cancer. (Appropriate doses here. Good place to buy the pills here.) It would also be extremely useful to have a key-chain radiation monitor—the one that currently seems to be most effective is here.
Whether to stay put or run away is the subject of some controversy. In all likelihood, many survivors of the blast would quickly find themselves in an eerie simulation of every political satirist's favorite film, Duck and Cover.
What in the 1950s came across as a laughably reassuring response to an overwhelming threat turns out to be surprisingly coherent practical advice for the urban 21st century. Because you are unlikely to be able to outrun the radioactive fallout, the best option in any city would most likely be to immediately find refuge under a thick physical barrier and to remain there for at least a few days. That barrier is your best defense against tiny particles and penetrating rays. Basements are best, followed by interior rooms with no windows. If you are in a tall tower, it's probably best to be on a midlevel floor, in a room close to the center of the building with no windows. You will need to stay there for several days at least, so your temporary shelter should be prestocked with food, water, radio, flashlights, and a makeshift toilet. Ideally, radio messages would begin soon after the explosion to instruct people about the nature and direction of the fallout and whether and how to evacuate. (Those interested in more thorough preparation can go here.)
"This would not be the end of the world," nuclear expert Charles Ferguson emphasized to me as we talked through the sequence of post-atomic events. "We can deal with this kind of horrific attack, and a little preparation can go a long way to increasing your chances of survival." It's a shocking, unnerving reality that one can rationally prepare for a nuclear blast. But all it really takes is a trip to the grocery store, a few clicks on the Internet, and short conversations with your boss and your wife.
I know that most of you would sooner shop for your own casket than stock up on post-nuclear groceries. The great paradox of surviving nuclear terrorism is that probably the most excruciating part is confronting it emotionally, tearing your psyche away from the much more comfortable (and widely assumed) scenario of annihilation. Ask any New Yorker about a nuclear attack and the first thing you'll hear is, "Why dwell on it? I'll be dead." No one wants to hear the muckier truth of likely survival. If confronted, people jerk back with the response, "I'd kill myself." But you wouldn't. A few survivors might, but that's just not what humans do in the face of catastrophe. Ask Elie Wiesel or Viktor Frankl. We've got this annoying survival instinct. You would want to live. You would want to help your family. You would want to help others. You would want to rebuild your life.
Why not face that reality now, in advance? Yes, it's uncomfortable. But an hour or two of preparation might mean the difference between complete misery and relative safety. No one is suggesting a life-altering obsession—Lord knows I'm looking forward to thinking about something else—only that you spend about as much time preparing for this awful unlikelihood as you already have for other awful unlikelihoods. None of us expect to get cancer or watch our house burn to cinders, but we buy health, life, and home insurance just in case. We prepare for the worst and then forget about it. Why not apply that same principle to acts of God or Bin Laden?
Maybe you won't, but I will. Someone has to start the trend. To survey my survival gear options, I paid a visit to Safer America, a disaster-preparedness supply shop on East 54th Street in Manhattan.
General manager Jonathan Elkoubi was waiting inside, ready to show me how, since 9/11, he has helped families and corporations prepare for the next 9/11. His showroom is a survivalist's paradise, stocked with everything from smoke hoods and particle masks to earthquake alarms and skyscraper escape parachutes. ("I'm not going to name any names," he said, "but you'd be shocked by the CEOs who buy these parachutes for their own personal use and buy nothing for anyone else even on their own floor.")
At the end of the full tour, we came to the pièces de résistance: the new, lightweight Demron™ torso vest and full-body radiation suit. For $688 and $1,200, respectively, not only will you effortlessly beat back most ionizing rays—you'll look damned good doing it.
Maybe that's how we turn urbanites around on nuclear preparedness. We make it chic.
Next: How to survive an earthquake.
From: David Shenk
Subject: How To Survive an Earthquake
Posted Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2006, at 12:11 PM ET
If you do not live on the Pacific Rim, feel free to skip this first paragraph. Four-fifths of the world's major earthquakes occur on the volatile tectonic belt that includes California, Japan, coastal China, Indonesia, and Mexico, which means that anyone living there and not seriously preparing for a major earthquake (little brother, I'm talking to you) is a gambler who likes to lose big bets. At some point in your lifetime, at least one Big One is likely to strike somewhere in your region, killing thousands—maybe tens of thousands. This is well-known by everyone, but most of the reporting has neglected to point out just how easy it is to prepare yourself for one of the planet's most reliable sequels. Isn't it worth a few hours' time and a few hundred bucks to dramatically improve your family's chances of living through it?
More on that preparation in a moment. First, let's move eastward over the United States, because the real surprise about earthquakes is how exposed-but-oblivious the rest of us are. Everyone knows about the Great San Francisco Quake of 1906. But how many know that in 1911 and 1912, Missouri and Tennessee experienced three grand earthquakes larger than any ever recorded in California? In addition, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and South Carolina have all recorded quakes greater than 7.0 on the Richter scale. I, for one, was surprised to learn that every state in the union has experienced at least one minor earthquake. (One suburb of Cleveland, for example, has been shaking all year long.)
Perhaps the most vulnerable place in the nation right now is New York City, which turns out to be the third-most seismically active region east of the Mississippi. Geologists estimate a 20 percent to 40 percent chance of a significant earthquake in the next 50 years in New York, and they make a special point to say that a major quake is also a real possibility. New Yorkers don't worry about earthquakes, but we should—particularly those of us who own property here. What has experts especially concerned is the city's alarmingly high ratio of likelihood-to-preparedness. The vast majority of buildings in New York, including my own brownstone and thousands just like it in my Brooklyn neighborhood, are not built to withstand significant quakes. Boston, by contrast, which faces roughly the same risk, is in much better structural shape. (New York does require earthquake-resistant design in all new buildings.)
Most earthquakes are the result of a sudden "elastic rebound" of energy, a release of stress built up over time between tectonic plates way down below. Think of a stretched rubber band suddenly snapping. In a quake, two kinds of waves are released, and the ground can move in any number of ways—it can roll, shake side to side, thrust up and down, tear open, liquefy, sink in, or slide away. The shaking might last just a few seconds or as long as a few minutes and, as everyone now knows, can be followed by a tsunami, which is essentially a giant wave caused by an underwater earthquake. Consequences can include flying glass and other objects, building collapse, twisted roads, fires, floods, release of hazardous materials, and, of course, the apocalyptic favorite: people swallowed up by large holes in the Earth.
So, what's the Survivalist's earthquake strategy? First, consider a warning device. Tradition suggests bringing home a dozen weasels or keeping your eye on a pool of catfish. But since scientists have never been able to confirm any reliable animal mechanism for earthquake prediction, you may be better off plunking down $25 on the new and reputable Quake Alarm, a smoke-detector-sized device that plugs into your wall and sounds an alarm at the first sign of the faster P-waves, which arrive just before the more destructive S-waves. At best, it will give you only a few seconds' advance warning, but that could be enough time to get out of the house or at least to a safer spot.
Next, identify those safer spots. It's not in your kitchen or garage—those are generally the most dangerous rooms in the house. Windows, big appliances, and large wall objects are also to be avoided, as are fireplaces and walls with masonry veneer. Assume that anything unattached or loosely attached will hurtle through the air toward your forehead. Bookshelves, glass-framed art, cabinets above waist level—all bad. (In the silver-lining department, a severe earthquake is an excellent opportunity to get rid of that chandelier you've always hated.) Seek unadorned hallways. Arches or doorways provide extra structural stability. If possible, climb underneath a sturdy desk or table and hold onto the legs for the duration of the quake. (If you are driving, it's best to stop the car and stay in it. If you are outside, stay outside and keep clear of buildings, tall trees, and power lines.)
Finally, gather emergency supplies and consider some battening-down. Flashlights should be at the ready, as should several fire extinguishers, a good first-aid kit, a radio, and a reserve supply of food, water, and essential medicines—a bare minimum of 72 hours' worth. Don't overlook the water. In the aftermath of a major quake, you can expect to be on your own and without clean water, power, and groceries for some time.
A quick walk through your home will reveal countless objects that a moderate earthquake could transform into dangerous sorties. The good news is, it's cheap and easy to eliminate many of those hazards right now. Water heaters can easily be strapped in place—this is absolutely critical. Gas lines can be fitted with automatic seismic shut-off valves or should at least be located and turned off as quickly as possible after a quake. Shelves and other tall furniture can be secured to the wall.
If you own your home, you should also seriously consider two more significant measures:
1. Earthquake insurance—which turns out to be a lot more useful if you buy it before an earthquake. (Insurance companies report a flood of new policies immediately after each major disaster.)
2. Securing your house more strongly to its foundation. This may not be nearly as expensive at it sounds and will quite possibly save your house from a total loss in a severe quake. Fastening a few beams to concrete isn't such a big deal; it's another thing entirely to lift up an entire house that has slid off of its foundation.
More good earthquake survival info here and here. There are no guarantees in disaster preparedness, but earthquake planning is relatively easy, cheap, and effective, so it makes for a nice introduction to survivalism of all kinds.
Next: How to survive a subway or skyscraper attack.
sidebar
Return to article
Potassium Iodide dosage:
- Infants less than 1 month old: 16 milligrams.
- Children aged 1 month to 3 years: 32 milligrams.
- Children aged 3 to 18 years old: 65 milligrams.
- Adults, including pregnant and breast-feeding women, and adolescents over 150 pounds: 130 milligrams.
Take for 10 days unless directed otherwise by public-health authorities.
David Shenk is author of The Forgetting and Data Smog. His new book is The Immortal Game. Contact him at survivalist@davidshenk.com.Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2148772/
posted by Joe Paris @ Wednesday, September 06, 2006
<< Home