Mabee - PPrepping for a Suburban or Rural Community. Building a Civil Defense Plan for a Long-Term Catastrophe

Prepping for a Suburban
or Rural Community:

Building a Civil Defense Plan for a Long-Term Catastrophe

by

Michael Mabee

Disclaimer: This book is not intended to give legal advice and is intended to provide general information only. While every effort was made to insure the accuracy of the information contained herein, the author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility for any alleged harm arising directly or indirectly from the use of this information in this book.

2013 Michael Mabee

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for short quotes or excerpts used in book reviews.

Contact the author at:

ISBN: 1482731215

ISBN-13: 9781482731217

eBook ISBN: 978-1-63003-462-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013904810

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

North Charleston, South Carolina

To my wife Fran (who has absolutely no interest in this book, but puts up with me and my doomsday supplies anyway) and to my father-in-law Tony.

If she ever kicks me out, Im taking Tony with me.

This book was inspired in part by a proposed House Resolution. (I wonder how often that happens.) I would like to thank the bipartisan sponsors of House Resolution 762 (112th Congress): Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-MD), Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY), Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Hank Johnson (D-GA).

While the resolution may have died in committee, I hope the idea doesnt.

I would also like to acknowledge the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. I fear that too few Americans have heard of the EMP Commission and their critically important work. But every Americanand every politicianshould pay close attention to the findings and recommendations of the EMP Commission and the very real threats to the power grid.

Finally, thanks to my copy editor (Mom). I doubt she envisioned that her spawn would be so bad at singular possessives. Thanks Mom, at least now I have someone else to blame for any errant apostrophes that slipped through.

If the grid goes down, so does your Kindle, Nook, iPad or other e-reader. Any useful books on preparedness and survival you find, you will want to have in hardcopy for reference when you really need them. In fact, any that you find extremely useful, you may want to consider having more than one copy. Knowledge may be more valuable than currency someday.

I think that all prepping and survival books should have very inexpensive e-book editions. If people find them useful, they are going to buy a hardcopy. If not, they wont.

In memory of the 13 who did not come back.

I would suggest that one of our greatest vulnerabilities, not just in the homeland but our military, is our susceptibility toour vulnerability to electromagnetic pulse (EMP). We may avoid that, sir, but what we may not avoid is a major solar storm of the Carrington magnitude. A high official in Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) told me that if that happened our grid would come down, cascading bring[ing] down some of the major transformers, it would be perhaps several years before the grid was back up. I asked him the consequences of that. He said probably 80 percent of our population would die. I see no activity on the part of either the military or the Homeland Security that addresses this enormous threat to life as we know it.

Congressman Roscoe G. Bartlett (Maryland)

Preppers: Your bug out bag and a years worth of wheat in Mylar bags are not going to save you.

Everybody else: If you dont believe, or have never considered, that our electrical grid is extremely vulnerableand that the loss of the electrical grid for a prolonged period of time could result in tens of millions of deaths and could catapult the United States technologically back over a centuryyou may want to review the congressional hearings and the reports of the EMP Commission listed in the references (links are provided to these documents). Im not here to convince you. Decide for yourself.

What kind of long-term catastrophe is possible? In one scenario discussed in numerous US congressional hearings, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), delivered either from a solar flare or terrorist EMP weapon, could cause up to 80 percent of the US population to die, and everybody left would be thrown back to a nineteenth-century (i.e., the 1800s) agricultural societyour iPads never to return. And that is just one of several possible scenarios that could create a national catastrophe.

Lets back up. When we hear the term nuclear war what comes to mind for most people is the Cold War era specter of cities laid to waste by ICBMs and nothing surviving except the cockroaches. But while the threat of that type of war is less worrisome today to most people than it was in the 1960s and 1970s, there is another worry. Today, one terrorist missile with a small nuclear warhead fired from a ship could take down the power grid. And it is possible that the grid would never come back. That is the threat of an EMP weapon. And it doesnt have to be terrorists. The sun can do much the same thing to the grid with a solar flare of the magnitude that happens every 100 years or so. How long has it been since the last one? Almost 100 years.

Ive worked as an urban EMT and paramedic. Ive worked as a suburban cop and for the federal government. Ive had a good deal of military training, two wartime deployments to Iraq, and two humanitarian deployments to Guatemala. Hell, I was even in the boy scouts as a kid. So if you asked me a few years ago if I was prepared, I would say that I was more prepared than most.

If you ask me now if I am prepared, Id have to say no.

Although I am personally as prepared as I can be (or at least as prepared as my wife, who does not think the world is going to end, will let me be), that is not good enough. Individual preparedness and family preparedness alone are not going to save us in a long-term national catastrophe. That is the purpose of this book. Instead of focusing, as many lone wolf preppers do, solely on individual and family preparedness, wouldnt we be better off to also focus on the survival of our town or village? Wouldnt prepping be better played as a team sport?

A years worth of food storage will do you little good if your house is looted by a heavily armed group of desperate, starving refugees in a without rule of law world. But if you live in a fairly secure town, with a working preparedness plan (which includes an adequate security force), there is a better chance that your familys preparedness suppliesand your familywould survive. Moreover, it does not matter how much food and water you have saved up; eventually, you are going to run out, even if you are not looted. Then what? If your town has an effective government and a contingency plan for security, food, water, and medical care (beans, bullets, and bandages), everybodys survival prospects in the town increase.