It's Tornado Season. Do You Have Plan?

The tornado that swept across parts of Oklahoma recently and that touched down in Moore, OK, a few miles from Oklamoma City, was an E4 strength tornado. E5 is the most powerful. The tornado was estimated to be between one and two miles wide. Tornados can be incredibly unpredictable and extremely destructive. The Oklahoma tornado killed at least 24 people and  destroyed homes and two schools, according to reports.

While escaping or bugging out to safety is often the preferred method of surviving a natural disaster, there isn't always time to get away from a tornado, and because it can move so quickly, it isn't always possible to outrun it. Last weekend's tornado that hit parts of Oklahoma City also brought a lot of rain. Many people who tried to either drive out of the storm or get home from work were stuck on clogged freeways. Being stuck in a traffic jam AND in the path of a tornado is a very dangerous situation. A car is not a safe shelter for a tornado, it can be picked up and carried a long way by the high winds.

Modern technology has provided many towns and cities with up to 15 minutes warning of a potential tornado strike. This doesn't sound like much, but it's better than it used to be and it gives many people enough time to seek shelter where they are.

I think that it's a good idea before the annual tornado season begins, to put together a simple bugout bag that contains items that would help a person to survive for a few days in the event of a tornado hitting their home or where they work.

However, there is an alternative to to escaping from a tornado, and that is to Shelter in Place (SIP). SIP is often a much safer alternative to trying to outrun a tornado. People have done it for decades. Often, they simply go into the cellar of their home and hide under something solid, such as a workbench or table. It may not be perfect, but it's quick and simple to do, and it doesn't involve escaping while carrying a bag of belongings and going outside into the path of the tornado.

Many public places such as airports and government buildings offer designated tornado shelters. These are also good places for people who are not at home to seek shelter, but you have to know where they are located BEFORE there is the threat of a tornado.

Survival always comes back to the same principles: Be AWARE of your surroundings, be PREPARED with a simple plan and a few items to survive a specific, predetermined disaster, and be able to DECIDE if or when to put the plan into action.

Writing my Bugout Book

I'm writing another book. It's about escaping or evacuating from dangerous situations, which is commonly called "bugging out." I think there are a lot of misconceptions about bugging out. It's become the reason for some people to buy a 4x4 vehicle and
fill it with water, ammo, and freeze dried rations. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with that, in fact I think it's great that more people are considering the possibility of having to go somewhere else to avoid a dangerous event--whatever that event may be. It's just that there are a lot more mundane, but more likely events that can harm people than "The Big One."

By all means, prepare for a major catastrophe if your time and budget allows, but let's not forget the smaller, less exciting episodes that are more likely: A chemical spill on the expressway that forces people to leave their homes for a few hours; forest fire, house fire, home invasion, fire in the workplace, bomb scare or active shooter alert in a public place; flood or  hurricane warning.

More often than not, it's the small, familiar things that can be the most dangerous because we don't perceive them to be a threat until it's too late. One example is a stronger than normal wave surge or tide at the beach. Some people heed the lifeguard's warning to stay out of the water, but a few actually gravitate to the beach to see what's going on. One example of this was the huge earthquake off the coast of Japan in 2011, which generated a tsunami wave that traveled across the Pacific Ocean to the California coast. Media outlets advised observers in California to stay away from the sea shore, but some people actually moved closer to the surf. One person died when they were swept out to sea. My bugout book is taking much longer to write than I anticipated, partly because it explores so many more attributes of bugging out than just packing a bugout bag for an emergency. I'll post updates on my progress from time to time ... 

Colorado Democrats Push Gun Bans in the Legislature

I spent Friday sitting in the gallery listening to the Colorado  Senate debating seven different gun bills. I had to leave while #6  (magazine ban over 15 rounds) was being debated, but the first five bills passed the committee along party lines with democrats voting for and republicans voting against. Interestingly, voice votes were (in my opinion and in the opinion of those sitting around me)  too close to call, but the Dem chairperson passed them anyway. The Assault Weapons Ban bill was held over until next week for debate. As the wording of the bill stands right now, it classifies all semi-auto rifles that use a detachable magazine (including .22 rimfire) as assault weapons. It bans any magazine over 15 rounds capacity, although the wording implies that any magazine that has a detacheable floorplate and that could accept an extender to increase the capacity over 15 rounds would also be banned. This means a de facto ban on any magazine with a removeable floorplate.

One win for the pro-freedom side: The magazine ban on tubular shotgun magazines was changed from a limit of 8 rounds, to a magazine length of 28 inches. Not surprisingly, the bill's author did not know that shotgun shells run in size from the short Aguila rounds to the 3 1/2 inch magnums     (2 3/4 and 3 inch lengths being the most popular.) A big "thank you" goes to gun rights activist and legal eagle David Kopel for helping her to rewrite that part of the bill and bring a tiny piece of common sense to a bad bill that will likely pass.

A big thank you goes to Colorado magazine manufacturer Magpul for supporting gun rights and standing firm on their comittment to leave the state if the magazine ban passes. Other local Colorado companies who supply Magpul testified that their businesses will be badly affected by Magpul leaving (further reducing employment and revenue in the state), but they all blamed the bill, and nobody blamed Magpul for their decision.

There was a long discussion about how  business and revenue in Colorado will be being adversly affected by the anti-gun bills. An Outdoors/hunting video production company stated they are pulling plans to video hunting in Colorado because the universal background check bill has such draconian requirements. They risk breaking the (proposed) law if a firearm is passed around from crew to presenters to hunters during filming! That's about a million dollars lost to the state, not including revenue from hotels, restaurants, gas stations etc. In fact, many out of state hunters could break the proposed backgound check law by carrying a rifle on the hunt that they borrowed from a friend or relative.

Yesterday, republican senators who made comments during their speeches about specific gun ban bills criticizing   the Democrats  for not standing up to the Mayor Bloomberg (New York)  initiated legislation were chastized by the Democrat Chair. So much for free speech!

Last week at the House Committee hearings, I heard a Magpul employee tearfully testify that if the bill passes she will have to decide between leaving Colorado and splitting up her family (two kids in college here)  or staying in Colorado and losing her job--her husband and another family member also work for Magpul. The reply from one of the Democrat female committee members was, "Talk to your employer." That was a nasty, egotistical comment for an elected official to make to a constituent.
We all know what happens when you give teenage boys whiskey and car keys. We are about to see what happens when you give left-wing politicians Bloomberg Kool-Aid and a majority in both Colorado legislatures.

Be Aware of Your Surroundings to the Best of Your Ability

I've long been a proponent of living in "Condition Yellow." In other words, being aware of one's surroundings: Walking, driving, travelling, standing at a bus stop, fishing at the local lake, walking around the supermarket, and just about any other occasion when we are out in a public place, we need to be aware of our surroundings. Our radar is running in a 360 degree circle, actively looking for something or someone approaching us that might turn out to be a threat to our security. This what it means to be in Condition Yellow. When we are in Condition White, it means we are UNaware of what is happening around us, and therefore we may become the victim of something nasty because we didn't get the warning to deal with or avoid it in time.

Today I was reminded that while we should strive to be in Condition Yellow 100 percent of our waking hours, it is not humanly possible. I was standing outside my house, concentrating on retrieving an item from my vehicle when a voice right behind me said, "Hi, John!"

I confess, I really jumped. Fortunately, it was a friend.

Does this mean that my system of awareness is faulty? No, not at all. What it does mean is that while we should strive every day to be completely aware of our surroundings, there are times when we get absorbed in what we're doing and we get surprised by things we didn't detect earlier. Nobody can live in Condition Yellow all the time. But by striving to reach that goal, we can greatly reduce our exposure to surprises. In other words, living in Condition Yellow to the best of our ability will reduce the chances of being surprised by some nasty event, but we cannot expect to reduce the odds to zero.

When the mall starts to flood, it's time to leave

Here's an interesting piece of video of water quickly flooding a shopping mall. How would you handle this?
First, regardless of what type of building we may be inside, it's always good to have a simple plan to get out quickly using an alternative exit from the one we came in by. A flood may be a bit unusual, but there are other reasons to want to escape from a location quickly: Fire, Riot, even a terrorist attack or a shooting may be the reason to get away quickly and safely.

When we walk into a mall, office building, airport, railroad station, restaurant, or any other public place, it's good to take a moment to identify where the emergency exits are located. Think also about other exits such as the delivery entrance at the rear of a supermarket and shopping mall, the kitchen entrance at a restaurant, the fire escape in an office building, etc.

Don't delay. If the situation looks bad, get out Now! You can always come back in if it turns out to be a false alarm.

Click here to watch the mall flooding and notice how quickly this happens. It doesn't leave much time to escape, so don't hang around filming it on your cell phone when you should be heading to higher ground.

12/21/2012 Don't Expect the World to End

A lot has been said the past couple of years about the Mayan Calendar coming to an end on December 21, 2012 and other coinciding events such as the alignment of the earth with the center of the galaxy. It reminds me of the last time that predictions were made about the collapse of civilization:
The event on December 31st, 1999 when the century changed from 1900 to  2000--commonly known as Y2K.

The prediction was that computers worldwide had not been programmed to recognize the date change, and therefore dates on computerized documents would show "January 1st, 1900" instead of  "January 1st, 2000." Imagine what that would do to computerized calculations, for example in banks, calculating interest on accounts, or in government facilities with scientific calculations involving date and distance. As a computer programmer at the time, I (like most programmers worldwide) spent quite a lot of my time leading up to Y2K ensuring that computer programs were updated to allow for the new century.

Even so, like many people worldwide, I doubted that every line of code in the world would be changed correctly and in time, and so I made some preparations for outages in the national electric grid and other utilities caused by computer failures, that could affect the supply of electrical power, water, electronic communication, and therefore may result in rioting, delays in food deliveries, lack of emergency services, etc.

Fortunately, on 12/31/1999 nothing much happened. But it did cause me to think about how to survive potentially dangerous incidents that are not as exotic as a worldwide collapse of technology, but are more likely: House fires, terrorist attacks, flu pandemics, hurricanes, earthquakes ... the world has experienced all of these on a fairly frequent basis.

One good thing about the whole Mayan calendar brouhaha is that it causes many people to ask themselves for the first time, "What if?"

What if I was without power, communications, food and water for 48 hours or longer? What if the police knocked at my door and told me I had five minutes to evacuate my home? Do I know what my options are to Shelter in Place (SIP) and ride out an emergency, or to evacuate to avoid one?

Let's use this Mayan calendar discussion as an opportunity to evaluate where we are, what the most likely threats to our well-being are, and what and who we have around us to be able to shelter in place or evacuate if we are ever faced with a more mundane, but more likely event that threatens our well-being.
See you on December 22nd!

My Interview on Armed american Radio

I recently did an interview on Armed American Radio with host Mark Walters, talking about my book, "Dealing with Danger -- Be Prepared, Aware, and Decisive." 

Mark and I discussed a lot of the principles a person can adopt to be more safe in their everyday life, and  to be better able end each day in the same or better condition than when the day began.

Click here to listen to the interview:
http://armedamericanradio.org/2012/10/10-21-2012-hour-2/#comments