ENCOURAGING ANGELS: 61 Million Disabled Americans (and Everyone Else) Need a Plan for Civil Defense – an Interview with Civil Defense Expert Jack Lawson

Photo Credit: Etsy

By Stan Szymanski and answers to questions by Jack Lawson

1st of a multi-part series

Many Americans today have absolutely no idea that a world war is imminent. The previously acknowledged national responsibility of ‘Civil Defense’ has morphed into an idea known as ‘Emergency Management’ which means that the policy of the United States is to have no Civil Defense at all.

‘Civil Defense’ is defined as:

…’the system of protective measures and emergency relief activities conducted by civilians in case of hostile attack, sabotage, or natural disaster’…(Merriam Webster Online)

America has become a place where people expect the ‘government’ to come and save them in time of catastrophe. How did that work out during the time of hurricane Katrina? How is that that same ‘government’ doing with the train derailment catastrophe in East Palestine, OH?

According to The American Civil Defense Association:

Our United States government currently

• Has NO Department of Civil Defense

• Does NOT educate our children about the effects of nuclear weapons

• Has NO fallout shelters for the general public

• Has NO directives on how to build hardened fallout shelters

• Has NO information for post-war survival

• Has NO government directed warning systems, sirens, evacuation plans, or general preparations for nuclear attack (tacda.org)

In Moscow they can house all of their people in underground bunkers in the case of a nuclear attack and they have done drills involving 40 Million people in their population. They get ‘Civil Defense’. When is the last time you saw a PSA (Public Service Announcement) regarding American Civil Defense? You haven’t. That fact is a big inspiration for putting pen to paper (or finger to iPhone) for this writing.

At Encouraging Angels, our ‘business’ is to be concerned with Americans that make up the disabled community. This group accounts for a lot of people.

1 in 4 or 61 Million (1 in 4 disabled equates to 83 Million Americans) Americans live with a disability, . (That’s government math; it’s actually 1 in 6 or 61 million Americans-Thank you Jack Lawson for picking up on that)

These general categories of disability include:

-Mobility (serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs)

-Cognition (serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions)

-Hearing (serious difficulty hearing)

-Vision (serious difficulty seeing)

-Independent living (difficulty doing errands alone)

-Self-care (difficulty dressing or bathing)

-Hospice care for the terminally il

As the drums of war beat louder and louder across the world, how is someone who has a disability supposed to consider how to prepare a Civil Defense? How can they develop a plan to protect themselves and their neighborhood?

I have to think upon my own experience in caring for my daughter who could not walk, talk, feed or toilet herself. Of course someone with that level of affect cannot be an ‘active’ part of a family defense. The caregivers are to a meaningful extent, naturally taken out of a lot of everyday life due to the fact that they are committing substantial parts of their time and effort to the care of those who cannot care for themselves. But they still have to live. The caregivers have to figure out how they will continue to care for their loved ones when services (governmental, municipal sewage, electricity etc…) are cut off from them.

An unofficial but oft quoted saying attributed to the Marines is ‘Improvise, adapt, overcome’. For those in the disability community, and their caregivers, this way of thinking will play a part in figuring out what they -can do- when it comes to Civil Defense. As Mr. Lawson says below-mindset.

For the disabled and especially their caregivers, coming to grips with your own Civil Defense is essential in the days of the United States of America destroying the Nord Stream pipeline.  So is assessing your situation in the days of literally over one hundred food processing plants being burnt down or destroyed. Having the foresight to have a neighborhood plan for defense in the event of societal breakdown because of the effects of war, shortages of goods or the starkness of a grid-down (no electricity) scenario is now a must for the affected and their custodians.

I may have a lot of experience caring for and working with the disabled, but I have no experience in the area of Civil Defense. So I turned to someone that is considered one of the foremost experts on Civil Defense for the individual-Mr. Jack Lawson. Jack has served in the United States Air Force as a middle guidance and SAFO nuclear arming controls electronic technician and the Foreign Legion in Africa as a member of an airborne rapid deployment force in a guerilla war. He has written and published many essays and other books including The Slavers Wheel, And We Hide From The Devil, In Defense and of course Civil Defense Manual Volumes 1 and 2.

Jack, thank you so much for taking time to talk with EA. Can you please give us your background as it applies to the subject of Civil Defense?

It is only my pleasure Stan.

To answer part of your first question, I’ve been prepping since I was a Midwestern farm boy from a poor family of 11 people. I got the “Prepper Mindset” once I began to realize that… what we ate, what we drank, where we sheltered, warmth and other day to day Life Essential Items… were not guaranteed. The “light bulb” of awareness and the hard-core reality of life turned on in my mind at the age of about 10. I became an unwilling participant in my Father and Mother’s farming and construction/home building businesses starting at the age of ten… working like a grown man. In retrospect, it was one of the best things that happened to me.

We didn’t go hungry, but food was not plentiful and I could see the worry on my parent’s faces and in their everyday concerns of how they were going to provide for us. The first year we farmed… a “tighter-than-bark-on-a-tree” neighbor, Rudy, felt so sorry for us that he butchered a hog and gave us half of it. Rudy said he didn’t have enough room in his freezer for the other half of it, which was his bullshytte excuse to us and others so he didn’t look like a “sucker” to be taken advantage of. His well to do brother Carl was involved we suspected. They knew our family was living on potatoes and beans with no protein in the form of meat and as miserly as this guy and his brother Carl were…they cared… they had a big hearts.

What happened to us was not that we hadn’t prepared… the farm economy went off the cliff overnight and was one of the worst crashes of the farm market since the Depression of the 1930s. It was 1958 and the first year we farmed. My Mother fed us for the next whole year on produce from her garden that she had canned the previous summer. Shelf after shelf of Mason Jars with garden produce stored in them. A basement full. The garden was THREE times as big the next Summer and that kept us going. We later had two huge freezers full of beef when we got enough money to afford to buy cows. Back then, like I advocate in my book the Civil Defense Manual for people to do now, cooperation between neighbors was the way we helped each other survive. Then from that small herd of cattle, we butchered and fed others in the neighborhood when they had little to nothing. What a rewarding feeling it was helping each other. We also worked our butts off helping others with their farming when they had medical problems or were sick. Long hours but WONDERFUL and FULFILLING days with GREAT people.

Did you get government aid?

No government aid for us. Like always, unless they’re collecting your money, interfering with your life by trying to tell you what to do when they don’t know what to do themselves, the government is never around when you need them. We were on our own and no one took welfare then, even if it was offered.

I suppose the way we lived sounds similar to a Kibbutz or Communism on the surface… which, by the way, those two are the same no matter how the Israelis try to sugar coat and romanticize the communal farm. The Kibbutz is Communist.

But it was none of that. We didn’t have the apathy, the indolence, the hatred and jealousy, the callousness and lack of compassion and caring, the ego and arrogance and blindness of the commissar, the mindless orders that command helping… and the sermons of “How to Live a Good Comrade’s Godless Life” …in harmony with that former waste of flesh and slob Karl Marx, of Communism. Communism “Kills the hope, kills the Spirit of Man” …those words from my former neighbor in Las Vegas, not me. He escaped from one of those Eastern European Communist Insane asylums.

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 No, this caring was the result of just real Christian people! It was heartwarming and gave me a sense of security that all of us cared for each other… even though we individually farmed and owned our own farms, owned our own machinery and eventually made our own fortunes.

When all were struggling, we were different in the respect that the cooperation, not communalism, was done genuinely out of caring and compassion… and at the end of the day, you still owned your farm, machinery, cattle, chickens and pigs… they weren’t the State’s.

 You are a big promoter of cooperation between people, correct?

Yes! But there is little to none of this cooperative attitude between younger generations now which is a deadly threat to ALL Americans when, not if, this overly complex supply system is disrupted or breaks down. Furthering the danger now is few grow their own food. The average American AT MOST has no more than a week’s worth of food and a month’s medicines… literarily NO WATER. Nor do their neighbors.

I also call the Life Essential Items necessary to maintain life, Life Critical Supplies and Services in the Civil Defense Manual. When these items were available during abundant times as I grew up, we had to store to ensure we could provide enough of these items for times that weren’t so good and the hard, cold and frigid winters of the Midwest.

Two critical items are food and water for the average person… the third and fourth ones for most Caregivers and their Patients are medicines and sanitary supplies. Other items come into play… heating and cooling can be Life Essential Items for some Patients. Supplies of items like oxygen may also be Life Essential Items

Jack, my understanding is that you lived in Africa for a number of years also. How did that affect your attitude towards life and your approach to Preparedness?

I had a unique insight into hardship, hunger and starvation that most people living in abundant countries haven’t had. I saw firsthand the suffering and death from starvation, lack of potable safe water for human consumption and lack of basic sanitation and medicines in Africa. Once you see how that affects people, it never leaves your mind. You look at life differently and you never return to the “normal” thought of most Americans who have not seen it.

You become concerned about not having Life Essential Items. Situations most people can’t even imagine here… I’ve lived in the midst of these situations and they are etched indelibly in my mind.

My wife is British and was born and raised in Africa. She is no stranger to REAL disease. She still laughs about the overreaction to this covid “epidemic/pandemic” and the extremely low dead rate from it.

My wife knows that when you live through a Typhus or Cholera epidemic, you will see how ridiculous and relatively harmless the low mortality rate of Covid is…at least for those who were not injected with this experimental DNA modification serum… commonly misquoted by the word “Vaccine” which, following the protocol of a “dead host” vaccination, Covid prevention injections do not qualify for the use of the word “Vaccine.”

The lack of sanitary Life Essential Items in Africa especially affects the children, which is heart wrenching. Terrible. I am still full of sorrow thinking of the terrible existence much of Africa and the world lives in. However, the situation has improved dramatically since the discovery and distribution there of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine.

The black Africans are wonderful people. They are happy, caring, hardworking and generous people. I’d have them live next door to me any day.

Ivermectin. That drug alone is God’s gift to mankind. It ASTOUNDS ME that our medical authorities say it’s a dangerous drug… whereas it is one of the safest and most miraculous medicines in existence. If you see “Guinea Worms” exiting the ankles or legs of a human… you’ll probably never eat angel hair pasta again.

Anyone who criticizes Ivermectin should have their medical license, scientific credentials and or authority stripped from them… and should probably be tried by a jury and hung for the deaths they’ve caused during this covid scare warning people not to take Ivermectin. The two men who discovered and synthesized Ivermectin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015.

And our medical and pharmaceutical people call Ivermectin “Horse De-Wormer!?” When people stare at me with that “Deer caught in the headlights” look, knowing I am an advocate of “Horse De-Wormer” for Covid I tell them… “But it’s like a fine Pate’ and is soooo good on Ritz crackers!” They’re morons to not look at all sides of the equation so, I like to disgust them… and they are such blinded idiots they never get the joke.

Ivermectin has alleviated most of the parasite issues in people from larvae pathogens in water.

Hydroxychloroquine has also drastically reduced the number of people getting Malaria and other mosquito transmitted parasitic diseases. If any of you Readers out there don’t believe in God… read about the miraculous gift of Ivermectin on the internet.

So, the word “Prepping,” where does that come from? I think most Americans envision people who are Preppers or Survivalists as extremists. Do you think that’s true?

The term Prepping comes from the word Preparedness… which I define as a person (Prepper) who stores and provides for themselves, their family… and as is the focus of this interview, the disabled. These people store Life Essential Items necessary for survival for various periods of time that they think they may not be able to have these items. I will describe those disabled you care for as your “Patient” (the Patient the Caregiver takes care of).

I also want to state that there is a difference between Preppers, who look at having enough Life Essential Items to survive a temporary disruption… and those fully into the long term of coping without Life Essential Items… who are commonly called Survivalists. There’s more on that in an excellent essay by J.C. Dodge of Mason Dixon Tactical (https://masondixontactical.com/)

Extremists!? I liken Prepping to this example… would you drive to town and back in your car with just a gallon of gasoline in the fuel tank if you thought it would be exactly enough to get you there and back? Of course not! That’s why people drive their vehicles with additional fuel in them. The same with “Prepping” …would you have just enough food, water and medicines in your home for the day? Of course not! The ignorant do not prepare for the next days and weeks of being on their own. Especially with the state of current events in the world.

Jack, in your estimation, what level of preparedness does the government have to offer the public in the area of Civil Defense?

Little to no help will be available from your government WHEN YOU NEED IT. That is on the Federal, State, County and Local Level. When a disaster occurs, you will see the real time incompetence of these government agencies. They mostly shuffle paper, drink coffee and have great planning sessions… but the real time of disaster is an open critique visible to all, which as has been evidenced by almost every disaster in the past, as to how incompetent and unprepared these agencies are. Don’t mistake what I say… they have amassed huge stockpiles of food, medicine and water. However, what, if anything they will bring to help people, will be late to the game and will be disbursed with a heavy hand.

When a standing President ORDERS 12,000 brand new FEMA owned mobile homes to New Orleans from Arkansas and two years later the only movement of these mobile homes was from their parking spaces and back after millions of dollars was spent graveling the huge acreage they sat on, that gives you an idea of their concern to respond to your needs… no matter who orders them. They are also hog-tied by their own rules and regulations, whether their intention to help is genuine or not.

You WILL surrender ALL your liberties to these government people to get their aid. You will let them inject whatever they want in you for “Vaccines” or you will not eat, drink or shelter in their facilities.

Weapons will have to be turned over to them and I actually question whether they will give aid to those who believe in the United States Constitution, Christians and those who believe in gun rights or have traditional versions of what our society should be, in addition to giving aid may be determined by ideological, race and other religion belief. They will use information they have gathered on YOU to their favor. They will use voter registration for or against you.

I suspect they will give aid according to some twisted idea of eugenics…which will definitely affect those who are the point of this essay… the disabled. Don’t think that government aid will not have every computer base of information on you from whether you are getting Social Security Disability to if you are registered as a Republican to what your Social Media Score is. They already have that information whether you believe you live in America or not.

While we (the United States) disbanded the American Civil Defense Program under Carter… Russia, North Korea, China, Switzerland and many other countries have MASSIVELY increased their spending on Civil Defense facilities and training for their citizens. The Russians recently had a Civil Defense Drill involving 40 MILLION of their citizens who they have shelter space for. The United States… ZERO exercises in the last 50 years. I’m not trying to demoralize or scare people by those statements. It’s Realism. I’m trying to make people realize that the government won’t take care of you… so you must prepare for yourself and your Patients. All the Civil Defense System is now are public broadcasts and sirens that will tell you that you’re going to be in deep shytte… how deep you will be depends on how well you pay attention to this warning and PREPARE.

For people that are already dealing with a malady/disability and for the caregivers who are many times worn out with their duties, it can be difficult for them to have to think about another threat or hardship foisted upon them. How important is mindset, the willingness to deal with reality and the admission to self that something like Civil Defense preparedness is something they need to do?

The mindset is close to everything! Before a Catastrophic Event happens and during the event the state of mind is most important.

I know that belief in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit is absolutely of extreme importance regardless of how bad the situation gets.

For those in the reading audience who don’t have those beliefs, you must simply believe in a Higher Power and believe in yourself… that Higher Power being an immortal benevolent entity bigger than ourselves. That is critical.

The Survival Square in the Civil Defense Manual shows four things that I learned by butt hard experience and suffering…

1. You MUST have a “Survival Mentality” (positive state of mind)

2. You must have “Knowledge” (on how to survive)

3. You must have “Training” (on supplies and equipment used to survive)

4. AND You must have supplies… “Food, water, medicines”

The principle of “Adverse Consequences of Self-Delusion” that applies to organizations and groups… applies also to the individual, especially in regards to Preparedness. That means, if you have illusionary thinking and believe that none of what I write here will happen and aren’t prepared for disruption of Life Essential Items, you WILL suffer the consequences.

What is the overall level of citizen readiness? Do you think that most people are unprepared?

Few Americans are prepared! Probably 85 percent of Americans live hand-to-mouth and can’t envision the rest of the day, much less the next week or month. Furthermore, they don’t really care. Most are glued to and to preoccupied with their iPhone Entertainment Center. They will be at your door begging, threatening or taking when things go bad.

But to compound the issue, Americans are no longer people of action and resolve. I need people to understand that the state of mind that Americans have now is absolutely a disaster when it comes to an emergency and the necessity to act. We’ve been subjected to too much technology, our minds are over loaded with illusion and fantasy and there is too much sensory input.

Of this input, most people cannot separate reality from fantasy. People are literarily connected to their iPhone Entertainment Center by umbilical cord like an unborn baby to its mother. People are “Woke” and their existence revolves around issues that are not life threatening and they have absolutely no idea of how to deal with injurious or deadly issues.

This problem is largely confined to the major population and metropolitan areas. The inaction of people in these areas will kill most of them when the system stops functioning in providing them Life Essential Items. They may become violent out of desperation, but most will die or be killed before they can harm too many others… they will die first from lack of water. However, the gangs of these areas will survive and thrive…they are familiar with and have no hesitancy to act and use deadly force… they use it constantly.

As an example of this problem of people being paralyzed and incapable of action, my wife and I visited a major Metropolitan area last week some one hundred plus miles from where we live. Not that we buy much from upscale Big City stores, but my wife was dead set on getting another pair of the “perfect jeans” while in this Big City and we had other business there.

So, while she decided to go into one of the “Versace, Neiman-Marcus, Dillard, Macys” type stores in a mall in this major cesspool of humanity, I sat on a couch under the escalators to wait for her return. Shopping is brutal business to me… but she loves it. I’d walk a hundred miles in the African bush by myself, and have, but 800 yards in a shopping center is exhausting and barbaric to me.

So, I sat in this largely uncomfortable and torturous designer “chair” and, Special Forces Association baseball cap pulled down over my eyes, dozed off. Minutes later I heard a blood curdling scream, I woke startled and stood up quickly. The young guy next to me and I determined that the noise from a horror incident was coming from the top of the escalator. We ran to the bottom of it.

For whatever reason, this guy stopped, turned and walked back to his “chair.” I, 75 years young and two steps at a time, roared up to the top of the stopped escalator. I quickly surveyed the situation for danger to me, what was happening and where I could help. With a crowd of around 20 people, including two mall security people in their bright yellow and black spiffy uniforms standing paralyzed, I saw the problem.

A small terrier dog, pitifully and painfully, had his paw caught between the reluctant-to-let-go-of-it top escalator step and the stationary escalator transition-step-to-mall-floor-landing platform. I mean, this little guy was close to becoming a dog named “Tripod.” There were more people gathering every second as the screams of a relatively obese black woman, with a $10,000 diamond nose ring and holding the corresponding Versace handbag and the dog’s leash, continued making shrieking animal-like noises unabated. I commanded her…actually I yelled at her…thinking of her stupidity and ignorance for believing that her beautiful little creature of God’s grace could walk up an escalator, and she didn’t need to carry it.

“Quit screaming and hold your dog’s mouth closed so he doesn’t bite me!” She did and I proceeded to pry and at the same time, gently pull her dog’s mangled paw out. When it was free, the poor little thing was shaking as I wrapped one of my handkerchiefs around the dog’s paw and tied it in an attempt to contain the bleeding. I then told this lady she’d better get the dog to a veterinarian… like now.

Not one finger was lifted by any other of the “men” or women present to help, including the “security guards.” They just watched. Me? I don’t like to see any creature suffer. Well, there are maybe a few two-legged ones I’d make an exception for. Actually, two of the gawkers were doing something other than standing, looking, watching and making crisis noises. They were using their iPhones to video this!

I had no immediate idea that I was the object of their video…the brave, Spit in the Devil’s Eye, Green Beret and his death-defying actions in saving one of “Man’s Best Friends” from the clutches of this bone and flesh canine hungry escalator.

The lady thanked me profusely.

That’s what a stout knife is for, is it not? Prying? While I was doing this, my jacket came up over my concealed waistband holstered pistol and a woman said nervously… “He’s got a gun!!!!!!” But since I had a Special Forces ball cap on and was doing “Good Samaritan” work, that issue became moot, and the now some 35 people continued to gawk and make low level sobbing noises.

I wanted to stop and say… “Yes, you moron, actually, I have two knives, a 9mm pistol, a spare magazine, a flashlight and a stainless-steel shaft pen for rapidly perforating assailant’s throats. Why? Because you idiots have no capability to act in a crisis other than trying to capture the situation on your bloody iPhone camera!” But I carried on since I am certain that I was the only one of thousands in that mall that had any of those emergency tools and wanted to get that beautiful little creature free.

But above all… don’t live with a “Doom and Gloom” attitude about all this. Put a few laughs into your Preparations. Prepare, relax and then keep some levity in you Preparedness.

The point of relating this story is… find good neighbors to help if you can, but don’t expect too much. People are now watchers… not doers because they’re not capable of dealing with crisis and emergency.

My philosophy is as posted on the www.CivilDefenseManual.com… “Be prepared. Then relax, enjoy each and every moment of life… and love your family with uninhibited passion!”

Jack, what are the first things that an affected individual or caregiver need to get squared away for themselves?

Water and food first and in that order. In an emergency, close the bathtub drain, cover it with tape to seal it tightly and before water pressure stops, fill that tub and every pan and container you can find. Fill garbage bags put in corners. Fill pails… fill everything!

Then IMMEDIATELY GO GET AS MUCH medicines and sanitary supplies… maybe oxygen… AS YOU CAN GET.

Lighting. Have plenty of flashlights and batteries. Assume there will not be electricity! In an emergency, use “Tuna in Oil” in cans or any type of can with oil in it. Almost ALL oils burn. I show you the following on making a 6-hour plus light, by poking a hole in the center of the tuna can, pushing a string or twisted threads or cotton swabs as a wick down the hole to the bottom of the can, lighting the wick and the oil will burn for hours giving you light. Voila! Ta-Da! Presto!  You have illumination light. Then when daylight comes, eat the contents of the can to give you the energy to go look for a more sustainable light source.

Shelter and warmth or cooling need to be provided for some Patients.

Protection. UDAP Brand Bear Spray (Go to EBay) for defense if you can’t, don’t want to or don’t have a firearm for protection. Shotguns are best. Baseball bats work in a pinch for the Caregiver.

Sanitation. Have garbage bags to put in the toilet for urine and stool. Then seal them and put them out of the way. Maybe a 5 gallon bucket with garbage bag liners for an additional toilet.

Help from others. The caregiver needs to get neighbors to help watch their Patient when they cannot be there. They may also need to move their Patient in with them at their home and with their family.

What areas of disabilities would you recommend special circumstances for and what would you recommend?

Caregivers need to determine this per their Patient. The Caregiver needs to imagine this by “turning off the electricity, water and night lights” in their mind then figure how they will care for this person in every single action they take daily.

The Caregiver needs to decide what and how they will deal with the disability WITH their Patient. I rank the worst first on down as disabilities for the Caregiver to determine how they will deal with day to day issues for these Patients.

-Vision (serious difficulty seeing)

-Cognition (serious difficulty     concentrating, remembering, or making decisions)

-Hospice Care (of the Terminally Ill) (Pain Management Medicine issues)

-Mobility (serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs)

-Self-care (difficulty dressing or bathing)

-Hearing (serious difficulty hearing)

-Independent living (difficulty doing errands alone)

A prevailing characteristic of the case of the disabled and the caregivers is a feeling of being mostly alone in their situation. How important is it for them to make an effort to achieve a level of connection in their neighborhood to become part of a ‘team’ and how should they go about it?

As I state repeatedly, get help for your Patient from those around you. The Caregiver needs to get a break from their Patient especially during times of crisis. But be careful who you approach and select.

Simply create an excuse to get to know the neighbors. Borrow the “Proverbial Cup of Sugar” to meet them. Or maybe ask them if they need a cup of sugar. You will most likely find good people around you. That being said, the desperation of hunger and thirst will bring the worse side of people out.

Still, be cautious of informing neighbors of just how much food, water and other items you have stored. You need to slowly learn who you can trust to help you in a crisis. Align with people who have also prepared with Life Essential Items so they don’t come in and take all of what you have stored. Good people won’t do that.

Use board games and card games to enlist the familiarity of neighbors by getting acquainted with them through doing fun things before the emergency or crisis. Board games and card games also take everyone’s mind off the emergency during the emergency and don’t need electricity.

You also need these people to help protect you in a worst-case scenario. There is definitely “Strength in Numbers” and this is the only way to survive.

Organizing the floor of an apartment, a group of condominiums, a street in a neighborhood… it’s one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish. I lay it all out in the Civil Defense Manual. Form a CDM Neighborhood Protection Plan or Neighborhood Support Group. To the “Arm Chair Quarterbacks” who shoot their mouths off like this one who said… “Knocking on doors and asking people to join the defense group pre-end of the world is laughable because most people will think you’re nuts and recruiting for a militia.” I’ve set up a half-dozen of these… and hundreds more have been set up by people across the country. So, my question to the Arm Chair Quarterback’s statement above is… “What makes you such an expert and what are you doing to help others!?” Learn to contribute and help, not sit back and criticize.

Is there anything the Civil Defense greenhorn should watch out for as they begin their journey?

Encourage your neighbors to store food and water, but keep your preparedness accomplishments secret. The reality of how people will behave towards the Caregiver and their Patient when all goes bad will become apparent… quickly. You cannot endanger your Patient and yourself by trying to feed others, as difficult as that may be to do. But if you do feed a person or give them water ONCE… you can be assured that they will be back with others to take all you have.

I tell people this true story to illustrate the point. To help her mother get out of the country, my wife went back to Zimbabwe, Africa. This was after the Communists had destroyed the country and starvation was widespread. People, except in the ruling class Communists who had gourmet foods and lacked for nothing and also kept the army and police fed, were dropping dead from starvation. Black and white African people were machine gunned by the army for protesting starvation. That never got on the Western news… the wonders of the communist paradise in action.

During all of this, the gate guard at my mother-in-law’s home came to my wife one day and said… “Madame, there is a young girl who wants to speak with you.” My wife went with him to the front gate of their walled in house and looked at a 12-year-old or so black African girl who was skin and bones. The young girl begged my wife for something to eat. My wife, tears in her eyes, ran to the kitchen and made her a huge sandwich from the food they had left and gave her a bottle of water.

Her mother comes home later and is angrily yelling at my wife, her daughter, for doing this. My wife was still crying and said that she would go without one meal to make up for it. “That’s not the point!” her mother yelled. Within hours, 200 more starving people were at the gate standing like Zombies. Most were barely alive with no strength. If they had been physically capable, they would have torn the gate down and taken by force all my wife, her mother and the guards and garden boy’s food.

The point is… if you attempt to feed or help others survive, you endanger yourself and your Patient’s survival. Then EVERYONE DIES. Read SELCO’s story in the first Chapter of the Civil Defense Manual to know the “dark behavior” of people in desperate straits and distress.

Jack, this is such a big subject; as many people consider this for the first time, what should they keep in mind?

Don’t live with a “Doom and Gloom” attitude about all this. Put a few laughs into your preparations.

START NOW. Buy an extra can of calorically dense food like black beans the next trip to the grocery store… but put that can under a bed. You have now started. Do the same the next trip to the store. Do the same with water…buy a case of bottled water and store than under the bed. Keep adding to this each time you shop.

Start thinking about how you will do things without electricity or natural gas. So, don’t forget the manual can opener. The one that works without electricity. Actually, I tell you how to open a can of food almost effortlessly without a can opener that is slicker than snot if you have a concrete surface around. It is not using a knife.

Take for instance the blind. God knows they’re better people than me. I don’t know if I could survive with that handicap. But special planning needs to take place for those people. Leaving food and water in prearranged places that they can get to and feed themselves if necessary. Each Caregiver should put their mind in the body of those Patients they take care of. Step into their world and think about how to help set up a way for them to survive as comfortably as possible if they are on their own.

My neighborhood group is making a list of those in our area who need in home care so we can help them by first identifying who they are, then where they live and then what special needs they have.

The bottom line is this… if we do not take care of the disabled and handicapped…if they do not survive… in my opinion there is no reason for the rest of us to live. We have thrown away the best characteristic of humanity in letting these people perish… compassion and caring. Like a soldier, one of my best friends used to say repeatedly…

“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand watch as our guardians in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. A soldier must seize every advantage to defeat his opponent. He must strike swiftly and strike hard… he who dares… wins. But under all circumstances those guardians must stand ready to protect the innocent and those too weak or unable to defend themselves…” – Often spoken quote of New Zealander Martin O. of my unit Foreign Legion Support Commando Unit-Killed In Action – Africa 1979

Jack, thank you for your time and expertise and contribution today. I imagine that it is a good idea for people to consider obtaining your incredible written work so they have a literary reference in their personal library: Civil Defense Manual, Volumes 1 and 2. Can you tell us a little about it and where can they go to get it?

www.CivilDefenseManual.com Also look at the free self help items on the website.

This is just the opening conversation with Jack. Please share this with your neighbors and watch for the next installment of this important subject.

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Stan Szymanski (or Encouraging Angels) is not a medical doctor. This is not medical advice. In all matters pertaining to the health and care of a human being consult a medical doctor. This is not legal, financial or personal advice. Consult appropriate professionals in those fields for that type of advice. The answers/comments of the guest are their own.