Dale Martin’s The Trapper’s Bible is one of the best resources you can own for learning to harvest wild game. It is also available in a Kindle edition. For wild plants things are more difficult as every region of the country will have different environments that produce very different flora depending on the seasons. Thus a survival library will need to be tailored to where you live. Because you never know what the future holds  being familiar with general foraging techniques and knowledge is a good idea and it is here that online resources truly shine.

One of the best websites I have found so far is the excellent Eat the Weeds. “Green Deane” offers physical classes and keeps a great archive but where Eat the Weeds really shines is the more than one hundred videos featuring the harvesting and use of many common plants that is available free to the public. They can be accessed on the site or through the Eat the Weeds YouTube channel and I urge everyone to check it out.

I was reading a post on the excellent site The Survivalist Blog about bug out guns where the author made some really good points, and the comments were the usual mixed bag of commonsense, armchair gunfighting, and pure fantasy that serves only to confuse survival newcomers. The most commonsense advice I saw in those comments and anywhere else is this: carry what you are comfortable with that is suited to your circumstance. Vague to be sure, but it is a general guideline that you should keep in mind when purchasing any weapon. It was this principle that lead me buy a New England Firearms Survivor shotgun in .410/.45 nearly a decade ago. With Taurus’ Judge revolver creating a renewed interest in the .410 for self defense (which has led to the availability of .410 buckshot loads to the public) the .410 deserves some serious thought for a good survival arm or bug out gun.

My reasoning for not dismissing the .410 out of hand if you’re looking for a good survival arm has to do with the characteristics of the .410 itself, which is often where the main criticism of the round comes in. I am not claiming you should or shouldn’t make the .410 your main weapon in your survival battery, but it is a tool that has some benefits for realistic survival scenarios:

1) Size and weight. The .410 is often criticized for being too small, but the long skinny cartridges have an advantage over the 12ga and 20ga in load out. I have a little Swiss Army belt pouch for my phone which zips closed and has a front pocket. I think it’s got some funny name like The Barnacle. I can load the inside pouch with 15-20 rounds of 3 in .410 000 buckshot with another five rounds of 2 1/2 inch buck in the flap pocket and the whole package still weighs less than a fully loaded revolver. It also keeps the ammo dry and 0ut of the way. I can carry three to four times more ammunition than any other shotgun and most rifles for the same weight which, months or years into a TEOTWAWKI situation is going to be a boon if there is truly a total collapse of society.

I have scouted several areas in my vicinity where wild edibles grow, and because I live on the outskirts of a city that just turned from rural to suburb, there are lots of old plantings, game birds, and chances to bag some meat that are being left alone as natives flee the influx of “damn Yankees” who in the main aren’t familiar with the place.

Now we all know hunting is not a good survival strategy, but if a long term situation is making it hard to get food, a little hunting/gathering is a good way to stretch your larder and garden. When I say hunting, I of course mean setting some traps for animals that I can check after gathering up the kudzu or whatever I’m looking at gathering. In this situation, a gun is taken along for chance shots at small game and maybe self-defense if I screw up and end up in that situation. I also may need to use the gun to humanely kill animals that have not succumbed to the traps I set.  Many professional trappers will use .22s for this but in a TEOTWAWKI situation the .22 isn’t as versatile as a .410, where you can carry several specialized styles of ammo for almost any situation in a package seconded only to the .22 lr in weight.

The plans of some survivalists never fail to amuse me. Bug out bags stuffed with a few weeks of supplies paired with a tricked out assault rifle and a handgun, each of which comes along with several pounds worth of ammunition. These same people tell you they’ll also be wearing 20+ pounds of armor and their family members will be similarly kitted out. This is nonsense. In a vehicle you may carry a kit like this, but the average prepper is not going to be hoofing it why carrying that amount of weight. I have been a long distance hiker for many years, so many in fact that several years ago a doctor told me I basically have no cartridge left on the back of my left knee. I’m 38 now, and the time of hiking anywhere with 70-100 pounds of gear are over. I suspect most preppers are in the same boat. In the scenario I describe above (which I picked specifically to be mild and realistic) I would be packing snares and traps, digging and cutting implements and some containers of various kinds for the wild edibles. And of course a first aid kit just in case, a small amount of food and bait, and of course water.  Add to that your tricked out 12 ga plus ammo and you’re looking at a day of discomfort and extra strain. All my gear is picked with weight in mind, because the heavier equipment that may pack more punch won’t do you any good if you need to put it down because it tires you out.

2) Versatility. The introduction of .410/.45 revolvers has created an incentive for ammunition makers to start taking the .410 seriously again. For many years people wanting to press a .410 into self defense service would be forced to use slugs, which while basically .45 caliber were so light that they didn’t achieve the kind of terminal performance of .45 handgun rounds like the ACP or the venerable Long Colt. The average slug weighs in at somewhere between 80 and 100 grains and though many are effective they are less than half the weight of today’s average cowboy action load which is why shotguns like the NEF Survivor made the trade off in accuracy using shot by rifling the barrel that was also chambered for .45 colt and supplying the gun with a specialty choke to tame the pattern opening spin the rifling imparts on shot. For an inexpensive woodsrunning/survival arm the trade off is more than worth it. The first .45 Colt rounds I ever purchased were Federal 225 grain semi-wadcutter hollow points which gives me plenty of confidence coming out of a 20 inch barrel. But new ammunition choices have made the the .410 a fearsome self defense caliber in it’s own right.

Winchester’s 3 inch 000 buckshot round throws five .36 caliber round balls at an advertised 1100 feet per second. While I don’t chronograph rounds at the range myself, I have seen some people publish numbers close to advertised. Wild Bill Hickok was known to have killed a few people with just one .36 galena pill traveling half that speed, so just keep that in mind when some armchair gunfighter tells you .410 buck will bounce off the ribs of assailants like so much lead confetti. Their 2 1/2 inch throws three 000 buck and almost every major company is making some version of that round, often for prices that would surprise those who shop for .410. I just saw a 25 rd box of Centurion 2 1/2 ooo buck for less than $20 in a catalog. Winchester announced an interesting round designed for handguns which has three ooo sized discs packed in front of a load of 12 bbs which I can’t wait to run through my Survivor. Of course there is plenty of birdshot out there too.

The .410 ammo boom means you need not look for a .410 that handles .45 anymore, adding to the versatility. Rossi’s new youth shotgun called the Tuffy would be an easy to pack survival tool made all the more effective with many of these new powerful rounds. Of course, the Taurus Judge revolvers come in a variety of configurations including Tracker models ideal for foraging. Single and double barrel models can be had for anywhere from $100 to $300 and there are several semi-auto guns like the Saiga that can be had for very reasonable prices (although magazines remain expensive) including .410 uppers for AR platforms.

3) Recoil. Everyone is a manly man at the range, but remember, in a true TEOTWAWKI situation you’ll be using your gun in either worst case scenarios or for making meat. You won’t have the luxury of only shooting when you feel well, are uninjured, and wearing a vest with a thick recoil pad in place. I can fire my Survivor one handed if I need to and I can fire it all day without getting beat up. You may take a few shots at squirrels on Tuesday, have to put down a feral dog on Wednesday and then have to kill the raccoon that’s taken up residence near your tomato plants Wednesday evening. That’s a lot of shooting and I’m not including the zombies/”golden horde”/looters that most survivalists think will be taking up their days.

You tell me you’re at the range every day shooting your Remington 870 and that .454 and can handle the recoil long term. Fine, you’re tougher than me. But you’re getting older, tough guy. Punishing your shoulders to harvest small game isn’t a smart survival strategy, and as you get older the effects of all those 3 1/2 inch  slugs and 45/70 rounds are going to show.

I visit many survival forums and am often astounded to see how many people with various ailments that effect their strength and mobility seem to think they’re going to snatch up an RPD and squeeze off a few hundred rounds at “the bad guys” with a wooden buttstock pressed into a bruised shoulder and their bursitis flaring up. Not nay saying you, but let’s be realistic.

After TEOTWAWKI, Icy Hot and ibuprofen are going to be commodities too precious for you to use up avoiding the realities of age. You may not have access to sports doctors to help heal your blown out shoulder, so before you discount low recoil “mouse guns” you should figure out if you’re still a young buck, and will you be one indefinitely?

4) Security and logistics. Unless we have to flee, the big guns in this household are here to defend the house and everyone in it, not for banging around some half-built office park picking strawberries on my way to check a snare I set up to catch what may be a rabbit. I’m not saying my .410 is disposable, but it is purposefully my bang around gun because of its simplicity, ruggedness, and because its loss won’t hamper my ability to keep the base camp secure. My other guns are for my wife to be able to ensure I have a house to come back to if I’m out picking dandelion leaves. She needs more power and capacity than me because I would be on the move if anything went down. Frankly out in the field if my .410 and a revolver won’t get me out of a scrape then I doubt by Mossberg will either, but in static home defense the factors that make a good foraging or survival tool are not what we’re looking for in a firearm. You need the right tool for the right job and the .410 is a great foraging/garden gun which makes it an excellent survival gun.

So while I know I won’t start a trend (and I don’t want to), if your SHTF plan involves staying mobile and traveling light or you’re just looking for a light shotgun for a little woodsrunning in areas where there aren’t many big predators, you may want to give the .410 a second look. With the new personal defense ammo out there, one of the main shortcomings of the round has pretty much been eliminated.

TNP has a three part video opus on urban survival that I think makes some good points and is something you should check out. I’m posting the first here but the rest are already posted on their page. There’s some jargon (like SAWC which means “Space/Size And Weight Constraints”) but don’t let that overwhelm you, there’s some good grist for the mill here:

Like I said a bit surprising although I’d be curious to see if using round nose ammo gave different results. I’d still be uncomfortable shooting a raccoon or coyote with a .22 LR (something people claim to do with .22 magnums all the time) but I think this just makes me rethink the usefulness of the .22 Mag in those situations, especially given the economics. 500 round bricks of .22 LR are still under $20 whereas people are slapping down around $12-15 bucks for 50 in my neck of the woods. The magnums are still significantly cheaper than centerfire handgun ammunition, but not cheap enough to make the small boost in power worth spending extra money per round.

Of course shooting through paperbacks is not what we use guns for. The .22 mag still discharges much more energy into a flesh and blood target which is why rabbits and such game shot with the round suffer wounds that waste a lot of meat. This is also a strike against the .22 Magnum in my opinion. The hyper velocity .22 LR ammo being produced these days will do anything a .22 Magnum can do cheaper, and other rounds will pick up where the .22 LR leaves off. I assume people interested in the pelts of animals too big of the .22 LR may like the Magnums but I have heard of professional trappers putting down almost everything on their ‘lines with a .22 LR to the back of the head from a pistol. For predator hunters the .22 Hornet teamed with a pistol in .22 LR seems more utilitarian than the .22 Magnum.

I had considered buying a .22 handgun myself but when I started itching for my .327 Federal Magnum I found that other rounds I could feed it like the .32 S&W Long were still widely available and figured that the little .32 filled the niche for a .22 handgun close enough (except for the expense) that I put the money I would have spent on a .22 rig into a few boxes of watermelon killing .32 S&W Long. I don’t see how a .22 Magnum could be more indispensable than the underrated and inexpensive .22 LR so I’m going to agree with  Heather and her husband Jeff on this one.

Imagine yourself in a rapidly de-industrialized America (or Europe, Canada whatever) due to financial collapse exacerbated by food shortages, disease and a chaotic world exploding in the wake of American power receding. Maybe solar storms or an E.M.P. have knocked out the grid, or cap-and-trade has created energy shortages like we see in places like Venezuela and are beginning to see in Europe. Imagine that supermarkets are empty, refrigeration is unreliable and there is no guarantee that things will ever get back to normal. What would you do?

For many survivalists, myself included, the solution is “prepping” for such a scenario. This involves stockpiling long lasting foods and perhaps water if there is no other way to ensure supply. Those are short term solutions however, completely unsustainable for a lifetime. In the long term many survival minded people learn hunting, trapping and fishing skills. This is a sure way to starvation if it is your only option to put food on the table for you and your family as anyone who has ever been hunting or fishing will tell you. A better option is to supplement those skills with the art of growing food and foraging for wild plants. All together you now have a recipe for a short and brutish life much like that of ancient man when he still lived as a hunter-gatherer. Doable but hardly ideal.

Man is a social animal for a reason: our needs are more easily met when we cooperate in large groups. We need an economy to truly live a sustainable lifestyle; we will need to trade with others for things which for one reason or another we will not be able to produce ourselves. In short the best case scenario for a survivalist is to be enmeshed with a large group of people living in an area they are invested in securing who all produce various things that they will trade internally and on occasion with outsiders.

Producing things people will trade for is the ideal for long term sustainability after a collapse. Much has been written on how to avoid looters by looking like you have nothing to loot. Many survivalists are planning on spending years, maybe decades, hiding in bunkers with a select group of fellow survivalists. This too will end badly for many as anyone who can envision several well armed families living in close quarters and sharing finite resources will conclude. Those who survive any coming collapse will do so by being able to produce things others need, not share things from a collective and steadily depleting collective pantry. Food would be the most valuable resource of course, although a good seamstress or carpenter will likely be able to get by. What we are talking abut is wealth in the old sense of the word, not acquired through business deals or wise investment but through production.

Eggs, for example, are a kind of wealth. Many suburbanites have begun keeping their own hens for economic reasons (they save money on eggs) but we see more and more that a person with  small flock of chickens is doing something most Americans have little experience with – producing actual wealth. Even survivalists often don’t fully understand this idea, explaining why people who think America is about to descend into a new dark age think one ounce gold coins (or worse, gold certificates) are going to pull them through while the rest of us starve. Gold and silver have their uses (one of which is enriching bloggers pre-collapse) but gold and silver represent wealth. They are not necessarily true wealth.

I’ll give you an example. I have two neighbors in the above worst of the worst case scenario. One has a veritable dragon’s hoard of one ounce gold coins each of which are now theoretically worth $10,000 in the new, desperate America. The other has a micro-farm consisting of a flock of chickens, a couple of milking goats and a large garden. Now let’s suppose that both want to get a couple of bowls of Rob Taylor’s famous five can chili or some homemade cough drops I mixed up in my spare time. What happens? Do I make change for a $10,000 gold coin? Or do I take a small basket of eggs for a batch of chili with a home made cough drop lagniappe? Sans a banking system to standardize currency bartering with precious metals is a risky proposition which is an idea I have put forward to before. This is not to say gold will be worthless, but it will be hard to trade with and if push comes to shove, harder to digest. Historically this has always been the case.

The first verse of the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem reads:

Wealth is a comfort to all men;
yet must every man bestow it freely,
if he wish to gain honour in the sight of the Lord.

This line references the rune Feoh which represents wealth in general but its name literally means “cattle” which was the the measure of wealth the ancient Northern Europeans used. Those who study runes for religious reasons point out this understanding of wealth, as practical goods like livestock and furs, provides both historical and spiritual insight into the runic tradition. For the survival minded of any religion it is instructive to note that people who lived in a harsh environment of low technology and scarcity of resources, livestock was how people measured wealth and was the currency that common people traded with.

Of course, many people don’t have room for cattle or other sorts of livestock like goats which are increasingly popular. But depending on the laws in your areas and rules of your homeowner’s association if you happen to be unlucky enough to have one, almost everyone can own a few chickens or grow heirloom vegetables. These renewable resources have value to you and others. If you find no buyers for your eggs, goat’s milk, and Cherokee Purple tomatoes, you can still use them to provide comfort and security for you and your family which is literally what wealth is. Not so your gold hoard or your ammunition reserves. It is time for survivalists to have a fundamental rethinking of what wealth means and how we can acquire it in a post-collapse world.

I found this on James Marchington’s YouTube Channel.

Survivalism is going mainstream and everyone is looking to cash in, including left leaning “learning” channels like The History Channel which has long abandoned objective and informative programs in favor of communist agi-prop like the completely disgusting Howard Zinn-led call for class warfare The People Speak.

However, I am a fan of Monster Quest so I always check in to see what’s on. This is how I came across The History Channel’s most outrageous program – a show called Apocalypse Man. It is not an exaggeration to say this show is not so much an instructional program on surviving disasters as a plot by The History Channel to murder you.

“Survival expert” Rudy Reyes begins the program by telling people that during a full on TEOTEWAWKI situation they should head into the biggest city they can find, and the show goes down hill from there. I understand that Mr. Reyes is said to be a Marine Force Recon veteran which I have seen some discussion about on the Web as being a bald-faced lie. I won’t play gotcha with someone’s service, but I will say that if Reyes is relaying his military training to audiences then we should start rethinking the training we’re giving our boys.

The key to surviving any situation is being prepared, staying cool, and using common sense. Most of all, the old adage “keep it simple, stupid” should be the motto you live by. Reyes sees things differently, as evidenced by him lighting a campfire with steel wool and a battery. Because I assume there’s no way he could have gotten hold of lighters or matches before TEOTWAWKI.

His preparation for the coming collapse of society, imagined by the producers as some sort of sudden Mad Max scenario (which ignores historical collapses, like Argentina) seems to be a bag of burglary tools, a complete lack of concern for his or any one else’s safety, and the morals of a crack addict. With pry bar in hand and criminality in his heart our “hero” takes viewers on a whirlwind tour through every nerd’s apocalypse spank fantasy where an empty world becomes their kingdom.

As I stated before, his first bit of advice for TEOTWAWKI is to tell people to head into the nearest large city because that, he says with a straight face, is where the supplies are. I guess all the stores that surround me on the outskirts of the very modest city I live by are illusions caused by my lack of “survival expertise” as is my larder of supplies I’ve collected for emergencies. Of course, heading into a city after a disaster is foolish, especially now that a small army of Reyes inspired looters, sorry I meant survivalists, will be rushing there to join the masses of people struggling to survive. The cities are dangerous now, with higher crime rates and worse unemployment/poverty than the rest of the country. After TEOTWAWKI I can only assume that most rational people will be planning on getting out of the city as quickly as possible.

But this is Rudy Reyes we’re talking about! Irrationality is his secret weapon to survive any situation. Like when his path to the shining city (full of supplies which simply can’t be found elsewhere) is blocked by a river he doesn’t want to cross because there could be poop in it. The drawbridge to cross it has been raised by police or military because martial law has been imposed, although none seemed to stick around to keep the crossing secure. What to do? Luckily Reyes has rope in his backpack along with his pry bar (what crime bloggers will immediately recognize as a rape kit) so using the pry bar as a grapnel, he swings across the river. I mean, what could go wrong? It’s not like if you get injured after this apocalypse pulling some stupid stunt it’d be hard to medical attention, right?

Then there’s Reyes’ special survival “foraging” method. Home invasion. Reyes actually tells viewers that to get supplies they should go to the suburbs, look for houses that haven’t been looted and kick in those doors, flashlight at the ready to brain anyone they run into. He never puts forward the idea that A) even in the breakdown of law and order this is wrong or B) the unlooted house is probably unlooted for a reason. The Reyes inspired home invader is going to be shot eventually.

I can only imagine the look on some Apocalypse Man fan’s face as he kicks in my front door to find an angry blogger with the new .327 Ruger Blackhawk I’m hoping to receive as an anniversary present tucked into a garish Halloween orange sash Wild Bill Hickock style. “What would Rudy do?” he’ll ask himself as I shoot him several times before Tweeting “ZOMG! Had 2 shoot looter, he had a Apocalypse man dvd in his pack! ROTFLMAO!”

It’ll be a steep price to pay for canned goods you can get on sale for $.50 a piece at any supermarket prior to TEOTWAWKI.

But that’s not Reyes’ worst advice or most asinine claim. Throughout the one hour episode we’re treated to such ludicrous scenes as Reyes lighting campfires indoors, rappelling down elevator cables (there are access ladders in most elevator shafts), risking life and limb to get fuel for generators because you “need electricity to survive” (explaining why there was no life on earth until the 20th century) and we even watched in horror as Reyes procured drinking water with the same dirty bicycle pump he had used to pump diesel out of a gas station supply tank.

“This is sustainability!” he declares while standing proudly over his three days worth of canned goods. Fuel and power, not food and water, are the things Reyes says we need after TEOTWAWKI. Most laughable is Reyes’ commandeering of a hospital which he claims is worthless except that it has a generator. You know, because one man with a pry bar should be willing to attempt to secure an entire facility alone … so he doesn’t have to sleep in the dark.

In short, Rudy Reyes advocates a survival strategy in which people who’ve spent too much time playing the Fallout games kick in your door, cave in your skull in front of your terrified family and steal whatever is in your house. Then they will retire to the block long hospital complex which they have secured with nothing more than steely determination and a total lack of morality. This is a process they will replicate every couple of days.

That’s not so much a survival strategy as a invitation to get your ticket punched. The Xbox playing pot smokers who take people like Reyes seriously don’t have what it takes to pull off home invasions now, much less when Darwinism ensues and the unlooted homes are filled with the people with the fewest compunctions about blasting some d-bag who spent all his money on drugs and video games prior to TEOTWAWKI. Reyes’ advice to viewers in the event of societal chaos is to do everything they can to make things more chaotic. In Europe that might fly, in a country where more than half the population owns firearms trouble makers are not going to be surviving at higher rates than people who put some food away and mind their business.

If I were a conspiracy theorist I’d be suspicious of The History Channel’s agenda. After all, they’ve been supporting Marxism with Zinn and strong centralized governments benefit from periods of disorder. But it’s more likely they simply want to cash in on the survival boom and looked for someone who was willing to affirm their pre-concieved notions of American immorality.

The real problem is that Reyes is not the purveyor of this sort of anything goes philosophy, but a product of the entrance into survivalism of people who are not preparing for TEOTWAWKI, but hoping for it. There are hundreds of Reyeses out there. People’s who plan on looting Wal-Mart after a disaster rather than shopping there now. People who dream of a time when they can simply smash windows and take what they want from the society and culture they despise for whatever reason. There are people who think the world owes them and they see civil disorder as a time for them to get what’s coming to them.  Reyes is telling them to attempt to take, by force if necessary, what you and I have put away for the bad times. The show is a plot to kill not only those who follow Reyes’ advice, but those of us who get in the way.

It is for this reason that I recommend people view this pilot if they get a chance, so you can see into the mind of a degenerate looter, oh I’m sorry survival expert, first hand.

But times are changing. I’ve seen a lot of bad information out there not just on the Internet but now on television. With Americans’ lifestyles set to change significantly in the next few years it is more important than ever that good information get out there that people can use.

Survivalism isn’t about looting Wal-Marts after a Zombie pandemic, it’s about being able to feed yourself and your family when times are rough. It’s not about living out your Fallout 3 fantasy, it’s about living through America’s descent into second or maybe third world status in relative comfort and safety. I’m no expert in surviving TEOTWAWKI but neither is anyone else. I have however been very poor, lived in high crime areas and had to make do in my life so I think I have something to add to the conversation.

We’ll be resume a 3-5 time a week publishing schedule starting today. I hope you enjoy the reboot of American Survival Blog

Meanwhile the W.H.O. has raised the pandemic alert level to 5. The scale only goes to six. So according to these people lowballing the numbers a pandemic is pretty much a definite. If it has such a low mortality rate, why do they care?

Probably because the situation in Mexico is much worse than it is being reported. Suburban Guerrilla has various testimonials from doctors in the area which claim people aren’t being told the truth in an effort to insulate Mexico from economic harm and hide the fact that the government an U.N. bodies are basically ineffective money wasters. Here’s one letter I found particularly enlightening:

I work as a resident doctor in one of the biggest hospitals in Mexico City and sadly, the situation is far from “under control”. As a doctor, I realise that the media does not report the truth. Authorities distributed vaccines among all the medical personnel with no results, because two of my partners who worked in this hospital (interns) were killed by this new virus in less than six days even though they were vaccinated as all of us were. The official number of deaths is 20, nevertheless, the true number of victims are more than 200. I understand that we must avoid to panic, but telling the truth it might be better now to prevent and avoid more deaths.

My point isn’t that we’re at the end of civilization, just that the helplessness of government agencies in face of this is something they are both embarrassed of and unwilling to allow the populace to see lest we begin to question their existence at all. I think that this new flu is spreading. It is not as dangerous now as it might be if this flu follows the Spanish Flu pattern of three seasonal waves, it will be in the fall and winter. Even that may mean little to healthy and relatively wealthy Americans who are not the poor and unhealthy victims of the Spanish Flu.

But this flu is going to cause significant damage to our economy and may kill a fair share of people. No matter how much cheer leading the media is doing it’s time to take precautions. The virus can mutate in to a more lethal form at anytime, so as long as the pandemic threat level remains high you need to be aware of the threat.

I became aware of the epidemic in Mexico Saturday when the numbers were small but worrisome. 800 infected in Mexico with over 20 confirmed fatalities and eight suspected cases here. Now their are a confirmed 1300 infected in Mexico with over 100 fatalities and at least 30 cases all over the United States. New York, Kansas, Ohio, Texas and California have had confirmed Swine flu infections. There’s a map charting the infections here. Canada, Spain, France and London may also have cases.

I have seen unconfirmed reports that there are Swine Flu infections in Alabama.

The C.D.C has admitted that the seasonal flu vaccines people have will not be effective against this new strain. Governments around the world are beginning quarantines of anyone suspected of having the virus, as well as tightening restrictions on pork products and travel.

There isn’t a lot of information out there, the C.D.C page on the outbreak is nothing you haven’t heard on the news. Oddly the deaths have so far been limited to Mexico, although they were all young healthy people. I would theorize that although Mexico City is a as urban as any U.S. city Americans in general have more access to potentially life saving items and luxuries than the average Mexican. Cheap over the counter medicine and central air conditioning may among other things really be making a difference in the outcome of a nasty bug. On the other hand there is such a small sample of cases thus far that we won’t know how lethal this new flu is until we have infection numbers similar to Mexico.

Right now no one can tell you honestly how bad this may get, but those with a survivalist mind-set (myself included) are taking precautions. If it’s possible stay home for the next few days and get plenty of liquids in the house and stock up on fever reducing medications as well as the regular flu stuff you keep in the house. Don’t wait to pick up supplies, if more people get sick there will be runs on grocery stores and those crowds may be full of infected people. Many people are recommending you buy breathing masks, but if you don’t already have them going to stores where sick people may be congregating to get them (pharmacies and the like) isn’t a better plan than laying low. You can buy many items online if you can wait a few days for them. The only reason for you to be in a store for the next couple of days is if you don’t have necessities like food, water and toilet paper on hand.

There are already rumors circulating about the flu designed to make you panic. I have seen several comments implying that this was a bio-terror attack by the United States on Mexico and much is being made on various conspiracist forums I will never link to of the death of Felipe Solis just hours after meeting our President. Some newshounds are pointing out that this outbreak came only days after Fort Detrick began an investigation into missing viruses from their bio-warfare facility. It is an odd coincidence, but I have been told that samples turn up missing from government labs with a frequency that would alarm the public if they realized it. Depending on the amount of tin foil hattery in your area (and New York is lousy with people who believe in such nonsense) this sort of conspiracy mongering so early in the event is another reason to stay home if you can.

There’s no way to verify these statements, but readers have sent alarming stories to the BBC which imply that the situation in Mexico is worse than the media is letting on:

I’m a specialist doctor in respiratory diseases and intensive care at the Mexican National Institute of Health. There is a severe emergency over the swine flu here. More and more patients are being admitted to the intensive care unit. Despite the heroic efforts of all staff (doctors, nurses, specialists, etc) patients continue to inevitably die. The truth is that anti-viral treatments and vaccines are not expected to have any effect, even at high doses. It is a great fear among the staff. The infection risk is very high among the doctors and health staff.

There is a sense of chaos in the other hospitals and we do not know what to do. Staff are starting to leave and many are opting to retire or apply for holidays. The truth is that mortality is even higher than what is being reported by the authorities, at least in the hospital where I work it. It is killing three to four patients daily, and it has been going on for more than three weeks. It is a shame and there is great fear here. Increasingly younger patients aged 20 to 30 years are dying before our helpless eyes and there is great sadness among health professionals here.
Antonio Chavez, Mexico City

There are several more testimonies similar to this one. There is no way to know how many sicknesses and deaths slipped by the bureaucrats before the alerts were issued so the mortality rate for the flu may be higher or lower in Mexico than the 7% it’s at now.

Take the day off, buy as much food and water as you need and take a mini-vacation. I know it’s easy to say when you work at home as I do, but if you can stay off the streets do so until you’re sure this bug has mutated into a less lethal form. However there is no need to panic, yet. But it is time to get prepared. Except in Mexico most infections were no worse than the regular flu so stay cool. Water, food and toilet paper, if you don’t have enough to last you a week or more of staying home than get some now.

Cross posted at Red Alerts

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Here’s a link to a supposed real time infection map. Mexico has remained the epicenter with more than 1600 infected.

I have seen unconfirmed reports that there were more than 100 sick kids in the Queens prep school but only eight were tested originally. They all tested positive for Swine Flu. If true the C.D.C and DHS are playing fast and loose with the numbers in order to control the panic that will happen if people see a new virus spreading quickly. The official tally there is now 28 infected.

Gateway Pundit reports that we’re still not screening passengers arriving from Mexico.

Mexico City has been hit with an earthquake. The gods are angry down there.

The European Union is telling people not to travel to Mexico or America. Obama is not amused.

Update: A private school in South Carolina has been closed after kids coming from Mexico were found to have Flu-like symptoms. Greenville News (perhaps America’s worst newspaper)  gives bare bone details, omitting facts you may want to know like where the school is located. The Newberry Academy website has a statement about the closure.