Ragnar Benson - Ragnar's Urban Survival - A Hard-Times Guide to Staying Alive in the City

NUTRITION

What is the most important nursing element for patients recovering from burns, breaks, and gunshot trauma?

Most people are surprised to discover it is nutrition. My first guess was a good supply of antibiotics. I was skeptical, so I asked several experts. I heard the same story time after time. When survival nursing is likely, lay in a huge supply of high-quality multiple vitamins and minerals, I was repeatedly told. Along with antibiotics, some of these are available from the vet supply counter.

Plan to feed quality meals, they said. A surgeon suggested that I bone up on the five basic food groups. And they are not nicotine, caffeine, sugar, fat, and alcohol, he half-scolded with a twinkle in his eye.

Good nutrition is a cornerstone of survival nursing.

The curative effects of chicken soup are no myth. Good nutrition does speed a cure.

Chicken soup's restorative powers are apparently no myth. Patients respond mightily to nutrition, adding yet another dimension to our storage needs and requirements. Basically, good nutrition depends on lots of clean water, fruit, fresh vegetables, meat, and grains daily We are told to pay special attention that everything is prepared and served in the most sanitary manner possible. Improper food preparation can lead to a destruction of food value or, on the other end of the scale, to possible food poisoning.

We are to select one main course providing an adequate serving of meat. Bread or some sort of cereal should also be provided. Fruit and/or vegetables as available should be served at least once a day. Recovering patients may eat like hogs or they may eat like birds, including as many as five meals daily. A nurse's duty is to keep the patient clean, happy, and full of good, nutritious food. Not an altogether easy task, especially in primitive conditions. This simple-sounding philosophical concept is often about as important as storage, diagnosis, and then deployment of pharmaceutical drugs.

MEDICAL CONDITIONS

As mentioned in Chapter 10, initial care is a complex issue about which a bit has already been written. Those interested in medical matters not directly having to do with long-term nursing might look at Survivalist's Medicine Chest and Do-It-Yourself Medicine.

It is my firm conviction that survivors, including those in cities. are faced with three general categories of medical conditions. First of these are medical situations brought on by age, heredity, or general deterioration, over which we have little or no control and for which cures and effective treatments, in the hands of specialists, buy a few years at best.

Second are conditions directly caused by personal behavior which are completely avoidable. AIDS and lung cancer (for smok ers) jump to mind as examples in this category. This is not to suggest that there are personal choices we should not make. Only that there are personal choices that all individuals must make knowing full well that the when they choose wrong, the consequences are severe.

Third are medical emergencies brought on by accidents, warfare, or environmental conditions that are definitely treatable by skilled, dedicated amateurs. These are the type of conditions where nursing is most effective. Obviously there is overlap. The challenge lies not in taking foolish, unrewarding risks. while still continuing at the same time to enjoy life to its fullest. Detonations and gunfire are an adrenaline rush for me, for instance. I already know I may not die in bed.

These last people who have consciously elected to get into the battle and are now hurt, who have contracted some awful disease or condition as a result of a filthy, unhealthy environment, or who have been abused by their fellow man are ones we can realistically expect to nurse back to life in our survival retreats.

I hope this brief introduction has sensitized all potential city survivors to the understanding that they will likely be faced with a survival nursing chore, what it will cost to undertake this chore, and how to proceed.

Conclusion

But will all of this stuff really work.?

It's a fair question with which I am. frequently confrontedprincipally by skeptical, nonpreparedness folks who really don't want it to work.

I'm thankful that most skeptics stay well outside the ranks of practicing survivalists. These skeptics are the types who fail to see any future need for any survival skills or knowledge. Planning ahead is the hallmark of the survivor. Obviously these are not plan-aheaders.

People who have actually lived through a collapsed, foughtover, or abandoned-city survival scenario all agree-most of us can make it.

Significantly, most survivors never want to repeat the experience. "Even a pig," one especially devout Islamic Imam told me, "should not have to go through what I went through on our retreat from Delhi to Karachi." His confession after 50 years was so solidly sincere it was virtually tearful.

Being certain that some sort of collapse will likely occur in one of our big cities is necessary if one is to survive. Jews in Europe immediately prior to World War II were convinced that nothing worse could happen to them. Few made real, viable preparations.

"They just could not do all of the monstrous things Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich said they will do to us," was their plaintive cry. They are like some foolish, appeasing American gun owners today whose motto seems to be, "If we do just this one more stupid, ineffective thing, they will finally leave us alone."

When we were kids, we used to whistle as we walked past the cemetery at our property corner. How many wars, genocides, mass killings, and ethnic cleansings will it take before we realize that governments will never leave freedom-loving people alone?

All city survivors of any experience fervently wish they had taken the time and money to make more extensive prior preparations. It would have been much easier if they'd had a few more gallons of stored water, bags of flour, dollars to buy necessities, or whatever, they allsay.

Kosovo, Yugoslavia-this whole stinking mess has been constantly before me in the news as I worked on the manuscript for this book.

We heard it constantly on the news from reporters, government agents, apologists, and casual observers-these people were incapable of saving themselves, these naysayers claim. Fortunately, I was in constant contact with Ziga, a like-minded reader/informant in Slovenia whose considerable wisdom I share with readers. It is sufficient to understand that Slovenia is one of those bread slicesized countries located in the region involved in the tumult.

Ziga makes several interesting points, the first of which may have little to nothing to do with city survival and perhaps little to do with survival in Kosovo.

"These Kosovars are the scariest gangsters!" Ziga writes. "They deal mostly with heroin, prostitution, and illegal, ruthless moneylending," he continues. "They cause a lot of trouble here." Like stereotyping any people, all this may be true or it may be that we tend to notice only the really rotten eggs in the basket.

Way back in 1991, very quickly after the Berlin Wall went down, Slobodan Milosevic sent his army to attack Slovenia. The Slovenian army mostly militiamen, repulsed the attack in a matter of days. Slovenia has prospered economically in peace, even since. By European standards, excluding Switzerland, gun ownership in Slovenia is relatively easy, especially including black-market accessibility.