When All Hell Breaks Loose Part 12

Baking soda will keep indefinitely if it's stored in an airtight, moisture-proof container. If it's left in the cardboard box, it will last a little more than a year, much less if it's inside your moisture-filled refrigerator.

Yeast is a living organism and needs to be faithfully rotated. The commonly available dried yeast in the foil packets has the expiration date stamped right on the package. If kept in an airtight, moisture-proof container, and as cool or cold as possible, it will keep much longer than the stamped expiration date. It can be tested for potency by mixing a bit of the dried yeast with an equal amount of sugar and putting the mixture into warm water. It should begin to bubble in about six minutes or so.

Spices are, well, the spice of life. The spice trade of centuries past revolutionized the taste buds and the monetary flow of the world. Truly, spices have been so unknowingly important to the nation that some of my friends plan on storing extra spices as a means of barter when the skies fall. Having a variety, or at least a few basic spices, on hand will help counter the dreaded "appet.i.te fatigue" syndrome from setting in on your family. Most spices can be used to cover up bland or bad-tasting foods. There is a reason why standard military-issue MREs come with a bottle of Tabasco sauce.

Spices can be a challenge to store for long periods of time, especially if they are ground up and powdered, which most are. Like other foods they are sensitive to heat, light, oxygen, and moisture. Buy spices that are "whole" if you can, put them into smaller containers if you purchased them in bulk, store them like you would food, and keep your choices simple.

Vinegar comes in many flavors. A common one, apple cider vinegar, will keep indefinitely if stored in an unopened container at room temperature. White vinegar can also be used as a natural cleaning agent around the house.

Insect Infestations Everyone likes a free meal, especially in the wild world of insects. Grains, legumes, and many other foods can fall prey to serious insect infestations if basic precautions are not taken. I'll never forget the carnage that lurked inside my bag of rolled oats that I foolishly stored in the closet in its original paper sack. I'm not sure what kind of bug it was, but I had perfected a breeding ground for thousands of them-even the neighboring horses wouldn't touch the leftovers.

It's critical that your stored food be bug free, and the easiest way to accomplish that is to make sure the bugs are absent in the first place. Don't buy bulk grains and dried foods from cheap sources or the problem might already be in the bag. Large companies that go through product quickly are a better bet as the food won't sit around as much. With many insects, like my oat bugs, the party seems to happen on the top few inches of food, so look before you agitate the product and hide the evidence.

If you store food in the ways that have been recommended in this book, attracting bugs after the fact should not be a problem. Don't tempt bugs or rodents by being a slob where you have your food stored. Keep things clean. If bugs get out of control in some of your food, get that food out of the house and check to see if other food has been infested.

Some bugs can be eaten along with the food, or the larger varieties sifted out. I don't know how many times I've eaten cereal with weevils in it. I consider it extra protein, as you might, if food is scarce. But the bottom line is, bugs eat your food, and their nutritional value is not likely to make up for the difference in what they have pilfered.

Killing Bugs [and Their Eggs] in Food Sometimes when the bugs are absent, the eggs are not. One year I harvested native mesquite beans that were a staple food of the desert Indians in Arizona. At first glance the pods looked fine. After a few weeks, the eggs of whatever bugs were within the pods ate away at the goods, unbeknownst to me, and ruined most of the crop. The same thing happened with some pinyon nuts I gathered. Some native peoples used large winnowing-type baskets and hot coals from the fire to parch foods before they were stored.

Freezing and Heating Cold can be used to kill bugs and their larvae and eggs. If you have access to cold temperatures, large quant.i.ties of food such as a full five-gallon bucket can be placed in a freezer at 0 degrees F (minus 17 degrees C) or lower for ten days. If smaller packages of food are used, the days can be lessened to four or five, as the food will require less time to be chilled all the way through. General household freezers are wimpy when needing to achieve seriously low temperatures but many chest freezers can do it. When it comes to killing bugs, the colder the temperature, the better. As the Native Americans have proven, buggy food can also be treated with heat. Most people recommend placing the food in question on a baking sheet into the oven for thirty minutes at 140 degrees F (60 degrees C), a temperature easily achieved by solar ovens. The dictionary definition of "tedious" references processing five hundred pounds of grain that way. Heated food should be eaten within a few weeks of doing so.

Molds and Bacteria Mold can affect any type of food, including "dry" foods such as grains and legumes where enough moisture (humidity) and warmth are present. Of course there are fungal strains as well that grow in the refrigerator, as anyone who has opened forgotten leftovers can attest. Notice that hearty molds can infect foods with high sugar or salt contents as well (both excellent preservatives), even when refrigerated. Who hasn't looked in the bottom of a jar of jelly and seen mold or trimmed a piece from a cured salted piece of meat? Not all molds are bad for human consumption, but the ones that are can nearly kill you or at the very least make you extremely sick. As I mentioned with my squash incident, some molds produce toxic mycotoxins, which are produced around the root of the mold itself, so they can be deep within the food itself. Like skin cancer, superficially tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the surface of the mold will not get the part that's deep within the food. Worst of all, fungal mycotoxins last for long periods of time and are not destroyed by heat.

Here in the arid Southwest, we marvel at the rare occurrence of mold and mildew, throwing parties in honor of its extraordinary mustiness. Those of you who live in humid climates are unimpressed and are probably well versed in how to deal with invading mold and mildew. Keep your food storage areas clean. On countertops, refrigerators, and other food storage surfaces, mold can be eliminated with an a.s.sortment of household disinfectants such as our beloved chlorine bleach solution. Many "hard" foods such as potatoes, apples, and cheddar cheese can be trimmed of mold. Cut away the infected area along with an inch or so of the unaffected food without letting the knife touch the mold. "Soft" foods such as tomatoes, melons, cream cheese, and peanut b.u.t.ter should be thrown away. If you mess around with these and many other soft foods, you may pay a high price. Moldy foods should be thrown safely away so they can't be gotten into by curious kids and hungry animals.

Bacteria need moisture to grow, and many strains found in foods can be very tough to kill. Some of the more nasty varieties toxic to humans can form spores that are very resistant to being eradicated. Moldy "wet foods" such as canned goods can become havens for the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, or botulism, one of the most deadly forms of bacterial food poisoning around. The toxin created from the growing bacteria is the culprit and is reportedly so potent that one teaspoon of the botulism toxin is capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Because of this, don't screw around with bacterial spoilage in any type of wet food, whether fresh, home-canned, or commercially canned from the store. Any canned goods that are bulging, leaking, smell bad, or that squirt liquid when you open them should be thrown away! As with moldy foods, make sure you dispose of them safely away from kids and pets. (Note: Canned foods that have gone bad will have at least two of the above traits. Some cans that have been physically dented will squirt fluid when opened with a can opener, as the volume inside the can has been reduced, thereby putting the canned goods under pressure.) However, IF IN DOUBT, THROW IT OUT!

Using Salt to Reduce Moisture It would be almost impossible for dry grains and legumes to grow harmful bacteria due to the lack of moisture. They can, however, grow mold. There is an easy method used to keep the moisture content in certain stored foods low that involves our friend salt. For food products such as rice, dry beans, dried peas, and pastas (other grains will require a different method), putting one inch of salt in the bottom of a container such as a food-grade five-gallon bucket before adding the food will hold the moisture content below 10 percent. This eliminates the environment required for molds to grow and prevents many insect eggs from hatching. Don't separate the salt from the food. Just pour the food right on top of the salt. As we know from our salt talk, the salt will store indefinitely and can be used as is. This method is a great way to have salt work for its storage s.p.a.ce until it's used for its own sake.

The Dizzying World of Food-Storage Strategies The technical information involved in storing foods is incredibly intense and has been the subject of dozens of books. I have only so much room in this book so you're on your own to research the other methods used to increase the storage times of food. Other home storage strategies might include Mylar bags, flus.h.i.+ng with carbon dioxide and nitrogen, special enamel-coated cans, moisture-absorbing desiccants and oxygen absorbers, dry ice, vacuum sealing, and food-grade diatomaceous earth. Your local LDS (Mormon) church might have a cannery near where you live and you may be able to use their food-packing facilities for a fee. If the option feels right to you, it doesn't hurt to ask.

Come on, Man, Tell Me. . .How Long Do Stored Foods REALLY Last?

I wish I knew for sure, other than the obvious good keepers such as salt and white sugar. In the months of research I did for this book, I came across many, many contradictions as to how long stored foods will last. Some sources say whole wheat lasts for six months, others, indefinitely. And I could go on and on with the discrepancies. This is the main reason that I don't include a one-size-fits-all, handy-dandy food storage chart stating exactly how long your stored food will last. I looked at several such charts and many of them have very different answers for the same food product.

I personally have experimented with dried pinto beans (among several other things) that have been stored for more than fifteen years, still in the paper sack in which they were bought! Other than requiring a lot of soaking time and extra fuel to cook, they're fine. . .or are they? I don't have the resources to take my beans to the neighborhood laboratory and have them a.n.a.lyzed for nutritional content and microbes, as I'm sure is true for many other food storage "experts" who've undoubtedly experimented likewise. So I have fifteen-year-old pinto beans in a paper sack that are still edible, so what? I live in Arizona, land of limited moisture. How would that sack of pinto beans do in a closet in Was.h.i.+ngton state?

As with human nature and Mother Nature in a survival scenario, food storage is fraught with variables as to how the story will end. There is no question that following the rules of food storage will increase the shelf life of your stored food. How long it will really last is anyone's guess. Take all prophetic advice about how long your vittles will be vital with a grain of salt. The sure way out of this dilemma is to rotate your food by storing what you eat and eating what you store.

Bugs, Mice, and Rats:

It's What's for Dinner

When the times get tough, the tough look for alternative food sources. I don't like killing things for food, but I realize the importance of knowing how to do so if that's my only option. So do the students who take my cla.s.ses on survival skills, some of whom have been vegetarians or vegans. Animal meat doesn't originate on a Styrofoam plate covered with plastic wrap. I'm convinced the world would have a lot more vegetarians if people who chose to eat meat had to kill it themselves. Doing so is an awesome responsibility and very humbling. That said, every urban, suburban, and rural area will have their share of smaller critters that hardy survivors can exploit to their advantage-bugs and rodents being the most common.

Eating What Bugs You Eating bugs has gotten a bad rap, most recently from stupid television shows designed to shock people that seem to have nothing better to do. Most insects and bugs can be eaten and almost all contain a high amount of protein. Stay away from stinkbugs in the Southwest, caterpillars in general, and beware of insects that can hurt you such as bees, wasps, yellow jackets, and the like. Some insects should be cooked to kill potential parasites they carry, such as gra.s.shoppers.

I realize your family will more than likely protest to worms being on the menu. Such an opinion is just that, an opinion based on cultural conditioning and being grossed out by the appearance of a foreign-looking creature. Bugs aren't gross; they just look gross to most people. If you knew the ingredients of a hot dog you would eat bugs. Most bugs and insects have a very mild flavor that can easily be disguised with spices or other food. Their shapes can be disguised by cooking and grinding them if necessary into a powder. This homemade protein powder can be added to soups and stews or something else to help your family achieve the nutrition they need-without the gross-out factor. If your survival food stash is getting low, cutting it with bugs will help extend the rations. For the most palatable results at the dinner table, think twice before telling other family members what you've done-and don't tell Vinny!

Remarkable Rodents Mice and rats are extremely adaptable creatures. They are also easy to catch and kill with a little advanced preparation. My "Really Cool, Gotta Have It, Multiple Use Stuff" list presented later in the book includes traps for mice and rats. Rattraps are simply mousetraps on steroids. I have killed rats in mousetraps, and vice versa, but unless the mousetrap comes down on a vulnerable part of the rat's anatomy, you will more than likely lose your mousetrap to the rat. Unless the powerful critter gets stuck in a small s.p.a.ce while trying to navigate with the trap attached to its body, it will disappear to a place only the rat knows about.

The most common mouse and rattraps are the Victor brand found at most hardware and grocery stores. There are two choices, the old-fas.h.i.+oned type with the metal bait area and the ones with the yellow plastic bait pad. The latter ones rely on a substance that's imprinted into the plastic itself to attract the rodent and don't require bait. These work okay when fresh, but they quickly lose their attractant, even when stored new within their original plastic. Even so, I like these the best, and use them successfully, even with no bait or commercial attractant left on the yellow pad. The answer to my success is easy if you think like a rodent. I place the loaded traps with the yellow pad nearest the wall, preferably right after or before a tunnel of some kind, such as a board propped up against the wall. Rodents are creatures of habit and love cruising along walls in the dead of night. If the wall also features some protective cover, such as our board example, all the better. The yellow bait pad has a large surface area and traps the rodent as it scurries across the trap, no bait needed.

Follow Robbie's instructions to make your own deadfall trap using everyday stuff around the house. Use caution with this trap as it can smash fingers and kill pets as well as rodents. To learn how to cook your critter, head to the Crucially Creative Cooking chapter.

In the strictest sense, stored emergency food should be treated as rations, not regular meals. Its main focus is to provide the survivor with sugar in order to minimize catabolism and dehydration and increase survival time.

At minimum, have a two- to four-week supply of stored food on hand for possible emergencies. This food should be easy to access, portable, require no cooking, and meet all of your nutritional needs. Don't forget to store food at the office and in vehicles as well.

If the power goes out, eat the food in the refrigerator first, and then the freezer. In a well-stocked, well-insulated freezer, foods will usually still have ice crystals in their centers-meaning they are safe to eat-for at least two days.

There are three macronutrients in foods: carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. All contain different amounts of calories, or stored energy, and "burn" or metabolize at varying rates within the body. Stored foods should contain all three macronutrients when possible for maximum nutrition and energy.

Of the three macronutrients, proteins require the most water from the body to metabolize. Avoid proteins and salty foods when water supplies are scarce.

Along with the nutritional content in quality food, salt and fats (cooking oils, etc.) are required for life. Fats are difficult to store for long periods of time but salt will store indefinitely.

Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the amount of calories you burn at rest doing no physical activity. Physiological factors that increase BMR are being male, young, tall, and muscular. Doing any physical activity whatsoever will increase the amount of calories you burn, as will certain illnesses and being in cold weather without adequate clothing or shelter.

Several factors will determine what your family chooses to store for food. These include the family's preference for what they like to eat, the supposed duration of the emergency, the age and health of family members, your home's unique storage environment, family finances, and pets.

Warning! Don't take food storage for granted. Forced low-calorie diets of semistarvation will have far-reaching psychological and physiological effects. Leave living-off-the-land mythologies to Hollywood.

Be discreet about your food storage program and its location. It's no one's business but your family's.

There are several types of prepared foods that can be successfully stored. The more common options are canned goods, dried or dehydrated, freeze-dried, whole grains or legumes packed in buckets, and MREs (meals ready to eat). All have their pros and cons in preparation, cost, palatability, storage life, and nutrition.

Basic rules of food storage: Store what you eat, rotate what you store, store your food in the best possible conditions for maximum storage life using food-grade containers, and keep things simple.

In general, canned foods are great for food storage plans as they are widely available, durable and portable, cheap, easy to open with no preparation or cooking required, and store well for up to two years.

How much food to store is dependent upon the intention and needs of each family. Keeping track of consumed food is helpful for purchasing larger quant.i.ties. As an example, a family wis.h.i.+ng to store six months of food can estimate the amount of food required to purchase by keeping track of all food eaten within a one month period and multiplying by six.

For maximum storage life, foods should be stored in a cool, dry, dark location in food-grade, oxygen-free containers. The containers should also keep stored foods protected from rodents and insect infestations. All food should be dated and faithfully rotated.

When purchasing bulk grains or legumes, buy only from reputable dealers who quickly sell large volumes of quality product. The more they sell, the fresher the product will be and the less likely it will have an insect problem.

Insects, and their larva and eggs, can be destroyed with sufficient heat or cold. Keep food storage areas clean to avoid attracting pest problems in the first place.

Some molds in foods produce dangerous mycotoxins that are toxic to humans. These toxins make their way deep into foods, last for long periods of time, and are not destroyed by heat.

Warning! All "wet foods" such as canned goods, whether home-canned or commercially canned, that are bulging, leaking, smell bad, or squirt fluid when you open them should be safely discarded out of the reach of children and animals. Deadly bacterias such as botulism can quickly kill your loved ones. If in doubt, throw it out!

The easiest way to prevent decreased nutritional content and spoiled food is to faithfully rotate your stored food using the "FIFO" method, first in, first out.

SAVVY yet SIMPLE Significant Subst.i.tute SANITATION

"And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee."

-Deuteronomy 23:13 Improper sanitation is directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide every year. Some slum settlements today in Africa require up to 150 people to share a single toilet, forcing many to defecate in plastic bags, known as "flying toilets," which are thrown on the roadside. Disease from improper sanitation has at times proved just as deadly as the wars which provoked the situation. During the American Civil War, more than 70,000 soldiers died from dysentery. The same plight killed more soldiers than bullets during the Spanish-American War. Currently, more than 2.6 billion people live without proper toilets or drains, leaving ample opportunity for disease. Should an act of devastation take out your town or city's sanitation system, an alternative means for dealing with human waste should rank high on your list of survival priorities.

Early efforts at sanitation, at least for the wealthy, have been traced back as early as 3300 BC to the Mesopotamians, with the Greeks, Romans, and others following suit. For the "common man," going to the john usually meant something different. For early Romans, it was routine to throw the contents of the chamber pot out the window and onto the street the next morning. Countless supposedly advanced civilizations had for the most part no clue about proper sanitation. Many cultures simply p.o.o.ped in unhygienic pits or threw the contents of their primitive privies over the walls of towns and cities. Medieval Paris had to extend its protective city walls as the pile of p.o.o.p had grown so tall outside the original wall that invaders could climb the pile and attack the city. The thousands of pounds of excrement dumped into rivers even stopped some of them from flowing. Needless to say, the smell of many medieval towns and cities was totally obnoxious and dangerously unsanitary. It wasn't until the mid-1800s with the likes of potty pioneers Thomas Twyford, Thomas c.r.a.pper, and George Jennings that improvements in the toilet and sanitation started to create less of a stink.

A lack of sanitation facilities following a major disaster can quickly create disease epidemics unless basic guidelines are followed. Unfortunately, modern urbanites have an "out of sight, out of mind" mentality regarding the aftermath of going to the bathroom. We have grown accustomed to doing our duty, hitting a lever, and letting someone else deal with our s.h.i.+t, literally and figuratively. Sooner or later, however, similar to one who blames other people or circ.u.mstances for his or her troubles, our waste products will catch up with us to be redeemed.

The average person produces two to three pints of urine and one pound of feces every day. Imagine your family's toilet after one day of use without the ability to get rid of its contents. Besides rating high on the gross-o-meter, it's a great way to get your entire family sick, especially during the warm season. As clean as your family might be, the truth is, flies, pests, and pets love p.o.o.p and will stop at virtually nothing to partake in the feast. After dining on your t.u.r.d, flies won't think twice about landing upon your sandwich or whatever survival cuisine you may be enjoying at the moment. The ensuing results from fecalborne pathogens can be disastrous to you and your loved ones' health.

P[ee]P[ee] and D[oo]D[oo]: Decisively Dealing with Dangerous Dung Over the years I have ushered hundreds of people into the wilderness for survival and primitive living skills courses. Within hours of our arrival at our backcountry home, we discuss the nature of doing one's business in nature. These helpful hints are just as applicable in your backyard as they are out in the woods. Use the "PPDD" formula as ground rules for the toilet options discussed later in this chapter.

PPDD Stands for Privacy, Proximity, Depth, and Drainage Privacy Unless your potty plan produces privacy on the part of the partic.i.p.ant, you will quickly fall from grace within your family. The last thing that anyone needs during a survival scenario is to be stressed out about where to go to the toilet. Undo stress and concern about being seen while going to the bathroom can psychologically and physiologically cause a person to "bind up" inside, preventing a bowel movement through constipation. Unless this is remedied, your loved one may become impacted, forcing a kind of kins.h.i.+p better left to the imagination and the virtues of a rubber glove. Along with providing privacy, tell your loved ones to RELAX and consciously think about the process while doing the job. If they are tense or strain, the sphincter muscles contract and make evacuation more difficult. This, along with squatting to keep the sigmoid colon properly aligned (outlined later) and adequate roughage in the diet should do the trick. Once again, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of. . .well, you get the picture. A simple tarp or other barrier might be all that is required to have your family p.o.o.ping in peace.

Proximity I have had people get lost in the woods while looking for the perfect private haven to go to the toilet. They walk so long and so far that, upon their return trip, they become disoriented from camp-an embarra.s.sing predicament at the very least. While this point might not be applicable for your situation, make certain that your place of business is located within the realm of your loved ones finding their way back to the house. Stress, fear, darkness, weather, or other variables might make your backyard or back lot trip a bit more challenging than usual. Having a designated place to go to the bathroom that is private will prevent a person's instinct to wander until they find a spot in which they feel safe.

Depth According to the U.S. Forest Service, one should dig a small hole at least twelve inches deep to p.o.o.p in. Doing so in most of the state of Arizona will require a backhoe due to incredibly hard desert earth. Sometimes, in remote areas during intense desert heat, I leave scat uncovered; it gets baked by the desert sun and decomposes much more rapidly than if covered. In this case, I am on a cross-country hiking course and am permanently leaving the area and the fly connection. For our urban/suburban purposes, plan on covering your p.o.o.p. There are a few different applications in regards to the depth and the size of the hole, which I'll cover later in the chapter.

Drainage Poor sanitation habits are stereotyped to be the curse of developing countries and their largely "uncivilized" population. Recent history has proved otherwise. The Serbian/Croatian conflict mentioned earlier is case in point. Unfortunate families downstream from the upstream p.o.o.pers bore the brunt of the effects. Entire families became ill due to fecal pathogens as rampant dysentery ruled day and night. People tried to keep clean by was.h.i.+ng themselves in the flowing water, further exacerbating the problem. Many babies, small children, and a few adults died as a result.

If a drainage or low spot on your property doesn't contain water, sooner or later, after a heavy rainfall, it will. Ample rainfall will cause drainages to flow, and the flow will be dictated by our friend gravity. Many dry washes or arroyos in the Southwest become dangerous killers as summer monsoon storms cause powerful flashfloods, was.h.i.+ng away cars, cows, and campers.

It's tempting for some to go potty in drainages, as excess vegetation caused by extra groundwater enables one to squat with some semblance of privacy. Pathogens in fecal matter can travel more than three hundred feet through the earth, thereby contaminating above- and below-groundwater sources with a bevy of nasty things.

If you go potty in that private little wash in the back of your property, when it does flow you risk infecting your neighborhood with the gift that keeps on giving. Think like a raindrop when you decide where to station the outhouse-your family and neighbors will thank you.

Using Your Existing Toilet If the water mains are broken, it's still possible to use your indoor toilet with no water in the back tank. Before doing the following suggestion, make sure there is no problem with the local sewer mains! Flus.h.i.+ng your toilet when the town's sewer infrastructure is in pieces will further complicate your locality's sanitation emergency. Eventually radio or some other media will broadcast bulletins concerning the status of your sewer lines and whether it is safe to flush.

After going to the bathroom, pour water into the toilet bowl itself (not the tank in the back) from a five-gallon bucket or other large container and your toilet will flush. Obviously, use this method only if water is an abundant resource.

If for some reason your toilet cannot be flushed you can still use it for the seat that it is. First, remove the water from the bowl. Next, tape or otherwise anchor a heavy-duty plastic bag (I would double the bags) under the toilet seat and let the bag fill the cavity of the bowl. After the bag is comfortably full (two-thirds at most), untape the bag, add a small amount of powdered disinfectant like wood ashes or quicklime, tie it very securely, and place it within a preprepared slit trench or durable container such as a plastic five-gallon bucket (lined with a trash bag) or a trash container (lined with a trash bag) with a tight-fitting lid. Don't be cheap and have too much p.o.o.p in the bag or it will be a living nightmare to tie up and dispose of.

The Five-Gallon Bucket I love five-gallon buckets as they have endless uses. They are containers, and hunting and gathering cultures around the world evolved around the container and how it could be used, from carrying food and water to babies and bedding. Have several buckets on hand and keep the plastic ones out of the sun so they don't prematurely deteriorate and crack and fall apart.

Five-gallon buckets lined with a couple of heavy-duty plastic bags can be used as portable toilets indoors or outside. When the bag is too full for comfort, tie it off securely and dispose of it in a preprepared slit trench or secure container for disposal when your emergency is over. Some camping stores sell buckets complete with a toilet-seat lid, custom-made for going to the bathroom. Sitting on the uncomfortable rim of the bucket can be dealt with by laying a couple of boards across the bucket's top and p.o.o.ping in between the boards. At the onset of an emergency, any container will do that has a cover and will hold the contents until you can dispose of it. Many varieties of sanitizing chemical packets and disinfectants can be purchased from camping and RV stores and can be added to the contents of the bucket.

Basic Backyard Bathrooms: A Potty Primer You would be amazed at how many people have never gone to the bathroom outdoors. If you are one of those amazing people, no problem, there's always a new day and another opportunity! The following outdoor recommendations are basic, yet tried and true.

Most families have a variety of options to deal with human waste after a grid meltdown, especially those with access to a little bare ground in the backyard or elsewhere. Extreme caution should be used in areas where the groundwater table is high; raw sewage can easily infect underground water supplies, wells, springs, creeks, rivers, and lakes. If possible, locate your trench WELL AWAY from all potential water sources, above and below ground. The United States Forest Service recommends a minimum of two hundred feet between your p.o.o.p site and any open water source. (Consider this a bare minimum, as waterborne pathogens have been known to travel more than three hundred feet to contaminate above- and below-groundwater sources.) Nevertheless, if your yard's topography directs rainfall runoff through the latrine, and then into the stream, rethink your location regardless of the two-hundred-foot rule. Fierce storms can dump amazing amounts of rain in a very short time. After the carnage, it's easy to study the ground and see where the next storm's runoff water will go by the tiny and sometimes not so tiny ravines created by the initial storm.

Use common sense, and wherever you go to the bathroom, think like a raindrop and visualize the area covered with water and notice where the flow would go. There may be times, due to the right topography, that you'll be fine having a cat hole fifty feet or so from water, especially if it's used for only a few days. If you're unable to safely dig cat holes or pit trenches, don't bury your human waste. Store it instead on the premises in containers with tight-fitting lids. I'll talk more about this type of containment later.

The Slit Trench If you have the s.p.a.ce and the time, a slit trench is a great way for the family to unload its troubles in a contained manner with minimal potential for sanitation problems. Slit trenches take more effort to create than cat holes but can be used for extended periods of time and by larger families.

The Cat Hole The cat-hole method speaks for itself with a few human, sanitary considerations thrown in. The next time Whiskers or Fluffy takes a dump, notice what they do. First, they find a diggable area which meets their psychological profile regarding privacy. Next, they dig the hole, do their business, and bury the results. Cat holes are good for single uses or more. Posthole diggers are marvelous for efficiently excavating fairly deep pilot holes good for several p.o.o.ps. Manual or mechanical augers, if available, are even better.

You will be squatting to go to the bathroom for both slit trenches and cat holes. Get used to this thought now. If need be, you can always improvise something to sit on to suspend your derriere over the hole. If family members are older, have bad knees, or some other physical disability, you can creatively build things out of 24s or knock out the bottom of a chair to support a b.u.t.t over slit trenches and cat holes.

A Word on "Squatting"

SAVVY SQUATTING STRATEGIES.

1 Have your heels higher than your toes. Put rocks or boards under your heels, squat on a slope, etc.

2 If helpful, stretch beforehand to help loosen tight muscles. Go ahead and laugh. . .until the night you have dysentery over your trench.

3 If wearing shorts or pants, take off one leg, or better yet, take them off completely before squatting. This provides greater mobility, lessens the need for accuracy, and eliminates the stress of c.r.a.pping on your clothes. Dresses are wonderful for squatting and can provide some semblance of privacy when going to the bathroom in less than private scenarios. Take off your underwear and simply lift the dress up, bunching it around your waist. Men can do the same with kilts-how can a 250-pound, axe-wielding Scottish warrior be a sissy?

4 Anchor some type of grab bar such as posts, a suspended rope, or have your trench near a helpful bush or tree limb to hold onto to a.s.sist you in getting back into a standing position. Grab bars are critical for obese, elderly, or physically impaired family members.

Unless you're lucky enough to be a catcher for a baseball team, most Americans are not accustomed to squatting while going to the bathroom. If you have traveled to many locales on our planet, from India to Asia, the chances are high that you have already practiced squatting. Squatting properly positions the body more naturally, keeping the sigmoid colon in a more vertical position, and lets the abdominal cavity be supported by the tops of the thighs to help eliminate waste more efficiently.

Conditions and Materials Needed to Construct a Slit Trench or Cat Hole 1 The bodily need. If you have a large family or expect to be doing your business for an extended period of time, constructing a slit trench might be the best option. Cat holes work for short-time uses or smaller families, depending on how much land you have.

2 Access to dry or moist (not wet) diggable ground that is safe from contaminating above- and below-groundwater sources and safe for access and use by all members of the family. If you have the opportunity and are thinking ahead, locate your trenches and cat holes around areas where your family's fecal matter will nourish the earth. Multiple cat holes around the perimeter of your fruit trees will fertilize the tree, thereby providing a more healthy and abundant crop in the future. Don't dig too close to the tree or you'll run into roots.

3 Something to dig with. Shovels (and picks and digging bars in the case of most of the Southwest) and posthole diggers work well for creating a comfortable ca-ca cavity in most earth. If you own a small backhoe or garden tractor with an auger attachment, you'll be your neighborhood's best bathroom barter buddy.

4 Privacy barriers. Unless your poo place has built-in privacy from fences, trees, shrubs, or whatever, plan on making Aunt Betty's potty practice pleasurable by erecting sheets, extra blankets, opaque tarps, or some other visibility barrier. Again, a word to the wise: If you fail to make your bathroom spot psychologically comfortable for the user, they won't use it. This can lead to uncomfortable results such as constipation and possible fecal compaction. Do you really want to know your family this well? Like everything else in this book, plan ahead and get to know your family's comfort zone now.

5 Something to cover the p.o.o.p and fill in the hole. Remember, flies and other critters, including many family dogs, love p.o.o.p, so it's important to cover it over to decrease the possibility of problems. Your family can simply use the dirt that came out of the hole but flies can be aggressive little diggers. If you're worried about kids or pets rooting through the debris, get aggressive about blocking off the opening of the trench or hole with boards or something else. Wood ashes from your fireplace or woodstove or a thin layer of quicklime can also be used as cover. Both have somewhat disinfectant properties that not only make it harder for flies to dig for the goodies but also provide a barrier that flies (and most pets) disagree with. Ashes and quicklime are also powderlike in their makeup, thus they cover p.o.o.p thoroughly. Agricultural lime is much, much stronger than quicklime. Too much agricultural lime will disrupt the pH of the soil, affecting plant growth, depending on the ecosystem. If agricultural lime is all you have, cut it at a ratio of one tablespoon lime per five-gallon bucket of wood ashes.

When your slit trench or cat hole is full (about a foot from the top), spread a thin layer of quicklime on the contents and fill it in with dirt.

You'll have more dirt leftover because you've been adding p.o.o.p to the hole. This is good as you want to mound up the dirt over the trench or cat hole as the earth will settle with time. When the trench is full, walk on the mound to pack the earth down.

After the t.u.r.d Your colon is empty, the results have been safely buried, and life is looking up. . .now what? Before you make everyone a survival sandwich or hug the baby, it's time to take action about was.h.i.+ng your hands. I always wipe my b.u.t.t with the same hand, but I thoroughly wash both. Hand was.h.i.+ng is critical, especially in group scenarios, as the majority of sanitary health problems and kitchen cases of food poisoning are a direct result of improper food handling by kitchen workers with unclean hands. Always stock waterless hand sanitizer (usually an alcohol base) in your bathroom whether or not you have a water-was.h.i.+ng option available; water may be hard to come by at some point in your ordeal. At my water-miser homestead, I use waterless hand sanitizer full time in the bathroom. Put one or two squirts into the palm of your hand and briskly rub your hands together until the sanitizer dissipates. If thirty seconds of brisk hand rubbing have pa.s.sed and your hands are still wet with sanitizer, use less next time.

Another option is to have a small basin of water with enough household bleach 5.25 or 6 percent in it to make the water smell strongly of chlorine, usually two and a half capfuls (one tablespoon) for every gallon of water. As the size of bleach caps vary, some folks tie a measuring spoon to the handle of the bleach bottle. Chlorine bleach dissipates into the air over time so pay attention and add more bleach often to retain the chlorine smell. Change the water frequently, depending upon use. Be aware that heat inactivates bleach and in very cold water it takes longer to work. The rule of thumb is, if your hand-was.h.i.+ng water doesn't smell like chlorine, add more bleach! While somewhat sketchy, in the outdoors when I have no water, bleach, or hand sanitizer, I use "clean" sand, gravel, or earth to wash my hands. Vigorously rub your fingers and hands with the above for thirty seconds or more and you should be good to go in a pinch.