Food-Borne Disease

The deadly outbreak of E. coli in Europe sounds a wake-up call for all of us. Over the course of just a couple weeks, the death toll has reached 33, with about 3,100 sickened by the bacterium carried on food.

One of the problems has been identifying which food to avoid. Investigators have bounced around from tomatoes to cucumbers to lettuce to bean sprouts — at first suspecting each of those as the source of the disease, then later dismissing them. Now, it appears that they are back to pointing toward the bean sprouts as the culprit.

The uncertainty wreaked havoc with the food industry, as customers abandoned first one type of food and then another, leaving farmers unable to market their crops. In addition to the damage that was done to human health, there was enormous damage to the European economy from this little "epidemic."

I say "little" because, devastating as it is to the individuals and families involved, the numbers are puny by comparison with other disease outbreaks that historically killed millions. Nevertheless, it is still a serious problem when officials can't even put their fingers on what is causing the disease.

Hospitals in Hamburg, Germany (seemingly the epicenter of the outbreak), have been overwhelmed. Doctors and nurses are working around the clock trying to keep up with the influx of patients.  More than 700 of the patients are suffering from not only diarrhea and cramps, but have developed life-threatening complications that can lead to kidney failure, paralysis and epileptic seizures. Hundreds of patients are in intensive care. These patients need round-the-clock medical care, working the medical staff and also the hospital cleaning staff to exhaustion.

One of the surprising things about this illness is who it has affected. In a statement by Marc Voss, a senior internist at Regio Clinic Elmshorn, "It has been very stressful for all of us because we are dealing predominantly with younger patients without significant previous diseases." About 77% of patients are women, the majority of them between 20 and 50 years old, most are physically fit and live healthy lifestyles.

How can that be? It's easy to understand when we consider that this particular outbreak of E. coli has been carried on vegetables. The young, health-conscious, physically fit are likely to be eating a diet that includes a lot of vegetables — so they were a prime target.

Does that mean we should avoid eating vegetables? Not at all. In fact, most E. coli outbreaks arrive on meats that have been contaminated during processing. And dairy foods are often carriers of salmonella. So unless you give up eating altogether, there's always a possibility that the food you buy (even organic) might be contaminated.

The solution? Double wash everything. Use a vegetable cleanser such as GSE (grapefruit seed extract) mixed with water in a spray bottle and sprayed onto the food while washing. It's a good idea to wash the outside of fruits and veggies even though you're going to discard the peel (melon, oranges, bananas, etc.) to prevent accidental transfer of contaminants from the outside to the inside.

In this day, when we import so much produce from across the country or around the world, it's a good idea to be especially cautious. But even if you buy all your produce from local farms, that is no guarantee against disease outbreak. For those folks in Germany, the produce came from a local organic farm.

One additional lesson we can take from this incident is how quickly the hospital system can become overwhelmed by even a relatively minor catastrophic event. When something BIG comes along, we won't be able to depend on local medical care or other normal community services. We need to obtain as much training as possible so we are more capable of handling our own situation, insofar as possible. Some crises are clearly beyond our ability to handle without outside help, but we should do as much as we can without depending on the community to take care of us.

Five Rules

Being a competent outdoorsman doesn’t come naturally for most of us. That shouldn’t be a big surprise, because we live indoors, get our water out of a faucet, eat refrigerated food that’s cooked on something other than a wood fire, and sleep dry in a comfy bed under a roof. We don’t grow up hunting everything we eat, shaking our boots out before putting them on, building shelter from natural materials before bedding down in a blanket roll, and bathing in a cold creek while using a bit of sphagnum moss or equisetum for a scrub brush. That’s because most of us live in civilization.

That being the case, it takes some effort to become competent in the outdoors. To be good at living in a camp setting, we have to break the chains of civilization…at least a little bit. Doesn’t mean we have to live in the dirt, sleep with a pinecone stuck in our back, eat semi-raw burned food, offer ourself up to predatory insects, or be miserable in a hundred unmentionable ways. Nope! All it really means is that we need to learn some new rules of life in order to keep ourself safe and happy.

Here are five suggestions to get started:

• The first order of business is to know where you are in relation to where you want to be. It’s called not getting lost. 

A butcher friend once told me, when I was foolish enough to ask him if he ever cut himself, “Heck yeah! I’m a butcher, ain’t I?” I took that as a yes. And the same goes for outdoorsmen — if you explore the great outdoors long enough, it’s only a matter of time until you look around and wonder just where you might be. That’s what we call being lost. It comes from failing to pay strict attention to everything around you…especially the trail behind you.

To keep from getting lost, periodically turn around and study your backtrail. It looks totally different going back on the same trail, so memorize the landmarks — the rock with lichens growing on it, the tree with a goofy forked limb, everything.

I got lost once in a deep forest in Louisiana. Being from the West, I grew up looking at mountainous scenery, using peaks and cliffs and canyons as landmarks while I hiked. Well, Louisiana has none of that stuff, and sure enough, I got misplaced (just another way of saying the L word). It’s a spooky feeling, and I don’t recommend it. So pay attention. Turn around often and memorize the backtrail. If there’s nothing memorable to look at, tie a bit of surveyors tape to a twig so it will stand out when you look back upon it. When you hike back out, take the bits of tape with you, so as not to litter the trail.

• Be prepared to stay longer than originally planned. You never know what’s going to happen, so if you’re out for a day hike, be prepared to stay overnight, or maybe even two. That means some kind of shelter, some food, water and the ability to make fire and signal for help. All of that stuff can go in a couple of pockets, if you choose your equipment well. 

We’re talking the basics here. For shelter, I carry two items — an inexpensive pocket poncho and an emergency blanket by Adventure Medical Kits (www.adventuremedicalkits.com). For food, I carry a few granola bars and some jerky. For purifying water, I carry a Frontier Filter straw by AquaMira (www.aquamira.com). To start fires, I carry a Bic and also a Swedish FireSteel (www.lightmyfire.com) plus a few cotton balls treated with petroleum jelly and stowed in a zip baggie. And to signal for help, I carry a signal mirror and a signal whistle.

• Experienced outdoorsmen make camp early in the afternoon, several hours before sunset, giving themselves ample time to get the shelter up, a fire started, and a good supply of firewood to last through the evening, with some left over to start the fire the next morning. 

• Be prepared to solve emergency medical problems. Even the most cautious life in camp sometimes involves getting a splinter, minor burns, cuts and scrapes. Have a good first aid kit. Expand your knowledge by taking a first aid course. Become competent and comfortable managing factures and sprains, hypothermia, heat-related injuries, CPR, blood loss, shock, drowning, snakebite, and major burns. 

• Finally, the mark of a true outdoorsman is wilderness etiquette — Don’t take noisy entertainment gadgets with you when you go camping. There’s a reason people like to go into the great outdoors for short periods of time — it’s called getting away from it all. What’s the sense of getting away from it all if you take it all with you? 

While boat camping at Lake Powell one summer, we found a quiet cove with an isolated beach, dropped anchor, kicked back and enjoyed the crimson canyon walls and crystal blue water. A hawk soared overhead. It’s the kind of place that causes you to whisper so as not to disturb the silence.

Then they came — a houseboat with a family full of kids. They anchored a hundred feet away, fired up the generator, cranked up the megawatt stereo system, and proceeded to destroy the serenity. I found myself shaking my head in disbelief. We quietly packed up our camp and moved to another canyon.

Real outdoorsmen love the sound of a breeze whispering through the trees, and the chuckle of a stream racing over a bed of rocks. They are polite enough to allow others the same opportunity to enjoy the peace nature has to offer. So my recommendation is that if you absolutely can’t live without noise, at least spare others the annoyance by wearing ear buds or headphones.

So, there you have five fundamentals that can help you become a more outdoorsman-like person.

Prevent Lyme Disease

When we lived in Wisconsin, it was a daily ritual to perform "tick inspections" on each other and on our kids. Ticks were simply a way of life there, and some would end up crawling up into the scalp area and hiding in the hair. But the inspections had to cover every inch of the body, because ticks are opportunistic and will settle down for a meal just about anywhere.

It wasn't necessary to hike through the woods or across a grassy field to become tick bait. One morning, I got up, took a shower, put on clean clothes, and hopped on my bike to ride the 6 miles to work. My feet never touched the ground from the moment I left the house until I arrived at the office. But when I got there, I felt something crawling up my neck. You guessed it — a tick.

The point is, ticks can hide in your carpet, in your clothes, or just about anywhere you come in contact with Mother Earth. Granted, some parts of the country are more prone to ticks than other locations. But you can find them in all 50 states. And one of the problems with ticks is that they carry disease — Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and Lyme disease are the two most common.

Lyme disease is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi that normally lives in mice, squirrels and other small animals. Ticks pick up the disease from those animals and transfer it to humans. Lyme disease cases usually peak during the spring and summer months. That's when the ticks are active and when people are outside more often.

Signs and symptoms of Lyme disease are:

• A round, red rash that spreads around the site of the bite
• Flu-like symptoms
• Fatigue
• Headache
• Sore muscles and joints
• Fever

Treatment includes the use of oral antibiotics, prescribed by a doctor. So if you suspect that you have Lyme disease, the first thing to do is schedule an appointment with your doctor. According the the National Institutes of Health, most patients can be cured within a few weeks of taking the medication.

If the disease goes untreated, serious health problems can ensue, including:

• Chronic joint inflammation (sometimes called Lyme arthritis)
• Neurological problems such as facial palsy and neuropathy
• Memory loss
• Heart rhythm irregularities
• Difficulty concentrating
• Changes in mood or sleep habits

To prevent problems with ticks:

• Avoid walking through bushy areas and tall grasses
• Use insect repellent that contains 20-to 30-percent DEET
• Wear long sleeves and long pants. Tuck pants cuffs into your boots or socks, and spray repellent around the boot tops.
• Light colored clothing allows you to spot ticks more easily when they are crawling on the fabric.
• Perform tick inspections daily. Check the whole body, from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet. 
• If you find a tick, remove it as quickly as possible. Use fine-pointed tweezers to grab the tick as close to the mouth parts as possible, where the jaws attach to your skin. Be careful to not squeeze the tick in any manner. Do not try to "back the tick out" by using heat — that only encourages the tick to release the disease into the bite area. If you can't remove the tick yourself, call your doctor. 

The good news is that ticks don't usually spread Lyme disease until they have been attached for at least 36 hours, so if you discover the tick early on, you can probably avoid getting sick.

Surviving an EMP

EMP — what the heck is that? The acronym stands for ElectroMagnetic Pulse and refers to a nuclear weapon detonated at high altitude above a targeted country, sending a powerful burst of electromagnetic energy to destroy the electrical and electronic infrastructure of the nation.

In an EMP attack, the nuclear explosion occurs so high in the atmosphere (25 to 100 miles up) that no physical damage happens at ground level. People aren't killed by the explosion, there is no radioactive fallout, and buildings are not knocked down. Everything looks normal…but nothing that depends on electrical or electronic systems will work. Restoring the systems that are destroyed by the EMP, and thus returning to normalcy might take a year or longer.

If you would like to read an interesting book about what happens in the aftermath of an EMP attack, I suggest One Second After by William R. Forstchen. Although this is a work of fiction, the science is real. The author is a professor of military history and the history of technology, and used proven scientific information as the basis for the story. The foreword to the book was written by Newt Gingrich, and the afterword by a naval captain who is expert on the topic. The book has circulated in the halls of Congress and the Pentagon, and elicited recommendation from those places that every American should read the book to become informed about the potential for this type of attack and how it would impact our daily lives.

Here's a brief rundown of what the experts say would happen after an EMP event:

• Automobiles with electronic ignition systems stop dead in their tracks, as if they had run out of gas. Older vehicle that have no electronic control systems might still operate, but fuel will be unavailable, because the pumps will not operate at gas stations. And the ethanol-laced gas stored in tanks will go bad from phase separation within a couple months and be unusable over the long term. Loss of the transportation system means that no new supplies can be delivered.
• Communication systems such as telephone, radio, television and Internet cease to function. With no communication with the outside world, rumors will spread and the populace will panic, following every crackpot who comes along with theories about the end of the world. 
• Failure of the communication system leads to loss of coordination and cooperation. In the ensuing panic, neighbor will rise up against neighbor, community against community.
• Electric power generation is disabled, because everything is controlled by computer these days, and the sensitive electronics of every computer will be disabled.
• Computer controlled backup generators will not operate, and older generators will only run as long as the fuel holds out.
• With no electricity being delivered to communities, there will be no electricity delivered to businesses, homes, hospitals, etc. 
• There will be no power for the community water company, so no water for your home.
• No power for the community water treatment plant, so the sewage system fails.
• No garbage pickup service, so the garbage will simply pile up and attract vermin. Disease will follow quickly. 
• The fire department won't be able to operate vehicles or equipment to put out fires.
• The police will be on foot, at first, but most who work in community services will eventually abandon their posts to take care of their own families. 
• Stores and pharmacies will almost immediately be emptied of all commodities by those who scramble to grab everything before anyone else can get there. There will be no food, medicines, tools or other supplies left on the shelves.
• The food supply will run out very quickly — within days — as will the domestic water supply. Those who can will hunt and fish until the local game population is decimated, then will turn to domestic pets as a source of protein. 
• The drinking of contaminated water by those who are not equipped to purify their own water, will lead to disease and death. 
• Nursing home personnel have no recourse but to sit by and watch patients die when prescription drugs and other life-saving supplies become unavailable.
• The dead have to be buried by hand, because grave-digging machinery will not operate. After awhile, the dead will be left unburied because lack of food will so weaken survivors that no one has enough energy to dig the graves. 
• Criminals band together into armed gangs and roam from house to house and from town to town in search of food. 

The interesting thing about Forstchen's story is that, although no one died from the initial nuclear blast, there was a massive death toll from the loss of services caused by the EMP. Shows just how dependent on modern technology we, as a culture, have become. 

Survival Myths

Call them old wives tales or rumors or myths, or simply lies. By any name, they are misinformation, and they can lead to disaster when you're in a survival situation. Listed below are 15 of the most common survival myths, along with a brief explanation about why these persistent theories are wrong. 

1. You can determine direction by looking for moss on the north side of trees. The truth is that moss will grow on every side of a tree if conditions of moisture, temperature and shade are just right.

2. It’s safe to eat whatever you see the animals eat. Nope! Some birds can safely eat poison ivy berries, and some rodents can eat mushrooms that are toxic to humans.

3. You can counteract the effects of frostbite by rubbing the affected area with snow. Exactly wrong. Rubbing frozen flesh with snow will only increase the damage.

4. The most important survival priorities are always shelter, fire, water and food. These four vital survival techniques might be superseded by a higher priority such as a catastrophic injury requiring immediate emergency medical treatment.

5. If you “play dead” a grizzly bear will always leave you alone. Not always. A grizzly is unpredictable and might maul you even though you are doing your best imitation of a corpse.

6. You can safely drink water from an active stream if it is tumbling over rocks enough to become aerated. A tumbling brook might still be infested with giardia and/or cryptosporidium that can cause severe illness. Aeration of the water does not kill these pathogens.

7. It’s a good idea to climb a tree to look for the trail ahead. Although gaining a high vantage point can give you a better view of things ahead, climbing a tree is both exhausting and dangerous and is not worth the energy expenditure, nor the risk of injury.

8. Black bears are not a threat to humans. Black bear attacks on humans, while rare, do happen. It’s a mistake to be complacent about encounters with these powerful predators.

9. Take off your boots before crossing a stream or lake, so they don’t pull you down. The greater risk is that of suffering injury to your feet while crossing a body of water. Keep boots on to protect feet, ‘cause you’ll need them to continue your trek.

10. The best way to dry out wet clothing is to wear it while sitting by the fire. Wet clothing literally sucks the warmth out of your body, so get out of the wet things and cover up with something dry while you dry your clothing by the fire.

11. As long as you can find North, you can navigate to safety. North is meaningless unless you know which direction you must travel to reach safety. Knowing where you are in relation to a safe destination is the only important issue.

12. It’s best to hike through the night to avoid the heat of day. In hot regions, use the morning hours for hiking, from just after daybreak until the heat comes up. Hunker down during the heat of the day, but do not travel through the night or you risk injury or becoming lost.

13. Travel swiftly to get out of the survival situation as quickly as possible. Suffering an injury might be the very thing that leads to your death. Travel cautiously to avoid injury at all cost.

14. The best way to purify water is by boiling. Boiling kills organic contaminants in the water, but does not eliminate non-organic pollutants such as chemicals or heavy metals. In fact, boiling can concentrate these inorganics as the water evaporates.

15. Following a river or stream is the best way to find civilization. Some waterways run their course for hundreds of miles without bumping into civilization, especially in the wilder parts of the world. And following a stream can sometimes be exceedingly difficult and dangerous. 

Dramatic Rescue - Lessons Learned

Seven weeks after Canadian couple Albert and Rita Chretien drove down the wrong road and got their van stuck in mud miles away from civilization, 56-year-old Rita was discovered by hunters and rescued. Unfortnately, 59-year-old Albert has yet to be found.

The drama unfolded as the Penticton, B.C. couple decided to take a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada on March 19th. They reached Baker City in eastern Oregon safely, where their images were caught by a store surveillance camera. That was the last known sighting of the couple until Rita was discovered by hunters, after the couple made the decision to do some sightseeing and explore back roads in the desert mountains of southern Oregon.

According to a report by Officer Dan Moskaluk of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the couple "got turned around off the main road that they should have been on." The weather in the area had included a lot of rain and snow over the previous month. Moskaluk noted that they weren't prepared for winter weather and that the couple doesn't go camping.

After the van got stuck in the mud, Albert and Rita hunkered down for a couple of days, and then he decided to try to go on foot to find help. That was the last anyone ever saw of Albert Chretien.

Rita stayed with the van and lived on water and small amounts of trail mix they had with them. Over the ensuing 7 weeks, she lost 20 to 30 pounds, according to family members who spoke with the news media afterward.

The search goes on for Albert, covering an area of 3,000 square miles, but up until now nothing has been found.

This kind of story keep popping up with vicious regularity, reminding us of the lessons that should be learned.

• Even though a long time may go by, and it feels like a waste of time to just sit and do nothing, it is almost always better to stay with the vehicle where you have shelter and at least some supplies to keep you alive until you are rescued. A vehicle is much easier for searchers to spot than a lone individual wandering on the open landscape. 
• When you're in trouble, get signaling efforts going right away. Smoke by day, a bright fire by night. Use signal mirrors to flash the horizon, hoping someone might see the signal and investigate or call authorities. 
• Carry electronic devices such as cell phones, and the ability to keep the battery charged up from the vehicle electrical system. 
• The ultimate rescue device is a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) or the SPOT Satellite Messenger (www.findmespot.com), which will call in the rescue helicopters within a few hours after the system is activated. 
• Carry sufficient drinking water and food in the vehicle to keep you alive for an extended period. 
• Carry blankets or sleeping bags in the vehicle, and equipment that gives you the ability to start fires. 
• File a travel plan with friends and family members, detailing your itinerary. Plan "check in" times with those people, and leave instructions to notify authorities if you don't show up where you're supposed to be. 
• If you decided to make changes to your itinerary, alert the folks you've left your travel plan with, so they'll know where you've gone and when you expect to be at your destination. That step alone would keep you from suffering through 7 weeks of a survival experiences, as Rita Chretien did. 

My Idea of the Ultimate Evacuation Vehicle

A personal evacuation plan should take into account the methods of travel and the routes available to you. The plan should include secondary options, in case the first one doesn't work. That goes not only for the route you'll take, but also the transportation methods you'll use — be it four wheels, two wheels, or no wheels at all.

Vehicles such as cars, trucks or RVs might work. Quadrunners, motorcycles and bicycles might be better under some circumstances. Or you might have the opportunity to leave the land behind and head away from trouble on a boat.

There is a reason we live near a coastline. In my opinion, there is no better escape vehicle (vessel) than a sailboat, and I'll tell you why.

In the event of a catastrophe that requires evacuation, a car, truck, SUV or RV might become bogged down in traffic. If you've decided to evacuate, you might make it only a few miles before you end up stuck in gridlock, surrounded by thousands of other people trying to do the same thing. That could leave you miles from all the supplies you would have had at home, and possibly stuck inside the perimeter of the disaster impact area.

The problem might be exacerbated by a power outage that shuts down the gas station's ability to pump fuel — or the lack of fuel altogether. A fuel shortage can be caused by government imposed rationing, a truck strike,  or some aspect of the disaster itself shutting things down. That's when travel by bicycle becomes an option.

Our personal escape involves a sailboat. We've owned a 26-foot trailerable sailboat for more than 15 years and have sailed all over the western states. Twelve years ago, we settled in a coastal community in the Pacific Northwest, and now enjoy what I consider to be the most viable survival conditions possible. The weather here is not a survival issue. It might be overcast or rainy or chilly sometimes, but we don't have hurricanes, tornados, deadly blizzards with sub-zero cold. We have a good growing season, abundant freshwater, hunting and fishing right at our doorstep. But best of all, we have the open coastline and a sailboat.

Yes, we live in a potential earthquake zone, but earthquakes don't affect boats, unless a tsunami is generated. Even though it's a possibility, the statistical chance for a damaging tsunami in our area is less than being hit by a meteorite. During a tsunami, the best place to be in on high ground, but the second best place is on a boat over deep water, because the energy impulse passes beneath the boat totally unnoticed.

In our region, chances are that some type of catastrophic situation would make it prudent to make our exit via sailboat. It could be a chemical/biological/radiological incident caused by either an accident or by terrorists — it could be the chaos generated by economic breakdown — it could be our desire to step out from under excessive government regulation such as martial law — it could be related to a revolution such as it happening all over the Middle East right now. You just never know what's going to happen, but it's good to have the option of dropping out of sight for your own safety. And the sailboat is the best way I've found to do that.

The evacuation would entail casting off the docklines and heading away from the troubled landscape.  There's no chance of getting stuck in traffic. The wind is free, so we don't need to worry about fuel shortage. The boat is well equipped for living aboard, complete with a galley (kitchen), head (bathroom) with a composting toilet, sleeping areas, a dinette, and storage space for everything we need. We keep the boat stocked with food and water, as well as all the supplies to keep us going for a long time.

The ability to leave the chaos behind, sail away and drop anchor in a quiet cove somewhere is reassuring. After all is said and done, it's the almost impossible challenge of trying to meet the needs of a population in crisis that creates the survival problems. After the dust settles from whatever form of disaster has struck, it's the massive populace that generates survival issues that can last for years after the event has subsided — just look at Haiti, for example. The ability to remove yourself from that picture accomplishes two goals — first, it puts you in a safer position; and second, it eases the burden on relief organizations because they won't have to be concerned about taking care of you.

I know that not everyone lives near a coastline. We didn't always live near one ourselves. But after we analyzed what was going on in the world, we took the steps to put ourselves in this position so we would have a better chance of survival. Your mileage may vary. But I encourage you to think about this and figure things out that will best suit your location and your personal situation.