Bug Out Boat Survival: The Post Apocalyptic Survival Trailer Pod (Aftermath Survival Book 3)

by Ron Foster

  However when the grid went down, he wasn’t regarded as being quirky anymore at all, the message for the need to have been already prepared beforehand had gotten through and whatever Doomsday Prepper Hollywood notions they had of him as a survivalist with lots of guns and ammo and an itchy trigger finger, they could keep to themselves or believe in so long as the myth or fact kept them afraid of him and somewhat distant from his land if they happened to know where he lived.

  The people that knew him best, (the people he actually cared to talk to occasionally on a regular basis) or the closest neighbors that knew of him a bit differently regardless of that bit of awe they had of him at first, that he had actually been prepared and had been preparing for a solar storm to take the grid down for a long time, all now flocked to his door to swear their allegiance in hopes of gaining some of the mythical food stores that they thought he had on hand.

  Sam had some long term food stored around his small place, but not a lot and not near as much extra as he thought he needed for what he saw the future to be. He had on hand in his house and stored in a small metal shed in the yard about the equivalent of one years worth of food split two ways between him and Lori and then he had some more sundries to extend it further as his odd way of estimating provisions went.

  He calculated that with his extra supplies that they could easily extend his one year individual supply into two separate personal one year supplies for them both no problem based upon their regular eating patterns. That was if everything in those No 10 cans remained consumable and fine like stored long term like it was supposed to. He had been buying long term storage foods for over 10 long years a little bit at a time and purchasing mostly freeze dried entrees and basics as his retirement plan in lieu of cash money savings because his limited income forced him to make some hard choices. The way he figured with prices going up on that stuff every year so sharply that it was smart having cans of food around as a life security measure and it beat having devalued dollars In the bank and he instead invested in his own personal retirement food bank. Sam figured to date he might even have gotten himself a nice 50% return or more on his investments in big cans of dried and dehydrated food when looking at the cost to replace what he had these days. He had seen a lot of it go from $20.00 a can to $50.00 per in a relatively short period of time.

  Hell Sam was in his late fifties now and to his way of thinking before this disastrous event had even occurred considered strongly that he had a good investment in all that long term food storage as his personally controlled lifetime resource that he might have been possibly be needing to eat someday during hard times. Particularly what with the way social security was going insolvent etc. and the way his finances were sometimes the pits anyway etc. it made sense. He also had this collection of long term storage in his food bank in his hand and felt if you can’t touch it you don’t own it in regards to other investments such as paper retirement funds like stocks or bonds or anything else he couldn’t afford just made sense.

  Sam planned not only for disasters but for old age as best he could and life in general with a homesteading preppers twist. Just like his decision to purchase that wonderful Tetra-POD Boat this type of planning had many applications in the here and now uses he felt enhanced his quality of life. The problem though was deciding what exactly deserved its own special cargo place on board the boat at the moment and why it should be stowed that had been his constant battle since the grid went down.

  In trailer mode only, he could haul a year or so’s worth of food in it and on it no problem. Hell in Canada he had seen pictures of people hauling a whole big Moose on top of the trailers strapped on as an extra load. The trailer has a 27 cu. ft capacity w/2000 lbs. payload. However transformed into a 10’-10” Jon Boat (rated 3hp / 2persons) mode it is quite a different mathematical calculation and you can’t load that heavy and keep your waterline where you want. In boat mode it has plenty of capacity at a satisfying rating of 766lb. payload but you got to mind your P’s and Q’s on what you’re putting in it because the weight onboard adds up quickly. It’s the ultimate tool for any outdoor enthusiast to take what they need for an outing but Sam didn’t know a prepper out there that wouldn’t find themselves gleefully trying to overload that sturdy thing like it was some kind of a giant tackle box for a SHTF situation! It could certainly carry the kitchen sink if he wanted to but he was careful in his selections of gear and supplies.

  A key advantage of bugging out by boat is the ability to predict and prepare for gathering food in the wilderness using the most sensible and effective manner available. A hobbyist fisherman prepares to catch a game fish or a meat fish by going after a particular species known to frequent a specific habitat chooses his selection of fishing gear almost religiously, you might say. The angler understands to a certain degree the target of the fish’s habits, diets, best fishing depth etc. and uses these traits when choosing their gear to maximize their success such as line weights, rod capabilities and hook sizes. A person fishing for bass primarily will have a different concentration of gear than someone that concentrates on catfish or panfish. A saltwater fisherman will have a different selection of rods reels; lures etc specifically suited to the environments and targeted sport fish they seek to take. It would be rare to find a prepper thinking about putting an entire tackle box into his bug out gear. The boat allows you to do this as well as practice with it. A survival fishing kit is not long term survival nor would I consider it application for practical or enjoyable recreation. Also if you were bugging out on foot and your primary destination was say a lake you would surely depend on and bring a real fishing rod and some tackle over some other things and not stake your life on your ability to cane pole fish with a survival kit. Try surf fishing with a survival fishing kit, not going to happen unless you have some serious survival fishing skills or the ability to get out on the water.

  Your bug out plan starts with an assessment of the conditions you may be facing when the time comes to leave and when the time comes to settle in at your destination. If you are like most of people nowadays you live in an urban environment, therefore you will likely be looking at a hopelessly clogged transportation grid when you go to leave it. If the car doesn’t move you don’t move so you’re not going to be able to carry all your gear you got loaded in your vehicle. Do you have an alternate means of carrying gear like a collapsible hand truck maybe that could help you move your gear once you got to your destination or you could drag your gear off the road and cache it if you got lucky and stuck in a likely place. How about a bicycle, skateboard, wagon etc or like Sam and Lori had Adult NyceWheels scooters for compact alternative transportation? Most people don’t think that far outside the box. Sam and Lori each had a scooter in their personal vehicles in case they broke down and had no other means of transport.

  Let’s say that you live in a large metropolitan area. If the SHTF occurred in a sudden fashion that had some drama to it like a dirty bomb goes off that was planted by a terrorist you can bet your two cents that everyone in town will get likeminded and have the same idea you do; get out of dodge fast.

  The important difference between you as a prepper and the rest of them will be that you will have acquired some of the knowledge needed to bug in and wait it out or get yourself back home to your support group and plan your withdrawal from the city. But what you have to consider immediately is the same immediate problem that the masses have. How will you get through the grid lock and possibly panicked mobs to reach the relative safety of home or open country? Hopefully you will travel as fast as you can. If someone passes you as you trudge along with your pack with a scooter like Sam and Lori, bicycle whatever or for that matter a kayak, well then they will be first to the supplies that have not been claimed.

  If like Sam you live in the eastern half of the country it wouldn’t be presumptuous at all to say that you probably have a large river near your home. That river will connect to other rivers and waterways that will make miles of liquid highways for those with the m
eans to use it! Most people will never think of the water and will limit themselves to land travel. A small boat and good prior planning could allow many people to bypass all that turmoil on the roads and slip nearly unnoticed from the area.

  Keep Moving Forward To Succeed

  By just mentally picturing all of the “cool and essential survival stuff” we preppers often have on hand in our gear and food stashes, it’s not hard for us to imagine at all the new detailed and debated threads of a “Bug Out Boat Essentials List” popping up in the preparedness forums. That is because now we have a cube and weight as for the size of a Tetra Pod boat to go off of as preppers and vie for the title of best annotated list of stuff that needs floating around in that particular boat.

  It’s bad enough with the bug out bag lists of heavy stuff most folks shouldn’t be carrying on their backs but that’s also like comparing a well stocked tackle box for fishing vs. a survival fishing kit. It all boils down to what you are trying to accomplish be it catch a certain type of fish needing specific gear or just a load light enough to get to your bug out location where you have a full tackle box and food stored.

  Sam had a pretty good selection of canned goods like flour and additives like gluten, baking powder, etc, spaghetti, cornmeal, sugar, cereals etc. that were scattered about his Prepper Shack for tortilla making (you can put anything on a tortilla or in a taco, even rabbit, squirrels and fish) and other food stuffs that he figured were now classified as luxuries for holidays, birthdays and just easy living that extended his supplies out to a guesstimated total of feeding of about 1.5 plus people for a year if rationed properly. That’s when this grid down thing had first started six months ago. He had sold some, gave some away, ate a bunch and shared a few meals with the needy and now he was down to 6 months for two.

  Thing is Sam considered he wasn’t the defunct free food warehouse or church pantry for the needy in the city that had been helping the folks living in the country before this disaster either. This was particularly true as in the case Sam now found themselves in, they had food on hand, and the neighbors knew it but not how much was there or he had actually left after doing some minimal help they didn’t have a clue. For some time now it had been a mantra of Sam saying “I ain’t selling anymore food, that’s it for selling or giving away anymore of it, now what? I said I don’t have anything. Please go away or more forcibly “You need to get off my property” etc. This kind of a bad day had been coming around way too much lately. That’s why Sam and Lori had gathered up what they had left in food stores and decided they needed to move on

  Sam had anticipated this food demand for free or sale too less fortunate others he was now encountering after the disaster, well the best he could anyway. He didn’t really know about or anticipate the number of relatives they had or how the disaster affected some family men he now mentally worried about who he thought might be likely to be discussing robbing him with their wives.

  Oh they were basically good folk living around here, he and they depended on one another for security and they were kind of sort of following his advice on getting a community crop in and doing some organized hunting and trapping, well for a bit anyway, that is until all that dissolved into nobody showing up for work except for the bugs and the wildlife to discourage them from further efforts.

  Thing is it was more than worrisome about how they might now come to see Sam after he had cut them off cold after doing everything he felt he could to help them. Some might be thinking some very bad thoughts about him or were being evilly influenced by a group to make them more subordinate and see it their way. Could be some started thinking of Sam as not being as worthy of a character as he used to be to stand between them and their children’s hunger and his meager food stores he had refused to share based upon him just saying no with the implied threat of a holster on his hip.

  Sam knew the primal and often violent urges men got to protect and provide for their families and he knew also of a mother’s love for her children would leave no option untried when it came to their offspring’s health and welfare. That included maybe even robbing Sam and Lori. He didn’t begrudge them that bad idea as much as he acted like, he had hoped he could talk some sense into them and remind them it was his doing that they had got by so far with sort of little mutual survival pacts, but things were just too bad now to expect honor and former moral respect to carry any weight. The community garden project was a flop.

  No him and his girlfriend were probably just considered somehow a bit dispensable as the “ the old odd couple” that needed to be taken care of in some fashion and not so much worry about doing it in a benign way, so they themselves and families could have more to eat in their possibly malevolent imaginations. Law of the jungle and all that. People always want more; even if they have plenty already they often want yours too. Some are just greedier or think they are needier than others so taking for themselves is ok.” Sam mused distractedly.

  “Nobody has plenty of anything except a belly full of misery nowadays I guess, that is unless you count them worthless son of a bitches in government that could have prevented this catastrophe if they had just listened to the public calls for action to harden and improve our infrastructure from known threats.” Sam groused to himself.

  Hell, what were folks in government going to do with them mobs of Middle Eastern refugees they had brought in and forced on the states? Turn them and the illegal aliens and prisons out to do what they wanted to in the country side or have them waiting to move in with us at the FEMA camps to accost the good American citizens needing help? I bet that’s just what the SOB’s did was just walk away and leave the gates open while they hid in a bunker and ate well. Bad enough we already had our whole entitlement crowd with generations of gangs and ghettos destroying cities and minds but now we got the Jihadi’s running amok because their welfare checks stopped too.

  Hopefully those animalistic bastards will die off fighting with each other over scraps of food but not for some time. Hell they are all probably organizing into new gangs and having a field day of rape and pillage without normal legal oversight now. The fools will have already been partying in the streets looting everything they can get their grubbies on if they were just the common run of the mill ignorant lopsided thinking opportunists stealing TV’s and Tennis shoes while our thin nation borders don’t even attempt to stop the cartels and lord knows what moving towards the land of opportunity to take over what they now have access to even more freely.

  If the criminals were already getting across the border smuggled guns, drugs and people before this crap happened, I bet now they are all in second heaven doing more of it and wondering what to do next. Seems like they could get a load of whatever they wanted to across the border back then, I bet the cartels already got the black market food distribution business cornered. They can basically take over farms and have slave labor producing it in Mexico and shipping it up North until they get enough territory in the US taken over to do the same thing here and make the Peon financial system a common thing.

  “The military, oh my word the military, what were they doing at the moment? Fighting with starving citizens or waiting on a invading country” Sam wondered as a twig snapped out in the woods and brought him to a instant halt as he froze and scanned in that direction for game or would a be aggressor.

  “Far too easy for someone to just lay in wait in the bushes with a deer rifle waiting on him or his wife to go fetch water. Far too easy to overwhelm her at the house when he was out trapping or collecting water” Sam somberly considered. Far too easy to die these days for all kind of stupid reasons at any given moment and he wasn’t going to take it anymore! Nasty thoughts flooded his head of all he had seen and experienced the last several months.

  Why it was just the other day that the couple that lived up the road from him had come down and told Sam that they would take care of those pesky neighbors of his for him if he gave them twenty five pounds of rice and some beans if he had any left for barter. It didn’t
seem that they wanted to take care of them in any nice way either as evidently they had some previous angst or grudge against them by their demeanor.

  In addition to the violence-prone, there will be the element of normally decent people who didn't prepare and who will try to take what they need by whatever means necessary to keep themselves and their families alive

  That was when Sam had told Lori in no uncertain terms that it was time for them to be moving on away from this place.

  Sam calmed himself down now as he decided it was probably just a bird browsing in the forest litter or something that he had heard to distract him and put him on guard as he went back to stealthily slinking back down the trail towards the creek. He was on a mission today to pick up all his body hold Conibear animal traps today and get himself ready for tomorrow to bug out. As he walked along he could just not get that disturbing conversation out of his mind about the alleged bounty of rice on his neighbors head.

  After Arnold had so aggressively told him of his willingness to “expeditiously remove the problem and Sam didn’t have to worry about it” regarding the rice barter thing, Sam had to do some serious rethinking of his position in this life. He felt betrayed and worried that now that for the price of a few meals you could put a contract or bounty on someone. Seems all his good will efforts were for naught to try to get the community together and it was just a waiting game he figured until someone put a value on him.