When All Hell Breaks Loose Part 4

How much stuff does your family need to store for an emergency and how long will it take until help arrives? The short answer is, how would I know? Once you've decided for your family what is required for their survival and comfort, you can progress to the all-important how much is required. How much survival stuff you have is directly proportional to what you feel threatens your home, and how long the effects will last. In other words, how much you store is a custom decision that must be made by you and your family. Factors that will help you reach a rational decision are included below. While certainly not all-inclusive, these points detail the lion's share of variables that should influence your decision on how much preparedness gear to have around the house. For the curious or desperate, my boilerplate advice for most urban areas is to have a minimum two- to four-week supply of what's needed to function without outside help of any kind.

Enough is Enough: Determining How Much To Store from the Store The following points will help you fine-tune how much preparedness gear your tribe might need. Supplement the list with family meetings, facts on the ground about your unique situation, and common sense.

The number of family members in your tribe, including pets. Obvious enough, yes?

The number of children, elderly, and special-needs members. The young and the old have different needs. These differences fall into many categories including nutrition, entertainment, healthcare and first-aid, sanitation, and mobility. Specialty items catering to either group can be easily overlooked when buying and storing regular supplies. In most instances, these specialty items can be improvised, yet in some cases, a shortage of needed items may cause your family member's death. Take a serious look at what little Jimmy and Grandpa Joe truly need for their survival and purchase more than what's needed for your worst-case scenario. Likewise, people with disabilities or who use special medications may frequently have their medical needs overlooked.

The proposed duration of your emergency, imagined or otherwise. My crystal ball broke a long time ago. This is the wild card that no one can escape, knowing how long the emergency your family must endure will last. Pay attention to the other points in this list, make an educated guess regarding what types of emergencies could be the most prevalent for your home turf, plan and prepare the best that you can, have faith, and be happy.

Realistic opportunities to resupply your stock. A common thread in most urban survival scenarios is the limited ability to purchase more goods. In a realm where living off the land means commandeering the 1986 Cutla.s.s Supreme from the supermarket to the discount store, your self-reliance will last as long as the last item on the shelf, or the capacity of your gas tank. Travel may be impossible (not to mention dangerous) due to clogged freeways and streets. Even if your grocery store is located down the street, don't expect to come home with bacon and eggs during an emergency.

Rationing supplies as opposed to continuing your normal, "nonemergency" lifestyle. Failing or refusing to ration your supplies and switch your family into "conservation mode" will have dire consequences for your stored goods over longer emergencies. Around the globe, case histories regarding survival situations are loaded with examples of people blowing through limited supplies in short order. The reasons for doing so are endless, as are the ways in which the offending parties died.

One of the most famous cases of survival involved the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crash-landed deep within the Andes mountains. Search planes were sent out to locate the missing plane almost immediately. A few days into their ordeal, the survivors spotted a plane overhead that seemed to circle them and acknowledge their location. In celebratory glee, they proceeded to consume all of their known food and drink while putting a serious dent into the group's stash of cigarettes. Days later, on a dying radio, they heard that the rescue mission to locate them had been called off. In fact, the survivors hadn't been seen at all, as the top of their plane was white and had crashed at an elevation in which snow covered the ground year-round. Before their ultimate rescue, the group remained on the mountain for more than two months, forced to eat the bodies of their dead friends and relatives in order to live.

Having a neighborhood support group as opposed to going it alone. So-called American independence has done damage to our sense of community. Do you know your neighbor? Do you care? The average 1800s American mountain man died when he was between thirty-four to thirty-seven years old. Mountain men were not living off the land without survival tools. They possessed several horses and mules, bags of flour and other dried staples, rifles, knives, traps, fire-starting methods, intimate knowledge of the landscape they were working within, potential friends.h.i.+ps with native peoples, guts, determination, and a serious sense of adventure. Do you have any guesses as to why they died so young?

A friend of mine who teaches primitive living skills put together a "primitive living" experiment on her land. Several people, all well versed in the hard skills it takes to live from the land, joined her for the event. For months prior, each prepared what they felt would be required to give them a fighting chance. They dried deer and elk meat, made baskets, buckskin clothing, extra footwear, hunting and fis.h.i.+ng implements, pottery cookware, shelters, and on and on the list went. When the experiment finally commenced, more than 75 percent of the people washed out before the first week was over, many due to headaches suffered from caffeine and nicotine withdrawal! My friend ended up alone with her eight-year-old daughter for the next several weeks.

Regardless of her knowledge and the fact that she was on her own turf, she was unable to advance beyond eating and using the stores she had initially prepared for the experiment. She couldn't gather enough new calories to break even with what she started with, let alone store a surplus for the coming weeks. This trial was conducted in late summer in northern Montana, a land where calories were not going to get any easier to find as autumn hit and winter followed.

As she recounted her experience, she stated that the reason she failed to make any progress toward a self-sustaining lifestyle was because she had to do everything herself. In the case of the mountain men, doing everything alone flat wore them out, leaving them more susceptible to the dangers of their daily life. In other words, they died young from the sheer harshness of their solitary lifestyle. For all of you rugged individualists out there, take heart and listen to the wisdom of the tribe. Consider creating a support system with like-minded individuals who live nearby.

Climate and season. Cold and hot weather each have their variables that tax human survival. Frigid temperatures will cause your body's metabolism to spike and burn through calories like crazy, depleting your food stores more quickly than usual. Hot weather will cause you and your family to suck down your water supply in short order. Be sure to update and rotate certain stored items to meet the challenges of the changing seasons.

The geographical location of your home. During the summer of 2005, America suffered her largest disaster nightmare to date as Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana and Mississippi, devastating the coastline and completely obliterating entire towns from the landscape. Thousands died and tens of thousands were displaced. Built below sea level, the city of New Orleans, the Big Easy itself, was under several feet of water. On the sixth day of the disaster, countless people, dehydrated, short or out of food, and very scared, were still waiting to be rescued from partially submerged homes and apartments. For G.o.d's sake, if you live in or near geographical areas that are especially vulnerable to some kind of unique tragedy, please take the necessary precautions to deal with your area's worst-case scenario. In New Orleans, knowing how to disinfect water for drinking could have literally saved dozens of lives, and it can be done for as little as one dollar, or with trash and know-how for free.

Your ability to improvise your needs directly from your environment. Many communities are more suburban than urban. Many more are flat-out rural. If you have a creek running through your backyard, hooray for you, provided that you have the ability to disinfect the water when the bodies float by. If wildlife regularly wanders around your home, you have options that others do not. If the back lot of your property is wooded, you have access to supplies valuable to your family's survival; if your kitchen window looks out over a vegetable garden, all the better. After gleaning the necessities for survival from common sense, this book, and other sources, peruse your immediate area to discern which tasks and needs can be improvised directly from your environment. Remember that simplicity and doing more with less are important keys to your family's survival.

FINDING OUT What You'll MISS around the House BEFORE IT'S GONE

"He who does not economize will have to agonize."

-Confucius a.s.suming that you live in a metropolitan area, as 80 percent of our nation does, a large part of your survival plan will focus upon your home. If you're living on "grid power," provide fun for the entire family by finding the main breaker and turning it off. (Tell your family first what you're trying to accomplish). Folks living in apartments or other places where the neighbors would frown upon your little game can simply duct tape switches and appliances as reminders that they no longer work. Try this exercise some evening and see if you and your family can sense the feeling that someone has you by the groin. Most families quickly realize that their world as they know it can be brought to a standstill in the blink of a breaker. Like Alcoholics Anonymous, the first step in the healing process is to realize that we have a problem. But in this case, we're not powerless to do something about it.

Another cool exercise to find out how much power and fuel your family uses is to compile a list. The list should include all major appliances or items that require electricity or fuel such as propane or natural gas that your family uses on a daily basis. For example, the word "refrigerator" stands for the refrigerator, the word "television" represents the television and so on. Each time a family member uses an item on the list, they put a check mark beside the item. This method is more effective if everyone writes down the amount of time the item was used. If the television is checked off, write down how long you watched TV after the check mark. Using the check mark system allows family members to at least see how many times an appliance has been used (as they put the check mark by the appliance before they use it), in the event they forget to jot down how long the appliance was on after the fact. You might also have a list for items that are used every week or two. If your family is honest with itself, it won't take long to pick out the high-use items. Extending the exercise a full week, photocopying the original checklist so that each day has a fresh page upon which to record your day's consumption, will give you a good average to work with regarding your family's fixation with its furnis.h.i.+ngs.

Next, have a family meeting (remember consensus decision-making, if applicable) and carefully look over the high-use items in the household. What stuff has the most check marks beside it and how long was it used? Decide for your family what are non-negotiable, high-need items. I would recommend breaking this into two parts. The first list should have items that dictate the very survival of your family. In essence, your family would die in a long-term survival situation without these items. Antic.i.p.ating the duration of your family's mock survival scenario is paramount to what and how many supplies you will need. Only you know if more supplies will be required for your situation.

Part two includes items that, while not truly needed for base survival, would be nice to have around to keep the kids from crawling up the walls. This list might include a few high-use items from the main list that add to the family's sense of calm by promoting psychological comfort. If television is prominent for your tribe, and you don't have a small, battery-operated TV (as if full programming would be up and running in a serious emergency), consider instead the ultimate goal of TV. While it can provide information, TV typically provides entertainment, but so do board games, and with fewer moving parts and less energy consumption.

Listing what your family actually uses each day and how long they use it will hammer home the truth about what they deem important in your household. Without this written evidence, you will be far less likely to accurately a.s.sess your family's needs and wants, and what will push their b.u.t.tons when they are deprived of the furnis.h.i.+ngs they love so much.

PART 2.

HAND CANDY.

Gimme SHELTER!

"If design, production, and construction cannot be channeled to serve survival, if we fabricate an environment-of which, after all, we seem an inseparable part-but cannot make it an organically possible extension of ourselves, then the end of the race may well appear in sight."

-Richard Neutra, Survival Through Design The optimum ambient temperature in which human beings are able to maintain core body temperature without stress is 79 to 86 degrees F (26 to 30 degrees C). Although the modern home now serves many purposes, physical and psychological, a home used to have one main priority. It matters not if your home is a mansion or a shack for this purpose. Both the mansion and the shack are simply shelters, and a shelter's main purpose in the past was to act as an extension of clothing to help thermoregulate the core body temperature of its occupants. I don't care how much money you've dumped into your shelter to compete with the Joneses, if it's too hot or cold inside, you'll be miserable. This almighty G.o.d called "room temperature" is a phenomenon so common and taken for granted that its importance to comfort and happiness has been completely overlooked by modern urbanites. It's only when the invisible switch of room temperature clicks off that people realize how dependent on the grid they have become.

According to Tony Brown, founder and director of the Ecosa Inst.i.tute, Americans use more than 30 percent of the country's total energy budget to heat and cool their homes. This wasteful blasphemy should hammer home the point that stabilizing the inner temperature of the home ranks high on the list of priorities for all Americans. It's a blasphemy because there are many alternative building and common-sense options for builders and homeowners alike that severely reduce or all but eliminate the need for heating and cooling the home with outside resources. The Ecosa Inst.i.tute is a sustainable design school for architecture students that teaches alternative methods of design, construction, and energy efficiency. It is part of the growing tide of people worldwide who know there are better options for building smart, efficient homes without pillaging the land. Imagine how much freer this nation and the world would be if common-sense building alternatives to promote energy efficiency were actively promoted by the world's governments. What if we eliminated even half of the above percentage of our nation's energy dependence by simply building or modifying current homes to make better use of free energy sources and conserve the ones they use? Luckily, we don't have to wait for status quo politicians who seem to be more interested in keeping their job than doing their job.

The Self-Reliant Freedom of Good Design "MY PRECEPT TO ALL WHO BUILD IS, THAT THE OWNER SHOULD BE AN ORNAMENT TO THE HOUSE, AND NOT THE HOUSE TO THE OWNER.".

-CICERO In a modern outdoor survival situation the most common way to die is to succ.u.mb to hypothermia, low body temperature, or hyperthermia, high body temperature. Knowing this, and knowing that this country has become a slave to foreign energy in order to have a comfortable living room, I wanted to design a home that would thermoregulate its own core body temperature, and I have. While my home looks unconventional, the basic concepts that I've incorporated to achieve energy freedom are orientation, thermal ma.s.s, and insulation. These common-sense concepts can be applied to any home regardless of the materials it's constructed from or how it looks.

It's winter in the high desert as I write this, and last night the thermometer outside read 9 degrees F (minus 13 degrees C), a bit colder than typical and, ironically, part of the same storm system that left 500,000 people without power in the Midwest. Regardless of single-digit temperatures, my home remained a cozy 72 degrees F (22 degrees C), and it did so without using any conventional energy resources. I have no heating bills of any kind and I don't burn wood. My home is heated entirely by the free clean energy of the sun, a phenomenon commonly referred to as "pa.s.sive solar." Along with orienting my home solar south, I have the proper square footage of windows to match the square footage of my home so that it doesn't under- or overheat. These windows let in shortwave radiation from the sun that soaks into my stone floor during the day. At night when outside temperatures dip, the stone floor, which is a great conductor of the sun's energy, re-radiates the stored suns.h.i.+ne, or heat, as long-wave radiation that keeps the house warm. Insulation and thermal ma.s.s help retain the heat throughout the night. The process starts anew the next day. Even though my home is dependent on the sun for heat, it's designed to retain this comfort for several days of cloudy weather or storms.

In the summertime, when outside temperatures. .h.i.t triple digits, I enjoy inside temps in the high 70s (approximately 25 degrees C). I have no cooling bills of any kind. A simple roof overhang designed for my window height and lat.i.tude keeps the higher summer sun's rays from hitting the stone floor. My windows and doors are situated to take advantage of the prevailing weather patterns and the cooler nighttime breezes. In fact, the entire front of the house is a huge parabola that acts as a scoop to harness the dominant southwestern weather systems for optimal natural free ventilation when required. Once again, thermal ma.s.s and insulation keep out hot temperatures while maintaining the cooler inside environment.

I've utilized an open floor plan that allows natural light from the sun to reach all rooms of the house, even though my house is underground. This eliminates the need for artificial lighting of any kind until it gets dark outside. The wall paint is impregnated with mica, which is highly reflective of natural or artificial light, thereby increasing the light value. Hundreds of pieces of shattered mirror line a vertical skylight that reflects sunlight into a back room that has no windows of its own.

What electrical lighting, appliances (including a microwave, was.h.i.+ng machine, and computer), and tools that I require are powered by a self-contained solar system. A carport to s.h.i.+eld vehicles from the summer sun doubles as a rain catchment surface, which funnels thousands of gallons of potable water into a holding tank that gravity feeds into the house. My hot water comes from the sun as well, which heats up water-filled panels and the salvaged inside of a conventional water heater that's painted black. Although much of the time I use a small, two-burner, propane-fueled stove for cooking, my solar oven cooks everything from lentil soup to chocolate cake for free. Regardless of my frequent stove use, by paying attention to fuel consumption as outlined in the creative cooking chapter, I can make my barbeque grill-sized propane tank (twenty-pound cylinder) last more than a year and a half. And it costs less than thirteen dollars to fill.

The rooms in my home are a series of parabolas, one of nature's strongest shapes, thus my home was built for a fraction of the cost of traditional earth homes that require ma.s.sive infrastructure to hold up the weight of the earth. The shape of my roof is, of course, arched, like the top of an igloo, so even though gra.s.s and flowers grow on the roof, it doesn't leak, as there is no flat surface for water to collect. The precipitation that does. .h.i.t the roof is directed by earthen contours and berms toward waiting fruit trees that are heavily mulched with compost, sand, and stone to conserve water. The earth acts as thermal ma.s.s, helping to slow down fluctuations in temperature, and the gra.s.ses on the roof not only stabilize the earth from erosion, but act as insulation, especially during the hot summer months when they shade the roof from the sun. The hot-season native gramma gra.s.ses require no water other than rain and also provide forage for the wild desert cottontail rabbits (which I hunt for food) that live on my roof.

In short, my off-the-grid home thermoregulates its own inner temperature in hot and cold weather extremes, self-ventilates, lights itself during daylight hours, and provides supplemental meat for the table, all for free, and all with very little activity on my part. It does so because I researched and implemented the virtues of good building design and paid strict attention to the natural world of my particular building site.

Most homes are dependent boxes plopped down upon a landscape in which little or no thought was given as to how the landscape operates, except to take advantage of the pretty view. Did I mention that I have a pretty view, too? Because nature is so often ignored when building footprints are laid out, the homeowner pays the price for the builder's ignorance each month in heating and cooling bills. And more than a quarter of energy expenditures within the United States goes to pay for this nonsense.

While it might be impractical to retrofit your home to take advantage of these concepts, one of my friends did, and it has completely changed the comfort level of his mountain log home. New homebuilders have the option of researching what alternative building methods will work for their geographical life zone, and I encourage them to do so. The little extra effort and thought you put into the design of your shelter will save you loads of time, headaches, and money over the years. With the precarious nature of petroleum supplies these days, your super-energy-efficient home will have a healthy resale value when compared to the common oil-guzzling or natural-gas-consuming box. While giving you instructions on designing a self-reliant, energy-efficient home is out of bounds for this book, mentioning that it's entirely possible to do so is not. Ultimate self-reliance comes when one prepares to mitigate the cause of problems instead of fiddling around with the effects.

The Art of Regulating Your Core Body Temperature:

An Ignored yet Critical Competence

Hypothermia: (From the Greek hypo, meaning "under, beneath, or below," and the Greek therme, meaning "heat.") Hypothermia occurs when your body's core temperature drops below 98.6 degrees F (37 degrees C).

Hyperthermia: (From the Greek hyper, meaning "over, above, or excessive," and the Greek therme, meaning "heat.") Hyperthermia occurs when your body's core temperature rises above 98.6 degrees F (37 degrees C).

As stated earlier, the main intention of your home or any shelter is to help thermoregulate your core body temperature during periods of outside temperature fluctuation. Still don't believe it? In simple terms, if it's too hot outside, you retreat into the house to enjoy the air conditioning. If it's too cold outside, you withdraw inside to thaw out by the heater.

If a catastrophe brings down the power grid, unless you have alternative ways to heat or cool your home, you may be subjected to extreme outdoor temperatures inside your home. Dozens of people die in America each year, in their homes, due to lack of thermoregulation. In the late summer of 2003, Europe was heavily hit by a major heat wave in which tens of thousands of people died. The ensuing drought caused crops to fail and thousands of acres of countryside to burn in forest fires. Nearly 20,000 people died in Italy; 2,139 in the United Kingdom; 7,000 in Germany; and 14,802 in France-all within a few weeks. As France does not normally have very hot summers and most residences are not equipped with air conditioning, people were unaware of how to deal with the onslaught of high temperatures. Due to the rarity of the event, French officials had no contingency plan for a heat wave and the crippling effects of dehydration and hyperthermia. To complicate matters further, the heat wave occurred in August, a month in which many French citizens (including governmental physicians and doctors) are on vacation.

Closer to home, obnoxious summer heat waves in Chicago alone have killed more than a hundred people in just a few days from hyperthermia and dehydration. Hundreds more die each year across the nation as drought cycles increase and temperatures climb. Likewise, winter weather and hypothermia go on a killing spree as snow and ice storms knock out power, snarl traffic, disrupt communications, and delay aid to hundreds of thousands of people without heat. Far from needing radically cold temperatures to do its work, the majority of deaths from hypothermia occur when air temperatures are between 30 and 50 degrees F (minus 2 to 10 degrees C).

The term "exposure" is a generic term often used by the media to describe deaths due to hypothermia or hyperthermia. Both are, by far, the unspoken causes of death that in silence and without fanfare go about killing the unprepared en ma.s.se around the world. Please realize that many of the skills and concepts presented in this book are directly or indirectly related to helping you achieve and maintain a normal core body temperature for your survival. The following information on body temperature regulation is extremely important, so don't s.p.a.ce out and go on autopilot when you read it. The most efficient way to prepare for and mitigate a disaster is to know its cause.

Thermoregulation: Your Body's Nitty Gritty for Both Country and City In humans, core body temperature alternates in cycles throughout the day. While daily activity is responsible for some of this cycling, the body's circadian rhythm accounts for the majority. Inner body temperatures are lower in the early morning, around 97.9 degrees (36.6 degree C) with the late afternoon high being approximately 99.3 degrees (37.4 degrees C). Age is also an important factor, as some thermoregulatory responses are not fully developed until after p.u.b.erty. People in their sixties and older will be subject to less sweating in reaction to heat and a reduced vasoconstrictor response and s.h.i.+vering in response to cold. While body temperature regulation between men and women is similar, there are several subtle differences in females. Females have a smaller blood volume, lower hemoglobin concentration, smaller heart and lean body ma.s.s (less muscle means less s.h.i.+vering), a greater percentage of total body fat, greater surface area to ma.s.s ratio, a higher body temperature set point for sweating, and geometrically thinner extremities, to name a few. Females also have the added difference of monthly temperature variations relating to menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause.

Fluctuations in core body temperature, high or low, of even a few degrees can severely compromise your ability to survive. To control its inner temperature, the body must be able to sense a change in environmental temperature and respond accordingly. To do so, in part, the body is equipped with warm and cold receptors located in the skin, spinal cord, muscles, and brain that begin physiological changes to quickly deal with temperature extremes. Many variables contribute to the development and severity of hypothermia and hyperthermia including a person's age, s.e.x, health, nutrition, body size, hydration, physical exercise, exhaustion, duration of exposure to wind and temperature, wetness, medications, intoxicants, and prior adaptation to heat or cold. The core body temperature is thermoregulated by the physiological responses and reflexes of vasoconstriction, vasodilation, s.h.i.+vering, and sweating. Aside from basic physical necessities such as an un.o.bstructed airway, breathing, and circulation, thermoregulation is of prime importance for your short- and long-term survival.

Temperature regulation in humans represents the balance between heat production from metabolic sources such as digesting a pizza and exercise, and heat loss from respiration and evaporation (sweating) and the physics of radiation, convection, and conduction. Once hypothermia develops, the heat deficit is shared by two body compartments, the sh.e.l.l and the core. Your outer skin or "sh.e.l.l" consists of .065 inches of skin and has an average area of 2.2 square yards. This means that on average your sh.e.l.l accounts for only 10 percent of your total body ma.s.s. The rest of it is considered "the core." In other words, when your body senses a drop in core temperature, it burns through an enormous amount of calories and puts a dent in your stored food supply.

Human beings suck in their ability to physiologically adapt to cold environments. Temperature regulatory mechanisms act through the autonomic nervous system and are largely controlled by the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus responds to stimuli from nerve receptors in your skin, which is the largest organ in your body. In a cold environment, body heat is conserved first by the constriction of blood vessels near the body's surface (vasoconstriction), keeping the majority of blood (heat) in the core. The body thus uses the skin and underlying fatty layer as insulation. The one area of skin that doesn't constrict blood flow when the outside temperature gets cold is the scalp, which likes to remain at a fairly constant temperature regardless of outside extremes. This is one reason why the head and neck area loses (and gains in hot temperatures) a tremendous amount of heat.

In its attempt to regulate temperature, the body changes blood flow to the skin. When blood vessels are dilated wide open in hot weather, the body can circulate more than four quarts of blood every minute-in the skin alone. In cold weather, blood vessels constrict the skin's blood flow to an amazing 99 percent of the former, a mere 0.02 quarts per minute! Ironically, when temperatures continue to drop, blood vessels in the skin dilate (vasodilation), and if temperatures drop further, the blood vessels alternate back and forth between dilation and constriction in the body's attempt to ensure that the skin remains undamaged from the cold. The result is your red nose, ears, hands, and other appendages in the wintertime. If outside temperatures continue to plummet, however, surface blood vessels constrict continuously to protect the core.

Second in the body's response to cold are uncoordinated waves of muscle contractions more commonly referred to as s.h.i.+vering. s.h.i.+vering utilizes small parts of the skeletal muscles called motor units, which contract at around ten to twenty times per second and can increase your metabolism fivefold! The energy needed for s.h.i.+vering comes from fats and simple sugars (carbohydrates) and can be used up quickly if not replaced with extra food. s.h.i.+vering decreases when carbon dioxide levels raise (as in a poorly ventilated home or emergency shelter), when the oxygen in the air becomes thinner (extremes in alt.i.tude), and through the use of alcohol, which impairs the s.h.i.+vering response.

Since blood vessels are essentially the pipes your body uses to heat itself by forcing warmed blood throughout your body, ingesting substances that dilate surface blood vessels is stupid. Purposely constricting blood vessels is also a bad move whether through nicotine use, dehydration, or tight clothing. Dehydration slowly turns your blood into ketchup, making it that much harder for the heart to circulate the sludge around in order to keep inner temperatures stable. Low temperatures also change the composition of blood, making it thicker by up to 21 percent, by increasing the number of particles such as platelets, red blood cells, and cholesterol.

When it's hot outside, heat must be lost by the body to maintain a proper core temperature. Brain cells are particularly sensitive to high temperatures. Increased surface blood flow through dilated vessels, especially in the arms and legs, works at dissipating extra heat by exploiting the major surface areas of the body as well as avoiding the insulating properties of subcutaneous fat. Once again, if your blood turns to ketchup because of dehydration, this activity is severely compromised. The increased surface blood flow and the wonders of evaporative heat loss through increased sweating are the main tools your body uses to stabilize its inner core when outside temperatures soar.

Cellular Chaos Your body's 50 billion cells have permeable membranes, or "walls," consisting of lipids or fats. Through these membranes cells make and break bonds at precise rates, maintaining such levels as our sodium and pota.s.sium balance. These membranes, being composed of fats, are very sensitive to changes in temperature.

When your core body temperature drops, proteins within the cells start to clump, causing holes, while water in and around the cells freeze to form jagged ice crystals that shred the delicate membranes. Conversely, as the core overheats, cell membranes begin to lose their elasticity and can actually melt. With cell membranes damaged, precision rates are altered and once-pristine body systems fall into a state of unregulated pandemonium. Fluctuations in core body temperature literally cause chaos on a cellular level, chaos you can see in the uncoordinated signs and symptoms of hypo- and hyperthermia.

In summary, living in cold temperatures without insulated clothing and footwear, lying on uninsulated ground (conduction), or wearing weather-dampened or sweated-out cotton clothing (evaporation) in the wind (convection) while being unable to improvise a heat source (radiation) can all cause death by hypothermia.

Conversely, in hot temperatures, radiation from the sun (directly and reflected from the ground and particulate matter in the air) can heat up conductive ground surfaces in excess of 150 degrees F (65.5 degrees C). This in turn helps produce heated convective winds capable of evaporating sweat obscenely fast with little cooling effect for the body. Add in the effects of metabolic heat produced by digging a sanitation trench in the backyard at noon, and you have a serious setup for dehydration, hyperthermia, and death.

Knowing the Signs and Symptoms of Hypothermia and Hyperthermia A "sign" is a behavior you see in someone else while a "symptom" is a behavior someone else sees in you. Notice that the psychological signs and symptoms of hypothermia and hyperthermia are very similar, involving disorientation and poor coordination. These similarities are no accident and offer vital clues into a person's physiology at the time. In city or country, recognizing the signs and symptoms of hypothermia and hyperthermia in yourself and others is critical as they are the body's warning signals that things are getting out of whack on a cellular level. The majority of people dead from exposure had ample early warnings that were ignored. These warning signs are your second chance to immediately manipulate your internal and external environment in whatever way you can to prevent further heat loss or gain.

Heinous Hypothermia: The Signs and Symptoms Early Signs and Symptoms Core temperature 9596 degrees F (3535.5 degrees C) s.h.i.+vering Decreased awareness Unable to think or solve problems Apathy Confusion Skin pale and cool to the touch Numbness (stinging pain) Loss of dexterity Advancing Signs and Symptoms Core temperature 9394 degrees F (33.934.5 degrees C) Obvious s.h.i.+vering Stumbling Deterioration of fine and complex motor skills Little or no effort to protect oneself Unaware of present situation Advanced Signs and Symptoms Core temperature 9192 degrees F (32.833.4 degrees C) Intense s.h.i.+vering Difficulty walking Thick or slurred speech No effort to protect oneself Skin appears ashen gray and cold Possible hallucinations The Death Zone Core temperature 8790 degrees F (30.632.2 degrees C) s.h.i.+vering comes in waves Unable to walk Speech very difficult to understand

If the core temperature continues to drop, s.h.i.+vering will cease, breathing and pulse will appear absent, and the skin will become blue in color. Death will quickly follow.

Hideous Hyperthermia: The Signs and Symptoms There are three levels of environmental heat illness recognized by the medical profession. Listed in order of severity, from bad to worse, they are heat cramps, heat exhaustion, and heatstroke. There are two types of heatstroke, cla.s.sical heatstroke and exertional heatstroke. Cla.s.sical heatstroke generally occurs in out-of-shape, sedentary older folks who decide to weed the garden or mow the lawn at noon in July. Exertional heatstroke happens after intense physical activity in a hot environment, especially during periods of high humidity, which prevent the cooling power of evaporation. During this type of heatstroke, despite earlier beliefs, the victim may still be sweating heavily, as the sweat glands are usually still active at the time of collapse. Heatstroke is extremely serious and can be avoided by paying attention to the signs and symptoms of heat cramps and heat exhaustion.

Signs and Symptoms of Heat Cramps Core temperature 99100 degrees F (37.337.8 degrees C) Thirst Irritability Profuse sweating Headache Dizziness Nausea, vomiting Decreased appet.i.te Generalized weakness Spasms of the voluntary muscles and abdomen after exercise and exertion in a hot environment Signs and Symptoms of Heat Exhaustion Core temperature 101102 degrees F (38.438.9 degrees C) Excessive thirst Profuse sweating Headache Dizziness Nausea, vomiting Generalized weakness Decreased appet.i.te Disorientation Confusion Cramps Weak, rapid pulse with shallow, rapid breathing Cool, pale, moist skin Decreased awareness or unconsciousness Signs and Symptoms of Heatstroke Core temperature 103106 degrees F (39.541.1 degrees C) Disorientation Confusion Hot, flushed, potentially dry skin (cla.s.sical heatstroke) or hot, flushed, sweaty skin (exertional heatstroke) Signs and symptoms of shock Rapid, bounding pulse or rapid, weak pulse Initial deep breathing, rapidly progressing to shallow breathing, followed ultimately by no breathing Dilated, sluggish pupils Delirium Little or no effort to protect oneself Unaware of present situation Seizures Stroke Coma If elevated core temperatures remain constant or continue to rise, the Grim Reaper will take you out to lunch.

How Your Body Loses and Gains Heat Humans are incredibly vulnerable to temperature extremes. Like a motor vehicle, the body has very limited temperature parameters in which it will "run." If these limits are breached, the vehicle runs worse and worse until it finally stops running altogether. Regardless of where you live on this planet, you are susceptible to certain physical laws that dictate how your body loses and gains heat from the environment. It matters not if your environment is the deep woods of Alaska or an apartment in downtown Tokyo, the laws of nature described below will be enacted. By recognizing and understanding the following general physics involved in heat loss and gain, the survivor can intelligently a.s.sess virtually any situation placed before them and, one by one, manage the problems. Knowing these simple laws in advance allows the wise person to prepare accordingly and mitigate potential breaches to thermoregulation before they happen.

Conduction Conduction is the transfer of heat (energy) through direct contact with an object, including hot or cold air against the skin. The direction of heat flow is always from a warmer to a cooler temperature. If you touch a surface that's less than 92 degrees F (33 degrees C), you will lose heat through conduction. If the object touched is warmer than 92 degrees F, your body gains heat. Substances vary in their thermal conductivity quite radically. Water has twenty-five times the conductivity of air while muscles possess nearly twice the tissue conductivity of fat. Under normal conditions, conduction accounts for approximately 2 percent of the body's heat loss for a standing person.

Convection Convection is the transfer of heat (energy) through currents in air and liquids and can be either forced or natural. Convection has within it many variables including density, surface shape and temperature profiles, flow dynamics, conductivity, and specific heat. An example of forced convection would be rolling down the windows of a moving car or sitting in front of a fan. Natural convection happens when density changes in heating or cooling molecules next to the body cause them to move away from the body itself. This "boundary layer" effect is caused by slower-moving molecules directly against the skin produced by radiant heat given off by the body. This layer is only a few millimeters thick and is the equivalent of a constant, three-mile-per-hour wind.

Cla.s.sic convection experienced by everyone is the "wind chill factor," which causes existing outside air temperatures to feel much colder then they actually are. The effects of wind chill are directly responsible for thousands of deaths all over the world. In contrast, hot desert winds can feel like a hair dryer on the skin, and suck away evaporating sweat so quickly you might not think it's hot because you're "not sweating." Sweat evaporating from the skin at such an accelerated rate does little to help cool the body.