Bruce Willey

The Great Cover Up

Originally appeared in the Monterey Herald and the Santa Cruz GT Weekly

Rest and rejuvenation for your weary soil, green manure gives back in spades

The transition between summer and fall is always been an especially acute time for vegetable gardeners. Not only must we reacquaint ourselves with store-bought tomatoes that taste like gopher fur dipped in wood shavings, but we must also adapt to all the extra time on our hands as our garden beds lay fallow.  There is, after all, nothing worse than a gaggle of gardener’s wearing overalls and floppy hats, fondling their hoes outside a 7-11 and asking strangers for a spare, heirloom tomato.

But as any good organic gardener knows, late summer/early fall is time to sow the cover crop. Often called green manure, cover crops have been around before the invention of the “green” light bulb, or for that matter, before “green” meant something other than the color of plants, grass and trees. Organic gardeners have long touted the benefits of green manure with the same zeal of growing their own vegetables. And they know that the two have a symbiosis that works magic in the garden.

But your average vegetable gardener—myself included—took longer to make the connection. Why grow something that you’re not going to eat or pick?  Instead, I’d pull the last of the summer’s cornucopia from the garden and leave the garden to the weeds for next season. My soil hated me for it and over time, repaid me with ever-dwindling crops. Reap what you shall sow. 

Green manure, then, is nothing short of a philanthropic uncle that invests in your garden’s future. Cover crops—especially plants in the pea and bean family—fix valuable nutrients like nitrogen that your vegetables were all too happy to consume. Additionally, they act like a living mulch, enthusiastically competing with weeds for space and sunlight while their alive, suppressing weeds when their dead—which goes by the militant-sounding term “crop cover smother effect.”  Green manure also protects from erosion when it rains, providing an umbrella over the soil and allowing the rain to seep slowly into the dirt. Making the soil more drought resistant, cover crop roots also increase the water retention capacity of soil.   

Much in the way cover crops suppress weeds, they stop disease cycles in their tracks by reducing bacterial and fungal diseases that eventually make their way to the summer crops. Mustards are particularly good contenders for this, and along with vetch and clover, attract beneficial insects to the garden. Cover crops also break up the soil with their roots making them a spade-free gardening method that any lazy gardener (again, like myself) will appreciate.

“Our radish mix is like a soil buster,” says Greg Lightfoot of Peaceful Valley Farm Supply, a good Online source for cover crop seeds. Lightfoot has been gardening organically for the last 35 years and says certain cover crops can punch through heavy clay “like vegetable jackhammers.”

Cover crops are best planted at least a month before the first threat of frost. In other words, Right Now. If you still have vestiges of the summer garden, plant between the rows. Though cover crops prefer a cool season, there must be enough warmth for the seeds to germinate.

For best results combine various cover crops. A brawny combo for a soil workout includes a mix of purple vetch, fava beans, winter wheat and cereal rye. Vetch and fava beans pour nitrogen into the soil and create a huge amount of biomass that can either be composted or tilled right into the beds. Be sure to harvest both before they go to seed otherwise nitrogen drains from their root nodules. Rye and wheat on the other hand create super fine root mass which aerates the soil nicely and dumps nutrients in time for spring planting. 

With the cover crop safely in the ground a gardener can finally relax and peruse a seed catalog by the fire, dreaming fondly of next summer’s fresh vegetables. All this while outside, in the cold winter ground, the soil is in good hands, being nourished and protected by nature’s own green cover up.  

 

 

 

Gardening with Bush

George W. Bush and his airborne entourage flew over me as I was putting in a garden for my mother. I was kneeling over a row of Country Gentleman corn, tapping seeds into the earth. It’s a good hybrid variety that would stand 10 feet tall by summer’s end, a corn as sweet as candy. It also pollinates well, is very creamy and great for freezing.

The helicopters came in low and thunderous, skimming the madrones and live oaks to land at the small airport near my mother’s house up in the hills above Napa Valley—St. Helena to be exact. Same kind of choppers you see landing on the White House lawn, so I knew it had to be presidential. I probably should walk down the road and see what the fuss is about, I thought. This was a little more than a year ago.

Like many people I know, whenever I hear Bush on the radio, or worse, see and hear him on TV, I am overcome with undeniable misery. For good reasons, Bush makes me moody. At first it’s somewhat fascinating—the failures of speech and mind, the intellect of a small rodent. Then there’s the nightmarish veracity that this man is our president? Well, it is almost too much to fathom sometimes.

What’s worse, what scares me more, is that a lot of people voted for him, and there are still 37 percent who still give him a thumbs up. Who are these people? And even if he didn’t technically win both times, it seems to me even a million votes is a million too many. I remember my father used to joke that anyone who had voted for Richard Nixon would have to be re-baptized. I’ll go out on the limb a little further and say that those who voted for Bush have blood on their hands. Read the Beatitudes; Jesus would be way pissed off. God, the “higher” father that Bush ostensibly talks to on his strolls around the back of the White House, would do well to reinstate some good old-fashioned Old Testament “smiting” to save us all. But that kind of talk can get the Secret Service mowing down God’s proverbial corn patch.

I thought I would say all this while I can. We’re a dirty bomb away from becoming a fascist state. If that happens, even Barack Obama and Democratic Congress won’t be able to save us. Yet, on a sunny day in Santa Cruz, or anywhere, really, it’s difficult to comprehend what is happening to our freedoms, to the freedoms of others around the world.

Bush doesn’t get out to the Golden State much. Who can blame him. He’s not exactly welcomed here and faces waves of protesters. This visit was no different. Still, even the rumor that he might show had produced enough excitement in the local people that some had the foresight to hang America flags along the route to the ultra fancy B&B at the bottom of the hill where he stayed. At one Christian elementary school the children had painted a large banner with the words “WELCOME MR. PRESIDENT.” It hung on the school’s fence all week and it made me queasy every time I drove by. All those innocent children.

The helicopters eventually landed and I walked down the road to see Bush drive by. Yet there was too much security, state troopers, county sheriffs, secret police—to get close. I didn’t see anything but a long line of black SUV’s speed by.

While Bush was in the area, I fantasized about meeting him as I farmed the large garden plot. What would I say to the man? Would I be overcome by the power of office that I would blather politely? Or would I give him a piece of my mind? Hard to know. I’d rather garden than attend a protest rally.

One drizzly overcast day or so later, not unlike the weather that greeted Bush on his inauguration day, he came back to the helicopters at the airport. The roads were all blocked and it was impossible to get anywhere. I was stuck down near the grocery store along Bush’s return route and I walked out to the side of the road where a few people had gathered holding small flags. For the criminally inclined, it would have been a good day to rob a bank. Every badge, shape and size was predisposed. An hour later a long line of cars, lights blinking, came roaring up the road. And there, in the middle of the 40 or so police cars, were the two giant, black SUV’s with small American flags on the front fenders. It was an odd, disconcerting sight to see that much attention showered on a man that, for all political accidents aside, should have been a baseball commissioner or the CEO of a failing Texas oil company.

As Bush drove by I held out my arm, thumb down, (reverse hitch hiking, if you will) extending it as far as it would go over the pavement. A wave of adrenalin followed my foray into free speech and I felt extremely patriotic. Bush may be our common disaster, a disaster that we Americans will take decades to undo, but back at the garden, the rows of corn seeds were already beginning to grow.

Waiter Diaries

If there was justice in the world, every restaurant customer who has stiffed, under-tipped, snapped fingers, yelled or simply bad-mannered a waiter, waitress or bartender would be required to tie on an apron and work one shift in a restaurant. That’s all it would take. One busy shift and they would forever behave themselves. Food writers, I dare say, would get a mandatory six months on the floor—as bus boys.

Aside from slavery, prostitution, working in the coal mine, not to mention 8th grade substitute teaching, waiting tables is one of the most demanding, thankless jobs ever devised to humble a person. I should know. My resume is graced by two such aforementioned job titles and I’m still recovering. Particularly from waiting tables. Those years drove me to drink, whittled away my self-esteem and ultimately motivated me to finish college so I would hopefully never have to ask, “May I get you anything else?” (In hindsight, I should have majored in oil recovery science just to be sure.)

Yet I still have recurring nightmares. My tables are stretched miles apart but I can see them all. Rushing food out to one table far off on the horizon I pass by a lone table in the middle of a field that needs mayonnaise. Ten minutes later, after dropping off the food at the far end of the universe, another table flags me down on the way back to Hell’s kitchen (yes, char boiling flames and cooks that breath fire) and they need another round of drinks. But first the mayonnaise, which takes 20 minutes to run out and by that time everyone is flagging me down for something, the food is corpse cold, and my customers are flustered and unhappy. I wake up in a sweat, knowing that’s exactly how it was, sweat included.

For one, the human brain did not evolve enough brain cells to wait tables. Multitasking is not a big enough word to convey what happens to a waiter or waitress’s overloaded short-term memory banks. On a busy night, a waitress has a hundred different tasks oiled and whirling in her head. Need water on table 8, drink catastrophe up on B-9, fallen fork on table 2, asinine (with the emphasis on ass) customer waving bill at table 3, cooks screaming “food’s up,” while another customer with the personality of a bone saw is carving you into emotional pieces. And night after night, at the top of this rapid-fire mental to-do-list, is your happiness.

No really. Wait staff work to please, not just for the tips, but to make your dining experience a good one. Most take pride in seeing a table through the meal, knowing their customers got the best service possible, and that they’ll be back. Truth is, most people are good customers even if they could be better. I recall with certain fondness and modulated affection some of the people that graced my shifts. I even wonder what they’re up to now, and still like them better than some members of my own family. They tipped better, that’s for sure.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Restaurant Customers

Gracious Semaphore Techniques. If you need something the proper way to flag down a waiter or waitress is catch their eye, give a slight nod and a subtle wave of the hand. Don’t snap fingers, wave loudly, grab our aprons or yell. When your done, a napkin on the plate is the universal sign for “please take away my plate.” And don’t go to the bar, we only get in trouble for that.

Practice Patience, Employ Empathy A waiter is human, and we make mistakes. Granted some of us are just not smart enough to be good at what we do or we’re having a bad night. But be thankful for even the worst of us because without waiters you would be eating cafeteria food.

Tipping the Scales A tip is not a sign of how happy you are with the service. Tip 10 percent for really bad service, 15 percent for okay to average and 20-25 percent for excellent. But always take into account how busy that person is and what they did for you in spite of it all. Stay home and eat your smelly leftovers if you don’t agree. Or meet me out back behind the grease trap.

Compliments to the House If a waiter or waitress has done a good job compliment them. Even better, writer a letter to the owner of the bar and tell them what a good dining experience you had.

Denigration Probation Don’t belittle, patronize or try to be their best friends (unless you are friends, at which case don’t expect freebies and handouts or better service.)

What’s good here? Enough said. Stupid question.

Communiqué The bottom line is restaurants depend on repeat business. If you like a place you’ll probably go back and your face will become familiar. Your level of service will depend on how you treat the wait staff. Above all, communicate with them, be nice and be civil.

Post-Disaster Survival

Published in the Santa Cruz GT Weekly and the Mill Valley Pacific Sun

Post-Disaster Survival

Eating snails, digging toilets and learning the ABCs of looting: a fresh look at disaster preparedness
by Sven Davis and Bruce Willey


ILLUSTRATION BY MARK POUTENIS

For those that survive the earth shaking, the smattering winds or the muddy water, the post-disaster mantra from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is simple: We must be able to be self-sufficient for 72 hours or more. But what does that entail, exactly? Is it just being able to live by our wits and whatever food, water and supplies we had the foresight to have in store beforehand? Or is there something else? As we remember from the Loma Prieta Earthquake, which rattled this area 16 years ago this month, and the more recent catastrophes that struck New Orleans, Pakistan and India, 72 hours is a long time—and it’s just the beginning. Those that know how to improvise and prepare are the ones that will not only survive, but survive in style. It’s in this spirit that I—a bona fide Loma Prieta Earthquake survivor—offer a guide to living after the “Big One.” So Drop, Cover and Hold On, or at the very least, go buy a few gallons of water, a shovel and a camping stove. We’ll all be better off for it. After all, it’s impossible to know when a major disaster of apocalyptic proportions will hit California again—so much so that the old standby, “it’s not a question of if, but a question of when” has become less a call to arms than a cliché. But it will come despite the human capacity for denial. You can count on it.

Post-Disaster Party/Build a Commune

Once you’ve stabilized your survival needs after a disaster, you should throw a party. Lots of people formed impromptu block parties after our big quake, and the benefits were many.

You are going to be freaked out after a disaster, and getting together with others will make you feel less alone and more supported. You’ll have a powerful urge to tell your adventure story many times, and so will they. Get it out of your system.

You’re also going to have to deal with a lot of food that’s about to spoil, so get the coals going. It’s potluck time, and save room for ice cream.

Before you know it, you’ll have built a little survival community that can share efforts and resources. This is going to bring you all closer. Build a shared outhouse of some sort. Create a meat dehydrator to make jerky out of whatever you didn’t eat at the potluck (try using the barbecue. Cut meats into thin strips and dry on the rack at around 140 degrees overnight). Combine the liquor supply into a proper bar. Create a game center where all your board games and decks of cards are concentrated. Coordinate childcare, piling all the toys in a specific area to make a playground.

And depending on the nature of the disaster, you might want to gather arms and post guards to defend against roving gangs of thugs, malicious aliens, godless communists or flesh-eating zombies.

Water Worries

It’s interesting to note that two of the world’s most common and devastating natural disasters are the result of too much water (floods) and too little water (droughts). These facts are fodder for discussion around the post-disaster campfire. But for now, water is one of the most important things to have in order to survive. Homo Sapiens (which means “clever human” in Latin) can last about 60 days without food, and only about four days without water. Of course they will be the worst four days of your life with every thought devoted to procuring water when you could be having fun and saving people’s lives. So with that in mind, the general recommendation for one, active person is about a gallon a day. And you will be active, believe me.

But we remember those long lines of people waiting to buy water after the ’89 Loma Prieta earthquake and we just can’t help think that it would be more clever, more human really, to stock up on a little more just in case.

Storing water is really easy and doesn’t take up that much space. Plastic milk jugs work well. If your creativity gets sapped in pre-disaster mode you can always just buy gallons of the stuff at the supermarket and store it throughout the house or outside. After all it’s a lot cheaper than gasoline. Speaking of which, it’s a good idea to keep a few gallons in your car as well.

Disaster Preparedness Training

The City of Santa Cruz Fire Department offers a popular training program called CERT, or Community Emergency Response Training. This all- encompassing training will prepare anyone to manage his or her family and neighbors and be self-sufficient in the first few days of the disaster. Classes include earthquake awareness and hazard mitigation, fire suppression and hazardous materials, disaster medicine, search and rescue, team response and management, and disaster exercises. The classes are free. First priority is given to Santa Cruz City residents. Neighborhood groups and businesses are encouraged to apply. Current classes are taking place now. For more information, call 420-5280.

American Red Cross The Santa Cruz Chapter of the Red Cross offers extensive disaster training including first aid/CPR, pet first aid, water safety and preparing for disasters. In addition they offer first aid and disaster kits for home, business and car. For more information, call 429-3600.

Better Living Through Bartering

Besides making sure you have the essentials when preparing for disaster, consider going a step further and pack up some stuff for trade. There will always be things you want that you didn’t expect, and to get them you might have to rely on a barter economy.

Wave your credit card around all you want; two days after a disaster, the man with cold beer to trade has the world in his hands. With no fridge or ice at hand, it may seem impossible, but here’s the trick: Put a few beers in a wet cloth bag and hang it in the shade, in a breeze. Evaporating water takes heat with it, and the beers will cool down. To chill them further, crack a few of those instant ice packs used for sports injuries.

Of course, that supposes that you have a generator keeping a small fridge on line. If you do, you might be able to rent space for insulin users. (You bastard! I can’t believe you even considered that.)

Cigarettes are good, too. They’re lightweight and cheap and nicotine slaves will be doing your dirty work in no time.

Some people will want guns and ammunition, but trading with them will have you robbed of your smokes in no time. Better to stock things like propane bottles for outdoor grills, briquettes, white gas for Coleman stoves (they’ll run on unleaded gas, but that’s our secret), sunscreen, packs of cards, and batteries. Also consider a battery-operated DVD viewer and an assortment of kids’ movies—harried parents will pay top dollar for two hours off.

We were all talking about this stuff when we were panicking about Y2K, remember? Such heady days.

Emotional Response to Disaster

A disaster brings out the best and worst from us all. The media, in search of compelling stories (and ratings) will mostly concentrate on the extremes. Damage and death, heroes and villains, lead the way followed by the human response to the catastrophe. The range of emotions can be astonishing. Everything from pure terror to evangelical joy will be on display. But most people handle the disaster somewhere in the middle with intense feelings of connectedness and a hyper-sense of living in the moment. However, the Department of Health and Human Services has put out some possible behavioral responses to disaster for both victims and emergency responders. If you display any of these signs it may be best to seek some professional help or talk with a friend. Note the following natural symptoms for a natural disaster. And if your “gait changes” and you’re attracted to “gallows humor,” you’re probably too far gone.

• Anxiety, fear
• Grief, guilt, self-doubt. sadness
• Feeling overwhelmed, hopeless, despair, depressed
• Anticipation of harm to self or others, isolation, social withdrawal
• Insomnia
• Gait change
• Hyper-vigilance, startle reactions
• Crying easily
• Gallows humor
• Ritualistic behavior


Signs of the Times

If the disaster is disastrous enough, the President of the United States may cruise over the scene in a big green helicopter. This is exciting, and a rare opportunity for you to flex your freedom of speech and let the President know what you’re thinking. And if we are hit by and earthquake or tsunami before 2008, it will be the first time George W. Bush will have made a stop in the Bay Area, assuming he’ll actually come. He may not. The majority of us didn’t vote for him and he may hold that against us. All the more reason to prepare now.

Suggested Phrases to Write on Your Roof:

1 ABOUT TIME
2 DROP BEER HERE
3 YOU ARE THE DISASTER
4 HELP US EVILDOERS
5 BUSHWACKED
6 OK, OK WE’LL VOTE REPUBLICAN

Eight Disaster Reading Classics

1. “Earth Abides” George R. Stewart2. “South: The Last Antarctic Expedition of Shackleton and the Endurance” by Sir Ernest Shackleton with forward by Tim Cahill 3. “Transforming California” by John McPhee4. “Swiss Family Robinson” by Johann Wyss (for the kids)5. “A Dangerous Place: California’s Unsettling Fate” by Marc Reisner (Author of “Cadillac Desert”)6. “Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors” by Piers Paul Read7. “Robinson Crusoe” by Daniel Defoe8. “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding

Top Ten Disaster Films

Earthquake! (Charlton Heston)Twiste rOutbreak The China Syndrome The Day After Tomorrow The Andromeda Strain Volcano Armageddon The Swarm (bees)Independence Day

Suburban Foraging

So you didn’t plan well and you don’t have any food, or maybe you just want something fresh to augment your canned food supplies. Boy are you in the right area! Local Ohlones didn’t have much trouble gathering food around here, and neither should you. You’ve got lots to choose from:

Seafood Besides fishing, you could try some nice mussels, (but only between November and April), or even sample some seaweed. All seaweeds are edible. Pick them alive and young.

Plants Late summer is blackberry season. Spring and summer is good for dandelion leaves. In the woods, look for miners’ lettuce, redwood sorrel, and madrone berries. Making acorn mush is a lot of hard work, but you’ll have a disgusting gruel to reward your efforts.

Garden Revenge Snails are edible. In fact, our common garden snail, Helix aspersa, was imported as escargot in the 1850s and escaped (“Hey! Come back here!”). They may have eaten snail bait before you find them, though, so keep them captive for at least three days (ideally two weeks), feeding them plants or corn meal in the meantime. If they die, toss them out. Boil the survivors for 10 to 15 minutes, pull them from the shell, and chop them up. Toss in pasta with butter and herbs. They’ll resemble chopped clams. Don’t tell the kids. But why wait for a disaster? They’re just 300 calories per pound, and chock full of amino acids, calcium and protein.

Critters Whether they’re caught in your traps or fresh road kill, almost anything tries to cross a road can be eaten. Rattlesnakes, opossums, pigeons, ducks and deer can add a bit of welcome variety. Rabbits, squirrels and raccoons and various rodents have scent glands that need to be removed—such information is surprisingly easy to find on the Internet. See, it’s not just for porn!

Pets Not that anyone’s advocating it, but we’ve seen a photo of a sign on a storefront in New Orleans that says, “Don’t try. I’m inside with a big dog, an ugly woman, two shotguns and a claw hammer. “ Then two weeks later he added, “Still here. Woman left. Cooking a pot of dog gumbo.” That’s a bit regional. In our case, it might all be about the kitty carnitas. Bon appetit.

‘Roger That, I Read You Loud and Clear’

Though it’s difficult to quantify such things, after food, water and shelter, being able to communicate and receive information is critical to your survival in the first few days after a disaster. Come to think about it, it’s important all the time. Yet in a disaster situation many of our usual means of communication are severed, sometimes quite literally. Here are a few options to help keep you connected:

Walkie-talkies If the good, altruistic folks called first responders find them useful, then there must be applications for the common disaster victim. That, and parents keep track of their kids before they’re cell phone age with walkie-talkies. Unfortunately the consumer grade versions aren’t on the same channel as police and fire so you can’t get the inside scoop and voyeur in on the gory details. Nevertheless, walkie-talkies instantly add disaster cache and are great communication tools when the cell phone towers are knocked up. Just remember not to wander more than two miles, their range.

Radio A battery-operated radio for news reports and evacuation warnings is crucial. A few different radio manufacturers have cashed in on this. The Eton FR300 short-wave radio, for example, has a flashlight, cell phone charger, a crank in case the batteries die, and a bleeding siren. The company has grown so large that they, along with the Department of Homeland Security, declared last September to be National Preparedness Month.

Base Camp Some of the most haunting images to come out of Hurricane Katrina had to be the relatives of the victims attempting to contact them on national television. It’s best to avoid having to do this, so set up a location and method of communication before the disaster happens. A bulletin board at a one-story coffee shop or campus quad; Grandma’s house; and a contact of a relative or friend outside the state—preferably far inland without earthquake faults.

Television Because it’s weird and sort of flattering to see your town on CNN. And yes there are battery operated TVs. Of course there’s bound to be a survivalist geek who no doubt has his Tivo hooked up to a generator. But he wouldn’t be sitting around your campfire anyway.

A bullhorn Handy for rallying the neighbors into storming FEMA headquarters for some answers, calling the kids back from their baseball game in the deserted street, or yelling “Please remain calm. Everything is under control.” Use with discretion and only if you can look at yourself in the mirror and say with conviction: “I am not a natural born leader.”

Urban Camping

For the fleece and Gortex set, a major disaster can be treated as just another extended backpacking trip without the cumbersome backpack or long walk. Most likely you already have the camping accouterments—tent, sleeping bags, stove and the like—and it’s just a matter of running into the house between aftershocks and hauling it into the back yard.

But urban, post-disaster camping has its own particular challenges not found in Yosemite or Yellowstone. For starters you may find yourself camping with people who have never been a day’s walk away from their hair dryers. I’m referring to men here, but if you know women who are like this too, they also won’t appreciate the finer points of a well-pitched tent or like the smell of campfire on their clothes. So the trick is to try and make the experience as civilized as humanly possible while they slowly adjust to a life their great- great-grandmother experienced on the homestead. (Telling them this probably won’t help.)

Set the camp away from anything that might tumble down or fly through the air and land on you while you’re trying to go about your new-found outdoor life. This includes trees and telephone poles that may have been damaged in the disaster. Basically you want to avoid situations that will put your life in peril—again.

In our Mediterranean, non-buggy climate, a tent may be overkill unless it happens to be raining. But it still provides some much-needed psychological comfort and some privacy from the neighbors who have suddenly become your best friends. Those royal blue tarps that you can get at any hardware store work great too, and block out the stars just as well. Spread as many blankets around as you can muster and it will almost feel like a bed. Cardboard is another fantastic insulator as the homeless (bless their hearts) have long known. If it’s cold, remember that two bodies tightly squeezed together can almost double the body heat on one side. Experiment. Domesticated warm-blooded animals will work in a pinch. In Alaska, where the men are plentiful and the women are few, an awfully cold night is called a “three dog night” for a reason. How many cats equal a “three dog night?” Again, experiment.

Most disaster checklists don’t call for earplugs, yet they are fantastic for muffling your snoring bedmates of which there could be many now. Plus they cut the noise of howling (or snoring) dogs, sirens and other obnoxiously rampant post-disaster sounds. Sleep is necessary for your survival, and a good night’s rest will keep you alert and ready for most anything in the morning. Things like cooking the rest of the tepid food from the darkening fridge for breakfast before it goes bad comes immediately to mind. Keep a small collection of earplugs with the tent stakes and you’ll always have them when you need them.

With the gas and electricity off, you’ll need to make a kitchen outside. I’m going to be frank here: No one living in a disaster-prone state should be without a Coleman two-burner stove. The forest green wonder has been around forever, and has done more to civilize the campsite than the Winnebago. Well that’s a stretch, but you get the point. Make it a comfortable area to cook: grab the table out of the fallen-down house; stack the disaster detritus into a workable outdoor kitchen counter.

Other backpacking stoves work too, though the canister models may become useless after you’ve run out of canisters. Models like MSR’s Whisperlight or, even better, the mountaineering stove of choice, the XGK, which burns everything from diesel to unleaded to the old standby white gas. Speaking of white gas, keep a gallon of the stuff (pre-disaster) in a safe place outside away from anything that might remotely resemble a flame. (It’s also great for quickly starting a campfire, but our lawyers won’t let us divulge that information.) And never, make that never, use these stoves inside a house or in a tent unless you’ve had enough of the disaster and just want to end it all.

But after surviving the initial blast, shock, wind, wave, pyroclastic flow, you are ready to live life to the fullest outdoors. Camping can bring these optimistic feelings forth from even the most urbane, dandiest of us all. Then, as night falls again, a campfire can bring us to our not-so-distant past when we stared at the flames with the same glazed look we gave our televisions when they worked.

Just remember, all of this is all a mute point if you store your camping gear next to an un-reinforced brick wall or in a closet under some creaky stairs. You’ll need these supplies for what will surely be your most memorable camping experience since the last big one.

The Guide to Looting

When trying to recover from the catastrophe du jour, it can sometimes be difficult to keep your head straight. You’ve been through a traumatic experience, and at times like this your ugly every-man-for-himself side can overwhelm your civilized side. So if and when the time comes for a bit of looting, you might get a little carried away. Cut this guide out and store it with your emergency kit, next to the microwave popcorn.

Admit Your Failure If you’re looting, you’ve already demonstrated your failure to provide yourself with the essentials you need to survive. If you’re breaking down the door of a 7-Eleven for water and snacks within hours of the disaster striking, that’s just lame. You should have covered that. For that matter, maybe you should have evacuated when you were told to. And maybe you should have spent a little time making friends with your neighbors, so you could all help each other out without plundering stores for gummy worms.

Start With Giveaways Before stealing anything, remember that there will be people giving stuff away. After the Loma Prieta Earthquake, many grocery stores, even big chains, handed out most of the food that was doomed to spoil, engendering good will in the neighborhood. It also saved them a huge cleanup problem, so it’s a real win-win situation. Emergency agencies will attempt to get food and water to your area, so try to find them. It may take a little walking around; don’t expect them to set up on your corner to hydrate your lazy ass.

Minimize Damage If you must break into a place, keep the repair costs down. Break the smallest window that’ll get you in. We all pay for insurance rates that’ll go up because of what you’re doing, so take it easy.

Necessities Only Only take what you really need. Start with stuff that’ll go bad anyway, like fresh foods and juices. It’s tempting to take some magazines to stave off boredom, since they’ll be out of date soon anyway, but that’s a slippery slope. Once you do that, you’re going to feel OK about taking the slightly damaged electronics because you know they’re just going to be an insurance write-off.

Stay Off The News Don’t get filmed hauling nonessentials away. Outsiders are anxiously watching the situation on TV, with one hand on their checkbook. If you’re seen looting, it mars the purity of your victimhood and people become less willing to help you out. One look at you and it’s “Donate to the relief effort? Hell Martha, are you crazy? Did you see those bastards hauling off those plasma TV’s? They’re living better than we are!”

Pay Up Later Whatever you take, try to make it up to whomever you took it from. They may understand your motives, but that doesn’t mean the burden of your salvation should fall on their shoulders.

Post-Disaster Bathing

A major disaster is certainly a good excuse to let yourself go. In fact, if you look impeccably clean, fellow disaster survivors will get suspicious, possibly showing up at your front door wrapped in a towel to take a “quicky” shower. Still, even with the water turned off, it’s possible to stay relatively clean and retain that “I couldn’t be bothered, I just survived a major disaster” look.

First, there’s the ocean. Surfers swear by this method of bathing. Just remember to use a biodegradable soap and obviously never, ever enter the water if there’s a tsunami warning unless you’re really grubby. Our rivers and creeks offer varying degrees of cleanliness even in non-disaster times. The higher up the better, but they are probably best avoided as anybody that counts bacteria can tell you. Another option is to take sponge baths using the water from the top of the toilet. Though this sounds way counterproductive, the water hasn’t had a chance to mix with anything unsavory yet.

Post-Disaster Excreta, or Where to go After Exclaiming ‘excuse me, I have to powder my nose.’

Speaking of toilets, where does one relieve oneself if the water is turned off? As previous disasters have shown us, America quickly morphs into a developing nation when disaster strikes. And in those places, indoor plumbing is reserved for dictators and their wives. The rest of the population use pit toilets, and it’s become a way of life.

It can be for you too, with some digging. The working maxim regarding pit toilets is the deeper the better. Dig the hole in the yard away from where you’ve pitched the tent and where you eat. Nothing says bon appetit like a housefly landing on your food after you know where it’s been. Cover the hole with boards, leaving a six-inch hole. Either squat or use a 25-gallon bucket with the bottom cut out over the hole. After each movement throw a wad of dirt on top of the business to keep the flies under control.

In Africa they use what’s called an “Arborloo” wherein a tree is planted over the spot after the pit is full. It puts Miracle Grow to shame. So after the disaster is over this might be a nice gesture to the earth, a peace offering of sorts, and something positive to remember the disaster by.