SEAL Survival Guide (48 page)
Read SEAL Survival Guide Online
Authors: Cade Courtley
If you can keep your wits, you can increase your options for survival by waiting for the right moment to act. You must seize this chance because there might not be another. Now that you are free and have gathered intelligence about the group, you can assess if this is a robbery or if the attackers intend to turn this into a tiger kidnapping. In either case, time is running out, and you must take the one opportunity you have to escape.
Remember, the base goal at this point is not to attempt to free everyone but to
get at least one of you out of the house.
If someone in the household can escape and call for help, the home invaders will have lost their advantage. If you have the chance, it may be difficult to leave your loved ones behind. But remember, if you can get to a phone, this entire ordeal will be over in a few minutes. Nevertheless, seek an opportunity to create a diversion to allow the member who is freed of binding to make an escape. Set off a car alarm triggered from your keyless remote, or feign illness, or call out to the captors. If you are fleeing, you will have only a moment to go undiscovered; create barricades between you and the intruders as you go. Jumping or dropping from a height may be your only option for escape.
You won’t want to leave anyone behind, but doing so could save everyone. To some, running away from your family in crisis is distasteful, especially to men or women with children. However, the alternative could be far worse. And don’t ever follow an intruder once they leave your home. Leave that to the police.
HURRICANE AND TORNADO
Put your hat out the window of a car doing 75 mph and it gets flung backward. At 110 to 150 mph, it would be nearly impossible to hold on to it. Wind, rain, and the flooding caused by hurricanes make for a life-threatening natural disaster that must be taken seriously. When a storm system has sustained winds at speeds of 74 miles per hour or greater, it’s classified as a hurricane. As natural occurrences, hurricanes form from storm clouds that gather en masse over large, warm bodies of water, and depending on various other environmental factors, begin to circulate. Wind speed will determine the storm’s potential hazard, which is measured in categories: Category 1 has winds from 74 to 95 mph; a “Cat 5” has maximum sustained wind speeds of at least 157 mph.
A hurricane’s concentrated pressure and barometric fluctuations are what cause the most serious structural damage. Even if you are sheltered in an adequate dwelling, the pressure can literally cause an improperly braced house, for example, to implode. In addition, those who don’t take this powerful force of nature seriously greatly increase their chance of being killed by blowing debris. Deadly floods can also be part of the aftermath of a hurricane.
The Galveston, Texas, hurricane of September 8, 1900, claimed the highest death toll of any hurricane in U.S. history, with more than 8,000 fatalities due to flooding. More recently, the nation’s third-worst storm occurred on August 29, 2005, when Category 5 hurricane Katrina devastated the gulf coast from Biloxi, Mississippi, to New Orleans, killing more Americans than any other single natural disaster in more than fifty years. The storm surge broke a five-hundred-foot section of levee that kept the below-sea-level areas of New Orleans dry, flooding the historic streets with up to twenty feet of surging water and causing 1,400 deaths.
Preparation, Preparation, Preparation
Hurricane forecasting has improved tremendously since the turn of the last century, when the folks of Galveston had no clue as to what was heading their way on that fateful day. A hurricane is one natural disaster for which we are given plenty of time to prepare and/or evacuate. I can think of no greater example of how easily you can increase your odds of survival than by taking the time to do a serious preparation checklist and being ready for the worst.
The parallels between a nasty hurricane and combat are unlimited. Survival often comes down to knowing when to hold your position and when to move. You must decide when to fight, when to make a planned evacuation, and when to bunker in. Once the winds blow, the chances of dying from flying debris are great. As in combat, surviving a hurricane requires having the right gear and supplies to keep you alive. Preparation and rehearsal are keys to success in surviving this natural disaster.
Home Prep
Sheltering in a dwelling unprepared can be lethal. Use the following checklist to prepare your home.
Cover all openings. Use hurricane shutters with clearly marked windstorm ratings, or precut and predrilled plywood, and use permanent fasteners to attach them to the walls.
Make sure the straps that attach the roof to the wall plate of your house are properly nailed. If a house has a gable-end roof (looks like there’s a triangle at one corner), then use two-by-four cross-bracing to reinforce these parts for the horizontal force the gable ends will bear. The uplift force of hurricanes frequently blows entire roofs off homes.
Tie down or remove exterior lawn furniture, etc.
Survey for overhanging trees and trim. Remove trees that are within falling distance of your roof.