There Will Be War Volume VIII, page 3
Quinn slithered feet first through the window and slid over a desk into a tiny office. All the furniture had skidded across the tilting floor to the wall. The office opened onto the wreck of the sales area.
“Hello?”
The room smelled of rubbing alcohol. Shelves had spilled their contents before toppling onto one another. The floor was strewn with candy, broken glass, cheap plastic toys, smashed boxes, magazines and gaudy pills. Greeting cards fluttered in the wind as if in welcome.
“Over here!”
A sweating man stripped to his tee shirt struggled with an enormous tangle of junk: broken plaster, fallen joists and rafters, cotton candy puffs of insulation. A gray-faced man with a paunch sat on a fallen shelf and watched.
“I’m all right,” he repeated. “A minute. All right.”
The sweating man did not pause in his feverish efforts. “Made it through the shock wave. But the windstorm blew the roof away. They hid in the crawl space. One way in.” He kicked at the yellow wooden trap door half buried beneath the pile of debris.
Quinn pried a two-by-four out of the way. “Sure they’re alive?”
“Heard ’em. Vent holes in the foundation.” Together they flipped a chunk of wall off to one side. “Some of ’em ain’t.”
“My wife’s down there.”
He blinked at Quinn. It took just that long for a bond to be formed between them; a fellowship of sympathy and fear, a pact of cooperation. “We’ll find her,” he said.
Quinn nodded. “Why you here?”
“Neighbor.”
They labored with grim intensity until they had cleared away almost everything but a collapsed and immovable assembly of four-by-ten ceiling rafters. They strained at this last mess of wood and plaster.
“Stuck.” The good neighbor grunted. “Got a bar in my garage. Pry some loose first?”
“I’ll be all right,” said Frank.
“Take him.” Quinn gestured at the gray old man.
Left alone, Quinn circled the remaining debris, probing for a point of attack. The beams were too massive; there were too many of them. Not without a bulldozer, he thought as he toyed with the dangling respirator. Reason demanded that he walk away. Quinn was beyond reason.
He felt a thumping underfoot and dropped to his knees on the trap door. “Judy! Are you down there? Judy?”
He thought he heard someone say “Hello.” Or was it “Help?” The yellow door was thick and the wind had deafened him.
“Jud-ith Hutch-ins!” he shouted.
“Open… no air… soon…”
With a strangled moan, Quinn linked hands around the outermost rafter and tried to pull it toward him. The rough edge bit into his hands; muscles in his arms, stomach and calves stretched to their limits. He blocked out pain with anger. It was not fair… he had prepared… his family… damned politicians… no time… not… fair!
A berserk power tingled through him. Something popped and Quinn thought he had hurt himself. Three more pops followed in rapid succession as the spikes holding the rafter in place released. It came free with a squeal. Quinn staggered backwards, dragging it out of the way.
Quinn had never witnessed a miracle before. He did not know whether to praise the Lord or his adrenal glands. Whatever the source, his newfound strength could not be denied. He drew an enormous breath and turned to the next rafter.
The second was the hardest, the third was easy. Only three left on top of the door. He tried to lift them all at once. His back spasmed and he reeled away, stumbling over a twisted light fixture.
“Quinn!” The haze of pain lifted. Someone sat him up. He felt a grinding at the base of his spine. Judy kissed him; her face smelled like tears.
The neighbor helped him stand. “This your wife?” he said, grinning.
The rafters still pinned the trapdoor.
“What?” Quinn swayed.
Judy caught him. “Some people were hurt during the shock wave. They needed help, beds. Mrs. LeBeau opened her house, no one knew much first aid but me. Then this happened.’’ She hugged him. “I tried to watch for the truck but I was busy and I… I didn’t think you would come… after…”
“Not come?” He did not understand. “You weren’t trapped.”
The neighbor had wedged his crowbar under one of the fallen rafters and was straining to lift it. “Jesus!” He shook his head. “How’d you do it?”
Judy was staring. “Quinn,” she said, “let me see your dosimeter.”
He thrust it into his pocket without looking and gave her a quick kiss. “Listen,” he said, joining the neighbor, “your only chance is the schoolhouse. If it was a shelter it should have a hand pump. But you’ll need food: canned, dried—lots of rice, you understand?” He picked up the bar and rammed it deeper into the pile. “Stay put until the fallout passes. I’ve got a counter in the truck you can have.”
Quinn did not want to die but he could not leave until he had given the strangers trapped below a chance to live. The bomb had changed everything—the survivalists had been right about that. Nothing was certain; a chance was all anyone could expect. Maybe he could bushwhack through the orchards back to Flatrock Road. Maybe.
Judy was pale. “This won’t take long,” Quinn said. “There’s still time.” He felt the strength returning to him. “Still time.”
Surviving Armageddon, by Jerry Pournelle
Editor’s Introduction
Years ago I had a regular column in a magazine called Survive. Those were the days of the Carter Administration, when everything seemed to be coming apart. Even the President talked about the “era of limits” and a “national malaise.”
In those times we truly feared Armageddon, not as something abstract, but as an event that might very well happen next year—or even next month.
The advice I gave in my Survive column seems a bit quaint now, but only because we’re no longer so worried that the Big War is coming. I hope our doubts are justified; but as I write this, the Congress is telling the President elect that they’ll have no more of this talk of Star Wars; while the Soviets are busily installing missile defenses.
Maybe it’s not so irrelevant after all.
Surviving Armageddon
Jerry Pournelle
At a writer’s party a few years ago my partner Larry Niven and I met the author of the humorous best-seller Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche. “Real men,” Larry informed him, “eat whatever they damned well please.”
I bring this up because from time to time well-meaning friends chide me for living in a big city. I should, it seems, move to Rogue River, Oregon, or Resume Speed, Iowa, or some such place where I’d be safer when the balloon goes up; which, they assure me, it inevitably will.
There’s only one problem: I don’t want to move. I like living in cities. The word “civilized” originally meant those who can—and do—live in cities, and I happen to care a lot about my civilization.
When challenged, I can make a reasoned defense of city life even in these times; but the point is, I shouldn’t have to. I like it here. I don’t intend to let the barbarians chase me out, and there’s an end to the discussion.
Certainly it costs me. I live in Hollywood, which means I spend a lot on air conditioners and air purifiers. I must take some fairly extreme measures to foil burglars. I live in the hills, which periodically catch fire, so I’ve had to make some preparations for that, too. My neighborhood is quiet. There hasn’t been a crime of violence here in twenty years. That may or may not have something to do with the fact that most of my neighbors, like me, are pretty well armed; the fact is, we don’t know, because no one has ever challenged us. The only crime is cold burglary of an empty house, and since my house is never empty it doesn’t apply to me.
In a word, with sensible precautions, city life can be rewarding. It can even be safe, in the usual sense of the word. Certainly I feel at least as safe here as I would if I lived out in the toolies far from neighbors. At least I do under the current circumstances.
Circumstances change. Civilization is fragile; history shows it can sometimes be very fragile indeed.
One primary threat to civilization is nuclear war. The best way to survive a nuclear war is not to have one. Even those who’ve made the most stringent preparations, have taken all the survivalist measures, won’t be better off after an ICBM exchange. Even uninjured survivors will have a considerably shorter life expectancy than they have now. As an example: I take a complex mixture of vitamins and immune system protectors. I have a stockpile of them, but I certainly don’t have ten years’ worth—and it’s unlikely that Great Earth and Vitamin Research Products will be intact after a nuclear war.
One sometimes reads novels about people who not only survive nuclear wars, but thrive in those conditions. One even meets people who think they’re so well prepared they welcome Armageddon.
They’re wrong.
In the first place, they haven’t thought through how Armageddon will happen.
It’s fashionable among scaremongers, and those opposed to strategic defenses, to act as if nuclear war will start with a sneak attack on our cities. The first thing we know, huge multimegaton weapons will detonate out of the blue over New York and Los Angeles and the like. The fact is, that doesn’t make any sense at all. There’s no reason for the Soviets to start the war that way. One supposes that the Soviets, like the Americans, have large weapons targeted on cities, such weapons to be used as a last ditch retaliation; but it sure doesn’t make sense to start the war that way. Cities aren’t much of a military target. There are far more vital things to destroy if you intend to win the war.
And that’s what the Soviets say they want to do: win. Their internal publications, circulated only to senior officers, don’t talk about sneak attacks with city busters; they’re much more interested in our missile, naval, and air bases. True, there’s also interest in our industrial base as part of the “permanently operating factors” in war, but these are clearly of lesser importance than our immediate military capabilities.
Second, wars don’t start out of the blue. There are warning signs. As Stefan Possony used to say, wars like seductions take preparation. Astute observers will know what signs to watch for.
All this was more relevant back in the days of the Carter Administration than now. The Reagan modernization of the Strategic Forces has changed things very much for the better. So has the new regime in the Soviet Union. One might argue that the new regime was made possible when the U.S. made it clear we were not going to disarm and thus be a tempting target for the expansionist factions in the U.S.S.R. Whatever the truth of that, we’re clearly in less danger now than we were in the late 60s.
On the other hand, things could change. If they do, we will, I think, see the changes happen. There will be warning.
Thus, we city people do have a chance of getting out. (Of course, we had better know where we’re going.) Meanwhile, we can work to prevent nuclear war, and enjoy the benefits of city life until comes That Day. I can work more effectively for the Lunar Society and the High Frontier Project and all the other things I get involved in from Los Angeles than I can from Resume Speed, Iowa; and I like it here a lot better.
Given all that, it’s still sensible to recognize that things can come apart, and to prepare as necessary.
One problem with city life is that it’s difficult to practice basic firearms skills. There are ranges, but it’s not always easy to reach them, and transporting weapons can cause problems with the police. Yet the importance of pistol practice can’t be overemphasized. In my own case, I can go for months without firing a rifle and still hit something first shot, but in just a few weeks my pistol skills (never all that good to begin with) can go right to hell.
There’s a simple solution to the problem: air guns and an indoor target. I have a Beeman “Tempest” pistol (actually made by the British Webley firm), and a Beeman 4030 silent bullet trap. The pistol stays in my desk drawer with a supply of pellets; the bullet trap sits across the room, opposite the door so no one will unexpectedly wander into the line of fire. Whenever I can’t write, I can always target practice. Nancy Tappen tells me that Mel Tappen, the founder of the survivalist movement, used to do the same thing. It improves my nerves and does remarkable things for my accuracy.
Of course I tend to use photographs for targets. Not precisely people I don’t like; more usually they’re photos of the chief executives of computer companies. The PR departments send them to me all the time…
In addition, I have a Beeman R-1.22 (German-made) air rifle. This tiger with its scope sights is accurate enough to strike matches at twenty yards, about the maximum distance I can manage inside my property, and develops over 700-feet-per-second velocity—enough to kill rats with no problem at all.
Both these guns are nearly silent. I’ve fired literally thousands of pellets with them—I suspect I get a lot more actual shooting practice than many of my colleagues who’ve moved into high-maintenance property out in the country—and I’ve never had a complaint.
I strongly recommend a good air pistol for practice and a good air rifle as an indispensable survival tool. The latter will bring down about as much game as a .22 rimfire rifle, the ammunition keeps forever, and you can afford to buy thousands of pellets. The only real problem with air guns is choosing them, since there’s such a bewildering variety. Whatever brand you’re contemplating, get the Beeman catalog first; it has about thirty pages of important information on air guns, as well as recommendations of various kits required with different guns. (Beeman is offering their catalog free: write Beeman Precision Airguns, Inc., Dept. SV, 47-PR Paul Dr., San Rafael, CA 94903-7121.) When making your purchase, also get maintenance tools, spare parts, and lots of ammunition.
I also recommend Beeman for reliability and service. My information is based not only on personal experience, but on the experience of others and from the letters I get.
Also, it is absolutely necessary to build up one’s survival library. Unfortunately, there’s an awful lot of garbage being published under the category of “Survival Books,” and to make it worse some of our best publishers lump the dreck in with the real gems.
For example, Desert Publications’ (Dept. SV, Cornville, AZ 86325) catalog lists a number of useful books, such as Nuclear Survival, a compilation of public domain information including fallout-shelter plans; and the invaluable Checklist for Survival by Tony and Jo-Anne Lesce. Alas, they also sell—and enthusiastically promote—the silly book We Never Went to the Moon, which “proves” that the Apollo mission was a giant swindle. Then there’s Suppressed Inventions, which they say is a “virtual encyclopedia of practical, energy-efficient (and energy-producing) devices which never reached the marketplace.” One of these devices is the Pogue carburetor—a “suppressed” device I knew about in high school before the Korean War.
Now, of course, we all believe in free speech, and I’d be the last to advocate suppression of books, but how are you to tell which ones are reliable when silly things like these are treated as “important”?
Another nearly indispensable source of survival books is Paladin Press (Dept. SV, Box 1307, Boulder, CO 80306). Paladin publishes Bruce Clayton’s important Life After Doomsday and the very useful Better Read Than Dead by Thomas Nieman, with more shelter and equipment plans, as well as a raft of other excellent books. They also sell the usual line of “secret” Oriental arts books (I’ve often wondered how the Japanese managed to lose the war) and a bunch of urban-survival books that look interesting.
One of Paladin’s best-selling authors is Ragnar Benson. Benson’s books are interesting, and often useful, if taken with a dose of salt. For example, in Survival Poaching, Benson tells how he and his son used automatic weapons to defend the territory they poached. He explains how to make ammonium iodide, but neglects to tell you just how unstable it is when dry. (It’s really unstable; I don’t advise making it at all. We darned near killed ourselves with the stuff in high school.) All in all, the book is a fair roundup of ways to snare, trap, poison, and otherwise catch animals—but some of the methods, such as dynamiting lakes are pretty obvious, while others, such as using rotenone on ponds, are wasteful and ecologically unsound. Paladin claims, “The methods and traps described by Benson are known only to one Indian tribe and a few old-timers,” which is sheer nonsense.
A better book is Live Off the Land in the City and Country by Ragnar Benson and Devon Christenson, featuring tips not found in Kephart’s Camping and Woodcraft. For the real thing, though, get Kephart. That book is the real old-timer’s bible and, even though most of the equipment mentioned is obsolete, it is still among the first outdoorsmanship books one ought to own. It will be especially relevant if we’re ever in a situation where you can’t get to the local Eddie Bauer or Ambercrombie & Fitch.
Another source of good books is Caroline House Publishers (Dept, SV, 920 W. Industrial Dr., Aurora, IL 60506), which distributes the absolutely vital Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson Kearny. Even if you already have the American Security Council version, get the revised edition. Caroline House also sells two other required books, Mel Tappan’s famous Survival Guns and Tappan On Survival.
One of the next books to get is Paladin’s The Great Survival Resource Book, a sort of “Whole Earth Catalog” of equipment. It features lots of addresses of firms that offer catalogs. After you’ve sent for a couple dozen catalogs, send $12 for a year’s subscription to Journal of Civil Defense, Dept. SV, Box 910, Starke, Florida 32091; it’s worth it.
Probably the most valuable book I own is MacKenzie’s 10,000 Formulas. Published in 1868, it has 400 pages telling how to make everything known about at the time. The section on medicines is useful only for amusement, but MacKenzie shows how to butcher animals, smoke and preserve meat, make soap, gunpowder and fireworks, and how to brew beer—from choosing the barley and hops to malting the barley (“Throw the malt up into a heap as high as possible, where let it lie till it grows as hot as the hand can bear it, which usually happens in the space of about thirty hours”). Alas, nothing else like MacKenzie’s books seems to be available. However, you can often find old formula books in used-book stores. The 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, is particularly valuable for “how-to” articles. Naturally these old books aren’t going to tell you anything about electronics and other modern wonders, but they have a lot of information on labor-intensive farming and manufacturing. And those of us who survive a nuclear war must learn such things; farm machinery may become a luxury. My survival group boasts many “obsolete” skills which are at least as valuable as weapons training.
