I will survive

Your Emergency Survival Handbook

Researched and compiled by Paloma

Anvil Publishing, 165 pages

Available at National Book Stores

It’s easy to make fun of the doomsayers — those who walk around with signs proclaiming “The End Is Nigh,” or predict the apocalypse based on Mayan calendars or blithely tell us the Rapture is upon us. Three separate times.

But the truth is, we don’t really like to hear real bad news: like how unprepared we are for seasonal catastrophes — floods, typhoons, landslides and power outages. We often don’t want to think about the things that could actually happen; so we pooh-pooh the outlandish doomsday predictions and go about our business.

The book Your Emergency Survival Handbook (put out by Anvil Publishing, which, incidentally, is having this great sale on most of its titles until Dec. 10; check it out) takes a no-nonsense approach to getting us ready for disaster. Author Paloma is described as a “counseling astrologer-geomancer to high-profile clients across the globe,” and while her philosophies may lie beyond most disaster manuals (reason for Japan’s disastrous previous year? Bad feng-shui, according to Paloma), her advice is the kind long espoused by survivalists — those whose antennae are finely tuned to economic and social collapse, and who thus choose to buy up several years’ worth of canned goods — maybe even some handy weapons — and live in log cabins up in the hills, off the grid.

Living “off the grid” becomes an even more attractive proposition the more you read gloomy economic news. When the price of gold reaches historic levels, when everyone’s cash is replaced by plastic abstractions called credit cards, when most of our personal information is uploaded and “monitored” by cloud technology, and we casually act as though nothing could possibly go wrong or shut it all down… well, that’s when the antennae start to quiver, and a cold sweat begins to break out.

Your Emergency Survival Handbook (note the acronym: “Y-E-S”) takes a proactive approach to all this not-so-unrealistic fear. It also takes a God-centered approach, as in “ask God for wisdom and guidance” (one of the five steps in her “Don’t Panic” list). Curiously, the cover of the YES Handbookfeatures a placid field of daisies, as though one can navigate through most disasters via positive visualization. Well, mental preparation is as important as laying in supplies for that log cabin, after all.

The book is practical, laid out in helpful step-by-step chapters. Chapter one covers “The Importance of Preparedness” and shows us how to pack our own E.D.C. (or Every Day Carry) bag — the essential items we need on hand when disaster strikes. These include adhesive strips, plaster strips for minor wounds, a large safety pin, first aid items, a “multipurpose survival tool” (Swiss army knife might do), as well as cash, an LED flashlight and a lighter. The book recommends carrying all these items around in a belt-bag, presumably at all times. Fashion-wise, the “survival” look may never catch on. But what’s fashion next to survival? And you can easily stash the bag in your car (or large purse, ladies) for easy access.

Modular in approach, the YES Handbookis easy to flip through and chock full of useful information. Like the “Rule of Threes”: basically, you can survive three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. After that, the book warns, “You’re dead!”

While Paloma has been accumulating such information over the years, this is the first guide tailored specially for the Filipino market. There are specific tips (Want to know how to give CPR to an injured pet? Emergency Research Center, Inc. can show you how) that might not be available elsewhere all in one place.

Chapter 2 looks at “Types of Disasters,” and after watching the extreme weather that’s hit the globe over the past few years, more people may want to take a closer look at how to survive when floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, lightning storms, ipo-ipo (tornadoes), heat waves, radioactive fallout, electrical failure, government collapse — or any combination of the above — strike. Paloma takes a realist’s approach, warning that the government will never really tell us how unprepared we are for such disasters, since this would lead to widespread panic.

Other chapters in the YES Handbook cover “Creating a Disaster Plan”; “Storing Emergency Supplies”; “Evacuation”; and “Should You Decide to Stay” (with practical advice on how to stick around after it all shuts down).

Yes, you’ve seen the movies. You’ve watched zombies take over in The Walking Dead. You’ve sat through Contagion, holding a handkerchief over your mouth for days afterward, whenever someone coughed in your vicinity. So you know information is gold when disaster strikes. In an age when even the Centers For Disease Control in the US puts out a tongue-in-cheek “How to Survive a Zombie Attack” manual (which, nonetheless, contains practical survival advice), it just doesn’t pay to take these things too lightly. The last wave of survival guides hit us after 9/11; before that, it was the Y2K books — the popular Worst-Case Scenario series. Now, with world economies wobbling here and there, and the real heavy weather making its way into our lives with greater frequency, those guys with the “Doomsday” signs suddenly don’t seem like Chicken Littles or quacks after all. Anyway, as they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And a dose of preparation may be worth even more.