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When Disaster Strikes: Are You Prepared to Survive?
What would you do if society collapsed tomorrow? This question haunted Neil Strauss, propelling him on an extraordinary journey from ordinary writer to survival expert. In "Emergency," Strauss-whose work has been praised by everyone from Tim Ferriss to Joe Rogan-chronicles his transformation from an urban intellectual with zero practical skills into someone who could survive virtually any catastrophe. Published in 2009 during the economic recession, the book became an unexpected bestseller as Americans grappled with newfound financial insecurity. What makes this narrative particularly compelling is how Strauss's paranoia gradually evolves into something more profound: a rediscovery of community, purpose, and what truly matters when everything falls apart. His journey reflects our collective anxieties about an increasingly unstable world while offering practical wisdom for navigating uncertain times. Have you ever wondered if you could survive if everything you take for granted disappeared overnight? Strauss's adventure might just save your life.
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The Wake-Up Call: When Fear Becomes Reality
I never thought I'd find myself standing in a forest, knife in hand, preparing to slaughter a goat named Bettie. Yet there I was, dressed in army clothes, questioning my life choices while a man called Mad Dog watched impatiently. How did I-a former New York Times writer more comfortable with a pen than a weapon-end up here?
It began with a growing unease about the world. Walking through airports and cities, I started seeing the fragility beneath our seemingly permanent civilization. All it would take was one war, bomb, virus, or natural disaster to bring everything crashing down. History had shown this repeatedly in places like Hiroshima, Bosnia, Rwanda, and New Orleans. Our society, I realized, was just a temporary arrangement-like ancient civilizations whose ruins tourists now visit.
My generation had grown up believing we were somehow beyond history's reach. From 1980 to 2000, we experienced no major national catastrophes. Then history returned with a vengeance: terrorist attacks, domestic surveillance, flooded cities, economic collapse. My faith in the system eroded gradually until I decided I needed to equip myself with survival tools.
This wasn't easy for someone whose professional skills involved writing about music, not building shelters or hunting food. But over eight years, I transformed myself. I learned to shoot, start fires, track animals, find water, deliver babies, fly planes, sail boats, and more. When disaster strikes-and history suggests it eventually will-you'll want someone like me nearby.
My journey began on December 31, 1999, as I stood atop the Lincoln Memorial watching Secret Service agents with night-vision goggles scan the crowd during millennium celebrations. I'd promised myself to avoid spending New Year's someplace with guns, yet there I was. Later that night at the White House party, surrounded by celebrities like Muhammad Ali and Jack Nicholson, I stole a hand towel with the presidential seal from the bathroom-my first White House crime. Politics had never held much mystique for me, but I couldn't have imagined how my relationship with government would change in the coming years.
Throughout my life, I'd bargained with death-begging to live until certain milestones. Yet death surrounds us constantly in countless forms, reminding us that our existence means nothing to the universe. True happiness, I would learn, requires confronting our mortality while hoping to win a few battles in a war we'll ultimately lose.
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From Ironic Detachment to Genuine Fear
Before 9/11, I collected anti-American propaganda with ironic detachment. America was invincible-we conquered through culture, not military force. McDonald's, Hollywood, and pop music were our weapons. I was too ignorant then to realize it wasn't our burgers but our policies creating international resentment.
When the Twin Towers fell, everything changed. My propaganda collection wasn't funny anymore-it was a warning. If terrorists could destroy the World Trade Center, they could poison our water or release nerve gas in public spaces. I withdrew emergency cash, bought Cipro for anthrax protection, and ordered Israeli gas masks and survival gear.
The gas masks arrived with Hebrew instructions I couldn't understand. When I called a fire chief for help, he delivered devastating news: "A gas mask is iffy... The filters won't protect against nerve agents or biological threats." I'd bought not survival, but merely the feeling of safety.
This realization connected me to a childhood memory. At eleven, I learned about the Holocaust from Mrs. Kaufman, who drew a timeline of Hitler's rise to power. When she described Kristallnacht, I blurted out, "Why did they stay?" She explained many didn't think things would get worse. I promised myself that if persecution ever happened in my country, I wouldn't wait-I'd get out before it was too late.
After Bush's re-election in 2004, everything intensified. Unlike 2000, Americans had actually voted him in, signaling to the world that we condoned his actions. Britain's Daily Mirror captured global sentiment with its headline: "How Can 59,054,087 People Be So DUMB?" For historically-minded Americans like me, the administration's national security clampdown showed that fascism could happen here too.
By the time I seriously considered emigrating, countries like New Zealand and Australia had increased their residency requirements. I realized why Jews in Nazi Germany stayed: hope, which sustains us in the worst times but can be cruel in uncertain ones. I clung to the belief that our government would protect us if anything happened.
Then Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, shattering my remaining illusions about America. Unlike 9/11, the government had advance warning yet took five days to respond appropriately. The death toll reached 1,836. According to the House investigation, the catastrophe overwhelmed city, state, federal governments, and the Red Cross. FEMA "did not have logistics capacity sophisticated enough" to support the victims-and New Orleans was relatively small. What would happen in Los Angeles or New York?
Something changed in me after Katrina. Like beating my father at arm wrestling and realizing he could no longer protect me, I had to take care of myself. I became what I call a "Fliesian"-subscribing to William Golding's Lord of the Flies view that when systems collapse, people attack each other. It was time to find a safe haven overseas.
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The Passport Hunt: Finding an Escape Route
My search for a second citizenship led me to the Sovereign Society Offshore Advantage Seminar in Mexico. While other attendees focused on protecting wealth from government seizure, I feared what other countries might do to America. I discovered "The Passport Book," which detailed various citizenship options, and met Greg, a "Perpetual Tourist" with both UK and New Zealand citizenship.
Greg explained Harry Schultz's "three-flag system": second passport, offshore assets, and legal address in a tax haven. Though I questioned whether avoiding taxes justified such complicated arrangements, Greg explained the appeal was freedom from bureaucracy. When I asked why he'd been so open with me when others at the conference were secretive, Greg simply replied, "Because I found the sixth flag-freedom from fear."
After exhaustive research, I discovered St. Kitts and Nevis offered citizenship in six months for a $350,000 real estate investment or a $200,000 "donation." I booked a trip during Carnival, excited to have found a potential escape route.
In Basseterre, St. Kitts' capital, I met lawyer Maxwell Webb, who explained the citizenship process and introduced me to property developers. During my house-hunting tour, I was surprised to learn that of the last twenty-five units at St. Christopher Club, sixteen had sold to Americans seeking citizenship-I wasn't alone in my concerns. Victor Doche, the Egyptian Christian co-owner who had fled to Montreal in the seventies, explained that the St. Kitts passport was valuable because, as part of the British Commonwealth, it offered a backdoor to Great Britain.
After touring a tranquil duplex with views of both coasts, I walked to the beach. The island met all my criteria: credible passport, stable government, minimal taxes, quick citizenship process, and warm beaches. A new, simpler life awaited me here.
However, when Maxwell presented an invoice for over half a million dollars requiring full payment for both citizenship and apartment, cold sweat prickled my skin. I'd need a second mortgage to afford this. Despite my doubts about this potentially reckless decision, I signed the lease agreement and returned to Los Angeles to gather materials for my citizenship application.
Back home, I secured a second mortgage on my house, going deeper into debt in my quest for freedom. I packaged everything and sent it to Maxwell, hoping he wouldn't disappear with my money. Meanwhile, I continued searching for a Swiss bank account to complete my escape plan.
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From Escape to Self-Reliance: The Survival Journey Begins
Several months after my first visit to St. Kitts, I experienced a blackout in my new apartment there. With no matches for candles, spoiled food, and only a flimsy lock between me and potential intruders, I had an epiphany: if society snapped, locals could come down from the hills with machetes and overwhelm foreigners like me in minutes. The police lived on the hill too, with loyalty to their own, not to rich outsiders. As a "traitor" to America, I couldn't expect help from my government either.
I needed emergency supplies, weapons for protection, and survival skills to be truly sovereign. Katrina had taught us that no country can protect its citizens-true safety can only come from within.
This realization transformed my approach. Rather than just seeking an escape route, I needed to become self-sufficient. Spencer, my wealthy friend who shared my concerns, pointed out I didn't have guns or know how to fly a plane-crucial if systems break down and commercial transportation stops. We take for granted our dependence on electricity, water, food, transportation, and civil order.
I began researching survivalism, which originated with Harry Browne in the late sixties, concerned about economic collapse. Don Stephens gave followers the name "retreaters," advocating self-sufficient rural homes. Kurt Saxon, an ultra-right-winger, popularized the term "survivalist" in the 1970s, emphasizing preparing for social breakdown with specialized weapons.
When I called Kurt Saxon, now 76, I found him surprisingly friendly despite his disturbing prejudices and past associations with extremist groups. He promised to send his publications, claiming his mission was "to save the best of our species" and "preserve useful knowledge."
Though I'd befriended the father of survivalism, his materials were useless for beginners like me. I realized most survivalists had advantages I lacked-they grew up on farms, went hunting with their fathers, or learned practical skills from an early age. My urban upbringing left me with only conversation as a survival skill.
I created a "Survival To-Do List" and began with learning how to shoot. At Gunsite, a premier firearms training facility, I learned not just shooting techniques but the science of killing. The instructors taught us that bullets create "leak points," with bigger bullets causing more blood loss. By the final day, I'd learned to relax, trusting myself to shoot coolly and methodically, hitting targets with precision. McNeese's parting advice: "Be good to everyone you meet-but always have a plan to kill them."
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Mastering the Sacred Order: Shelter, Water, Fire, Food
After firearms training, I discovered the specialized language of survival on the Survivalistboards.com forum. WTSHTF means "When the Shit Hits the Fan," while EOTWAWKI stands for "End of the World as We Know It." "Bugging out" refers to leaving home for safety, requiring a bug-out bag (BOB) of supplies, a bug-out vehicle (BOV), and a bug-out location (BOL) stocked with provisions.
Spencer confirmed I should focus on two situations: "bugging in" with enough supplies to survive without outside help, and "bugging out" with an escape route to safety. I began learning motorcycle riding and flying lessons, though I worried that between my gun purchases, flight training, and suspicious internet searches, I might attract government attention.
At the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) class, Kevin Mason drilled into us that after a disaster, we're on our own. "Nobody's coming to your aid," he insisted repeatedly. I began stockpiling supplies-water jugs, generators, fuel with Sta-Bil, lanterns, matches, purification tablets, and first aid supplies.
In my final CERT class, instructor Sergio Mayorga taught us about B-NICE threats: biological, nuclear, incendiary, chemical, and explosive. Biological attacks are particularly dangerous because symptoms take weeks to appear. For nuclear attacks, we should shelter in basements or high buildings, sealing cracks with plastic and duct tape. During gunfire, lie stomach-down with feet toward the attacker and hands covering your head. Though these scenarios seemed unlikely, I took furious notes, driven by the same demon haunting everyone else: Just in Case.
What do we truly need? Beyond our wants-luxury items, freedom, happiness, and entertainment-our actual needs form a simple triangle of life: safety and health, shelter and warmth, and food and water. That's it. Survivalism prepares for when our ceiling of possibility lowers almost to the floor, when success becomes simply not dying.
Despite my training in motorcycles, flying, stockpiling supplies, and emergency response, I realized I needed more expertise from those who truly understand survival: the military. When I asked Evan, my Green Beret contact, about military SERE training (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape), he dismissed it and recommended Tom Brown instead: "He teaches the guys who teach the marines how to survive."
At Tom Brown's Tracker School in New Jersey's Pine Barrens, I encountered a force of nature. Brown appeared impervious to the cold in just a tank top, standing beneath a wooden sign reading "NO SNIVELING." Unlike Cold War survivalists stockpiling supplies, Brown advocated complete self-sufficiency: "How many people can take a walk for the rest of their lives and never need a damn thing from society?" He promised to teach us to survive anywhere with nothing.
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The Ultimate Test: Putting Skills into Practice
After completing Tom Brown's course, I sought knife training with Mad Dog in Arizona. His gruff voice warned me I'd "thank him when you get two flat tires in the desert and you're trying to figure out how to skewer a rabbit with only a pocket knife." In his workshop, Mad Dog pulled out his self-made Bear Cat knife, referring to it with parental devotion: "This is like one of my kids or my daughter. It's not expendable." He revealed that he mixed his own blood into the quench oil that hardened each blade.
The ultimate test came when Mad Dog instructed me to kill a goat-the scene from the book's opening. Despite my moral qualms, I completed the task, promising to use every part of the animal's body. Mad Dog explained the philosophy behind what we'd done: "Welcome to the circle of life. You're no longer just a bystander or a parasite. You're actively in it." He emphasized that survivalism also means conservation-"If you just take, you're like a locust."
Back home, I established a rigorous practice schedule: Fire Sundays for mastering primitive fire-making techniques, Shelter Mondays for building debris huts, Water Tuesdays for learning water procurement methods, Wednesday Survivalist Dinner Parties for primitive cooking, Tracking Thursdays for studying footprints in a sandbox, Primitive Hunting Fridays for throwing sticks and making snares, and Saturday Edible Plant Walks with Christopher Nyerges' School of Self-Reliance.
After two months of survival cross-training, I felt proficient with all four elements of the sacred order-shelter, water, fire, food-and more healthy, alive, and comfortable in my skin than ever before. My body was finally doing what it was designed to do.
To test my preparations, I conducted a three-day simulated emergency at home, turning off all utilities and living off my stockpile. Initially, I enjoyed the productivity of working without distractions, but practical challenges quickly emerged-bathroom issues, dishwashing without running water, and managing bodily functions consumed most of my time.
By the third day, my refrigerator was nearly empty. When Katie wanted cereal, the milk had spoiled, so I made oatmeal over the fire instead. Katie, who had initially resisted my survival obsession, was gradually embracing the primitive lifestyle. We gathered sticks together, built a fire, and made s'mores. I taught her to cook chicken breasts over the fire, and despite her complaints about the "wet and gushy" raw meat, she produced the most delicious chicken we'd ever tasted.
The experience made me ashamed of my wasteful past-the half-empty soda cans thrown away, food scraped into the disposal, long showers, and lights left on. In three normal days, I'd use 531 gallons of water; during this test, just one gallon. Instead of 121 kilowatt hours of electricity, I'd used just a gallon and a half of gasoline.
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From Self-Preservation to Community Service
Though well-prepared to "bug in," I still lacked a failsafe bug-out plan. With Kevin Reeve's help, I established three escape routes-by land to Malibu Lake, by air to a remote location, and by sea to Catalina Island. I even discovered I had access to a family cabin near Spokane-exactly where Reeve had recommended building a retreat due to its cheap land, low population density, and lax gun laws.
Despite my elaborate preparations, I realized something was still missing: experience with real emergencies. Seeking stress exposure, I enrolled in EMT training at the California Institute of Emergency Medical Training. The course provided exactly what I needed-exposure to life-and-death situations while gaining medical skills and access to emergency networks.
My EMT ride-alongs exposed me more to human suffering than the stress training I'd hoped for. Most calls involved elderly patients, showing how modern medicine extends suffering and loneliness for years. Despite my disappointment in not experiencing high-stress emergencies, I found myself changing. Driving home one night, I spotted a motorcyclist injured on the highway shoulder. While other cars sped past, I stopped, called 911, and used my first-aid kit to bandage his bleeding arm-something I'd never done before.
I joined California Emergency Mobile Patrol (C.E.M.P.), a volunteer search-and-rescue unit supporting Los Angeles police and fire departments. I was no longer Neil-I was SR14a, part of a network rather than an individual. Shortly after joining, I experienced my first natural disaster when a 5.4 magnitude earthquake struck. The radio's warning system worked perfectly-I dove under a desk as the house began to shake. I followed my training: checking on Katie, inspecting the neighborhood and our goat Lola, then calling C.E.M.P. to offer assistance. It felt good knowing exactly what to do.
The true test came when I responded to a devastating train accident where a Metrolink commuter train had collided head-on with a Union Pacific freight train. As an EMT, I helped establish a treatment center for the walking wounded. The community's response was overwhelming-local businesses and residents brought water, food, and supplies. Working with victims, I realized tragedy often brings out people's best instincts to help one another, challenging my Fliesian beliefs.
That night, I realized I'd transformed from someone who runs from disaster to someone who runs toward it to help. My preparations were no longer just for my own survival but for my community's.
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Coming Full Circle: Finding Purpose Beyond Fear
After nearly two years of waiting, I finally received my St. Kitts citizenship. Seeing my name and photo in a non-US passport-legitimately obtained through careful documentation and persistence-was breathtaking. The dark blue booklet represented not just a document, but a profound transformation. My second citizenship had evolved from a fear-driven necessity into a cherished choice. Through intensive training and real-world practice, I'd proven to myself that I could survive with minimal tools in both American forests and St. Kitts jungles, adapting to vastly different environments with confidence.
During the historic 2008 U.S. election, Katie, Spencer, and I joined hundreds of Kittitians at Sugar's bar, a local gathering spot that had become our second home. The atmosphere crackled with anticipation as we watched the results roll in on the flickering television screen. When Obama was announced as the 44th president, relief washed over us like a Caribbean wave. We'd been holding our breath for eight years, watching civil liberties erode and paranoia grow.
Ironically, I felt oddly grateful to the Bush administration-without its policies pushing me to seek alternatives, I wouldn't have discovered my second home in the Caribbean or experienced such a profound personal transformation. As celebrating Kittitians proclaimed "hope for America," their joy infectious and genuine, I reflected deeply on hope itself. I'd learned that hope, while comforting, is ultimately a passive emotion-the last survival skill of the powerless. Instead, I'd grown to prefer decisive action and practical preparation.
This philosophy now guides my daily life in Los Angeles, where I dedicate myself to numerous community service roles. I conduct search and rescue operations with C.E.M.P., mastering complex terrain and emergency protocols. I've become proficient in ham radio operations, maintaining crucial communication networks. Working as an EMT has taught me to remain calm under pressure while saving lives. Through CERT disaster drills, I help prepare whole neighborhoods for potential catastrophes. Even my urban homesteading efforts, including milking goats in my backyard, contribute to local resilience and self-sufficiency.
These experiences have taught me a profound truth: those who run from death also run from life, while those who run toward death-leaning over the abyss to pull someone back-truly live. This isn't mere philosophy; I've witnessed it firsthand in emergency situations where split-second decisions make the difference between life and death.
The survival skills I've acquired serve dual purposes. They provide immediate peace of mind, knowing I can protect and care for myself and loved ones in any situation. But more importantly, they've equipped me to serve others effectively until professional help arrives. This capability has become central to my identity and purpose.
What began as a paranoid quest to escape America transformed into something far more meaningful-a journey toward self-reliance, community service, and deeper purpose. The ultimate lesson of "Emergency" transcends mere physical preparation; it's about personal transformation into someone others can rely on when conventional systems fail. True survival, I've discovered, isn't about individual preservation but about strengthening community bonds and capabilities. By preparing yourself to face disaster, you become an essential resource to your community rather than a burden. This shift from fear-based isolation to community-focused preparation represents the most valuable survival skill of all.
