HS 38 – CERTS – Disaster Preparedness – Taking It To The Next Level

Welcome to the Holistic Survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival show is your family's insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst scenario, you'll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman.

Welcome to the Holistic Survival Show. This is Jason Hartman where we talk about protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Today we're going to talk one more time. I know you can't really talk about this topic too much about disaster preparedness and the CERTs program. And our guest is a fascinating guy. He's done a whole variety of work and just a really interesting guest. He's a medical doctor. He's written, I think nine books on all sorts of a variety of topics. A real renaissance man. So I think you'll enjoy that. And I think our next show we're going to do something about identity protection. A really interesting take on it. The author John Celio who authored a book entitled Privacy Means profit and and how to prevent identity theft and actually increase or at least protect your bottom line. That'll be interesting as well. And we'll have that. I think that will be our next show. Number 39. But let's get on with disaster preparedness kind of taken to the next level and welcome our guest. And we will be back with that in just less than 60 seconds.

Now you can get Jason's Creating wealth in today's economy home study course. All the knowledge and education revealed in a nine hour day of the creating wealth boot camp created in a home study course for you to dive into at your convenience. For more details go to jasonhartman.com.

It's my pleasure to welcome Jeffrey Simmons to the show. He's the author of Common Sense and Disaster Preparedness and he is an expert in all sorts of preparedness for various types of emergencies and disaster situations. And it's great to have him here to talk about how to be prepared. Jeff, welcome.

Thanks for having me.

My pleasure. So tell us first of all how you came to be interested in this topic and what it's all about.

Yeah, well, I was president of a local medical society and when 911 happened and we were meeting shortly Thereafter to plan our next year, which, you know, fundraising and education, the usual things that medical societies do. This 800 pound gorilla was sitting on the table. Preparedness. Look what happened in New York and in our town, I live in Eugene, Oregon, we didn't know of much being done. Looking into it and looking back, a lot had been done in lots of places, but our town hadn't. And so I got involved with something called the Medical Reserve Corps, which is essentially doctors responding when hospitals have been knocked out and reorganizing elsewhere in the town to help people who've been injured when there's been a disaster. But I learned about certs, which is Community Emergency Response Teams, which are nationwide, actually now, they're international. And these are neighbors helping neighbors, and they're neighbors trained to help when first responders can't come or are delayed. And that's a very common scenario in big disasters. New Orleans is a classic example, but there's numerous earthquakes and hurricanes and bomb explosions and a whole host of stuff where first responders are just overwhelmed. And so people need to know how to put out certain kinds of fires and need to know how to get victims out of rubble while getting themselves hurt. They need to know how to do safe, light search and rescue. They need to know how to do first aid with cardboard and tape. I mean, I have a first aid kit or a doctor or nurse along with them, how to slip, how to stabilize somebody, to work in pairs, how to know what's safe, what isn't, what's smart, what isn't. I mean, Oklahoma City bombing, a lot of people were right next to the building and some were hurt because the parts of the building were coming down. We trained people how far to stay away. Same thing with the World Trade center where they were hurt with jumpers. And so we teach a ton of basics, starting with the obvious, simple stuff that most people know, and that's to have enough food and water around and to keep track of it and to trade it out. So it's always. And so the standard recommendation, of course, would be 72 hours of food and 72 hours of water. But most of us can make it a lot longer without the food. It's the water that becomes important. And that also hinges on the ambient temperature. I mean, if you're in a humid hot area, you might need more. If you're ill, you might need more. Interesting enough, with some of the disasters we're seeing, some of those rules aren't holding up. Some people can make it a lot longer, but the standard still is 72 hours of each. And then we also teach people other things about preparedness, having a cell phone. I mean, some folks still don't have cell phones to call 911. Some people who do have cell phones don't have who to contact in an emergency if you're knocked out. We teach people to have something like ice. They call ice. That's in case of emergency. All paramedics know that or just have mom or dad. So they know who out of the 45 contacts who they can contact. And we teach people to always have two exits wherever they are, because you never know if you're in a fire, which one to might be blocked. So always have two exits. And it's not a bad idea sometimes to be sure that they work, as we noticed in the Rhode island nightclub fire a few years back.

I remember that.

That was awful. But they say that they could have saved about 65% of the people who died if they had decided to leave when the fire started. They all kind of were either dazed or thought it was all part of the show. And so, you know, we teach people to get out. There's a lot of good books about the fine line between panic and making a quick decision. And a lot of folks have died through the years of ferry boats and flipping over and planes crashing. Because some people go into what they call brain lock or brain freeze. They just go into this dazed look of disbelief and denial, and then they go into this decision mode. And by the time they get to making a move, they've lost several seconds. And sometimes those several seconds are extremely important. So that's hard to teach somebody because when a bad thing happens, they're not really thinking. But if you can teach that as a new knee jerk, that helps. And we teach people what to do after the disaster happens, too. You know, a lot of shelter information, but you should know where the shelters are. Listen to the radio if you don't. And sometimes they change depending on the disaster. We teach people what to do with their pets. A lot of people won't leave without their pets. Well, now there's a federal law that requires states to have shelters that will take care of pets that can be kept separate. They have to be kept separate, usually unless they're guide dogs of the sort of. And so you take your pets and what you do to your pets. Well, that's a whole other science. How much food should you have? Should you have a first aid kit for them and for you. Which is also true, going back to people is that, you know, if you can't afford to lose it, you know, they say secure it. In other words, be able to grab it and go. Because like that fire in California recently in, I think it was San Bruno, or a name similar to that, those folks were evacuated who were on the perimeter instantly. Well, if you got important papers, important photos, you should have them all in one place. If you have a family, have a family plan. You know, somebody takes pets, somebody takes the paper, somebody takes the food and water, and you all get in the car. If you're separated, it's happened and people are about town. You know, Mom's shopping or work and dad's out of town and the kid's at school, how do you meet up? Well, you call a relative, you all know the same relative to call out of town. If you're in a house, I'm really rattling this off, but to get it all in is a ton. If you're in a house fire, people have been killed and injured running back in for their kids. And we teach people to have a family plan so that everybody who evacuates and they know which window to go out or which door to go out, they all meet up at the mailbox or at the cedar tree or at the street sign or something. So everybody knows everybody's out. And so there's family plans. We teach family what kind of foods to store, which ones not to, how to protect them, because some of the foods that people store vermin will get into. Some of it will just get old and not be good. You need high calorie foods and you need it protected. And canned foods are great except for they're hard to carry. And so you look into some lighter foods that are high calorie to be able to carry, maybe a backpack for each person in the family. We teach people what to do with fires. You know, smoke filled room. Most people know to crawl low, but we make sure people know that. We tell people to feel the door before they open it to see if it's hot. You don't want to open a hot door. And we tell people to feel it with the back of their hand, not.

The front of their hand so they don't burn it. Yeah, right.

Yeah. And then they can't use their hand. So you feel it with the back of your hand. If it's nerve gas, you go up high. Most of us aren't going to have that.

Let me ask you a couple questions, if I may, on those. First of all, I want to go back to the food question. And we've had A lot of people on the show that have talked about food storage and food safety and rotating food so that none of the stock gets too old. But I wanted to ask you about one thing in particular. A lot of these survivalist websites and so forth, disaster websites and various first aid kits or bug out bags have these food pills in them. It's not really food, it's a food substitute that's a tiny little pill that has about a zillion calories in it. I was wondering if you could speak to those, because I've never asked anyone about it.

I'm not familiar with that. As soon as I'm off the air.

Here, I will check them out. I'd love to know about that. I don't know about.

I do know there are foods that are prepped that you can mix two chemicals together on the outside of the bag and you can have a hot meal. And they're light. And not only is that nice to have a hot meal, but psychologically it's comforting as well. And there are groups out there will sell you a whole backpack full, say they've got two weeks worth. What you need to know on that scenario is that you also have to carry water and water actually is the heaviest item of all. I do not know anything about those pills, but there are a ton of high calorie candy bars, but not candy bars that one could buy. I don't know about the pills. I'd be careful about a little pill that has high calories.

I'm sort of wondering if the claims are true and that's why I asked you about it. So on the food issue, anything more on that that you want to mention? And then I want to ask you about water and talk about nerve gas as well, because we have not talked about that on prior shows. Anything on food and water though you want to mention there before we go on?

Well, you know, on water there's no one way to sterilize water that works absolutely for everything. So some experts think that if you have the time and you have the means and you have the mechanism, you should boil it and put iodine tabs in or use one of the laser sterilizers because there's a whole bunch of viruses, a bunch of spores, there's chemicals. And so there is no one proof, one system that works entirely boiling. And the tabs are your easiest and the most likely to work. Water wise. You do have to gauge that, as I mentioned, based on humidity and heat, you're a lot better off in the cold than you are in the hot. And that's common sense on food, it really boils down to high calorie foods and being careful that you haven't stocked stuff that vermin. People will go to their emergency supplies and they'll have a bag of nuts or trail mix and cellophane and find out there's a hole in it or there's little pellets of rat poop in the area. And so it's a big danger. So we actually have people double seal things. We have them in sealed things and then in a container that is sealed as well, that has a handle on it or can roll and can be moved. And think of your kids and comfort foods. There are things that just make people feel better. You know, a Fig Newton or, you know, or two or an Oreo or you have to keep in mind what your kids have. If you have little kids, you know, you may be talking about formula. And so when you're packing your gear, you need to have what your baby's going to need. And that might be diapers. It'd be a whole host of medicines. One of the things is you don't catch in most of the books on survival and disaster preparedness, which I like to tout is in my book being an MD is what to do about your medications if you are cut off from your doc or any medical facility. No phones, no road access, and what do you do about medications? And you know, if you're in a situation where it's hot, you're sweating, you're not getting enough fluids, probably the one thing you shouldn't be doing is still taking your diuretic. And people get diuretics for blood pressure. In fact, even blood pressure medicines, you might want to half the dose. This is a conversation that you can't just take my advice. It's the kind of conversation people should have with their doctor, especially people who are in areas where there's likely to be a disaster. You know, where there's likely to be an earthquake, where there's likely to be hurricanes, where there's likely to be blackouts. What do I do about this medicine? There's blood thinners that need blood tests on a regular basis and should I just skip it so I can get back to you? And a number of other medicines. So I address that and I address certain medical conditions in the book as well. As I mentioned to you before we went on the air, it's being published by the Journal of Emergency Management and I don't know at this time whether it's going to go traditional routes or not, but I'm sure it'll be findable sometime late fall. I try to take in the book the best that I can see in all the books that I've seen. And I reviewed lots of books, lots and lots of books, actually, including the femocyte. To be honest with you, Jason, I don't think I've ever seen these pellets. It's interesting.

Now, what about you mentioned nerve gas, and I thought that was interesting. Scary as can be, but it sinks, whereas smoke rises. So in a fire, we want to be down low so we can breathe. First of all, how much warning are we going to have to something like nerve gas? Maybe you want to talk about the attack in Japan. I think that was sarin gas, if I'm not mistaken. What is sarin and what are the different things? What is anthrax? What are these?

Some of that's addressed in my book, and some of that's addressed in a lot of the books that are like my book, the sarin. And there's about six or five or five or six different variations on it. Our nerve gases are developed for warfare, but they're related to pesticides that are used in fields. And people sometimes die in similar ways because of overexposure to some of these pesticides. But for the most part they're not used anymore. But they have a direct impact on our nerves, and it's very, very hard to reverse this. Iraq used it on Iran a couple dozen years ago, and they claim that millions were killed with it, but certainly many were killed. And there's a medicine called atropine which reverses it, but you almost have to take shot after shot after shot of atropine to reverse it. You will not get. If there's a nerve gas warning, you're not likely to get a warning like you would a hurricane's coming to town or it's tornado season and they're seeing them in the next state or there's volcano rumbling or something. You're not going to get any warning if it's used and if it's used. Your best clue is if people are collapsing around you. And the thing is, for simplistic terms, everything goes in motion. The bowels go in motion, the stomach goes in motion. They're vomiting, they're lacrimating. Otherwise their eyes are running, they're salivating, their bowels are moving, they're hyper and they're collapsing. But I'll tell you, if anybody's, if you're a whole bunch of People collapsing around you anyway, you should probably get out of the area. And of course, call 911 if there's any chance that it could be nerve gas. Go up one flight or two flights or climb a tree. You know, the same thing with tsunamis. You know, you go up if you can, and you go up in a concrete building smoke, you go down. For World War I, a lot of soldiers were killed because the Germans had mustard gas, which would creep along the ground a foot or two high and then sink into the foxholes. And so all the guys that were foxholes, which was a standard procedure in those days, had terrible consequences. Most people don't think that we're going to get hit like Tokyo was, but you never know. They had 5,000 people who were affected. And in fact, interesting about the Tokyo attack is that people who were down and people who did CPR on them actually got poisoned with the gas also because they were doing mouth to mouth and the gas comes back out and affects.

So you don't do mouth to mouth. These people gas off. And that's the term gas off. And in fact, a lot of medical people were badly hurt even in that hospital that was overwhelmed because they had so many people who came there, they had to shift over to the chapel. Well, it turns out the chapel had no windows, so they had all these victims gassing off. And then they had nurses and doctors who were dropping, and some of them ended up in the icu. It really is a bad character. And so, I mean, for the most part, ventilate a room or an area. And another thing that's interesting about disasters is CPR has changed drastically in the last six months. There's major articles.

I heard that. Yeah, tell us about that.

There's major articles now saying you don't really have to do mouth to mouth for one. And for two, the mouth to mouth thing is so prohibitive to people so distasteful that they just won't do anything. Well, it turns out that the 911 operators now are just telling people to pound, almost depress almost as fast as they can at least 100 times a minute. And the thinking is that there's enough oxygen in the bloodstream already. And indeed there's evidence to support that. There was some place in Arizona, I think, who decided to do mouth to mouth or bag. And that bag or something along that line, the people without the mouth to mouth had like 20% more chance of survival. And so it got published and it got looked at and it's in the process of Changing now. Is it official? No. So anybody who's listening to me, you have to know the official CPR still is mouth to mouth, but that is changing. And it's certainly better to do the fast chest compressions than to do nothing.

Good point. So other kinds of disasters in terms of either biological or chemical attack, if you have anything else to say about that, I think people would like to know. Terrorism is what we're really talking about there.

The thing of water being poisoned is pretty unlikely. It takes such huge volumes. It's so diluted out that most experts don't think that we're going to have like a mass casualty incident with a water in any big city.

What about crop dusting and things like that over stadiums? I mean, I guess that's a lot harder to do than it sounds.

That's the nerve gas kind of thing. And that's stuff they're watching now, but they weren't watching before. It's always a risk. You know, we have so many private planes and we have so many vehicles. To have us putting in an air conditioning unit in a skyrise, you know, can cause havoc in the one building. But most people think that we're going to have mostly explosive devices. Like we're seeing sometimes huge, but mostly explosive devices because those are the easiest to work with. And the biological stuff still is lingering out there. That anthrax, they never solved who did it and that could happen again. It went through the US Mails. Look what happened with these packages that almost made it to the two synagogues in Chicago. Although what I read today sounds like they were timed and such that they may have gone off in the planes before they even got there. And so explosives are the main thing. There's not much you can do if you're on a plane that has an explosive device that goes off. There are a few things. There are a lot of interesting books out there, some few things that you can increase your survival on planes that crash. Not only do you have to like fly every day for 150,000 years before you'll statistically have that crash, so it really isn't a worry. But there's some studies, you know, people argued front, back, aisle, not things like that, but there does seem to be some evidence if you sit within five rows of an exit seat, exit door rather, and you sit on an aisle and you have a plan and you're not one of these people that go into brain lock. I mean, you have to train yourself not to do that. You have a reasonable chance, especially if somebody is at that exit door, who will respond. Sometimes we end up with a very heavy set person or a slow moving person or somebody who's frozen in their seat. And usually what you see with the stewardess is when you get on the plane, everybody thinks that they're greeting them, which they are. But they're also looking you over as to what kind of help you could be and should you be in one of those exit seats and who might be a problem if there's of the disaster. They're trained to look at you as you're coming on and weigh what your benefits or your risks are as you come on board.

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I never knew that. I would think nowadays they'd be looking for terrorists and looking them over, but for usefulness is what you're talking about. Usefulness and survival situations. Right.

They assume that's been taken care of by security. I mean, I think that's always being watched everywhere. But from my reading and my training is they assume most of that's been taken care of already. What they're looking for now is like that macho guy who's, you know, six' two, six' three, who, you know, used to play on the football team a few years ago, you know, and I'm being stereotypic, but a guy who's strong, who's young, who's, you know, gonna be able to rip that door open and you know, help people get out and that type of person, that guy might.

Go running for the hills though, you never know. Right, I hear you. So on that exit row thing, I find that interesting because they used to always say you're better off sitting in the back of the plane. Some say right over the wing. But gosh, that Airbus accident that just happened with the engine blowing up, I don't know that near the wing is that good a decision. Now it didn't matter in that particular instance, but it seems like, you know, you got all the fuel there, you know. Yeah.

Survivor club. And it talks about all the studies and there's no clear cut seat to sit in because they all. Every accident is a little different.

It's different, yeah. But near an exit row, statistically is definitely helpful.

And within five rows of the exit door.

One thing I want to ask you, when it comes back to the home or the office, if disaster strikes, say when one is at home, how do they make the stay or go decision? Sometimes it's best to just hold up in your house, but sometimes it's better to leave. How do you know?

Well, it's not always easy. I mean, the best answer I can give you is listen to what the authorities tell you on the emergency alert system, which would be on an AM radio station. So have a radio that's battery dependent, not plug in and listen to what they're telling you. But you also have to pay attention to things like gridlock because the people who left Houston for a hurricane, I think it was Rita, it was the one that followed Katrina, they got into gridlock and a lot of them ran out of gas and the grocery stores were closed or empty and the gas stations were closed. And so you can get yourself in trouble. But for the most part the experts are supposed to know, authorities are supposed to know what your best shot is and to get stay put or not. Getting in your car and driving through a toxic plume because there's been a hazmat incident is a lot more dangerous than going into the inner room of your home and taping up like a bathroom and taping up the doors and any other vents and staying put for six or eight hours. And so one has to know what the incident was, where it was, how close it was. You have to know what the authorities are saying. It's very hard to know when you're by yourself, kind of isolated or your family. So you are authority dependent and you have to trust them. There's a number of people at St. Helens, which is the volcano that went off near us here years ago, who didn't buy into the danger and stayed put. And they're no longer with us. And it happens with hurricanes as well. And then there's a bunch of examples of hurricane folks who stay put say I've always been here and they do fine. I would always side with what the authorities are telling me.

Any last tips in closing? We've got to wrap up but any last thoughts? Maybe some do's and don'ts. If you have any more of those you want to mention.

Yeah, always have a safe haven and have a backup safe haven, you know, when in doubt, sort of get out. Go on fema.gov that's the best piece of advice I can give anybody. Fema.gov and it'll tell you and you can pick your disaster du jour, you know, whatever affects your neck of the woods. And you can learn about food storage and food preparation. You can learn about how to protect your home. You know what to do if it's a flooding area. Fema.gov and you can drill down. That's the best words I can give you.

Good, good advice. Tell people where they can get the book. The title again? Common Sense and Disaster Preparedness.

Yes, Common Sense and Disaster Preparedness. It's being published by the Journal of Emergency Management, abbreviated jem. And, you know, you might email them or just watch their website or something. It's due out roughly late November, early December, but it's in production and I can't give a firm date.

Good stuff. Well, Jeff Simmons, thank you so much for joining us today. And thanks for the insights on disaster preparedness. Very important topic, obviously. Take care.

Thank you.

What's great about the shows you'll find on jasonhartman.com is that if you want to learn about investing in and managing income properties for college students, there's a show for that. If you want to learn how to get noticed online and in social media, there's a show for that. If you want to know how to save on life's largest expense, there's a show for that. And if you'd like to know about America, crime of the century, there's even a show for that. Yep, there's a show for just about anything only from jasonhartman.com or type in Jason Hartman in the iTunes store.

Thank you for joining us today for the holistic survival show protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Be sure to listen to our Creating wealth show, which focuses on exploiting the financial and wealth creation opportunities in today's economy. Learn more at www.jasonhartman.com or search Jason Hartman on itunes. This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company, offering very general guidelines and information. Opinions of guests are their own and none of the content should be considered individual advice. If you require personalized advice, please consult an appropriate professional information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.