Chapter 12
1330, Day 1, Garrett Household, Agua Dulce, California
Melinda and James reached Madison with the two-way radio at around 9:30 a.m. The couple had slept through the EMP unaware until morning and waking up to no power. Going outside and finding their neighbors milling around, trying to start their cars was all Logan needed to know that something drastic had occurred. He and Melinda pulled the two-way radio from a closet and set it up using Lee’s instructions just as the other family members had done. Once working, James contacted the main Garrett house.
The two-way radios provided the Garrett family a lifesaving advantage as a method for the three households to communicate. Although the Garretts were not yet aware of the extent of power and communication outage countrywide, they knew the radios Lee had set up provided their family a link for communicating. Cell phones were as dead as landlines, and widespread panic was surely occurring. Fear for loved ones gripped everyone. James and Melinda began to realize how important this HAM radio was. The two felt bad about all the kidding and harassment the family had given Lee over his obsession with setting up the radios at the three households.
Using the radios, a discussion of choices went back and forth. The final agreement was for Melinda and James to sit tight until later in the day. Then assuming Lawrence and Richard Silva made it to the house, they would send out a rescue party the ten miles, driving Lee’s old Mustang.
Meanwhile, Logan and Madison started taking stock of their emergency items and food supplies. A mostly buried shipping container up the hill from the house contained most of the emergency food. Although only under a few feet of dirt, the buried container remained at a nearly constant sixty-eight degrees. The hard volcanic rock of the Garrett property had proven difficult to excavate, but once completed, the nearly solid rock provided for strong walls and minimal reinforcement for the sides of the container. Steel beams and an added layer of galvanized sheet metal added strength to the roof. Besides food, the container had a large supply of other essential items including ammunition, batteries, stoves, fuel, medical supplies and about everything any well-versed Prepper would have a supply of. The container also had air ventilation pipes coming from two remote locations into a void below the floor. An air intake in the floor provided filtered air for one of three different air systems. The primary powered unit was an added HEPA air pump. If the outside environment became contaminated, the pump and filter combination created a slightly positive pressure in the container, ensuring no contaminants could leach into the container. A small dehumidifier and a portable air conditioner were also inside the container. A bank of 12-volt batteries powered a 48-volt inverter that could run any of the ventilation units. Solar panels arranged on the hill kept the batteries charged and ready. The ventilation pipes contained HEPA filters at the hidden intakes. HEPA filters could stop a multitude of dangerous things, including chemical, biological and even radioactive dust particles. Lee had designed the container for possible use as a short-term “survival shelter.” He argued there was little chance of using it for something like a nuclear or biological event. However, its use as a fire shelter in the fire-prone Southern California high desert was a real possibility. The buried, insulated, and dual entrance door shelter would be impervious to any raging fire and could easily provide clean, cool, and filtered air for a dozen people if needed.
The Garrett property was a constant rising slope from the entrance gate up to a rocky ridgeline along the north end of the plot. The highest point of the hill was eighty feet higher in elevation than the house. Large rocks at that point provided a perfect and natural location for an observation point. Lee and Logan had taken bags of premixed concrete up the hill with the tractor and poured and smoothed out the mix between the rocks to create a flat floor. They drilled into the rock using a concrete bit and hammer drill and installed eyebolts using a chemical two-part epoxy.
Logan found a tarpaulin and net in the storage shed he and his Dad had put together at the same time they built the OP. It consisted of a brown metallic tarp with a military camouflage net layer over the outside and connected to the inside layer with plastic wire ties. The combination unit would provide both shelter from rain and some concealment. Logan hiked up the hill and installed the net over the makeshift observation point. Then following instructions contained in the emergency book, Logan rolled out a multiconductor wire from the top of the OP down the hill to the house. Lee had already prepared a “phone” system using two old dial telephones. Following instructions available on Prepper sites, Lee rewired the phones and installed a lantern battery on each one. To make them quick and easy to set up and use, Lee had installed simple plastic connectors on each end of the cable. Once plugged to the phones at each point, simply lifting one phone’s handset caused the other phone to ring. The cheap phones provided clean, easy, and undetectable two-way communication similar to expensive military field phones.
Logan also took other items up to the OP, including bottled water, a large pair of binoculars, two small folding chairs, blankets, and a spotting scope. Plus, he carried up a small ammo-box of AR15 rounds and another of AR-10 rounds. He wanted the ammo and other items preplaced. If someone needed to man the post, they would only need to take weapons and personal items.
Madison had started looking over the short- and long-term food stores. She wanted to conserve the fresh and perishable food as long as possible. So she planned to supplement all meals with the long-term freeze-dried, canned, and dehydrated foods from the food container. The food container did contain a mixture of canned and bottled items, which they periodically rotated out of their daily diets. Far more importantly were the long-term products. These items had shelf lives of up to twenty-five years. She also found ten cases of MRE meals. The MRE meals did not have as long of shelf life but were quick and easy to use. She brought two cases of the MREs down to the house.
One of the sections in Lees emergency manual said to “prepare to bug out.” The instructions contained a list of priorities to stockpile in the garage. If the Garrett home became unlivable, they would evacuate using whatever running cars they had at their disposal. Currently, that included the old Mustang, which Logan backed up to the garage door, plus two Yamaha dirt bikes. Logan had retrieved both bikes from their respective shed and had drained and refueled them. Using a car battery power air compressor Logan topped off the air in all the bike tires, the Mustang, and even the Kubota tractor. The bikes would not carry large supplies, but they could traverse rugged terrain and would be valuable scout vehicles if the family was escaping to other places. He also found a tool bag made special for the bikes, which contained spare parts such as spark plugs and tire tubes plus an assortment of the needed tools. If the time came, forcing the family to flee, everyone knew the plan was to head north toward Lone Pine California. Lee’s Aunt Betty lived North of Lone Pine California in the foothills of the High Sierra Mountains. It was a perfect retreat spot should the need arise. Aunt Betty welcomed the idea of the family bugging out to her house in the mountains.
Madison also found a large box, which contained ten battery powered LED motion lights. They were small flat lights with 120-degree motion sensors. They contained small solar chargers to renew the rechargeable batteries during the daytime. Lee’s instructions said to install new rechargeable batteries in each unit and then place them around the property, hiding them within bushes or rocks. The small LED lights would provide warning for anyone trying to move around the property at night. Madison installed the new batteries in each unit and tested them, but she would let Logan do the placements later.
The five acres was only fully enclosed with three-wire metal post fencing. This fencing was more of a border marking, which did little to keep out people or wild animals. A portion of the yard around the backyard and side yards of the house had six-foot tall wood fencing. Madison knew that Lee had been working on a “sensing” wire, which he planned on running around the three-wire fence. Lee had explained to Madison how the extra sensor wire would run on electrical insulators close to the center bare metal fence wire. Most people would not notice the small wire.