When You Don't Make It

[Mortblanc]

I had a bad night last. Storms came through. There was a large "super cell" that developed in the center of our nation, then joined with several others to form a violent front that stretched from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

That is a 3000 mile wide storm system, and "super cells" are the storms that create violent tornados. The tornado alert went into effect in my area around 10pm and stayed in effect for the night.

At my place the storm got bad at around midnight with heavy winds around 50-60mph and rain bucketing down, thunder and lightening.

OK, I thought, if the power goes out I am set. I have had all the trees removed from near the house, everything is buttoned down. Food, water, fuel and everything needed is on hand for weeks if necessary.

I could not sleep and stayed up for most of the night. By that I mean that I did not go to bed until 4am when things calmed. Much of the storm had been nerve shattering and I hopped that all was well. I had turned off all the electronics when the storm began, to preserve them from storm surge and lightening strikes.

I woke this morning to discover that the "super cell" had spun off numerous scattered tornadoes and one full power storm of F3 level that traveled for a path of destruction for 250 miles, totally destroying everything in its path.

My state is 800 miles from east to west. The western section is a wide flood plain of the Mississippi River. That flat prairie goes for 250 miles with no hills, mountains or canyons to break the path of a weather system. That large tornado set itself down at the Mississippi River and ran east across the relatively empty farm land. Then it hit a small town named Mayfield, Kentucky. That town is 300 miles west of me. My grand parents had spent the last years of their lives about 20 miles north of there. I know the area well.

I turned on the computer this morning to discover that Mayfield is gone! Beside the destruction of the material structures it struck an industrial park, most of the facilities running 24/7 shifts. In that park was a factory that made candles. Decorative candles, and it being the holidays they were running a night shift to fill demand. 110 people were at work.

This morning only 40 of them are accounted for. Another 70 from scattered points in my state are dead. More than 100 total but there is no firm number at this point.

I don't know how many of those people were "fully prepped". I don't know how many of those flat homes were stocked for a year of SHTF. I don't know how many had generators, lanterns, torches, farming tools to rebuild society.

It does not really matter, they are dead. They did not see it coming, they could not avoid it, they could do not one thing about the situation that took them.

I know, that's too bad, life must go on, stiff upper lip make a cup of tea and carry on.

But it doesn't. Not for the people that lost a husband, wife, son, daughter or grand child in a crushed building and it was absolutely no one's fault. No one to blame, no one to hold responsible as negligent. It is not the government's fault, the sheeples fault, the media's fault, or the responsibility of the New World Order.

They are grieving, and they are grieving in the rain outside a flattened house beside a pickup truck that is upside down in the drive with the temps hovering around freezing. They are addled, they can not think straight, they are in shock and they can not even be held responsible for their own actions at this point, much less expected to "carry on". The immediate concern is "how many funerals do I need to plan?"

We stay detached from these disasters, evaluate them, critique the effectiveness of the responses, discuss what these people "should have in case of emergency". But what happens when after decades of training, selective buying, storing and stashing one dark night at 1am Godzilla stomps on your @$$ ???

You are still alive but everyone you loved is dead under a pile of rubble and you can't dig them out because you have a broken arm that has not been treated. You are sitting under the roots of an overturned tree, in the dark, in pain, in grief and completely disoriented. Your arm is broken, you are bloody, battered, no one is answering your screams and you don't know where your trousers went.

Good luck with that!

Oh you say you have lots of supplies in the house?

Sorry, you have no house, it's gone to OZ.

Now what you gonna do mighty prepper?