to keep you from becoming victim and turn you into a survivor. By cultivating your inherent traits of adaptability and tenacity, you can endure when things get tough. By planning ahead and learning new skills, you make yourself (and your household) more resilient and better able to adapt to change. In short, you are hard-wired for survival, and we are here to help you make the most of that. In this book, my co-author Joseph and I are going to show you how to prepare for the worst, share methods to manage your own survival, help you plan how to take care of your loved ones and friends, and provide ways to face a crisis that has dogged humanity for thousands of years—the scenario of a deadly epidemic. Don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom. Sometimes, it takes a crisis to peel away the distractions and noise of our busy lives, to remind
us the things that matter the most to us.
tim Macwelch
Founder, Advanced Survival Training
Survive a Pandemic
the basics
What You Need to Know, Right Now
Sometimes, the simplest things can make the biggest difference. Before we show you how to gear up for emergencies or help you “head for the hills” to escape, you’ll need to lay thegroundwork for pandemic safety. Nothing can be built up without a solid foundation.
KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON In a pandemic, it often feels as though the guidelines and projected outcomes are changing every day—and often, that’s because they are. In this chapter, we give you the basic information you need to know about the novel coronavirus,as well as best-practice tactics for any outbreak or epidemic.
KEEP IT CLEAN Washing your hands really does work to prevent the spread of disease and this simple practice might just save your life, but your hands aren’t the only thing to keep clean. Learn to harness you inner “clean freak” by disinfecting items that come from the outside and prevent cross-contamination in your home.
AVOID THE SCAMSTough times can bring out the best in people, as communities rally to help each other. Unfortunately, they can also bring out the worst. Bogus “cures” that do more harm than good, phishing scams, and identity thievery are just a few of the hazards we face—above and beyond the plague at our doorsteps.
There are a wide range of skills and tips in this book, from quick survival solutions to more elaborate plans, from everyday needs to worst-case scenarios. Before you jump ahead, it’s smart to build a foundation of knowledge.
01
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Wondering how to know if what’s going on is an outbreak, an epidemic, or a pandemic? Each represents a jump in severity and, while there are not exact delineations, here are the commonly
understood distinctions.
OUTBREAK An outbreak is a sudden rise in the number of cases of a disease. An outbreak may occur in a community or geographical area, or may even affect several countries. It may last for a few days or weeks, or even for several years. Some outbreaks are expected each year, the most common example being the
seasonal flu that hits every winter.
EPIDEMIC An outbreak becomes an epidemic once it starts spreading more quickly (and usually to a larger
population) than expected.
PANDEMIC If an outbreak spreads rapidly across nations or massive landmasses, it is termed a pandemic. Once it has jumped continents, we
begin calling it a global pandemic.
KNOW THE DIFFERENCE
People who end up in intensive care due to Covid-19 often suffer from acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS, which impairs the lungs’ ability to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide. This can result in organ failure, brain damage, abnormal heart rhythms, and other serious
conditions. The signs and symptoms of ARDS can begin
within hours to days of infection; treatment uses a ventilator. Globally, ARDS affects more than 3 million people a year, as it can also occur from conditions such as pneumonia, sepsis, severe burns, and smoke inhalation. ARDS has a mortality rate of approximately 40% and even for those who survive, a
decreased quality of life is sadly common.
KNOWABOUT ARDS
0304IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSEWhile the specifics of any outbreak will keep changing and
basics
Coronaviruses cause diseases in humans, mammals, and birds; when one crosses between species, it can go from being be mild in the original species to deadly in others. Often these start as a novel CoronaVirus (nCoV), the term for a medically significant new coronavirus . In humans the viruses cause respiratory tract infections which can range from mild to lethal. It is estimated about 15% of common colds in humans arecaused by coronaviruses. In recent decades, several zoonotic coronaviruses (those that began with an animal strain and crossed over to us) have caused
series outbreaks.
SARS The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) led to the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. Over 8,000 people from 29 different countries and territories were infected, and at least 774 died worldwide with a fatality rate of 9.2%. SARS is known to have crossed over from to humans either directly from horseshoe bats or by way of wild civet
meat sold at a local market in Guangdong, China.
MERS The first outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV), was the 2012 MERS outbreak in the Middle East, followed by the 2015 MERS outbreak in South Korea and the 2018 MERS outbreak centered in Saudi Arabia. MERS has been genetically linked to Camels and Egyptian tomb bats as the zoonotic source of human infection. Globally MERS patients were reported in over 25 countries, with almost 2500 cases worldwide and over
850 deaths reported, giving it a fatality rate of 36%.
COVID-19 The Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the cause of the global COVID-19 pandemic, is a strain of the original SARS virus. The first known patient was infected in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province, in November 2019. The virus subsequently spread to all provinces of China and to more than 150 other countries worldwide. Most people with COVID-19 recovered. For those who do not, the time from development of symptoms to death has been between 6 and 41 days, with an average 14 days. From a global perspective, the infection fatality rate is estimated to be up to 0.4%. However, of those who are admitted the hospital, the fatality rate is much higher, with a death to case ratio of approximately
6.2% at the time of writing.
FOCUS
