Prepping « Robin Writes

Last night, we watched The Worst Movie Ever. Kid you not. “Area 407” should be banished, erased, burned, SOMETHING.

The basic premise, annoying girl-child aside, was that a plane crashed in a government testing area. Roughly six or so people survived the crash: the annoying one (I can’t stress this enough), her sister, a fat guy who complained about everything, a US air marshal, a photo-journalist, a flight attendant, and a couple others.

Spoiler alert: they all died. Doesn’t matter—you really don’t want to watch this anyway.

So they’re sitting there in the middle of nowhere, no one has cell service (didn’t occur to them to check that for a good 30 minutes), everyone is injured (presumably, there’s a lot of blood), and guess what happened?

A lot of screaming and yelling and running around. After the flight attendant is killed by whatever-that-thing-is, they decide to all go for help. In fairness, the whatever-that-thing-is was still running around somewhere in the dark. Then the air marshal shoots at the—well, hell, it was some kind of dinosaur; spoiler alert again—and THEN announces, “It’s okay, I’m an air marshal.” With an Australian accent.

But I digress.

The point is that they were all idiots.

Let’s forget the dinosaur part for now, and the fact that they’d crashed into a government testing facility. That pretty much guaranteed they weren’t getting out alive, period. They’d seen too much.

But they could have lasted a lot longer, and without all the running around, finding abandoned cabins with sort of working radios, and finding an SUV too, which the annoying one’s sister used to accidentally run over the air marshal.

Oops, more digression.

What should they have done?

One, shut up. Oh, please, please, shut up! Now, bless her heart, the surviving flight attendant tried to get everyone to work together, but she just wasn’t up to the task. I get that. Some people aren’t. The marshal sure could have identified herself sooner—like right away. Whoever takes charge in a situation like this must 1) know what he’s doing, and 2) get control. All that racket probably drew the dinosaur—and that holds true for a lot of danger out in the middle of nowhere, dinosaur or not.

Moving on: attend to the immediate needs of the injured. Do not put a tourniquet on a scrape/cut on a whiny kid’s arm. Slap her out of her hysteria and whining. Seriously. She was about 13 or 14 and acted like an 8-year-old who’d missed a few days of Ritalin. Oy.

So, in this situation, no one was badly injured, nothing life-threatening. Next step, shelter.

They had half a plane sitting there, for crying out loud—why leave? Plane crash, black box, flare gun. Right there. Get comfortable, barricade the gaping opening, keep people busy. Next, check supplies.

Isn’t the galley usually in the back somewhere? Crew quarters, carry-ons, etc. Find water. Find some food. Hunker down and wait.

Sure, the military would have killed them later, perhaps, if they caught sight of the dinosaurs, but maybe not. At least it would have been a clean shot, instead of being ripped apart, or barfing up dinosaur eggs like the photo-journalist. Oops, my bad. Too graphic? It was pretty disgusting, for sure.

There are some situations where you might want to get the hell out of Dodge, but this wasn’t one of them. Sometimes, it’s best to stay put, especially if you know people might be looking for you.

Assess and take care of injuries, find shelter and supplies, and wait.

And watch out for mutant dinosaurs.

More stuff going down around these parts—again, if you haven’t seen the news, you’re living under a rock. It’s tense, all over the area, and the 24/7 coverage is really, really wearing.

And yes, I can only imagine how it feels to actually be living in Ferguson right now.

Sad, mad, glad, and afraid. The four basic emotions. On the one hand, there are the law-abiding citizens; on the other hand, the ones who are out-of-control. The latter are making things very, very difficult and dangerous for everyone.

Remember when your kids were small, or, if they still are, how you taught them appropriate responses to emotional angst? Things like “it’s not okay to scream when you’re only playing,” “it’s not okay to steal,” “it’s not okay to rip out your brother’s hair because he breathed on you.” We teach our kids that it’s okay to feel whatever emotion they’re having, but their responses must be tempered and socially acceptable.

Why, then, is Ferguson having such a hard time?

Go home. Talk to your family and friends. At home. Rant and rave. At home. Write letters, make phone calls, blog, go on social media. At home. Punch a pillow. Punch the walls. At home.

Do you really think that marching around your town, chanting “hands up, don’t shoot,” or any other slogan, is going to—what? What is that going to do? Show solidarity? I would hope you already have that, among your family and friends. You should know that the majority of Americans also stand firmly against injustice already.

It’s like posting a pink ribbon on your Facebook page. The purpose of that is to raise awareness of breast cancer, right? Who in the hell is NOT aware of breast cancer? Likewise, NO ONE in the world is not aware of what’s going down in Ferguson.

Now, I get it—the Constitution says you have the right to peacefully assemble. Great! The Constitution guarantees many things; common sense and common decency promote many things, but there’s a catch: there may be consequences.

For every action, there is a reaction. Michael Brown was shot, people are angry. Cause and effect. I’m not going to comment on the incident itself, because that, too, is cause and effect. If this had happened, if something else had not happened, wherever you stand on the cause, there is an effect.

If you argue with an officer, there is an effect that will follow; if you break the law, there’s consequence; either of these things could have many outcomes. If you fail to make dinner, you will be hungry; if you fail to work, you will have no money. You certainly have the “right” to do any of these things, and many more, but there will still be a consequence from whatever right you choose to exercise.

Sometimes, if you peacefully protest, someone will do something bad. It could be blocks away from you; it could be the person standing next to you. Either way, there’s a cause and an effect.

Last night, there were reports of kids being tear-gassed. Why in the hell were there kids outside in that mess in the first place? I’ve heard parents say they want their kids to be a part of this. Shouldn’t they, long before 9:30 in the evening, be in bed? School night or not, doesn’t matter.

What are some of these people teaching their kids? Go ahead, you can get mad at me for saying “these people” if you want to, but if you have half a brain you’ll realize I’m talking about people who bring children to a “protest” that, based on events of the last week, has a high potential to turn violent.

That, my friends, is the highest example of stupidity. Period.

My concern, and the reason I filed this under “Prep Monday,” is if things spread to the surrounding areas—and that’s already begun—we’re prepared. We’re ready, just in case, but not actively holed up. There’s no reason. Not yet.