How To Survive An Ebola Outbreak

By Tin Hat Ranch

Don’t panic.  The words from the famous novel “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” are imperative.  It is begging to look like we may have foot in mouth disease from our article last week, “You are SAFE from Ebola in the United States“, only time will tell.  We trusted that medical professionals would have take all steps necessary to properly treat Eric Duncan (the first case of Ebola in the US), it looks like the hospital had many tragic mis-steps.  They didn’t follow the best protocols. They entered Mr. Duncan’s room without booties, tyvek suits, or face shields.  They let far too many folks into his room.  They didn’t have proper procedures for transporting bodily fluid samples throughout the hospital, nor did they have a procedure for destruction of the medical waste that piled up to the ceiling.  That is water under the bridge now. As of today, two of the health workers have contracted the disease.

My advice to this hospital, and who am I, would be be this; limit the number of individuals that have access to the new patients to as few as possible. Take volunteers, promise to pay them an exorbitant amount of money to take on the task.  Isolate these individuals within the hospital as if they have the disease..and wait. But I digress, we may now have to consider surviving an Ebola outbreak due to the disease itself and the missteps of the hospital.  We are a logical page and we don’t want to induce panic, but we are a prepping page, so we focus on being prepared.  Everyone should be prepared.  

We don’t want to reinvent the wheel here, we’ve written on many of the subjects involved, so be sure to follow the links as they offer a wealth of information.  We know lots of you reading this might be frantically searching for this type of information, so here it goes:

Decisions

The biggest killer in an Ebola outbreak for informed individuals will be your lack of decision making ability.  If you decided right now to survive the disease, I’d bet, dollars to donuts, you would.  Isolating yourself right now, would virtually guarantee your survival.  But you have work tomorrow, and the kids have school, and there is that birthday party on Saturday, you know?  And if the world turns a few dozen more times, there is that vacation you’ve been planning.

Life gets in the way of decisions, but know the facts.  Ebola has an incubation period of up to three weeks.  People are only contagious when they begin to show symptoms, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, severe headache, muscle weakness, stomach pain, and hemorrhaging.  Once a person begins having these symptoms the disease can be transmitted via bodily fluids.  A victim coughs into their hand and touches a door know in a bathroom.  You follow, open the door, and without realizing it, you rub your eye.  You’ve been infected. You single largest chance in surviving Ebola is to know when to say when.  When to go into isolation.  I wish I could tell all of you when is the correct time to make that decision, but I can’t, I am in the same boat as you.  However, you can reduce your risk.  Sure, you have to go to work, but you don’t have to go out on the weekend.  Life and survival are all about the odds.  You can’t get hit by a bus if you never cross the street. If this becomes an outbreak, at some point both you and the country will decide it is time for isolation.  At that point you are really playing the odds. All you can do is wait out the 21 day period from your last contact with other people to see if you develop symptoms.  There are many considerations to this undertaking.

Isolation

So, you are going to wait it out.  You may have to consider that this can be a very costly endeavor.  Are you prepared?  The Rule of Three’s tell us the human body cannot survive more than three minutes without air, three hours without shelter in adverse conditions, three days without water, and three weeks without food.  Cover these bases while in isolation and your chances of survival tremendously increase. But what does this mean?

Three minutes without air is a situation you probably won’t run into in this scenario.  Three hours without shelter in adverse conditions depends on where you live. Winter is coming fast.  In a worst case scenario, public works employees may be doing the same thing you are, hunkering down.  Electricity and natural gas deliveries may be infrequent or stop altogether.  No problem, you still have a roof over your head, right?  Something as simple as a decent cold weather sleeping bag might keep you comfortable enough to ride out the winter camping indoors.

Things begin to get hairy when we get to water.  At a bare minimum you need a half a gallon of water per day, per person.  If you plan on washing and basic hygiene, figure on at least a gallon.  Do you know where a few months supply worth of water could be found?    Hint.  Check your water heater.  What about external sources of water?  Pools, ponds, lakes and rivers.  This water may be accessible to you but it may not be fit for consumption.  There are many choices when it comes to water filtration and you need to know what you are dealing with. Check out our article on emergency water purification.

Things begin to get really tricky when we get to food.  While you can survive for three weeks without food, it will be a miserable existence.  As of today, it still isn’t too late to prepare.  People do not realize just how much food is required to keep the status quo.  Our “just in time” existence leaves most of us with little or no preparation in this department.  Sure, you can just go out and pick up a year’s supply of food,<– but check it out, it is costly.  People do not know how to put a year’s supply of food in perspective, but look at it this way.  A person requires anywhere from 1800-2000 calories to maintain their current weight.  That is 730,000 calories for a year.  Everyone knows what a Big Mac is, and a Big Mac contains 550 calories, or 1327 Big Mac’s for a year.  Even if they are 2 for $4, that’s over $2,600, or more than a year’s supply of freeze dried food.  Keep in mind, both can be stored for 25 years.  Nevertheless, whether this outbreak fizzles or becomes full blown, food is the biggest item when it comes to long term survival.  Remember, hunting may be out of the question for a number of reasons, the fact they can transmit the virus is one of them.

The jury is out on how long an Ebola outbreak can last, but suffice it to say it would be many months at a bare minimum.  If you are truly intent on surviving, that means isolation for the entire time period.  It also means being self sustaining.  Again, if you have a water source and some sort of large capacity water filtration, then food will be of utmost concern.  Once folks start isolating themselves we will be living in a different world, if the outbreak lasts much longer than six months, I can’t even fathom the world we will enter.

Beyond the rule of three’s you may or may not need medical supplies for other injuries or illnesses, communications, and self-defense.

The Ebola Specific Kit

Beyond basic survival and emergency preparedness skills, Ebola has its own special preparedness considerations.  Again, we won’t remake the wheel here, we just made one the other day.  Please check out our article on the Ebola Survival Kit from the other day.

Right now, three people in the United States have contracted the disease, one has died.  It remains to be seen if this is the start of a full fledged outbreak or another TEOTWAWKI false alarm.  This isn’t meant as a comprehensive step by step guide on how to survive the disease, moreso a 10,000 foot overview for people who may be searching for answers.  Either way, we are preppers and we should be prepared for these types of emergencies.  God Speed.

This article originally appeared here at the Tin Hat Ranch