“What would I do?”

(This turned into a wall of words post. Sorry.)

It’s a question probably everyone who chooses to train with and carry weapons has asked, at least from time to time. With the news all full of the latest media celebrations of the ‘mass murder epidemic,’ I expect lots of other people are asking it as well. If people are given to useful introspection, that is, which I confess I don’t really know.

Lately veteran neurosurgeon turned neophyte politician Ben Carson got raked over the coals by leftists for speculating over what he would have done, had he found himself stuck unarmed in a classroom with a bunch of the latest human sacrifices…

“Not only would I probably not cooperate with him, I would not just stand there and let him shoot me, I would say, ‘Hey guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me, but he can’t get us all.”

Seems reasonable to me, since that approach is proven more likely to result in survival than closing your eyes and whimpering. But of course the lefties tore into him. Not that I care about his travails: I figure anybody who chooses to give up honest work and become a politician probably has other moral flaws as well, so Ben Carson can go to hell. But I happened to hear about it yesterday while listening to Limbaugh’s show in the Jeep, where Mark Steyn had taken it upon himself to defend him…

We tell our children all the time, to worry about the sea level in the Maldives, but we don’t teach them to worry about things that are unlikely, but happen all the time. You have to move fast before a gunman takes control of the room, before he’s figured out the landscape. That’s what Ben Carson was talking about. That’s when you have to act.

That’s what got me to thinking about it. Because I think all the time about how I’d react to a whole host of possible scary things.

For people who live in cities, that sort of thing is more or less a theoretical game. Shooters and preppers play all sorts of mind games around it – I did – but the chances of your personally ever finding yourself in that position are really quite remote. And if you do find yourself in danger, there are usually options that don’t involve hitting a gun-toting guy with a chair.

In the boonies, though, sudden emergencies – even life-threatening ones – are not remote possibilities. I’ve noted over the past decade, both from watching neighbors and from my own experience, that they’re more like certainties. No, not waiting for Little Mervin with a Gun to come into your room. Or…well, actually it seems we can’t even rule that out.

I’ll get back to the guy with a gun in a paragraph or two, though. First, here’s the first local life-threatening emergency I know of. This one happened before I moved here, but it happened to people close to me. My friend T, dead these past 7+ years, nearly went a few years before he did. Among his long list of serious health issues was a very severe case of diabetes. He had to monitor his blood sugar very carefully. One evening, as I recall the story, with no warning at all he pitched over in a grand mal seizure and did not respond to the usual attempts at first aid. He needed professional help bad, but calling an ambulance would be a lot easier than actually getting one. The clock was ticking, and they lived miles of winding desert road from the nearest pavement. A stranger trying to find him would almost certainly get lost for hours. How do you even tell a hurried stranger how to find the Gulch? Saving T’s life took teamwork, immediate action on the part of everybody nearby, and active, if not cool, heads.

The “bad guy with a gun” scenario also isn’t out of the question out here, as it turns out. It may not surprise you to learn that people who live far out in the desert are not always … how you say, normal. That abnormality can take forms from amusing through annoying to really scary. Believe it or not, this is the only place I’ve ever lived that turned out to have its very own homegrown serial killer – and he struck close to home. He took it upon himself to rid the world of “bad” people, among whom was an unpleasant guy – I rated him no higher than “annoying,” but I’m tolerant about such things – who lived no more than three miles from me. Our friendly neighborhood serial killer shot him in his bed at night, and I never did hear a plausible theory about how the killer got past the guy’s noisy dogs. Oh, believe me, I have frequently played that scenario over in my head.

When you’re far from the grid, living in wild country, and when you made all your own infrastructure as best you could from stuff you found lying around and plans you downloaded, emergencies are not theoretical possibilities. There is not the slightest guarantee you will get through any given evening undisturbed. Lightning strikes, trees fall, wind blows, worn brakes fail, fire burns, animals and insects bite and sting. And believe me, 911 fails to bring comfort. That’s without even considering the matter of bad people, who may see a person living remotely as a tempting target. You’ve got to sleep sometime.

What will you do? It’s not an irrelevant question.

Getting back to Carson and Steyn for a moment, a commenter said to Steyn,

How dare you!

Ben Carson would piss his pants if someone pointed a loaded gun to his head! So would you.

You have no idea what was going through the minds of those young people at the moment that lunatic was terrorizing them. No idea at all! do you think they might have been scared?

This person misses the point. I’ve been in immediate danger of losing everything, possibly including my life, and I guarantee that in such situations you are ‘scared.’ Duh. Piss your pants? Go ahead and do that if you need to … while you’re acting. Pants wash, but in the midst of the emergency bullshit won’t.

My last name is neither Eastwood nor Stallone nor Schwarzenegger – when I’m in danger, I’m scared. That’s not the measure of whether you’re going to get through whatever bad thing is going on. Fear can paralyze you – or it can activate you. It’s called a “fight or flight” response for a reason – neither option involves freezing in place. When threatened by sudden danger, get moving. Prioritize on the run and act.

Let’s say you suddenly find yourself sharing space with a propane-fueled fireball. Never mind how that happened – it’s certainly all your fault but that’s not important at the moment. Several actions are needed right f’ing now, and assigning blame isn’t even on the list. You can bolt outside and run in circles if you want, but that won’t save your home and your animals. Then maybe later you can freeze to death at your leisure. Far better to move: Take care of the most immediate part of the emergency and work your way down the list.

In hindsight it may seem to you that you didn’t deal with the problem in the best possible way. That was certainly true in my second fire-related emergency. But hindsight is a luxury with which you get to reward yourself after you’ve dealt with it. The priority is not to manage the crisis in a crisp, professional manner that will look good when written up for Backwoods Home. The priority is to save yourself, your animals, and your home. Afterward you can do Lessons Learned sessions. If you take down a bad guy in a community college, perhaps later you can nurse your broken fingers and reflect that an open palm strike would have been better than a fist. But in the moment, “later” is the point toward which you strive. And the point is to strive, not to curl up in a ball.

Fear? Hell yes, you’re afraid. But fear motivates: It must only become a problem later. First comes the adrenalin dump. That’s your friend, that gets you moving. “The roar when anger burns away/The vision leaps to black and gray/The speed that makes the wind feel slow/The strength beyond the bones’ design” – okay, that’s hyperbole, but still. Adrenalin is there for a reason.

Action movies never seem to mention what comes after that. The come-down from an adrenalin dump is weakness and the shakes – and then for weeks or months or years you’ll deal with terror of the same thing happening again.

But the way I see it – the only people who have to deal with post-trauma problems are the ones who make it past the trauma. Personally, I look at PTSD as nature’s way of telling you you lived.

So – end of the wall of words. “What would I do?” It’s a perfectly valid question, but unless you know of specific things you’re going to need to survive, there’s not a lot of point in trying to work out detailed plans. No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy anyway. Plan to avoid the crisis by all means, but the most important thing you must do in a crisis is act.