Hygiene, sanitation, caring for the dead 

“The only way humanity will manage to return to live with the harshness and suffering their ancestors did is with much death and anguish. Watch the TV Series “1883” to understand what I mean. Modern humanity will be those German and Slavic innocents and helpless immigrants.” – Jack Lawson, Author of the Civil Defense Manual 

Sanitation and hygiene 

See the Chapter “Individual and cooperative tools, supplies, equipment needed” for your CDM Neighborhood Protection Plan™ (NPP). 

Your NPP must operate under the assumption that you will not have water or sewer available for sinks, toilets, showers or bath tubs from your municipal or well system. 

Most people in the world do not shower or bathe daily as most of us as of the last decades in the industrialized and modernized world do. In some newer industrialized countries and in most of the third and fourth world countries, bathing in a stream is the extent of personal body hygiene. How clean that water is, is another question. Soap is a luxury and mostly non-existent. 

The majority of these third and fourth world people wouldn’t know what to do if they walked into a modern bathroom and were confronted with a shower or bath tub… unless they’ve watched us on television or in a movie. I’ve seen them urinate into sinks, not understanding the complications from that and the purpose of our modern bathroom fixtures. Hygiene is far from most of their minds. When an Extraordinary Catastrophic Event occurs, you will be thrust into some of the same conditions of those in the rest of the world. 

When your NPP has been set up properly, you have a separate Medical Section Sixth Leader that must aggressively enforce hygiene in the NPP. Human waste, disposition of the dead and garbage can become a major issue during a Prolonged Crisis or A Collapse Of Society. Failure to properly dispose of human waste can lead to epidemics such as typhoid, dysentery, diarrhea and who knows what.  

The spread of disease is guaranteed unless you take precautions and create and maintain sanitation facilities. 

Material waste Latrine. A latrine is a hole in the ground. How the U.S. Military and others come across these words is beyond me. It’s French from the Latin ‘latrina.’ A foreign word, but it gets the point across. A Latrine has to be dug deep enough that animals won’t dig down through the protective layer of dirt put over it to discarded items, such as anything having to do with food packaging or anything that bacteria can grow on. You must periodically cover these when the use of one stops and another is dug.  

Human waste… set up an Outhouse or dig a Latrine. A latrine is not for empty MRE packaging, Bush’s Baked Beans cans or soda cans (if you discard them as trash) as waste is discussed here. There is a need for latrines of discarded food containers that can’t be burned for cooking or heating or used for other purposes must be buried too. 

Human waste is p!$$ and shite… urine and fecal matter. You can guarantee yourself that you’ll be going to the bathroom much less during the first stages when A Collapse Of Society occurs, but none the less the disposal of human waste is a critical health issue to deal with. 

There is a product called Luggable Loo that is a simple lid that turns a bucket into a port-a-potty. Passed on to me my ‘ahead of everyone his age with preparedness,’ Nephew of the 82nd Airborne. 

It will be critical how you handle this waste. You won’t be using the ‘throne’ in the comfort of your home bathroom. The waste won’t be disappearing down that invisible round ‘turd subway’ to the waste treatment plant either. 

Conserve toilet tissue as if each sheet were a $100 bill that, when used, will be buried never to be seen again. Don’t waste your toilet tissue cleaning up spills, removing makeup or for any other purpose except wiping your posterior. Ration toilet paper to kids.  

This may sound repulsive, but if held properly, it takes 4 or 5 sheets or less of toilet paper to clean your posterior. I’ve taken dumps in the jungles and out-backs around the world and the few sheets of toilet paper that come in each ration package were sufficient. Learn to do this and teach your children how to do it… now. 

A latrine is simply a hole in the ground made for urine and fecal matter. Dig a slit trench three feet or more deep, eighteen inches wide and six feet long to squat over. If you have any feelings of decency left in your NPP, your carpenter types can build a wooden box with a toilet seat-shaped hole cut out in the top and place it over the hole. 

The box should be big enough to cover the trench. If your decency has abandoned you, at least cover the hole with boards or a piece of plywood to keep flies down and animals out of it. Tarps or a tent can be used as an enclosure around it for privacy.  

If you do have a carpenter type in your NPP, you can build a wooden structure like an old outhouse. Although this may seem ‘Medieval’ or ‘Redneck’ …and certainly feels ancient in freezing winter weather, as this farm boy’s butt can attest to… it will be the start of your march out of the ‘New Dark Ages’ and is a sanitary alternative to endlessly digging and filling latrines. The ‘quarter moon’ cut in the door is not for laughs or moon gazing… but to vent explosive methane gases.

Methane gas from shite is harmful to your health, highly Flammable and explosive, if in a confined area! Laugh as you may, it will kill you if in high enough concentrations! You must ventilate any enclosure you put around a Latrine or Outhouse. The trenches must be periodically filled in and another one dug to replace it. 

To make your 5 gallon bucket toilet you will need to assemble the following items… 

• Five gallon bucket. 
• Toilet seat lid. 
• Plastic garbage bags to fit the 5-gallon bucket with ties. 
• A shovel. 
  
  You’ll need these things also for your ‘bathroom’… 
• Toilet paper. 
• Baby wipes. 
• Anti-bacterial wipes. 
• Personal hygiene and feminine products. 

Sprinkle lime, borax or powdered laundry detergent, if you have it to spare, on top of the latrine waste daily. This helps keep down the smell and the flies. When the waste is two feet from the surface dig a new latrine. Cover the old location and compact the dirt to keep scavengers from digging it up. Mark the center of it with a rock or stake. 

Double line your toilet. When you’re in a High Rise Residential Building you can also empty the water out of your existing porcelain toilet and put a garbage bag liner in the bowl. Tie the end off after using the toilet and dispose of this waste bag by burying it at least two feet deep if you can find an area to do so or dispose of it away from your building. 

A five gallon bucket. A five gallon plastic bucket can be used as a toilet. You can purchase bucket liners or use small garbage bags as liners. You can buy buckets with lids and toilet seats made specifically for emergency toilets… or make them. You use a cheap, thin plastic liner or garbage bag and tie the top of the bag closed as you won’t have water to flush or clean this bucket out. 

Body cleansing. Keeping the body clean during a disaster is important to keep skin sores, transmittable fungus and bacteria from appearing and thriving. If water has to be hauled any distance, baths will be out of the question. Water for bathing should be boiled also to prevent bacterial and fungal skin growths. If you do not keep your clothing, bedding and your body clean you will eventually have lice infestations. See the Chapter “Medical and medical resources” on lice and the danger of. 

Tree, Unit shower or Garage Bucket Shower. A shower is the most efficient body cleaning system that uses the least amount of water. A shower can be constructed in an existing Building unit shower, garage or under a tree big enough to drape a tarp around and hang a bucket high enough with holes punched in the bottom or it. You fill the shower bucket with a water bucket from a ladder. 

Take a Spray Bottle Shower. Use a spray water bottle with a small amount of antibacterial soap in it and have another Group Member assist you in ‘showering.’ Use paper towels or hand wash cloths to scrub down. Water needs to be boiled to bathe in also and obviously let it cool down before putting it in a spray bottle or getting under the bucket. 

Wet Wipes ‘Pits and Crotch Shower.’ This can be refreshing, if not as satisfying as other ways of cleaning your body. This basic cleaning is necessary to keep rashes, fungus growths and bacteria down. Wet Wipes can be reconstituted with rubbing alcohol if they dry out. I hope you’re seeing the reason for stocking all these seemingly ‘odd’ items. 

In America, we have become used of modern sewer systems, trash disposal and proper burial of the dead. One of the first modern societies… the Romans knew the danger of disease from ill-disposed waste, sewage and from the improperly buried dead and constructed the first modern water aqueducts and sewer systems as part of the solution to these problems. After the fall of the Roman Empire… humanity de-evolved. 

When Crisis becomes a Prolonged Crisis or A Collapse Of Society, Mankind’s environment will de-evolve again. Diseases… most of them unheard of for years… if not centuries… will come back to life. Cholera. The killer. 

Typhoid Fever, Amoebic Dysentery, Typhus… to name a few will reappear. The mouth foaming and extremely contagious disease called Rabies will proliferate in animals and spread to humans. The common rat will come back into prolific being quickly… as the result of massive amounts of improperly disposed trash, waste and the abundance of unburied bodies, which they will feast on. Diseases like the Bubonic Plague, spread by fleas on rats and animals… may become a reality again. 

Again… poor sanitation will be the base cause of resurgence of many of these diseases. Human waste must be disposed of properly and the dead must be buried deeply immediately. This must be done away from living quarters, being careful that neither contaminates food or water supplies or sources.  

Caring for the dead 

You’ve undoubtedly heard the term and custom of the ‘Irish Wake.’ Ah the good ol’ Irish! According to Sigmund Freud, the Irish are the only culture impervious to psychoanalysis. Regardless, the ‘Wake’ tradition is known around the world and mostly attributed, wrongly so, to the Irish. 

The custom had been going on for millennia as part of many religions, one of those being Judaism. They used to leave the burial chamber open for days… partly believing and hoping the departed may come back to life, but also allowing members of the family to see the deceased again for one last time. So, before sealing the tomb, they let the dead person lay to open air and view for three days. 

People still regard the ‘Wake’ solely as an Irish burial rite, so let’s just leave it as a creation of the Irish. I actually described a Wake in another of my books and I found the old Wakes to be quite wild, complex and emotional ceremonies that went drunkenly on for days. Not having modern embalming methods that ensure the dead were dead, it came into being centuries ago from the fear of burying alive a ‘deceased’ person with a totally unresponsive body and state of mind induced by lead poisoning. 

With cemeteries dug up and moved, back hundreds of years ago, they found many with frenzied scratch marks on the coffin lids they opened. People who appeared dead, were mistakenly buried alive, only to wake in the confines of an inescapable box in the ground and no one to hear their screams. Quite the horrifying thought. It caused Acts of Parliament in England and the terms ‘grave yard shift’ and ‘saved by the bell.’ Read about it. 

You’ve also heard the term “born with a silver spoon in their mouth.” That refers to the fact that anyone way back who had money and common sense, didn’t drink or eat from plates, bowls, cups, goblets or ‘tankards’ of pewter… they drank and ate from much more expensive, but healthier and safer plates, bowls and cups made from silver and copper that had antiseptic qualities. Most people couldn’t afford these, so pewter became the most commonplace plates and containers in homes and pubs.  

Pewter is composed of an alloy… mostly tin, hardened with lead… and lead is extremely poisonous to humans. Lead from the pewter dishware or cups would leech from the plate or container to the drink or food as a reaction to some foods and from the alcohol in wines, ales and beer. In the case of alcohol, which the Irish are famed for consuming mass quantities of, it caused the heavy drinker to enter a state the Irish referred to as a Catatonic State… they couldn’t move, speak or respond to stimuli. For all accounts and purposes… they looked dead. 

So after they’d find the person laying in a ditch the next day, looking dead after leaving the pub and on their way home, they’d lay them out on the kitchen table for a couple of days to ensure the person was actually dead… and not suffering from this Catatonic State of poison paralysis. They realized that the drinker may regain consciousness after, sometimes up to two days… which many did, scarring the bejebers out of family, friend and foe. As a side note, modern day pewter is safe and lead free. 

The point of the ‘Irish Wake’ should be kept in mind to ensure in a Grid Down situation, you’re not putting someone in the ground alive. Make sure the ‘dead’ you’re burying… are really dead! Bleed them out to ensure this, cutting the carotid arteries on both side of the neck. If it were me going into a grave ‘looking dead,’ but not …I’d thank you. 

Bury… or burn and bury… the dead 

The dead must be buried at least four foot, preferably six foot deep. Placement of stones, blocks or concrete over shallow and deep graves is a necessity to prevent animals from digging up human remains and in the instance of Infectious Disease, spreading it further. Bury the dead away from wells, lakes and rivers to ensure water drainage from burial areas does not flow into your water source.  

In the case of Infectious Disease, it is recommended that the bodies be burned when possible on an above ground bonfire or ‘Funeral Pyre’ of logs then buried deeply. 

Burial sites must be areas where leaching of decay does not flow into rivers or lakes easily from run off rain and melting snow. Disease can kill more of your Group Members than any number of Intruders will ever kill. This is the responsibility of your Medical Section Sixth Leader with cooperation and assistance from all Group Members. 

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