I am no expert but what I have to tell you I do believe will be of some use to you after SHTF. I want to warn you before you read any further that this will be a very long post and a some what gory post. But you need to be prepared for the darker side of life once everything has gone to hell in a hand basket. The stories I am going to be sharing are true. I did not personally go through them but my son did.
We may think we are well prepared to take a human life if we have to but in truth nothing, and I mean nothing, can prepare you for that. We also might think we are prepared to see a body after a bloody battle but we can never emotionally prepare for that either.
Case in point; You are a well trained Army Combat Medic. You are in a town in a foreign country because Uncle Sam has sent you there and a suicide bomber set off a bomb. There is carnage every where. There are people with missing limbs, people with missing heads, children laying dead or mortally wounded. You see a small girl who can't be more than 5 years old. She has a large wound in her tummy and her guts are hanging out. You run to her and try to put her guts back in, pack the wound and hold everything in till more help arrives. You pick her up in one arm while holding her guts in with the other. You are doing everything you can to help her and comfort her at the same time while yelling for help. When you are looking at her you realize she is about the same age, same size and even has the same hair color of your own 5 year old little girl back home.
Suddenly, instead of seeing the little girl's face, you see your own daughter's face. You try even harder to save her. No matter what you do the little girl dies in your arms. You are devastated. First. you see the true little girl who lays dead in your arms then suddenly you see your own little girl laying dead in your arms.
You lay the little girl back down on the ground as gently as you can and run off to help anyone else you can but you keep seeing her in your mind. You are running on robot mode. Doing what you have been trained to do but you still keep seeing that little girl and then seeing your daughter's face in her place.
After it's all over and you have given your report to your commanding officer, you go off by yourself and cry. You never talk about it to anyone and you go on with living. Months down the road you are back home but you are not the same person. You have changed. You become so protective of your daughter that you are choking her own freedom in life.
You start having nightmares about what happened to that little girl back in the foreign country. Each time you keep seeing your own little girl. You feel guilty because you could not save that little girl. The guilt keeps eating at you until finally you break. You become hard to live with because you can't find anyone to talk to about what happened. You can't tell your wife because she doesn't want to hear about what happened over there. She is emotionally too young to hear it so you carry it with you at all times.
One day you are sitting home alone and you finally break, You take a gun and put it to your head ready to pull the trigger. You look over towards the bookcase and there sits an 8 x 10 picture of your little girl. You finally realize that you can not leave her unprotected so you have to get help. You put the gun away and go to the first person who is willing to listen and you break down and start crying. You cry with all your heart over the loss of that beautiful, innocent little girl who died in your arms. You cry over the fact that it could have just as well been your own daughter. You cry over the fact that people are so stupid because they start wars. You just cry and cry until finally you feel some sense of relief from the guilt that you were not able to save that little girl. You have been suffering for months from PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
Now, you might want to know how I know this. It is simple. I was the one my son came to when he finally broke down. I was the one that held him in my arms and rocked him while he cried and spilled out the guilt he felt over not being able to save the child. It was me who told him that putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger was not the answer because all that would do is leave his child without a father.
We talked for over 4 hours that day and there were several times when he just broke down and cried his heart out but finally he realized he had done all he could do for her and that was all there was to it. He had tried, he had done his best and it was not his fault that she died but the fault of the bomber.
After my son finished his advanced medic training, he was stationed in a big hospital on the weekends in the ER. On his first night a gunshot victim was brought in. The victim was a 14 year old gang banger. The gangs had fought a turf war that night. The boy had been shot in the gut. As they worked to save him, my son included, the boy died. It was the first time my son experienced battle wounds. He made it through his shift and made the 35 mile drive home. As soon as he walked into the door I knew something was wrong. I walked over to him, put my arms around him and he broke down. Even with all the training the Army had given him to prepare for this sort of thing it still did not fully prepare him. He was in a state of shock and had been running on pure adrenaline. Once he came down from that he could not keep going.
Another time when he was overseas, they were in a town when a fight broke out. I am not talking about a bar fight or some such foolishness as that. I am talking an actual combat fight. The militants were attacking his unit. One of them managed to grab my son's friend and was holding a gun to his head. He was threatening to shoot him if my son did not put his gun down. My son, knowing that if he put his gun down the militant would shoot them both, refused to lower or put down his gun. They were at a stand off. My son had a choice, either save his friend to allow him to live another minute or two before they would both die or take a chance that he might be able to save his friend and wait for an opening to take down the militant. My son was lucky in the fact that the militant made the wrong move and gave him the opening he needed and he took the shot. He was able to hit the guy in the head killing him before the guy could shoot his friend. That was the first time my son ever took a life and even though he had all sorts of training from the Army he still was not prepared for it. No amount of training could prepare my son to be in the position where he had to choose to save his own life over that of a good friend or take the life of some one to save his friend.
You may wonder why I am telling you all this. You may even wonder why it's important to know these stories and what happened in them. The reason is very simple. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, can ever prepare any of us for the out come of things like this. Nothing prepares us for how we will feel if we have to take the life of a 14 year old coming at us with a loaded gun. Nothing prepares us to see our young child laying on the ground with their guts hanging out. Nothing prepares us to take a life in order to save a life. Nothing can prepare us for the guilt we will feel afterwards nor the hopelessness we will feel about life.
Post Traumatic Stress is very real. It not confined to the military. It can effect people who are just ordinary people. It can effect children as well as adults. It's not caused just by seeing a fierce gun fight or a bombing. It can be caused by a rape, or seeing a car accident, a robbery or anything that can happen in every day life.
Watching violent tv movies or reading books containing severe violence is not going to prepare us or our children in dealing with the harsh reality of taking a life or seeing a bloody body full of bullet wounds, no matter how real the movie makers make it look. So, when you go about your prepping remember to prepare as best as possible for the aftermath of what you and your loved ones will have to go through when something traumatic happens.
Once SHTF we will face the fact that we stand a real good chance of going through things like my son and other military members have. We need to be prepared to deal with the after math of the guilt, the shock and the grief. Learning all you can about the five stages of grief and about PTSD will help you to deal with it when the time comes. Learn to spot the signs so that you are prepared to help your loved ones when they are going through it. Learn to spot the signs so that you yourself will know you need help with it.
Prepping Granny