a basement full of beans and rice, and suspiciously frequent deliveries from Artillery'R'Us? You always thought he was nuts, when he talked about flu being a scenario to end the world (in between his long rambles about conspiracy theories involving black helicopters and wacky liberals), but OMG, according to the media, swine flu's breaking out all over and it sounds just as improbable as if the announcement was that the zombies are coming!

Oinking noises and jokes about what "close contact" with swine may constitute aside, the swine flu may be very well turn out to be a serious issue. As Janet Napolitano, head of the US Department of Homeland Security said today, "It's important that people think about what they would do if this outbreak ramps up in their community."

Swine flu is real, it's here, and we're going to have to deal with it. It's clear that this new flu is spreading person to person. Mexico has confirmed that they now have double-digit fatalities and hundreds of suspected cases. (Edit to add: Things are developing faster than I can keep up. It was 800+ when I began this article yesterday and 1300+ now.) They're closing schools in the Mexico City area (a megatropolis with 20,000,000 people), and telling people to avoid areas with crowds. Multiple cases have also been reported in the United States, and there's a rapidly escalating number of other countries with suspected victims -- too many for me to keep up with.

The problem with a novel flu virus is that people may not have any immunity to it. Flu is wicked contagious, it's airborne, it persists in the environment for a long period, and people are able to spread it for around a day before they show symptoms and up to a week after. This means you can't always screen people for it, and you can have a whole chain of transmission through multiple victims before the first person is diagnosed.

At this point, we really don't know what the new flu will do. It could all blow over or it could be a huge disaster akin to the 1918 pandemic. Everything is evolving, and we just don't know yet what it will do.

Of course, some of my readers are probably scratching their heads and wondering what a pandemic has to do with that crazy survalist neighbor I alluded to above. Flu's pretty miserable, but if you're healthy, you get over it, right? The issue is, quite simply, that lots of people get sick in a pandemic. If half the city's sick, the other half is probably going to be caring for the sick or in hiding, which, basically, is a bad thing. Also, it hits healthy adults the hardest. Couple that with an economy that is wheezing "braaaaaaiinnnns" at the moment and shambling around like an undead shadow of itself, and the effect could be pretty darn similar to a global category five hurricane, minus the wind and rain.

Here's some of the effects that a flu pandemic might have:

First off, people might not go to work, either because they've got the flu, they're too scared to show up, their workplace has been closed, or they've got to stay home because their kids are out of school. The results of this might include:

• Utility plants (power, gas, water, sewage) left untended, and maintenance and routine chores neglected until they cease to function. 
• Nobody available to fix things that break: power lines, water mains, etc.
• Public transit closed, either because there's no employees around to run said transit (or for quarantine reasons)
  
• Farmers who can't farm, because they're sick or they can't get gas, diesel, propane, or supplies.
• Items stored in warehouses can't be distributed, including, potentially, food and medication and parts to fix things
  
• Gasoline and diesel shortages
• Retail and grocery stores closed

Additionally, local authorities may institute quarantines and closures. Either you may be unable to travel to get your groceries, or the groceries themselves may be stuck inside or outside of a quarantined area. (One would assume that the authorities will figure out how to safely get supplies delivered; one would also assume that there would be some chaos and beaurocracy involved. I'd rather not go hungry for a few days while they wrangle out the details.) It's the rare grocery store that stocks more than enough food for a day or two for a given area. And areas where large groups gather, including schools, retail stores, movie theaters, and nonessential businesses of any kind, may simply be closed to limit spread.

Quarantine is a real possibility. Some of the families of the infected patients in the US have already been told to stay home until the authorities are sure they're not sick. (See above: contagious before symptoms.) I'll assume that, since there are only a few of them, having food and supplies delivered to the sick and quarantined won't be a problem. However, if there are tens of thousands of families sick, and all their friends, family, and the local pizza delivery drivers in the city are sick? Yeah. That could be logistically a little bit more of a challenge.

(Edit to add: When I started this story, there were eight diagnosed cases. There are now 11 diagnosed cases, plus a few hundred suspected cases centered around a private school in New York. The kids in New York have tested positive of A/H1N1 influenza, which can't be further subtyped as a seasonal flu, so it's a fair bet that they're positive. This is a very good example of how quickly an influenza outbreak can get out of hand. If each of those 200 kids infects 2 people, and each of those two people infect two people, you have 1400 cases ... 200 + 400 + 800 ... possibly before the first 200 are better.)

Finally, a pandemic will put a huge stress on the economy. Businesses will go under. It's kinda hard to keep a cash flow going if you can't sell anything because both your customers and your employees are unable to buy anything because of illness, quarantine, or unwillingness to leave the house. And if people can't work because of quarantines and closures, they won't have money to buy things.  Our economy is already a fragile house of cards. A pandemic would yank a few supporting aces out of the base, in unpredictable and potentially disastrous ways.

So. You need to prep in a hurry. What do you do?

First off, consider the basics.

1) Water
2) Food
3) Shelter
4) Health care
5) Personal protection

Cover "water supplies" first. This is fairly easy, but also rather important. You could see either shortages or contaminated water if water treatment plants break down. And if you're on a well, you'll need a power source to pump the well.

Get some jugs, fill them up, set them aside somewhere in your house. Figure a couple gallons per person per day. (You'll need water for cleaning, drinking, and cooking.) How many days worth of water you feel you need to store is very situation dependent, of course. I'm probably going to need have a lot more water stored here in Arizona than a guy living on a lake somewhere in the Pacific Northwest where it rains every day, yes?

Also, if you don't have some in your laundry room, get a couple jugs of chlorine bleach, and set it aside for water purification. For unscented chlorine bleach at 4-6% strength add 8 drops per gallon of water. If water is contaminated (see: water treatment plant breakdown) or you need to resort to natural sources of water such as rainwater or rivers and creeks you'll have something to purify it with. If you don't need to purify water, you can use it for sanitation or for your laundry, and an extra jug of bleach is cheap enough that it shouldn't be a budget breaker.

After water, figure out what you're going to do for food. A few weeks, or even a month or two, of supplies is a good idea.

If you buy basic staples, you probably won't break the bank. Do buy food that you'll actually eat and know how to cook, or can easily learn. Also, buy food with an idea of how you'll cook it if the power goes out. If you've got a large home propane tank that's been recently topped off or a woodburning stove you may chose to stock different types of food than someone who's living in an apartment with just an electric range. If the power goes out, cooking a big pot of dry beans is not easy ... but you can still eat a cold can of soup.

Go for the most calories for your buck if you're short on money. Also, do not overstock on items that need to be frozen or refrigerated. If the power goes out, or your freezer simply breaks down (See: Law, Murphy), you're going to be eating a lot of meat in a hurry if your preps included half a cow.