I don’t know if it’s the fires in Western Canada (or Nepal, Central America, etc.), the floods in Brazil (or China, Dubai, Kenya, Indonesia, etc.) or the simple fact that I miss not packing anymore, but I took out my catakit, my emergency suitcase stored in a locker in my building 17 years ago after this article by Zeitgeist a bit of a visionary for the time. Today, one natural and even synthetic catamaran does not wait for the other.
The artifacts found made me smile: a little doggie for my B, a storybook, a cuddly toy, vintage 2009 Tylenol (still good; I tested it for a headache, but not for childbirth…) , liquid acetaminophen 2-11 years 2007 (I brought it back to the pharmacy; I don’t want to go to prison). The batteries for the radio had leaked, the brandy held up and the condoms… meh. Menopause took care of everything. Nature is well made, all in all. Except when we piss him off! There she goes wild. Like a good woman, menopausal or PMS, if you touch a hair of her child. The same. A tigress. Don’t even think about it.
I decided to refresh my catakit, Zeitgeist 2024. Maybe freeze-dried: mojitos mocktails with melon and mint and an Ottolenghi-style shakchouka with sweet potatoes and saffron emulsion? A sachet of yeast (for the dough, it’s useful), a few grams of mush to connect to the big whole? CBD oil to put things into perspective and a tarot to predict what happens next? Sage to chase away negative energies? I have nothing for cholera (except love).
In fact, I love this new hobby even if it raises the eyebrows of the careless. Survivalists don’t get a good press. I could retrain and start a small catakit business. The Red Cross sells ready-made ones, without soul, on Amazon. Mine would ease your boredom; gourmet, literary, chilly, forbidden games, community, hypochondriac or esoteric versions. I have enough imagination to keep you busy. The Dragons would finance me (hope not included).
Expect the unexpected
I monitor the site CatNat.netthe Permanent Observatory of Natural Disasters, and I don’t know if that makes me a collapsologist, a catastrophist, a doomist, a world finder, an informed citizen or a far-sighted mother who doesn’t keep the convenience store alive.
My 72-hour suitcase is minimalism that meets panic on board, anxious sobriety that hits a national alert on its cell phone. “There is a thin line between survivalism and survival kit,” Patricia wrote to me on Facebook, while I was carrying out an in-house survey on the ability to anticipate (margin of error +/- 3% on Mondays).
I have too many ideas of how this could happen. I don’t know if it’s going to be fast or slow. If it goes bad tomorrow, it won’t change anything in my life…
Mixed results: people tend to live in cicada mode or imagine that 911 will respond more quickly if an ice storm or a Russian hacker ” shut down » Hydro-Québec (scuze my russian). You may love Hydro; It’s a love that hangs by a thread.
My B has been flooded three times in the last two years (the City of Montreal intends to establish 30 sponge parks), which gives a good idea of the agility of public administrations. Press 0 and start knitting.
I’m interested in genre films. fuck the world »: Captain FantasticA dude anti-capitalist, played by Viggo Mortensen, with his children who live in the woods, or Into the Wild And Until the declinewho all have the immense quality of thinking outside the systems in place and showing us that without an iPhone, we do not last 72 hours.
While waiting for the catamarans, I watched a fascinating documentary that I thought was dedicated to the state of emergency. Expect the unexpected is indeed interested in the science of natural disasters with specialists (emergency preparedness consultant, neosurvivalist, libertarian, sociologist), but thinks broader and also focuses on the context. We consult the philosopher Alain Deneault, the professor at HEC Yves-Marie Abraham, the Dr John Gilmour, national security analyst, environmental scientist, anthropologist Louis-Karl Picard-Sioui.
Deneault, more lucid than paranoid, evokes the giant with feet of clay: “When it is no longer enough to pretend to feed us, house us, care for us, educate us, we will have to learn to organize ourselves at small scales. »
I also admired the resilience of Jonathan, a young neosurvivalist in his school bus converted six years ago. He took care to bring The little Prince with him. He confides that the most difficult thing is to live in a world where no one understands his approach, alone on his primitive planet.
Everything is moving around me
Another of my favorite philosophers, in the circumstances, survived the Port-au-Prince earthquake in 2010. In Everything is moving around me, Dany Laferrière recounts this suspension of time for less than a minute and notes: “A culture which only takes into account the living is in danger of death. »
It’s time to try everything that education or hygiene forbids us from doing
The writer-academician found himself without a suitcase in the courtyard of his Haitian hotel with his passport and a notebook in a pouch around his neck. The expat and the writer united in a kit at its simplest expression. For some, life depends on a pen. And the deep nature of people emerges very quickly in an emergency situation: “We immediately spot: the petty, the jealous, the generous, the optimists, the pessimists, the adventurers, the cautious, the silent and the annoying.” Dany remarks. He admits: “It took an earthquake for me to agree to share a mango. »
People no longer live anywhere except the present moment. And luxury comes down to a small thing: “The pillow is a sign that one has reached a high degree of refinement. »
I enjoyed rereading this timeless little book so much that I’m going to slip it into my catakit. If only for this blind sentence: “For once our misfortune was not exotic. What happens to us could happen anywhere. »
But if it happens everywhere, where will we go with our kit ?
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