Ticks and Other Bio-Hazards

In a Level 2/3 situation, the omnipresence of modern medical care that we have come to rely upon will be much less available.  We will be well advised to plan our lives so there will be less need to seek medical help.

One issue to consider when choosing the location for our retreat is the presence of any insect-borne diseases, any particularly dangerous animals, and other such issues.  This involves not just looking at challenges that presently exist, but also extrapolating further to new challenges that might appear.

For example, the Africanized or ‘killer’ bees that are spreading northwards up from Mexico.  It is far from clear at what point these bees will stop their advance.

Or the spread of ticks carrying various diseases, Lyme disease being the best known but far from the only such disease, some of which can be fatal.  Here’s a recent article about the increasing amount of the country being affected by such things, and here’s a useful map.

At the risk of inviting despair, here’s a series of maps showing the spread of various types of ticks and information on the diseases they can carry.  It would seem that nowhere is safe from some type of tick and disease.

As for other types of animal threats, it is hard to know if they will become more prevalent and severe, or less so, in a Level 2/3 situation.  On the one hand, there may be a reduction in human type impacts on such creatures, allowing them to thrive and increase in numbers.  On the other hand, there could be an increase in human impacts if they are the type of creature that people would choose to hunt for food – we’re just guessing that not everyone will strictly observe the current seasonal restrictions on when, where, and how game can be killed!

We’re also going to guess that not everyone will be wearing bright orange safety jackets in the woods and we’d suggest that the woods could become relatively dangerous places to be in, due to over-eager hunters shooting at anything that moves.