When the first Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook was published about a year ago, the title seemed tailor-made for life on the farm.
In recent years, agriculture for many has been one worst-case scenario after another, so why not a book about avoiding the common pitfalls?
But co-authors Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht had irony and James Bond on their minds. In the preface, they quote Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will; as well as the Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared.
The twain meets in their handbook and its sequel, The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel.
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The books give laughably simple instructions for escaping from quicksand, jumping from a moving car and reaching the surface when a scuba tank runs out of air.
The travel edition covers tailing a thief, crash-landing a plane and swimming across a piranha-infested river.
But where are the parts about farming? I thought I’d hit the jackpot on grain elevator demolition advice when the index listed “How to Survive in a Plummeting Elevator,” but it turned out to be advice on people-carriers, not grain storage.
Despite that false start, there are chapters in the two handbooks that farmers and ranchers could use. How to deal with a charging bull? (No, nothing to do with credit cards!) Wave an article of clothing to distract the bull and if it charges, throw the clothing away from you.
A sidebar in this chapter advises on avoiding a stampede: try to determine where the herd is headed, and then get out of the way.
Other potentially useful chapters: how to treat frostbite, how to avoid being struck by lightning; how to stop a runaway horse and how to climb out of a well. Particularly apropos for the recent worst-case scenario in North Battleford, Sask., is the “how to purify water” chapter. Guess what? Boiling is recommended.
Piven and Borgenicht are said to be planning several books along the same general theme.
If they do a worst-case scenario handbook on farming, chapters should include: how to fix the baler with nothing but wire and good intentions; what to do when genetically modified canola unexpectedly appears in your field; how to stop a prairie grass fire; and what to do when the Agricultural Income Disaster Assistance program asks for twice the money that it provided in the first place.
