The coronavirus disease—officially known as COVID-19—is hitting Europe and the Middle East and has made landfall in the U.S. with more than 100 cases. Like a lot of you, we’ve followed the outbreak with a mix of dread and fascination, and with frequent refreshes to the published by Johns Hopkins. The good news is that activities in the mountains—where people can remain at a safe distance from each other—will probably continue to be safe. But everything from yoga to the Olympics could get dicey.

Coronaviruses mightÌęlive for up to nine days on countertops.

Nobody knows yet just how long the COVID-19 virus can remain viable on surfaces, but other coronaviruses—a category of virus that can cause illnesses ranging from common colds to deadly diseases like SARS and MERS—can stick around for . That means you’ll want to be careful about what you touch (looking at you, iPhone and airplane tray table). One of the most common forms of transmission is to get virus particles on your hands and then rub your eyes, mouth, or nose. Fortunately, SARS and MERS can both be (62 percent alcohol or more) or hydrogen peroxide, so possibly the new coronavirus can, too. In hospitals, technicians also use more powerful to disinfectÌęsensitive areas, although it’sÌę and best used by gloved professionals.Ìę

The most effective protocol is to for 20 seconds or so. The foaming and rubbing action is important as itÌęworks viral particles out of the folds of your skin. Then apply an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. It takes alcohol 15 to 20 seconds to break down the lipid envelope that surrounds the virusÌęproteins. Luckily, enveloped viruses are the easiest to destroy with alcohol. And while some have pointed out that ethanol may be more destructive to viruses than rubbing alcohol, it’s also more dehydrating to your skin, so use hand sanitizer.

It’s much deadlier than the flu and has the potential to kill millions of people.

Everyone from to the has made the point that the flu is currently a greater threat to public health than COVID-19. But the phrasing here is key. In a typical flu season,Ìę from the flu. And COVID-19 is just getting started; by the time of this article’s publication, it had already killed worldwide. But COVID-19 has the world on edge because of what it could do. Experts think it has the potential to infect an enormous percent of the global population—some say as many of —and cause enormous social and economic disruption.Ìę

What makes COVID-19 so scary? Well, it’s highly transmissible: one infected person is likely to give the virus to . There are a few reasons for this. One, because COVID-19 is new, no one in the world has any immunity. Two, most—roughly —of the cases are mild or even asymptomatic, which means that those people with few symptoms can walk around infecting others rather than spending a couple of weeks laid up in bed. Three, the incubation period is relatively long: people can harbor the virus for two weeks or so before getting sick.Ìę

So how deadly is it to individuals?Ìę“Globally, about 3.4 percent of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization’s director,Ìę. That’s still much higher than the flu (0.1 percent) but lower than .Ìę

Lastly, and frighteningly, it appears that you can get reinfected. Unlike the flu, whose victims build up immunity to a specific strain after their illness, of people recovering from COVID-19 and then getting it again.

Fun things might be canceled.

For now, things like Mount Everest season, the Summer Olympics, and your favorite yoga class are still a go. But Olympic organizers are understandably worried. Dick Pound, a senior member of the International Olympic Committee last week that the IOC could afford to wait until May to make a decision about whether to moveÌęforward with the Games. TheÌęquestion they’re asking themselves: “Is this under sufficient control that we can be confident about going to Tokyo or not?” And if the virus is not under control, according to Pound, “you’re probably looking at a cancellation.”Ìę

Meanwhile, Everest expedition leader Adrian Ballinger, a fixture on the mountain for the past decade, tells us he’s altered his team’s plans to fly into Kathmandu and avoid major Chinese cities. The season kicks off around April 8, when groups begin flying into Nepal’s capital city. “Of course it’s still an unknown,” saidÌęBallinger, “but the Chinese have hit all deadlines so far, and we have sent full payment for our permits.” Nepal has, to date, of coronavirus;Ìęhowever, if the disease were to spread there, it couldÌęquickly overwhelm the small nation’s health care resources.Ìę

But when it comes to public crowds and normal human interaction, things may get sketchyÌęwhen the disease starts to spread in the U.S. If the fallout in places likeÌę, Spain, and Austria are any indicator, professional sports events could beÌę, large gatherings and festivals could be canceled, and .

Yes, you should stock up, but maybe not on what you’re thinking about.

In Hong Kong, coronavirus fears sparked a run on toilet paper, causing supermarket fights and even an . In all seriousness, experts say the are prudent amounts of any prescription medication you might need, as well as a small supply of dry goods like rice, beans, oats, and canned food that won’t go bad and that you’ll eat regardless. This is less about fears that supplies will run outÌęand more about (or worse, if you yourself are sick).

Surgical masks probably don’t help.

While most of East AsiaÌęis outfitted in doctor’s masks these days, that’s more aÌę than a medical necessity—mask-wearing “fosters a sense of a fate shared, mutual obligation, and civic duty,” anthropologist Christos Lynteris wrote recently . The World Health Organization says unless you’re a doctor—or you’re sick yourself. The best defense is washing your hands. If you do have to go into a high-risk situation (say, visiting a hospital during an outbreak), the mask to get is not the paper kindÌębut an , which can filter out at least 95 percent of tiny particles. Even then you need to be sure the mask fits snugly against clean-shaven skin—sorry, —and that no air seeps in around the edges.

Get ready for “social distancing.”

Places from to to are already implementing what public health experts call “social distancing,” which basically means discouraging people from hanging out in groups. This can be anything from canceling school to forbidding social gatherings (the Chinese megacity of Guangzhou has ). Should coronavirus hit the U.S. hard, employers will likely call for work-from-home arrangements. But—fair warning—that means actually doing your job. Young bank trainees in Hong Kong were recentlyÌę in the local press for getting caught hiking when they were supposed to be working from home.

You can spread the virus without showing symptoms.

This is part of what makes coronavirus so scary to infectious-disease experts. While SARS could only be transmitted viaÌęthe obviously sick (i.e., those who wereÌęhacking and feverish), coronavirus carriers can fly under the radar with few or no symptoms. A 20-year-old woman from Wuhan Ìębut never had symptomsÌęherself. And another woman infected a coworker at a meeting despite feeling nothing but a bit of fatigue. , people are the most contagious when they are the sickest. However, the agency reportedÌęthat “some spread might be possible before people show symptoms.”Ìę

The difficulty of asymptomatic transmission means both that there are carriers out there spreading the virus around unknowingly and that people who get sick will have no idea where they contracted COVID-19. It’s a recipe for rapid transmission.

The worst part of the pandemic—if it becomes one—will probably occur November through next March.

Coronaviruses which is why flu season is in the winter. If the new coronavirus follows the patterns of past pandemics, it will spread during the spring in the Northern Hemisphere, die down over the summer, and then come roaring back as the weather cools in the fall. If the fatality rate is actually above 3 percent, the new coronavirus would , which followed a similar pattern. The pandemic actually emerged in late 1917 at a military hospital in France, spread through the winter and spring of 1918, but didn’t really take off until the virus mutated into a more virulent strain that emerged in August of that year and was far deadlier in its than in the first.

Some people are highly infectious “super-spreaders.”Ìę

A businessman attended a sales conference in Singapore, stopped off at a French ski resort to see some friends, then headed back to the UK. Little did he know he was spreading coronavirus the whole way. By the time he realized he was infected, he’d tagged 11 other Britons. Oh, and he still didn’t feel sick himself. No one is exactly sure , but it’s probably a , from the host’s immune system to their behavior (if they’reÌęa hand washer) to where they happen to travel. Whatever it is, they’re dangerous. During the SARS epidemic in Singapore, justÌę managed to be responsible for 144 out of 204 cases.

Don’t panic. It’s not time to go to your .

In fact, hoarding could make things even more dangerous. If masks and other protective gear are snapped up by the “,” there’ll be : medical professionals.

The post 10 Things to Know About the Coronavirus Outbreak appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Paul Barrington isn’t crazy about the term “shark attacks.” Barrington, director of husbandry and operations at the , prefers “shark interactions.” Sharks don’t mean to bite humans, he says. They mean to bite fish. Humans just occasionally get in the way. “I prefer to think of it as more of a case of mistaken identity,” he says. Ìę

This summer, there have been eight shark “interactions” (read: bites) up and down the North Carolina coast—a state record—from the Outer Banks to the border with South Carolina. Two resulted in teenagers losing an arm.

The encounters have generated international publicity and speculation. Is climate change driving sharks closer to shore? Has their normal food supply died off, forcing them to search for different prey? Are they wreaking their sharkly revenge on humans, angry at us for destroying the environment and dumping trash in the oceans?Ìę

Several early reports have pointed to potential factors like Ìęand high ocean salinity due to low rainfall drawing salt-loving sharks to the area. The sharks’ behavior could be due to “some shift in ecology,” says Dr. Joel Fodrie, an oceanographer who directs the shark research program at the University of North Carolina’s Institute of Marine Sciences, but it’s too soon to pinpoint the affects of those shifts with certainty. A change in wind patterns, for example, could be bringing shark treats like mullet or menhaden closer to shore.

But experts like Barrington say the reasons are likely more prosaic. North Carolina has had an unusually hot summer, with temperatures risingÌęabove 100 degrees in June. More people are going to the beach to escape the asphalt-melting misery. And they’re spending more time in the water. When it’s 85 degrees out, you might be happy to lounge in the sand, taking the occasional two-minute dip to cool off. When it’s 104, you’re probably playing in the waves all afternoon.

“Two years ago we had one attack, three years ago we had two attacks,” FodrieÌęsays. “With as many people as we have spending time in the water, that’s amazing.”

No one is entirely sure what types of sharks are responsible for this summer’s spike in encounters. There are about 50 types of sharks known to inhabit North Carolina waters, 20 of which are relatively common. Of those, 10 or so—blacktip, spinner, tiger, and bull sharks, to name a few—are capable of biting a person. The more serious bites involving limb loss were likely perpetrated by bull or tiger sharks, which grow to 8 or 9 feet long and can inflict that type of damage, Fodrie says. The other six bites probably came from smaller species.

What’s difficult to say is whether the shark episodes have actually affected the numbers of swimmers in North Carolina waters. Some anecdotal reports say yes. (Full disclosure: This reporter and her family were one of them. They took a brief, wary dip during their vacation to Sunset Beach, then spent the rest of the trip crabbing on the shark-free canal side.) But other observers say no.ÌęFodrie, for his part, has two small children, and says he doesn’t keep them out of the water because of the shark events—they’ve been swimming all summer.

David Taylor, the district director of the Central North Carolina division of the Eastern Surfing Association, says news reports of tourists staying out of the water are highly overblown. He says he hasn’t noticed fewer people in the water, and that chats with local lifeguards confirm this. “They’re asking for safety tips, but they’re not staying out of the water,” says Taylor, who’s been surfing Atlantic Beach in North Carolina for 15 years.

As for the surfers, a few shark love bites aren’t going to keep them out of the water.Ìę“It’s never going to affect the surfers,” Taylor says. “Surfers are addicted.”

Barrington wants people to remember that sharks have more reason to be afraid of us than we are of them. Some 250,000 sharks are harvested for fins and meat every day across the planet, plunging shark populations into a steep decline they may never recover from, he says. “The sharks are in far more peril than us as humans.”

Simple precautions to avoidÌęshark encounters:Ìę

1. Don’t swim at dawn or after dark, when sharks are known to be most active.
2. If you get cut, stay out of the water.Ìę
3. If you see a lot of small bait fish swimming around, or spot dolphins (which, like sharks, eat the bait fish), leave the water—their presence could be a sign that sharks are in the area.
4. Stay a decent distance from piers, where fishing bait and fish guts (from cleaned fish)Ìęsmell like ambrosia to the average bull shark.Ìę
5. If you have the choice, swim in the sound–a body of water protected between two pieces of land–where the lack of waves means sharks are less likely to mistake you for a fish. Conversely, avoid inlets, where the frenetic activity of estuaries meeting the sea both attracts sharks and makes it difficult for them to see and hear clearly.Ìę

North Carolina beach towns, uneager to become the next Amity Island, have been scrambling to find ways to make their waters safer (or at least seem safer to the public). Pine Knoll Shores, for example, has announced plans to create several swimming-only beaches, no fishermen allowed. Emerald Isle has moved to ban shark fishing until September.

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AFTER DECADES of skiing and hiking, Anne Bujakowski's knee was toast, and she needed surgery—badly. So the 45-year-old Californian made a surprising decision: she flew halfway across the world for the operation.

“It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Bujakowski says of her 2010 knee replacement in Singapore.

Bujakowski had health insurance, but her employer, , in California's San Bernardino Mountains, had just launched a program offering employees significant savings on copays and other costs by going abroad for surgery. Insurance paid for the Singapore trip, including airfare, meals, and ten nights in a luxury hotel while she completed her physical therapy. Her out-of-pocket costs? Nothing. In the U.S., they could have been as high as $20,000.

Traveling abroad for surgery is now a $40 billion industry, and it's growing by 15 to 25 percent annually. In 2013, some 900,000 Americans are expected to seek treatment overseas. The reason is obvious: skyrocketing medical costs at home. In the U.S., knee replacement surgery runs an average of $48,000. In Thailand, it's $10,000. A bilateral hip replacement in the U.S.: $100,000. In India: $14,000. Generally speaking, surgeries are about 80 percent cheaper abroad, and if your insurance has international coverage, out-of-pocket expenses are usually minimal and sometimes waived entirely.

Most people who travel abroad for medical care are uninsured or underinsured, with high-copay or high-deductible insurance, says Glenn Cohen, a professor at who studies medical tourism. And a large number of them are younger, more adventurous patients, often because they have less-comprehensive insurance plans that don't fully cover the cost of, say, a blown ACL from skiing or a torn rotator cuff from kayaking, and also because they're more open to the idea of undergoing a medical procedure in a foreign country. According to a recent poll, 51 percent of millennials would consider going overseas for surgery, compared with only 29 percent of seniors.

Of course, the first question everyone asks is: Is it safe?

“Most overseas doctors are just as qualified or more qualified than the doctors in the United States,” says Geoff Moss, vice president at , a California company that brokers medical-tourism trips. “And the nurse-to-patient ratio is better. You get round-the-clock attention.”

Over the past dozen years, companies like Planet Hospital have sprung up to help clients navigate the sometimes daunting experience of choosing a foreign hospital. The companies provide dossiers on surgeons and independent reports on facilities, send you patient reviews, and arrange follow-up appointments with a stateside doctor when you return home. Many take care of travel plans, from buying plane tickets to booking presurgery adventures. Most of the doctors they endorse studied in the United States or the United Kingdom and are fluent in English, and their hospitals are just as proficient in patient care.

Patrick Follett, 59, used Planet Hospital to arrange a hip replacement in 2012. For years, Follett raced mountain bikes, skied, and competed in triathlons. But his hip was so beat up that it eventually became difficult to climb stairs. After consulting with Planet Hospital, he drove from his California home to the Mexican border town of Mexicali and got a new one, selecting a hospital and a surgeon from a list provided to him.

Despite his trepidation—”It's a Third World country down there,” he says—the Mexican hospital was “immaculate.” Plus, unlike in the U.S., he didn't feel any pressure to speed through his recovery so he could be discharged. Most important, his new hip is working perfectly.

“I've been riding my bike like a madman,” he says.

Stories like Follett's have some countries seeing dollar signs and beefing up their medical systems to meet demand, building shiny new hospitals and launching multimillion-dollar global ad campaigns. Inbound passengers at Seoul's Incheon International Airport are now greeted with a fully staffed information booth. The Czech Republic has its own medical-tourism website.

Meanwhile, various nations have earned a reputation for mastering certain procedures. Want a face-lift or cosmetic dentistry? Look to Mexico or Brazil, which have long catered to quick nips and tucks. Heart surgery? Think India or Japan, which have invested millions in cardiac hospitals. For those seeking orthopedic surgery for sports injuries, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe are top picks.

Moss says that most of Planet Hospital's clients choose their country and hospital based on quality of care, but that doesn't stop them from viewing the experience as the trip of a lifetime, especially if they have a lot of sick days saved up. “I always hear, 'Before I have my joint replace-ment or spinal surgery, I want to see the palace, I want to see Phuket,'” he says.

There are risks—in particular, what to do if something goes wrong with the procedure. Rates of medical complications are difficult to pin down, but experts say that surgery at an accredited hospital can be as safe as surgery in the U.S. Still, they recommend that you bring a friend on the off chance that things take a bad turn (see “Tips for Overseas Surgery,” below).

Demand for these trips should keep rising, even under the Affordable Care Act, which went into effect in October. According to the most optimistic forecasts, there will still be some 23 million uninsured Americans. And those who are newly insured may only be able to afford inexpensive plans with scant surgical benefits. Additionally, Cohen says the number of companies that, like Snow Summit, offer employees the option of undergoing surgery abroad should increase in the next few years.

So if you have a busted knee, a stiff hip, or a torn rotator cuff, take heart: you'll always have Bangkok.ÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌęÌę

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1. Plan ahead.

Look at least six months out, which is probably how long it will take to get all your ducks in a row.

2. Consider a medical travel agency.
A good broker can arrange everything from preoperative consultations to postsurgy physical therapy. It can also help arrange follow-up appointments in the U.S..

3. Look for accredited hospitals.inspects hospitals for high standards of care and lists facilities that specialize in procedures. Some might do only 50 knee replacements a year; you want the one that does 5,000.

4. Extend the trip.
Airplanes are a great place to pick up infections. Ask your surgeon when it’s OK to fly home, and don’t fly until at least three days after surgery. If you choose to spend two weeks on the beach afterward, tell your boss it’s doctor’s orders.

5. Buddy up.
Bringing a friend along adds to the cost, but a trusted ally can calm nerves, offer moral support, and, in the rare event that com-plications arise, be there to negotiate care and make alternate travel arrangements.

6. Seek Help
Medical travel agencies to help plan—and get you through—your surgery abroad:

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Being preparedÌęis just the sensible thing to do, Scott Hunt tells me. Power outage? Superstorm? Nuclear attack? He’ll be ready. That’s why he has a pickup truck that runs on wood.

Spare generators

Spare generators

Hunt on ATV with Son

Hunt, with son Elijah, believes economic collapse could lead to anarchy

Food-storage containers

Food-storage containers

Essential tools

Essential tools

Ìę

We’re standing by a toolshed in the backyard of Hunt’s home near Pickens, South Carolina, staring at a tall metal contraption that sits in the rusting bed of a Ford F-100. It’s a generator that can turn wood chips into wood gas, which, in turn, can run an internal combustion engine.

“I look at a tree, I see a battery,” Hunt says amiably, grabbing his yellow Bernzomatic Fat Boy torch and firing up the “gassifier.” He fans the flame with a gush of compressed air and the truck rumbles to life. “It’s my Mad Max ČúČ賊°ìłÜ±è.”

The 46-year-old Hunt, whose blue polo shirt and neat goatee say soccer dad more than road warrior, believes in backups. He’s got his water supply: a 1,600-gallon spring- and well-fed tank on a hill overlooking his property. He’s got power and heat: an enormous wood-fueled generator, a diesel generator, a propane generator, an old Army immersion heater, solar panels, a wood-burning stove, and solar ovens. There’s food: five rotating vegetable gardens backed by a basement full of canned salmon and refried beans, white and red wheat kernels, potatoes, and dried milk. To turn the wheat into flour, he’s rigged up an old Healthmaster 750 exercycle with a belt and grinding wheel. “In a grid-down situation,” Hunt says, “I believe you need to be prepared to live like in the 1800s.”

To that end, he takes home security very seriously. In his office, there’s a shoulder-high gun safe and piles of rifle cartridges. There are camouflaged lookout posts hidden in the woods beyond his house, infrared sensors planted around the perimeter of the property, and a concealed Smith and Wesson .38 that Hunt carries at all times.

Even to the grocery store? I ask.

“We’re living in a time of instability,” he says, wiping his hands on his jeans. “It doesn’t take long for people to turn into animals.”

Hunt isn’t alone in all of this. By phone I connect with a man I’ll identify only as David, a Houston resident whose house looks like all the other stucco McMansions in his gated community. But as David will tell you, the pantry is overstocked with food, there’s an unusually large amount of medical supplies in the hall closet, and he has two gun safes. Inside his office closet are four stuffed backpacks and a pair of oversize military duffel bags loaded with water filters, food, first-aid equipment, and duct tape. There are also four military load-bearing vests, the kind Army troops wear in Afghanistan: one for David and one each for his wife and two teenagers. șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű his front windows, the flower beds are raised 16 inches off the ground, higher than you’d see in normal gardens. This serves a particular purpose, David says.

“They’d make really good bullet stops,” he says calmly, as if he’s describing prize rosebushes. “Most people think a gunfight happens at waist level or higher. But really, if there’s going to be a gunfight, it happens about 12 inches off the ground.”

David assures me that his bulletproof planters are hardly extreme. “There are sites online where you can buy a chart to learn to field-dress a human body,” he says ominously. Not that he approves.

Scott and David are both preppers, members of a growing subculture of Americans who spend time and money—lots of it—preparing for apocalyptic scenarios of various stripes. They don’t like being called survivalists—that word has dark, kooky connotations—but it’s often hard to see much difference between them and other types of doomsayers who’ve cropped up in recent decades, motivated by everything from fear of nuclear war to antigovernment paranoia to Y2K. Whatever the label, the common thread is that things are going to hell and you can and should take measures to defend yourself. After all, the ants should be ready when the starving grasshoppers start running through the woods.

Today’s preppers worry about a variety of possible disasters: an economic collapse resulting in food shortages and anarchy (“It would only take nine days of hunger for the women to begin prostituting themselves,” Hunt tells me); grid-ruining electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) caused by solar activity or nuclear blasts; oil shortages; or natural disasters like Katrina or a seismic Big One.

Though preppers, unsurprisingly, lean heavily toward don’t-tread-on-me-style Tea Party libertarianism, the movement spans the political spectrum to include climate-change-fearing liberals and Portland bike messengers who raise bees on the roof as an act of anticorporate self-sufficiency. The majority of preppers, however, are Christian conservatives who don’t especially care for Obama’s “socialism” and are influenced at least in part by end-time theology. “Followers of Christ know there will be difficult times before he returns,” Hunt tells me at one point, though he insists he’s preparing for more secular calamities. The chain of events he considers most likely is an economic collapse leading to food shortages and eventual anarchy, though EMPs run a close second. He’s got an app on his Droid to warn him of oncoming solar flares.

Like 12-steppers or model-train enthusiasts, preppers have their own lingo: TSHTF (the shit hits the fan) and TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it) are popular, as are WROL (without rule of law), BOB (a bug-out bag, the backpack full of supplies you keep in case TSHTF and you have to GOOD—get out of Dodge). They maintain blogs like , with tutorials on long-term food storage and building hidden safety rooms. They have their own idiosyncratic preoccupations: the current price of gold, insurance stability indexes, the likelihood of volcanic eruptions in Yellowstone.

As you might expect, many preppers prefer to fly under the radar. It’s tricky explaining to uninitiated strangers why EMPs are a serious threat without provoking wisecracks about tinfoil hats. And if TSHTF, you don’t want those strangers knocking on your door looking to “redistribute” your canned beans.

Without fail, Preppers insist there’s nothing weird about what they’re doing. “Most of our members are typical middle-class people with average jobs,” says Washington State-based Tom Martin, director of the , an online forum for the movement. Though hard numbers are impossible to come by, Martin believes the prepper community has “exploded” in recent years. His website, started four years ago, now has nearly 19,000 members. The word prepper, unheard of just a few years ago, is now in use on thousands of prepper-specific blogs, websites, and YouTube videos. Preparedness conventions and self-reliance expos have sprung up in nearly every state. Cashing in on the trend, National Geographic Television launched a gawking reality show last year called Doomsday Preppers.

Why this? Why now? Mark Potok, an expert on fringe political movements who works for the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, says end-time groups, largely dormant since 1999’s Y2K freak-out, have “come roaring back” in the past three years.

“These things happen in times of great change, when there’s real social stress,” he says, citing the economy and the rapid societal upheavals wrought by globalization. “That’s what we’ve been going through.”

We’re certainly living in an anxious era. Recession. Global warming. Terrorism and the permanently rattled mood that began on September 11, 2001. Even the fringiest views get mainstream airplay these days, making the once crazy seem nearly normal. During his failed bid for the GOP presidential nomination, talked freely about his fear of EMPs produced by high-altitude nuclear bombs. “Without adequate preparation,” he said in a 2009 video address to a group concerned with the phenomena, “we would basically lose our civilization in a matter of seconds.” Prominent economists like Nouriel Roubini warn of further economic collapse radiating out from the European Union. “Greece is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said at the 2010 Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles. Self-sufficiency is suddenly a buzzword, with everyone from Tea Partiers to Brooklyn hipsters lamenting the loss of our great-grandparents’ handiness. These fears are reflected in pop culture, with Hollywood cranking out apocalypse-themed fare like The Hunger Games and The Walking Dead as fast as it can.

This isn’t the first time the country has been gripped by doomsday anxieties, of course. Predictions about the end of the world have popped up regularly throughout U.S. history. Amid the growth, urbanization, and westward expansion of the 1800s, the apocalypse flame burned across America, spawning various end-times-themed religions, including Seventh Day Adventism and Mormonism. During the white-knuckle years of the Cold War, ordinary suburbanites went around digging backyard bunkers and stockpiling Spam. In the 1990s, the survivalist-oriented militia movement made headlines, while Y2K brought a surge in sales of guns and gear. Now we have preppers.

“You’re seeing more and more people obsessed with things like this,” says Jay Lemery, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, in New York City, and the president-elect of the . “It’s infiltrating all aspects of normal life. I walk into an REI and there’s a whole section for disaster preparedness. September 11 changed everything, then compound that with Katrina. The idea that we live in the United States and somebody’s going to save you….” He trails off. “That really shook people.”

“We have children like you,” a woman in a pink polo shirt named Debbie says to me. “They’re not prepared, either. We cry all the time, because we know that if there’s ever a grid-down situation and the roads are cut off, we might never see them again.”

I’m sitting on gym bleachers inside the Cherrydale Place Church in suburban Greenville, South Carolina, talking with a handful of middle-aged preppers. I’m here for the South Carolina Sensible Preppers conference, the second such gathering this year. Roughly 500 people are crowded inside the church, listening to lectures on food storage and home defense. Every few hours, there’s a raffle for items like rifle scopes, flashlights, and Glock holsters in a choice of colors: black or “dark earth.”

Unlike the wild-eyed Chicken Littles typically portrayed on Doomsday Preppers—including a New York City fireman who thinks a volcanic explosion will choke Manhattan with ash—the crowd milling around the gym would look at home at a South Carolina football game: Nikes, Old Navy tees, baby strollers. And yet, as ordinary as the attendees seem, there’s a distinct air of electricity in the church, a sense of shared chosenness.

Don Porter, a handsome South Carolina businessman who organized the conference, takes the stage. “With what is going on in our nation right now, if you’re not prepping, you’re not thinking,” he says. Applause breaks out, and Porter grins. “You are not alone.”

They’re also not crazy, they emphasize.

“Nothing I have is anything everybody shouldn’t have,” says Tiffanee, a thirtysomething African-American woman from North Carolina, who says she’s worried about ordinary weather-related disasters. She shows me the contents of the multipocket Maxpedition bag she carries at all times. Inside, there’s a first-aid kit, a flashlight, an escape tool for breaking car windows, and several packs of Gatorade powder. At home she has months’ worth of food and water, weather radios, and CBs. Plus weapons, though she doesn’t want to talk about that. Tiffanee has always been fascinated with survival skills, she says—she even worked in emergency management for a while—so attending prepper conferences is a natural step.

“She’s loved knives ever since she was a little girl!” her mother tells me. “We used to call her Bladey Mae.”

I listen to a talk on food storage, in which I learn that “sugar is one of the currencies of tomorrow.” I sit through a first-aid lecture and hear that feminine products are a good way to stanch gunshot wounds and that I should stockpile animal antibiotics from online pet-supply companies. “If a fish can take it, a human can take it!” a speaker says.

I talk to a retiree from West Palm Beach who tells me he started prepping after living through two hurricanes. “You would be surprised as to how society breaks down in very little time,” he says. I talk to a mohawked welder from Alabama who says God has called him to “build a sanctuary for my family,” but he’s been having problems with boll weevils in his flour stockpile. I listen to two men debate the merits of various assault weapons for defending one’s home against marauding neighbors.

“There are more people killed in the U.S. by a .22-caliber long rifle than any other gun,” says one. He means this as a good thing.

Vendors have set up tables in the hallways and Sunday-school classrooms outside the gymnasium. The owner of a North Carolina prepper supply store displays books: Where There Is No Doctor; Basic Butchering of Livestock and Game; Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse. In the room next door, a friendly young Iraq vet sells night-vision goggles and Zombie Hunter bumper stickers.

Nearly all the vendors here started their operations in the past year or two, and all say that things are going gangbusters. “Business has been great,” says Chuck Ascher, a 23-year-old ex-Marine from Oregon who’s manning a table of water filters and “survival bracelets” woven from military parachute cord. “Stuff’s flying off the shelves.”

Scott Hunt knows all about the business side of prepping. An engineer by training, he worked for Michelin for years before settling into his current job: retrofitting homes for doom times. He and a partner travel the country engineering wells, installing solar generators, building chicken coops, and planting fruit orchards. Hunt launched in March 2011. By July he was so busy he was turning away clients.

His own spread is a testament to the fact that a fully prepped home need not be a bunker. A 4,500-square-foot structure built with local white pine, stylish cast-iron railings, and double-high ceilings, it’s right out of Better Homes and Gardens. Hunt lives here with his pharmacist wife, three teenage daughters, and five-year-old-son.

After showing me the wood-fueled truck, Hunt leads me through red-clay Carolina hills to visit one of his current projects, an in-the-works retreat belonging to a wealthy Connecticut couple new to prepping. The couple visited Hunt at his house last year, took a look around, and told him they wanted everything he had and then some. They’ve already spent $100,000 modifying the retreat—a beige 5,500-square-foot palace on a rural hillside—and Hunt figures they’ll spend another $100,000 before they’re through.

This kind of spending is not atypical in the prepper world. In an area described only as “the eastern side of the Rockies,” one developer has been selling underground prepper condos carved out of an abandoned missile-silo facility. Prices start at $2 million. If you can’t pony up a couple mil, a company called Vivos offers rental shares in a network of shelters with “the comfort of a luxury yacht,” starting at a mere $20,000 per person per year.

Hunt’s clients have no problem shelling out. One family in Virginia spent upwards of $250,000 on a retreat cabin—solar panels, security fencing, a clean-water system with five redundancies. Another client is building an entire EMP-proof community in Virginia, but Hunt’s not sure he’s supposed to talk about it. The founder, a businessman from Charlotte, North Carolina, helicoptered down just to meet him.

Then there’s this Connecticut couple who have ordered the works. Scott and I drive down the long, winding driveway to look at the rabbit hutches—rabbits offer the best feed-to-meat yield of any domesticated animal—and admire the new $15,000 Kubota tractor in the tool-and-implement barn, which is also new. I can smell the fresh-cut edges of the wood.

“They’re excited, they’re like kids,” Hunt says of his clients, chuckling over the happy preparedness of it all.

With peopleÌęspending $200,000 building a tricked-out retreat house complete with guaranteed hot showers and three years’ worth of freeze-dried pineapple chunks, you have to wonder: Won’t they be disappointed if the shit doesn’t hit the fan?

Hunt says nope, no way. “Hope and pray for the best, prepare for the worst,” he says. I believe him. But still.

If TSHTF, Hunt’s plan is this: His mother, his business partner, and his family will move in with him. If his daughters are away at college, they’ll of course have to come home. Hunt and his partner will spend their days being commandos, patrolling the perimeter and talking on radios. The way he describes it, the collapse sounds like a grown-up Boy Scout camp combined with Rambo.

Beyond the Boy Scout stuff, there is something primally appealing about the idea of life stripped to the bare essentials. If TSHTF, all the crap you have to deal with in your day-to-day 21st-century life—your ignorant boss, lines at the bank, the neighbor who asks you to please trim those tree branches because they’re hanging over into his yard—would be gone.

I asked J. Gordon Melton, a religious-studies scholar at Baylor University who has written about apocalyptic movements, why he thinks these tides of panic are so popular. Don’t people catch on to the fact that the world never ends as predicted? Melton is philosophical.

“There’s always a gap between what we want—what we expected to get out of life—and what we actually wind up with,” he says. “When that gap becomes so big that we don’t see any way of ever bridging it, that sets the stage for this idea of ‘Let’s just get rid of it all.’ ”

After the lecture about gunshot wounds at the Sensible Preppers conference, I wander into one of the Sunday-school classrooms and strike up a conversation with Billy Sterrett, the 28-year-old son of the owner of , a North Carolina-based prepper supply store with a table at the expo.

My phone buzzes, and I start shooting off a text message, then Billy’s phone buzzes and he starts doing the same. He grimaces.

“You know how crazy you get when you leave your cell phone at home?” he says. “I hate that. You know, if the power went out forever, I’d be happy.”

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Getting far, far, far away from it all is easier—and cheaper—than you think. Presenting seven adventure-packed Caribbean island escapes.

The Over-Under

SABA, NETHERLANDS ANTILLES

The most challenging part of a trip to Saba, a five-square-mile volcanic island 28 miles southwest of St. Maarten, is the arrival. Saba has the shortest commercial runway—1,312 feet—in the world. Think of it as an aircraft carrier made of rainforest and cliffs. But once you touch down, your toughest decision is whether to hike into a cloudforest or dive among coral-covered seamounts. Base yourself in a hot-tub-equipped cottage at Dutch marine biologist Tom van't Hof's Ecolodge Rendez-Vous (doubles, $85; ). Then hike past sweeping ocean vistas on the way up 2,877-foot Mount Scenery. Post-hike, head for the centrally located village of Windwardside, home to Sea Saba Advanced Dive Center. The outfitter leads half-day snorkeling trips and four-day scuba-certification courses in Saba National Marine Park, which van't Hof founded 20 years ago (snorkeling trips, $35; dive course, $450; ). Winair flies daily from St. Maarten to Saba (from $150; ).

Surf and Slip

BARBADOS

Among diehard surfers, Barbados is famous for Soup Bowl, a nasty curl off the eastern shore. Less known—and far more appealing for mortals—are the dozens of forgiving swells surrounding the 166-square-mile island. Newbies will find Freights Bay, near Barbados's southern tip, plenty welcoming. Fryers Well, outside of Speightstown, is a good intermediate option. And Tropicana, a left-hand break north of Holetown, offers hairball thrills. Seek lessons from Christ Church Parish–based surf master Melanie Pitcher ($70; ). On land, do as the locals do: Drink the world's best rum. First, hit the Mount Gay distillery (), where charred-oak barrels give the rum its caramel flavor. Then make for the parish of St. James, home to the John Moore bar, one of Barbados's finest rum shacks. Here, cricket matches are fiercely debated over strong punch and grilled bonita. A solid oceanside crash pad is the Peach & Quiet, in Inch Marlow (doubles from $110; ).

Little Big League

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

In this nation of 9.5 million, béisbol is not the pastime we know in the States. It's a way of life. Discover as much in Santo Domingo's training grounds, where teams like Aguilas Cibaeñas play in front of crowds that make the Fenway faithful look like sushi eaters (tickets generally cost less than $20; schedule available at ). The pro season runs from October through January, but baseball never stops. Coming this winter? Head to Boca Chica, 45 minutes east of Santo Domingo, and see tomorrow's stars at the New York Mets' new 37-acre training complex. For off-field thrills, drive 2.5 hours north to the adventure ranch Rancho Baiguate, outside Jarabocoa (doubles, $145; ). The guides here are versatile. One day they'll float you eight miles down the Class II Yaque del Norte River ($50). The next, they'll start a multi-day trip up 10,417-foot Pico Duarte, the Caribbean's tallest peak ($385).

Where the Wild Things Are

MONA ISLAND, PUERTO RICO

Think of this as Puerto Rico's version of the GalĂĄpagos. Mona Island, 46 miles west of Cabo Rojo, is open to just a few hundred visitors at a time, with the only overnight stays at campsites along its white-sand beach. Inland, nearly 90 percent of the terrain is 200-foot cliffs, riddled with half-mile-deep caverns. These contain the skeletons of many a conquistador and pirate. (Legend has it Captain Kidd once stayed here.) But come for the wildlife. On a four-day trip with mainland-based Acampa șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Tours, let four-foot Mona iguanas come to you like poodles, chase after blue-footed boobies, and spy on feral boars (you can also hunt them with bow and arrow in winter). Acampa arranges pickups throughout Puerto Rico, and trips should be booked one month in advance (roughly $750 per person for groups of ten; ).

Ghost Fish

SOUTH ANDROS ISLAND, BAHAMAS

Bonefish are hard to catch. Don't let anyone tell you differently. They look alternately like the white sand and mirrory water they swim between, and hooking them can require pinpoint casts of up to 70 feet. And that's the easy part—they fight like Japanese motorcycles. A good guide is not just recommended but necessary. Raised within sight of the water they traffic, the crew at Andros South, a fishing-first lodge situated on the eastern shore of South Andros, are as good as it gets. Expect about ten of the hardest-fighting fish you've ever encountered on a fly rod, every day. Back at the no-frills lodge, munch on conch fritters and swill Kalik (Bahamian beer) as the sun gets low. Three-day trips from $2,000 ().

Blue Yonder

ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES

The 32 islands and cays of St. Vincent and the Grenadines offer the most varied cruising in the Caribbean. Find Barefoot Yacht Charters, the region's best outfitter, off the southern tip of St. Vincent. Their six-night, American Sailing Association–certified cruise school, aboard a 40-foot yacht, teaches guests to clear the anchor, trim the main, and laze on the beaches of Mayreau ($1,300; ). Already skippered? Hire a sail from Barefoot and drift ($1,800 per week). Your destination: the 16-square-mile Tobago Cays Marine Park, home to a sand-bottom lagoon and six island playgrounds (). Kick your feet up, bounce between islands, and tell your friend the hawksbill turtle you're never going home.

Time Out

CORN ISLANDS, NICARAGUA

Two chunks of sand 40 miles east of Nica­ragua, the Corn Islands are the Caribbean in its primal state. Beaches are empty and wet-T-shirt contests won't make landfall for another 20 years. What to do? Just wander around with a snorkel, a cerveza, and a grin. The puddle-jumper from Managua leaves twice daily for the airstrip on Grand Corn ($165 round-trip; ). The “Grand” part is relative—the island is about four square miles. Dive Nautilus runs trips out to a sunken 400-year-old Spanish galleon ($20; ). Sleep in a bungalow at Casa Canada, where the owners arrange guided jungle hikes (cabanas from $115; ). For dinner, spiny Caribbean lobster runs about $15 at the restaurants near the dock (try Lidia's Place). A trip to Little Corn, a patch of sand 30 minutes north via speedboat, is a must. The Dive Little Corn shop rents snorkeling gear (from $15; ). Crash at Casa Iguana, a wind-and-solar-powered eco-lodge (doubles from $35; ).

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What sold me forever on Mexico was a 7,500-mile road trip from Minnesota to GuatemalaI took a few years ago. I drove from the Sierra Madre Oriental to the seafood capital of Veracruz. Near MĂ©rida, I biked through Maya ruins. In Tulum I slept exclusively in hammocks. Contrary to what my friends at home had predicted, I didn’t get sick or robbed. My only hassle was a $200 speeding ticket. The cop took a cut, but I was going 90 in a 55-kph zone. Sure, with drug-related violence stealing the headlines, I’d steer clear of JuĂĄrez nowadays. But in the dead of winter, nothing can keep me away from white sand and sublime fish tacos. Flying to Mexico’s major airports shouldn’t cost more than $600, and eight bucks will buy a week’s worth of fresh fruit and veggies at the local market. This paradise may have an edge, but it also offers more surfing, biking, and kayaking than anyone deserves.

Trek the YucatĂĄn

Ruins at Chichen Itza, Mexico

Ruins at Chichen Itza, Mexico

Mexico’s Caribbean coast, the Riviera Maya, is great. But it doesn’t have as much soul as the YucatĂĄn interior, where Spanish plantations meet Maya civilization to form a landscape out of an Octavio Paz poem. Fly to CancĂșn, rent a car, and start ruin-hopping 75 miles inland, at CobĂĄ, a 1,300-year-old Maya city. Rent a bike for $2.50 at the entrance, pedal through the ruins, and climb Nohoch Mul pyramid. Next, it’s off to one of the least visited Maya sites, Oxkintok, 40 miles south of MĂ©rida, home to more pyramids. But the best part of this trip may be the digs: The Starwood hotel group runs a series of renovated 16th-to-18th-century plantations along your driving route. These grand old facades are ideal launching pads for day trips to other ruins, like the iconic ChichĂ©n ItzĂĄ. And luckily, you don’t have to choose where to sleep: Starwood offers a seven-night hacienda-stay option ($2,600, including breakfasts; )

Escape to Isla Holbox

A 26-mile-long spit of sand 40 miles northwest of CancĂșn, Isla Holbox has evaded the vagaries of mass tourism: There are no roads here, only sand. No cars, only golf carts. And no day-trippers—just 1,500 residents and a few smart vacationers. Take a shuttle from CancĂșn to the mainland gateway of ChiquilĂĄ ($175 each way; ). From there it’s a 15-minute ferry to Holbox ($4 each way; ). Your base is Casa Sandra, a resort with a series of ocean-facing villas (doubles from $155; ). May through September is whale shark season in the Yum Balam Biosphere, a 600-square-mile protectorate of coastal waters and forests. Explore the menagerie with a snorkeling guide from Mextreme Travel—the outfitter donates a portion of proceeds to whale shark conservation ($50 per trip; ). Tip: Bring cash. Holbox has no ATMs, and credit cards are rarely accepted.

Surf in Sayulita

Sayulita is no longer a secret. That’s why my editors have allowed me to write about it—half the staff of șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű has visited in the past year. A fishing village fronting a crescent-shaped Pacific bay, 45 minutes north of Puerto Vallarta, it’s an easy getaway, but what makes this place stand out is the democratic surf: There’s a right longboard break just off the beach and plenty of advanced options accessible by boat. If you want to rent a house, SayulitaLife.com offers plenty of choices. If you don’t need that much space, shoot for an ample, affordable room at Villa Amor, on the southern end of the bay (doubles from $90; ). The resort will hook you up with the best local surf instructors (a lesson should run about $25). Experts, sign up with Tranquilo Surf, which leads daylong offshore surf safaris in search of shoulder-to-head-high point breaks (prices vary; ).

Paddle Baja

If you ask me, Baja’s white beaches and craggy Sierra de la Giganta mountains look best from offshore: The Sea of Cortez is a kayaker’s paradise. Sign on for an eight-day trip with Oregon-based Tofino Expeditions ($1,250; ), starting out of the fishing-cum-vacation port of Loreto. You’ll explore coastal islands and mangroves; paddle near sea lions in Loreto Bay National Marine Park; and weave through pastel-colored volcanic-rock formations at the Sierra de la Giganta coast, 16 miles south of Loreto. Nights are spent camping on beaches and in one of 48 waterfront rooms at the Desert Inn at Loreto. Around the corner, Mike’s Bar serves a mean michelada—local beer mixed with clam juice, lemon, and salt. (Tastes like iced tea but better.)

Jungle-Hop in Chiapas

Travelers in the mood for rainforests and ruins tend to take aim at Belize and Costa Rica, never considering southern Mexico. The result: Chiapas, though home to spectacular jungled Maya outposts, sees relatively few visitors, most of them of the Aussie-backpacker variety. Which is fine. Take a private five-day tour with the archaeologist guides at New Mexico–based MayaSites (from $700; ). The trip starts in Palenque, the pyramid-punctuated Maya city. Later, guests take a canoe ride down the Usumacinta River—Crocs! Toucans!—to the mossy temples at Yaxchilán. Opt to sleep at the Escudo Jaguar Ecotourist center, an hour upriver from Yaxchilán. From there, Agua Clara—a series of waterfalls feeding half a dozen travertine swimming holes—is an easy day trip.

Bike the Sierra Madre

Gear-grinding slickrock climbs. Amazing Pacific vistas. Brake-flicking descents. The Sierra Madre is made for mountain bikes. If you want to ride in Copper Canyon, that vast series of gorges eight hours south of El Paso, Texas, you’ll need strong quads and a guide—New Mexico–based Remolino șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Works offers eight-day trips ($1,400; ). Don’t have that kind of time? Explore the foothills south of Puerto Vallarta with Eco Ride Mex ($140; ). Opt for the Yelapa tour, which starts in El Tuito, 28 miles from Puerto Vallarta, and zips for 34 miles along ridgelines overlooking rainforests and blue Banderas Bay. A steep drop into Yelapa leads to a taxi-boat lift back to Puerto Vallarta, where the waterfrontBuenaventura Hotel awaits (doubles, $150; ).

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Nine

Minutes of flight time per every $500 fuel-up

250

Feet of altitude the prototype can gain and still return safely to the ground

60

Feet of altitude at which test pilot Eric Scott’s prototype malfunctioned, causing him to crash

Two

Surgeries endured by Scott after hard landings—one on his knee and one on his shoulder

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