The danger of flies and protecting yourself from them after SHTF hits!

Hello my friend and welcome back again! I was thinking the other day about all of the death that will follow SHTF and the danger they pose to your health, so that is the topic of today’s post.  Sit back, grab a cup of coffee and let’s get started shall we?

Without a doubt, when SHTF hits, there will be a lot of death caused by violence, starvation and disease. To me that seems to be pretty much a given. In a short time, there will thousands of dead bodies of people and animals alike no matter where you are.  The issues this will bring about will be staggering!  With dead bodies, there will come millions of flies and they will carry disease that will kill many more in the process.  These small insects will quickly become one of your biggest threats and you need to make plans now to deal with them.

They are not something that most of us normally think about because we normally see them in small number on a day to day basis. Most of us consider them to me mostly a nuisance more than anything else.  However, dead bodies will breed millions of them and they will all be carrying disease and illness.  You must prepare for them now or this slight oversight could be deadly to you and your group.

So just how do you prepare for them? There are many ways, but you need to do it now.  You prepare for them just like they were bees that could sting you by covering every part of your body that you can.  You should buy mosquito netting and be sure you have window screens on every window that you have.  You need to get some of those cheap Mosquito head coverings, I think they cost about $1. 99  at Wal-Mart and I am sure that you could probably get them at a better price if you buy them by the gross.  These will allow you to protect your head, face and neck while you are outside; just remember to wear long sleeve shirts, pants and gloves when they are at their worst.  Fortunately, I would imagine that many of them would die off in the first 6 months to a year, so it should not be a continuing issue.

Use the mosquito netting to create an enclosure just inside the door of your house or any building you might be working in. Then make sure you remove any that might slip in through the door with you before opening the netting to enter the room.  This will be a huge pain in the butt; however it could save your life and help stop the spread of disease. All livestock should be sprayed with some type of fly repellant to help protect them as well. Fly paper will be pretty much a waste of time as they will quickly fill up with no noticeable change in the fly population.

One trick that I learned back when I was cooking competition BBQ was to hang a clear plastic bag of water by one of its corners. The reason that this works is that the Hornet is a natural enemy of the common fly and the bag resembles a hornet’s nest, so the flies avoid it.  While it won’t get rid of all of them, you will be amazed how well it works.  I used this many times when I was cooking out doors and it worked every time.  You could also use old newspaper and shape it into   something that resembles a hornet’s nest as well.  Like I said, it will not get rid of them all, but it will make a huge dent in their numbers.  There are many other tricks out there but these are just a few that I know of to help get you started.  I’m sure if you take the time to think about it, you will come up with a few more and if you can, please share them with us below.  Well I guess that is it for today and I hope I have helped you in some small way be a little more prepared?  I also want to thank all of my readers as I only started this blog back in March, and have had over 100,000 visitors since that time.  You, the reader, is why I do this blog and it so very rewarding to have many people that seem to enjoy it.  Until next time, stay safe, stay strong and stay prepared!  God bless!

-The Sargent-