Why A Prepper Should Never Overlook Sleep.

Interesting article Lonewolf. Thanks for posting it.


From time to time we are tasked with working 12 hour shifts from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning. Often this is seven days a week. It is a long and difficult schedule to survive as it can go on for months and months. Pay is good....but it is very taxing on ones sleep and rest hours.


There are two difficulties with this kind of thing..particularly on the back shifts.

The first is getting uninterrupted rest/sleep. You need to disconnect yourself from the outside world...as much as possible.

I do not answer my front door....as much as possible. People who know me come to the back door and ring the street car bell hanging up there on my deck. And it had better be important....

The second is.....Most people are daywalkers and have no concept of people working the back shifts. They think and conduct themselves as if everyone works day shift hours. They will not survive months and months of this kind of thing.

Also those with families....you have to get them on board so as not to interrupt your rest with their social beliefs/practices which they think are so important.

These people including family have no concept of how stupid they are and take for granted the hours they work and sleep.
They have no concept of what it is to be awake at three or four in the morning and having to do dangerous or hazardous work.

You have to /must get your family on board.


Often I turn all the ringers off on my phones ...cell phone too. I just do not want the outside world coming in with what the world thinks is important..and ruining my rest/sleep.

I put a fan on to make background noise ....to drown out much of the neighbors cutting grass etc etc.


But after awhile and in line with the author of that article and what they are describing ...you become numb on such an schedule. I refer to this numbness as running on auto pilot.

If you get a few days off...you need them just to decompress and it is right back to the work grind.

People who work days often do not get so affected as do the night shift people.

But I hate dayshift....because of traffic ..people....parking ..and other crowd issues. As I have stated..I am just not the social butterfly type.

But this does not negate the need for rest and sleep.

I have been known to function for long periods of time on four to five hours of rest per day when working this schedule but it catches up with one after awhile.

I can also function on cat naps of 30 minutes to an hour..but this too is not substitute for good deep rest..and not being awoken for every bit of nonsense this world can muster.

Working graveyard shifts has made me aware of how many people operate in taking for granted that day shifts are the only thing happening out here. Bankers hours.

When day shift people occasionally get sent to the graveyard shifts ...you can watch them falling apart at the seams while they learn to survive on the new regimen. It is quite a shock. It is a whole new world to them.



Thanks,
Watcherchris
Not an Ishmaelite

 

When it hits the fan, count on losing sleep.

We're not talking about ongoing health, we're talking trying to make it one week at a time.

If there is a survival crew of several people who have proven trustworthy & will cover your six'o'clock, then maybe you can get in the zzzzzzzzzzs you need. Good luck on that.

And then there are the four-legged things. Had a friend out in the woods deer-hunting pre-dawn. Crashing down the mountain, a black bear almost ran straight over the top of him. He never came to any understanding of what spooked Smokey higher up the mountain. Few years later, he had a bear run out in front of his car (a GM Saturn with a plastic body), hits the bear, knocks it out cold, trashes his car, calls for assistance, comes back to car, bear gets up and runs back up into the woods. Seems my friend was prone to run-ins with bears. Me, I consider his first wife as being a bear problem for him also.

 

LOL LOL LOL...now that is a funny story Olde Geezer...LOL LOL!!

On the serious side...you are correct...about one week at a time ...or even shorter.

Most people have no clue what it is to go long hours off your daytime schedule..so secure are they by someone else's "Risk Taking " for their comfort levels that they take so much for granted...entitlement.

There are only a handful, if that on my job, of people for whom I am confident in them watching my six....and particularly in the wee hours of the morning...and on difficult/dangerous tasks.

Some of the tasks on which people endeavor...you'd better be frosty..awake and aware...diametrically opposed to what most people take for granted in the wee hours of the morning.

And yes...count on loosing sleep..alot of sleep.


Thanks,
Watcherchris
Not an Ishmaelite

 

When I could get it my preferred shift was always the graveyard shift. There is just less politics and crud on that shift. I have always been a troglodyte and actually sleep better in the day. Now that I'm retired I never go to sleep before 3am. I have a hard time sleeping much more than 5 hours most times. For several years I only slept 4 hours a day in the form of two 2 hour naps a day. I like he world at night better. I love the woods in the dark and always have fished a lot at night.

You are right that day people just don't understand being on the night shift means. My parents loved to scheduled things for early Saturday morning. My Mom woe up at 4am every day and my Dad always looked at laying in bed after 9am to just be laziness. When I started my own business, rule number one was that I didn't do ANYTHING before 9:30 am.

I think that some people are just born to be night people. Even when I was a kid and either worked or went to school during the day I never slept much at night on the weekends. I start feeling ALIVE about 9pm and am going and doing from then until 3am or later. Maybe my soul was supposed to go to Australia. I'm at my best during their day time.

 

Texdanm,

Texdanm...your singing my song!!!

Also prefer to fish at night. Caught many a stripped bass in these two rivers at night.

In some of the olde books.....they say that night people tend to prefer silver to gold...silver for the moon and night and gold for the sun and days.

I have always been a silver person though I know the value of gold..but prefer silver. Carry two silver dollars in my coin pocket right now...a 1925 and a 1926 Peace dollar...90 % silver.

I worked graveyard shift many many years ago when in the US Air Force and got to liking it. The ladies preferred me home and on day shift but I would not do it for them. I just liked the nights and the fewer people around the better I liked it.
Did it for many many years in this shipyard after getting out of the USAF.

I understand why many daywalkers begin early in the morning when they can..it can get very hot outside during the summer months.

LOL LOL LOL..I was not that way...

It took me awhile to get used to the nights and then I found I preferred it.

The main problems was the ladies I saw all were daywalkers...and wanted me to keep their schedules.

Today I often like to go about in my garage and get things done at night...provided I can get parts and materials together afore time and in place to work.


Thanks,
Watcherchris
Not an Ishmaelite

 

In the past people did not sleep like we do now. In general the true natural sleep pattern seems to be a pattern of short sleeps with awake periods in between. The exact pattern varied with places. In the north and south in the lower hemisphere there is no way you can sleep dusk till dawn when you have 14 to 16 hours of darkness. In the equatorial regions you need to get out of the sun during the heat of the day and get as much done as possible in the cooler night hours.

When there were no clocks and the only artificial light was a fire people tended to sleep for a 4 hour period then be awake for 2 to 4 hours then arise with the sun. There were lots of reasons for this. During the cold months you needed to tend the fire pretty often. Without birth control you had bigger families and babies and small children never sleep all night. Basically you slept when you needed to and rested when the heat of the day made it best to be inactive.

We have been sold on our 8 hour sleep method by a culture that is a slave to the clock and businesses seem to think that different jobs just must be done at specific hours. White collar workers work 9 to 5 while blue collar workers are supposed to be up with the sun even when it has nothing to do with the work. Even when I worked in small shops that only ran one shift we worked from 7 to 3:30 or 4.

When the lights go off and the clocks stop people are going to need to dump that sort of thinking. Rest doesn't have to mean sleep and sleep doesn't need to be done in 8 hour or longer chunks. There have always been night people. someone had to keep watch and maintain the fire. Nearly ALL primitive people knew more about the night sky than modern people do. We might know what the surface of Mars looks like but very few can find it in the night sky . The stars were the STARS of nighttime entertainment for primitive people and their clock for the seasons. They knew when the equinoxes occurred and the solstices.

Leaving behind the many things that we have been taught were the way things SHOULD be by our various cultures is going to be one of the hardest tasks for a future survivor. This is just one of many lies that we have been sold.