Lets face it. You wouldn't be reading this had a Biblical storm not appeared in the Gulf of Mexico to haul off and kick Uncle Sam right in the balls with his levees down. Two more came right behind her, then Australia starts their '06 season with one. They blame global warming, but the globe feels much the same to you. Now, there is one headed for you. Watcha gonna do?

In the hurricane zones of America, mass evacuation is the SOP, but we all saw how well those work when the impact area is as big as a Katrina, a Rita, or a Wilma. More died in the Rita evacuation than died in the storm. We don't get a full grasp of the number 1,000,000 until we are stuck behind them with a cat-five monster hurricane on our ass. Tooting the horn just doesn't seem to have the effect it used to.

Not everyone needs to leave the area, but everyone needs to be in low or no-risk shelters, the exception being the emergency responders who are willing to brave the storm either looking for or responding to people in need of rescue. In most cases these people are people who stayed in their homes when they should not have. Some can and should stand their ground, but how does one know whether to stay or to go.

If you always evacuate in any mandatory evacuation order and will forever evacuate the path of any hurricane, here is where you can stop reading.

(You can't really, because this is just a literary device to winnow out a hypothetical audience, and I am not really sure how this device works, but if it steadily gets rid of my readers, I'd say it works very poorly. Read on and maybe you can explain it to me. And I am not really a sexist, but the old expert military character I play in this piece seems to be, and seems to be trying hard not to be.)

If you think only fools stand their ground like the fools who tried to defend the Alamo, and those reckless Marines who took and held Mount Suribachi, or those silly soldiers who clung so tenaciously to the Pusan Perimeter, then you, too, can stop reading. You will never understand ground standing.

All children and pets need to be in a designated storm shelter along with the disabled, the elderly, and the infirm. That or well away from the disaster area. Vertical evacuation is much better than horizontal, and big buildings made of steel and concrete don't tople over in hurricanes. Go to Grandma's, or visit nearby, high-ground friends. Mom, you need to be with the kids, so all of you can stop reading.

That leaves able men and women, and some strapping lad sons, but also some childless stand-by-your-man women. Some of them are standing by women.

Note: I don't use the term able bodied, because ability has very little to do with the body, and the handicapped are not disabled, nor are the disabled necessarily handicapped. I am not grading and selecting, I am saying who should and should not consider standing ground, inviting those who want to explore this option further to remain, while directing those who should not to a path of evacuation options that will not be explored here.

Call me a sexist, but a Biblical storm is no place for a lady, so you girls run along, too. You can stand by your man (or woman) when he (or she) is standing on something that makes sense to your grandparents. Now get going before traffic gets bad, and don't be picking up hitchhikers that are walking along the freeway. You'll slow them down, and when the traffic gets bad, they'll get out when you could use the company.

Okay, now we are down to just we men and manly women as it should be, BUT you don't all need to go home to stand guard on that hardware store inventory arranged in a manner pleasing to your wife (or life partner), filled with all the junk she bought on sale over the years.

Many of you can take shelter where the police and firefighters ride this out and join the corps of able volunteers that will be greatly appreciated and quickly forgotten, simply brushed aside and made to stand behind the barricades when the power goes back on.

The rest want to look after your home, your stuff, not add to the evacuation and sheltering burden, help keep bad guys out of the neighborhood, assist in rescues, join recovery efforts, be useful in your community's time of great need, and use this opportunity to go through all your neighbors' personal places and spaces, peek in their nooks, and rummage all in their crannies. I understand completely, but you need to conduct a risk assessment survey before risking life and limb to protect and defend shit. Sorry, but in the words of the great George Carlin, the contents of your home only rises to stuff if the shit is mine.

The first order of business is find the exact elevation above mean sea level for the ground around your home. Don't go on what it appears to be. Use Google Earth to zoom in from a satellite. Place the cross hairs on your place, and read the elevation, then take readings all around in ever expanding circles until you have a "lay of the land" and a good idea where a huge mass of sea water will come at you from.

From the sea is a smart-ass answer, and had you been with me in Waveland, you'd have been dead wrong. Our surge water came from the north and from the east. The sea was due south. Had we listened to you, we'd have been facing the wrong way when that massive dome of sea water hit to be swept away backward.

After you figure the flood potential and find you have some potential, compute the fetch effect for the depth of water and expanse of water you expect to be swimming in, worst-case scenario.

Note: The wind needs a long clear run to build a wave and get it up to wind speed. This runway is called fetch and needs depth for maximum results. Rule of thumb has a hundred knot wind needing a hundred nautical miles in a hundred fathoms to achieve one mogie badass wave. A thousand yards in three feet of water will knock your stick-built castle clean off its foundation. You may think of this as the rule of pinky.

To estimate fetch, you will need to make a ground clutter survey by standing on your ground and turning a full circle. If you see any open area that extends for the length of ten football fields or more, hurry and catch your wife (or life partner).

For those who don't see a problem so far, the ground clutter can be a bigger problem than deep water and lots of fetch. What you want is the stuff weather radar bounces off of, good, solid, well-anchored, tall buildings. If you look east and see a trashy mobile home park, look southeast to a metal awning supply center, and south to a wacky neighbor who collects antique windmills, you need to stop weighing matters. Go be with your family and go visit the in-laws, because you won't want to see what happens where you were standing.

While the rest of you are out there looking around, ignor the forrest and see the trees. Now, imagine your neighborhood has a bad problem with beavers. No, I mean that tree-felling rodent with buck teeth. Those can be a problem. Which trees would you worry about? What a shame it would be were you to make this noble and valiant stand only to be crushed by a tree that fell like a giant swatting a bug that has you in it.

See yourself in spirit watching your kids peel back the carpet to show their friends the stain on the concrete where their daddy stood. Your anger when some punk says, "Your old man sure was dumb, huh?" And the pain when your kids agree. Best get you a chain saw and make like a bad beaver, huh?

NOT SO FAST! Some trees are good and some bad trees can be topped and trimmed to become very good fetch foilers. In fact, the wise man (or woman) plants trees of the right kind and then connects and supports them to gain a strategic advantage, especially at the point of greatest vulnerability. A shingle roof can be bound down so that the shingles can't lift and flap. A gable can be closed in. A man (or woman) can lay down wave trippers and wind blocks, wind thrusters, reverse twisters and wind 'n wave mangulators, inverters, and diverters.

When you turn your weak areas into strong points, you have strengthened your position, which does not impress a hurricane even a tiny iota. If you are defending a stick-built house, these combative things will make you feel better during your last hours on Earth.

We need to look at the construction of your Alamo. Let's face it. We aren't liberating an oppressed state, or taking critical ground from the Japanese, or holding tenaciously to the last piece of Korea, nor interdicting the rice-propelled hoard sandal-shuffling down the Ho Che Minh Trail. You men (and women) are guarding a huge box of consumer crap with your life, because you are a man, and that is what real men do, unless you are a manly woman. I'm not really sure what they do, but I do like their videos.

What exactly is stick-built?

If you could have a termite problem, you live in a stick-built house. If your house can burn to the ground, you live in a stick-built house. If banging on the wall or ceiling can get somebody to BE QUIET, you live in a stick-built house. If a drunk driver can drive through or park in your house, you live in a stick-built house. If doors and windows aren't needed to enter or leave your house with a framing hammer, you live in a stick-built house. If your heating and cooling bills really chap your ass, you live in a stick-built house. If a weather event can leave you with a clean foundation slab, you live in a stick-built house. If your homeowner's insurance premiums are killing you post Katrina, you own a stick-built house in a hurricane flood zone. Do NOT stand ground in a stick-built house subject to two or more feet of flood water or one perched aloft on stilts or pier supports.

If you own a home with one or more axles, and you have tires on your roof, you might be a redneck and be well advised to put those wheels back on that shoe box on steroids, hitch er up, and drag er to a foothill or a landfill. On this global warmed planet, there is no safe place to park your house on the hurricane coasts or on the Great Plains. But don't stand ground if any of the following apply:

Don't stand ground you rent, ground that isn't yours or floats.

Don't stand ground if you have over-insured your property.

Don't stand ground if your life is over-insured and standing ground was the beneficiary's idea.

Don't stand ground on a dare or to win a bet. Odds are, you wager with your wife's lover.

Don't stand ground that wouldn't be ground were it not for a levee.

Don't stand ground that alligators nest on.

Don't stand ground that vanishes during extra-high tides.

Don't stand ground that is littered with seashells.

Don't stand ground that has been dedicated to those who stood ground there.

Don't stand ground at any projected ground zero.

If your home is on the beach, or a bay, or a bayou, or a coastal river, reclaimed swamp, or very close to any body of water connected to the sea, Katrina has raised the storm surge bar considerably. You now need thirty-two feet above mean sea level to keep your welcome mat dry, and that assumes no waves or rain. One thing you don't do for a storm like Katrina is assume. The rest of us will assume you didn't suffer.

Those living inland need to be on twenty feet of land and nestled in good ground clutter in a steel reinforced concrete structure of some kind, and the best kind are in round forms with sphere roofs. Monolithic concrete with air-trapping interior spaces, the modern storm shelter home, solidly rooted to good ground is the hot ticket. Everyone else, go to an approved community storm shelter and stand that ground with the huddled masses, their god damn spoiled pets, undisciplined brats, opinionated women who light candles AND curse the darkness, stand by your pissed-off woman and join the bicker battles for floor space.

Okay, I guess that just leaves you and me,
And it would seem we have tarried too long.
Now the stores are closed as the streets will soon be,
And the sky bodes ill with a chill brought from Africa.
Low clouds move swiftly by, an ominous portent,
And the animals are gone, the birds and the bees,
The ants deep underground, the beaver...Damn!

Lightening...thunder...wind with a shrill voice
Like a tight virgin banshee in natural childbirth,
Giving birth to a great scaley horned thing with claws,
A sound to frighten a deaf roller derby biker dyke,
But we are men, you and I, so don't hold me so tight, BITCH!

Now the hurricane flags are ripped and rent,
The pole bent, waves driving through a drive-thru window.
We stand alone and hold our manhood in high value,
While lesser men flock and flee, WE STAND alone, you and I.
Fearless, undaunted, WE STAND here with priceless packages
Defending this bargain hallowed sacrificial ground, you and I.

This day, your experimental concrete bunker home is our Alamo,
But I gotta confess, my brave foolish friend, in my expert opinion,

WE SHOULDA LEFT WITH THE PUSSIES!