They came from the city.

They were prepared.

They were prepared for the complete collapse of world civilization, and with it, the demise of the banks, the governments, the plumbing fixtures; all of the institutions modern man relies upon.

They were prepared for the Next Ice Age when a giant meteorite crashes into Earth and tilts the planet on its axis, plunging life on Earth into a thousand years of winter.

They were prepared for times of mass starvation, when folks would shoot you for your food, because they knew that if they were starving, they’d shoot someone for their food.

It didn’t matter that none of these things had ever happened, they didn’t have their heads buried in the sand, and they weren’t taking any chances.

But there was something they weren’t prepared for; something that has been a constant threat for approximately 4.5 billion years: the deadliest homesteading mistake.

They were at the end of a long and tortuous jeep trail twenty miles from the nearest town, so that when the roving bands from the ghetto, three-hundred miles away, came looking for them in order to get their home-grown tomatoes, they’d need four-wheel-drive.

They were even beyond cell-phone service, and since they’d wanted to eliminate having bills to pay, so they didn’t have cell phones anyway.

So when they awoke on a crisp November morn, and the fire in the stove had dwindled down to coals overnight, they filled up the firebox with armloads of dry wood, opened the damper all the way and went outside to enjoy the fresh morning air.

Then they started playing with the dogs, and time sort of got away from them…