#preparedness

Practical Preparedness – Part 4

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Food

This is a big one with dedicated ‘preppers’. But in keeping with our theme so far, let’s keep this simple too. How much non-perishable food do you have on hand? If you have a nursing infant, how much formula? How much food is enough? The good news is you probably have at least enough fresh food on hand for three days. So even if supplies were completely cut off tomorrow you won’t starve before the Red Cross or FEMA show up with MREs for all. So for the absolute minimum survival ration, most households are already good-to-go. If you’re short of a three-day supply of food then I suspect nutrition is already a daily survival issue for you and this article may not help.

If it feels too easy to simply open the cupboard and go ‘Yep, I’m good!’ then let’s think about goals to be prepared for longer term situations like supply chain failures. Should we prepare for a week? A month? Three months?

Most people with families have a week’s worth of food on hand, but maybe not a week’s non-perishable food. If the power goes out and your fresh food spoils quickly you might need a backup supply of spaghetti-o’s or canned soup or other food to carry you through. But really you don’t need a lot more than that. Canned food will survive most disasters and although it’s not nearly as appetizing you can eat most of it without having to cook it. Take the number of people you’re feeding and presume at least one can of non-perishable food per-person, per day. That’s skinny eating to be sure. If you can stock more that’s great.

What about fancy non-perishable ‘survival’ food? This is a great way to stock up for preparedness, but it’s probably the most costly. I’ve eaten MREs (thanks Uncle Sam!), freeze-dried backpacker’s meals and products such as ‘Mountain House Adventure Meals’ and in the case of the backpacker food and adventure meals, they taste was better than I expected. MREs should be considered survival food, and only in the most dire of circumstances. The taste is ‘lowest-cost government contract’ quality. The Mountain House products and (I assume many others) have very long shelf-lives. Mountain House claims a thirty (30!) year shelf life. But don’t expect this to be the case with all products. The few products I’ve gotten from the ‘Backpackers Pantry’ line do not have extended shelf lives. The challenge with this option for preparedness is that all of this food is ‘dry’ and needs boiling hot water to reconstitute. The good news is that it’s durable and very lightweight. If ‘bugging-out’ is part of your plan, this is potentially a good option. Get yourself a Jet Boil type backpackers stove to cook them and you have a very compact solution that works even if the power is out or you can’t otherwise use your stove to cook.

https://mountainhouse.com/collections/emergency-food-and-survival

https://www.mypatriotsupply.com/

I don’t get anything for your use of these links, they’re just here to be helpful.

The good news is you have choices, and at least for short-term concerns, it’s really pretty easy to make sure you’re prepared. Remember, if you have limited funds/resources, don’t make this any more complicated/expensive than it needs to be. If you are concerned with more TEOTWAWKI situations then you should looking into learning more about hunting, homesteading, home gardening etc… These are all worthwhile endeavors of their own and I might have a bit to say about them later, but for now we’ll focus on what the average person can accomplish.

Practical Preparedness – Part 2

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So I want to be prepared – Now What?

Photo courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The most critical thing is what I like to call the “Preparedness Mindset”. This doesn’t mean paranoia, or keeping a shipping pallet of toilet paper or non-perishable supplies in your garage. It means that you consider what you’re going to do in the event of an emergency, and that you have a plan. As I like to say about nearly everything in life: Make the plan, work the plan.

If it feels like this isn’t normal, or that no one else is doing it, consider this : The US federal government has actually been supporting the notion of preparedness for many years, but in the face of convenience culture, it’s pretty widely ignored. But we have real-world examples of disasters in our recent past. Consider these scenarios:

The regional blackout in the northeastern US in 2003

Hurricane Katrina in 2005

The Camp fire in Norther California in 2018

And of course the Covid 19 pandemic that locked the world down in 2020.

These are not hypotheticals. And they are not completely isolated. Do you live on a coast? You’ve got the threat hurricanes and floods. Live in the Midwest? You’ve got snowstorms and tornados. Live in the West? Droughts and wildfires (and if you’re in California you can throw in earthquakes too).

Read what our esteemed federal government says about preparedness. There’s some great material here and you could easily spend 30 minutes (or more) immersed in this.

Ready.gov and the Department of Homeland Security.

So now what do you do? The first step in being prepared (aside from establishing the need to be prepared) is to assess who you are making preparations for and what hazards are you likely to face.

Who – This is your family, your tribe, your clan. For many of us, these are the people that are going to look at me in time of need and trouble and expect answers. Are you a parent or head of household with children? Are you single, but look after an elderly parent or special needs friend? Is it just you? What you need and how much of it is heavily dependent on assessing the ‘who’ in your life. Don’t forget pets. And irreplaceable photos and documents. In this day and age of technology priceless memories can be digitized and stored in the cloud or on media that you can easily take with you, but you have to think of this beforehand.

What – What disaster are you expecting to face? Storms? Earthquake? Riots? Are you expecting to shelter-in-place or ‘get out of Dodge’ when something bad happens? This will decide if you’re going to stock emergency supplies at home or at the office, or if you’re going to have a ready cache of supplies and gear that you ‘re going to load up and haul somewhere else. Perhaps you don’t know with certainty and need to be prepared on some level for either scenario.

Resources – What do you have to bring to bear to an effort at becoming prepared? If you’re thinking about this and making a plan you’re already most of the way there. Your best resource is the gray matter between your ears and your hands and feet. You don’t need thousands of dollars or to move to a forest miles from civilization. Even the popular notion of being prepared to ‘Bug Out’ isn’t really what most people should be thinking about first. We already equip ourselves for every day life, so all we really need to do is make a plan, add a few things and some supplies to get us by.