I’ve been torturing myself by reading lots of post apocalpytic fiction lately. Its a really guilty pleasure. In any case, I was wondering what you all think are the best ways to be prepared for a possible emergancy scenario – not necessarily the zombie apocalpyse but something plausible – big storm, outbreak, etc.
How much food should your family keep on hand? How much water? How much cash? Other important supplies? I know there are websites that talk about this, but I was wondering what you guys actually do.
We’ve always lived in places where weather can be a cause for concern. Relatives have gone for two weeks without power. I hope to never deal with that.
We maintain at least a two week supply of nonperishable food on hand that we rotate each year, donating the current supply just before buying the new supply. We used to keep much more. We also keep enough bottled water for two weeks. When we lived in hurricane prone areas we filled bathtubs before the storm was expected to hit. We’ve managed to build up a two to three week supply cushion of maintenance Rx meds, plus keep well stocked on OTC meds and personal care products. We have a bit more bleach, hydrogen peroxide, white vinegar and other useful items than necessary for our immediate needs.
We have enough battery powered LED lights to keep one in each room, plus extra batteries. Somewhere, there are a couple of small battery powered fans. In winter, we could use a fireplace. A greater concern would be A/C for most of the year. A battery powered travel CPAP has come in handy a few times.
When our kids were young, we kept a bug out bag packed for each member of the family that was also updated annually. That’s now reduced to two small tote bags. I never let my gas tank get below half full. Dh is a bit more lax.
I don’t know exactly how much cash we have on hand since dh tends to add a bit every so often. My guess is that there’s at least $1K, most of which is in a fire proof safe.
We have discussed this. We have a remote cabin that runs off of LP gas and has a generator. With a little forethought we could live there for months by stockpiling food.
We’re half way off the grid, with propane instead of natural gas, septic instead of sewer, and a backup diesel generator. And while we’re on a community water system we also have a well. We grow a fair amount of our own food and harvest an abundance of shellfish.
None of this was planned in anticipation of a disaster; it’s just the way things have turned out.
We are fully on the grid. I think the most I could prepare for is about a month of things going down. And that is only with law and order being maintained.
We often talk about this with our kids just for fun. It goes along with some movies and shows we watch. In the end, we’ve decided should anything major happen, our farm is the place we all gather. We have plenty of food both in the house and around us to last for quite some time along with ample growing food opportunities (along with my lad saving seeds, so no need to buy those). If we could no longer shop, it would be a long time before anyone went hungry. We wouldn’t have all the options we have with real life, but there are plenty of deer, and edible plants, etc… We have plenty of water. There is plenty of wood. PA’s weather isn’t horrendous most of the time. We have neighbors with all sorts of specialties to form a small self sufficient community. We’re out of the way to not be easily found (not even by many locals). We have good lookout spots for marauders. In a way, trying to see how well we could do would be sort of fun - if it weren’t for any sort of horrid reason that we had to try.
Here’s a problem that may be hard to prepare for: after 1994 6.7 Northridge CA earthquake, we allowed neighbors access to our swimming pool to take buckets of water to fill their toilets so they could flush them as area water had been cut off.
We have a decent amount of food, some extra water (2 water heaters), water filters, lots of extra coats/blankets, etc., A crank radio/flashlight. It’s not something I really worry about, but It has crossed my mind that in a long-lasting emergency situation, it might be good to have extra things that could be traded like matches/lighters, salt, seeds, medicines/bandages. Things that are cheap to buy and easy to store, but others might not have.
WE have a bin filled with 30 day supply of dry food for 4 ( doubles as a toilet, LOL,really), we have a couple of bins in the garage marked SHTFan filled with t.p., playing cards, a radio and all of the things you’d find on an emergency list. Once with a hurricane coming, I bought some things on Amazon. They arrived right before the rain started. I have camping supplies and could cook in the fireplace. Basically, we’d be fine for a few weeks. The thing is, if anything bad really did happen we are not far enough away from a major city that people looking for food and water wouldn’t come looking. We never have enough cash in the house. Unlike my Dad who keeps a ziplock filled with 5K in small bills. We do have a huge pantry so even if we ran out of the 30 days worth of food we’d be fine. Also, we always have coffee and wine in the house and medicines ( band aids etc) so could have a lot of things to trade. Our house would be difficult/impossible to protect in case of a real emergency.
Our house would also be impossible to protect. Any kind of emergancy where law and order truly broke down and we are done for. I think the best we can do is prepare for every day issues - Hurricanes, blizzards and things like that where it would be difficult to get to the market and transportation of food to stores might be delayed. I also sometimes worry about an outbreak of some virus where it would be advantageous not to go out in public for a while. I’m slowly trying to build up our emergancy stores, but honestly at the moment, I googling more then actually buying.
Not even trying here! But I do have a bit of a jelly problem. I could last a few months on the small hoard in my pantry: cactus jelly, gelatina di vino Chianti, TOE jam (tangerine orange elderberry), guava jelly, Sicilian orange marmalade, etc. A sweet way to go!
How about an emergency that necessitates you leaving your house? The issue in my area last month was flooding. My house was fine but many people weren’t so fortunate.
We have non-perishables, including wine, a gas stove, grill, hot water, and fireplace in our main home.
Our second home has a whole house generator and a quite large propane tank. We could live off of what’s in the separate freezer and second fridge and then unplug. Septic tank and a whole canal of water out the back for toilets. I could learn to love the oysters on the tidelands. Unfortunately, there’s no fireplace.
Always have cash on hand and meds, glasses, contacts are at both houses.
Nothing. If there’s an apocalyptic event there’s really nothing you can do, and people who get really into prepping aren’t afraid of disaster–it’s their fantasy.
