I know you’re reading this on Monday so that means you’re probably at work or busy running around in your daily life. As for me, I wrote this yesterday morning while I was preparing for an easy and fun-filled day watching my hometown Kansas City Chief whoop up on the lowly Dallas Cowboys (hopefully) mostly so I can give my brother-in-law a bad time about it since he’s a HUGE Cowboy’s fan. We’ll see how that goes. 😉
So, as I was doing various things Sunday morning before I could sit down and watch my games, I began to ponder exactly what situation I would have been in should “it” have happened.
What is “it,” you ask?
Well, “it” could be anything that would cause a major catastrophe in your life (or all of our lives) and for me that’s a major economic collapse. And, while I feel it would be more of a gradual downhill slide, who knows, they could simply announce one day–perhaps on a weekend such as this one–that every dollar is now worth half or less of what it once did and oh, don’t worry, we’re issuing a new currency that will “fix” everything. Trust us… it’ll all be OK.
For some people, “it” is an EMP… you know, where all the lights go out for years on end and it’s hello dark ages, only much, much worse. And, while I don’t really worry about an EMP in the traditional sense (via solar flares or war), I do find it intriguing that we could find ourselves in similar trouble with something as unexpected as a computer virus. Such a virus could seemingly wipe out our power grid’s infrastructure thereby creating an environment similar to that which an EMP would have created. Or, at least, that’s the way I understand it. Regardless, I actually think this scenario–a virus–is more plausible than an act of nature or war. Anyway, whatever “it” is for you, what would you do right now if your catastrophic event happend right now? Where would you be? Would you be ready?
Here’s where I was…
I found myself running around trying to get various things going, including boiling water for my morning tea, jumping in the shower, and starting a load of laundry. Notice that all of these activities required BOTH water and electricity to make happen since the stove is all electric. I’m honestly not sure which one we take for granted more: water or electricity. I know darn good and well we need water so that’s almost always a priority over electricity. Of course, we had plenty of water stored to see us through a few weeks (months with very judicious use) and a plan to collect rooftop rainwater. I simply would have needed to drag everything out and set it up. Obviously I would have been better off if I already had this setup in place… add that to my never ending to-do list.
I mentioned showering above. I do have a few camp showers, a makeshift shower (using a new garden sprayer), and plans to setup one using a five-gallon bucket and gravity. Of course, we have plenty of soaps, sanitizers, and personal hygiene supplies… and we know how to make quite a few homemade supplies and cleaners too and stock the supplies to make them. Likewise, I mentioned laundry and while we do have the supplies to use a 5-gallon bucket system and a washboard, I would prefer something much bigger such as this but that would require more water usage than we could afford right now. And, obviously, we wouldn’t be doing laundry nearly as often as we do now.
Boiling water wouldn’t be much of a problem either. In the winter there’s the woodstove but in the summer we’d want to take these activities outdoors. I have an assortment of emergency stoves to use and I can also makeshift one from #10 cans if I wanted. Now it’s just a matter of getting the fuel in the form of firewood, stockpiling charcoal (of which I don’t have nearly enough), and propane. Granted, I could have employed a variety of other “tricks” to heat water for free using the sun, including simply using my Sun Oven but I would suspect that my Sun Oven would be working hard cooking food whenever the sun was out. That said, I could also makeshift a solar oven too which would work in a pinch.
Of course, I had the television on listening to some pre-game banter. I know watching television would be very low on the list of priorities but eventually I would want to provide some form of entertainment, not only for the kiddos, but for me as well. After all, we Americans are very accustomed to constant external stimuli. With this in mind, I have plenty of tried-and-true board games, card games, and do plan on being able to charge my kids’ iPods on occasion… yes, they might actually die if they couldn’t play a video game on occasion… or so they say. We could also run a small portable DVD player and even our laptop from a small solar setup we have. That said, I do need to add more panels and batteries one of these days.
What else? I also had some lights on as well. I’ve got this fairly well covered, from an assortment of flashlights and headlamps to a variety of lanterns and even a small DC lighting setup. I’ve also got quite a few batteries to run them for months if not years and the ability to recharge batteries using a variety of chargers (post coming soon).
Fortunately, it’s been cooler lately so the AC hasn’t kicked on but we did have some ceiling fans running and if the weather were like it has been the past month then the AC most definitely would have been required. Staying cool, in my opinion, is much more difficult than keeping warm and so it’s a start to have off-grid cooling, starting with a battery-operated fan (or several) and even the ability to run a window AC (or makeshift one) for some time. I might also get a little wacky with my ideas to keep cool too.
Though we hadn’t been grocery shopping for the following week, I never really worry about that much because about all we ever get during our weekly trips are the refrigerated foods and we could have certainly made-do without them for quite a while. As I was out and about on Saturday I got gas so we were good there. I’m actually quite paranoid about keeping our vehicle’s gas tank half-full (among other things) but can’t say that I always do so. And, yes, I keep gasoline stored.
Because it’s summer we didn’t need firewood but I’ve never bothered to stock up for the winter so that could have been a problem over the coming winter… bad me! Granted, we do have the ability to procure firewood but I like it much better when somebody delivers it to my front door. 😉
About the only other major consideration left would be self-defense, home security, and medical. While I do have firearms I would need more vests and we have way too many windows to board up properly, so that’s a bummer. And, of course, we could always seem to use more [fill in the blank] if I had the ability to stock up with any warning but that’s precisely the point here: you and I have no warning. As for medical, we have plenty of basic first aid stuff, OTC pills, and so on but certainly no serious medical equipment… though my wife CAN deliver a baby, so we’re good there. 😉
Ultimately, I would like to think we’re fairly well squared away but I know we aren’t quite there yet. There are some very glaring problems (e.g., firewood and defense) that just aren’t where they should be and that’s my fault for not getting it done. Last, I hadn’t mentioned our proximity to the zombie hoards… yes, we’re way too close. It would take a minor miracle for us to be passed by unscathed. Fact is that we’re moving cross country soon and while this would seem the perfect time to get further away from civilization it’s just hard to do considering my wife’s profession as a midwife. Who knows. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a good compromise between proximity to her clients and distance away from society.
So, how about you? Where do you stand? Are you willfully neglecting some area of your preps or do you have it all good to go?
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