It always amazes me how complacent the vast majority of Americans are. Most people seem to think that disaster will never strike them. That the lights will always stay on. That grocery stores will always have food.
On the one hand I can understand this sentiment because–while times are good–society runs very smoothly and we’re rarely without anything we could possible need… or want.
On the other hand, it’s this very “smooth running” of society which makes us uniquely vulnerable because the vast majority of us haven’t a clue what to do if the lights go out for longer than a few hours or if the grocery stores don’t get their next shipments of food in a day or two.
The sad thing is that it’s really not that hard to prepare yourself for at least a minor hiccup in the food supply, for instance, by stockpiling even a bit of shelf stable foods. There are a few strategies to employ, one of the best ones is to start copy canning, that is, purchasing twice the amount of any shelf stable foods you consume each time you got the grocery store (e.g., buy fours cans of green beans if you used two, six cans of corn if you used three, etc). In short order you’ll build up a small stockpile upon which to rely.
Why bother, you ask?
There are plenty of reasons. The following article discusses six, each of which are certainly possible (one or two are inevitable), and I’m sure there are plenty more if one simply bothers to think about how food becomes a precious resource here in America once again…
“1. EMP – one nuclear bomb, detonated high in the ionosphere, can ruin your whole decade. Most of the U.S. could be without power for a very long time. Computers and anything using computer components would be burned out. It’s hard to say just how extensive the damage would be. Most cars would probably be inoperable. Cell phones may or may not be burned out, but the cell towers definitely would be dead. Radio, TV, cable, internet, would all shut down for a very long time. The infrastructure that supports modern communications took many decades to build up, and it would take just as long to rebuild…”
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