An overview of how our family is prepared

* Edit * I've been asked before what the best survival book is. Honestly, it is One Second After by William R. Forstchen. It's probably the best description scenario that could occur.

It is not those regurgitated line drawings that everyone copies from Euell Gibbons, or rehashed rule of 3's survival books.

Non-potable just goes through the usual barrels full of sand and biochar, and doesn’t need further treatment.

Don’t drink from the hot water tap.

Don't drink it hot if you think you may have lead pipes.

* https://www.cdc.gov/water-emergency/about/how-to-create-and-...

The old stuff can be used to water house plants or your garden. If you have advanced warning of an event (e.g., hurricane), you can also fill up a large reserve 'just in time':

* https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/waterbob-bathtub-liner-rev...

And water can be always treated to make it drinkable again.

I eat one or two a week as regular lunches, to rotate stock. When there's some room at the empty end of the shelf, I shove everything down, and buy some new cans to stuff in at the intake end.

It takes no more time than going to the pantry for a can of soup regularly would. And saves time, because I'm _never_ out and scrambling to find another option. Whether I'm 8 cans down or 24, one trip to the store will replenish it regardless.

Don't overcomplicate it. Folks who blog about things tend to do so because they're proud they achieved something difficult, so you compare yourself to a difficult standard. Resist that.

Even though the campbell's exec declared it "poor food" the jazzy jambalaya has replaced our instant pot recipe. We buy two cans of it, add a package of microwaveable ready rice and have decent (although very carb and sodium heavy) dinner in ~3 minutes.

It also cooks up great in a small pot on a pocket rocket and tastes great right of the can as far as it being suitable for emergency food.

Freeze dried stuff can be sit on a cool, dark shelf for a decade or two; a popular company:

* https://mountainhouse.com/

Also need to have a source of water and a way to boil it.

The grocery stores all had plenty of fresh food (some things ran short, but there was always plenty) I'm reasonably sure you never needed the camp stove, or any of the other supplies. They might have been nice to have anyway, but never needed.

Grab 2 packs of dried pasta instead of 1 for example. Rice. Beans. Canned stuff like veggies, fish, even the little single serve veg/beans etc.

Anything is better than nothing which is where most people land. Even knowing you got enough food stuffs for a day is enough comfort to ward off panic in disaster situations.

A 24/30pk of 500ml water can be had for like $5/10. Also very useful outside of disaster if they’re cycled through.

As I said elsewhere, make sure you can share knowledge and work with other survivors. A community of people with various skills (even if you give them the book and they learn it) makes survival a lot easier. Maybe your garden fails, but if you have a few other people you work with you can support each other and everybody lives.

It feels like you're suggesting prepping for a Shit Hits the Fan type scenario, which the OP post explicitly says is unreasonable. It postulates a world where most people would starve because growing plants to survive through a year is extremely difficult if you don't have any experience doing it, assuming you have enough land time and other resources to even do it properly. And I guess I just doubt that a box of seeds and a willingness to share your garden would see you through the year. You would need a whole lot of luck.

A) Not really that much fun (as evidenced by how shitty life gets for pretty much everyone in "The Walking Dead"). ;)

B) In my mind "The Zombie Apocalypse" has always just been an amusing way to generically refer to whatever future real "apocalypse" might happen to occur (eg; broken water main, ice storm, etc).

Drinking water requires more expensive containers, and some thinking around keeping it fresh (rotation & potentially some chemical additives like bleach).

Water is critical to life and so you want to be sure civilization won't return before you risk drinking random water. That said, I'd keep a camping water treatment instead (there are lots of options) since they take up less space.

Amateur ("ham") radio can be handy. If you don't want to go to the effort to get a radio, a receive-only AM/FM crank/solar radio can be handy to get news.

A large number of people working together will be much more likely to find solutions than a few isolated individuals. The isolated individuals may have disproportionately large survival resources, but probably not for long. If you are in the caring-is-sharing group you will have a much better chance than being in the me-me-bang-oh-shit group.

But there are a lot of people who fear community solidarity because it might lead to people asking questions about private jets and beach condos.

Plan for the disasters that are likely where you are. I have plans for a tornado - I shelter in my basement until it blows over, and then the next morning the police will help me get to a hotel (tornadoes are to sudden too evacuate in time, but small enough that the local hotels have extra room). I don't have plans for a hurricane because the closest I get to a hurricane is when the weather reports the minor rain we are seeing is what is left of a major hurricane a week ago.

Virginia

Some places in the UK might have to start worrying more about wildfires. Flooding is definitely on the rise.

(UK flooding is nearly always "you can save a lot of expensive damage with careful sandbagging" rather than "entire building swept away", though)

> won't allow looters in the neighborhood

My neighbours will be the first one to "equally share" everything I have with random junkies.

> if you die ... your preparation can save someone else's life.

Yeah, my neighbours make sure I die, and my stash will save their life.

Yes. Shared adversity tends to unite, not divide.

> My neighbours will be the first one to "equally share" everything I have with random junkies.

I guarantee you they won't, just out of self-preservation. They'd rather have you than "random junkies" or a trashed house next door.

It's like the parable of outrunning the bear: you don't have to be completely looter proof, you just have to be a harder target than the next block over. Most of the time that just means having a couple people per block patrolling with a camera to scare them off.

Contrary to urban legends (and fictional entertainment), in times of disaster humans generally pull together:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Paradise_Built_in_Hell

The guns were used to protect houses and the neighbor's house though. So this could well fall into what you meant by useful in your home. (but if that is what you meant locked shouldn't have been added)

The most common case of everybody hates me that nobody hates anybody, they just made an incorrect assumption "because of a frown", so get over it and try again. The second one I see is the person who everybody hates is at fault for being a bad person, so if this is the case fix yourself. Discrimination - where they hate you for your group - exists some places in the world, but for the most part it isn't discrimination it is one of the two above incorrectly identified.

A natural disaster ties together the fates of everyone living in the area. When law and order break down, the people living nearest to you are the most important guarantors of your own safety. Attack or hurt your neighbor and you've only made yourself less safe from outsiders.

All this to say the neighbor would have to be particularly stupid, short-sighted, and sociopathic. Or have a foolproof survival or evacuation plan. Other than that, your survival and co-operation is in their best interest.

If they could do this, wouldn't they already have moved on Taiwan?

But in any case a month makes it more likely you can try and find another source. Better to have some runway than none?

Probably not. My guess is the Pentagon's calculation would be that the cost to intervene would be unacceptable and could not be sustained anyway; many reports say the US would deplete their ammo stocks for such a conflict in like a week, and that was _before_ the blunder in Iran

> Better ... than none?

For sure. But doesn't solve the problem of "how do I survive if the power grid goes down for over a year?" Best solution is to get out of USA prior to that event. I don't think any amount of prep will significantly change your outcome in that scenario if you remain in the US.

They suggested having at LEAST a weeks worth of supplies, and more if you don't want to be waiting in a very impatient line with a bunch of scared, hungry people that may be desperate.

The other data is harder to quantify, but kind of insane. Like how long DHS estimates it will take to rebuild I-5 (minus major bridges) as a passable road, along with some key railroads, and basic power.

Survival is nowhere near as hard as most people believe, especially in a warm country without seasons. I used to do week-long camping trips to remote islands without any civilization there. There are people who have been living on remote islands by themselves without any issues for years. Australia is actually quite safe. The things which can kill you are pretty easy to avoid. Snakes are scared of you, crocodiles are only near rivers and lakes and only in some states, sharks only in the sea, dangerous spiders are pretty rare and mostly mind their own business... No bears, no lions, no wolves (except dingoes but they're smaller and more like wild dogs). There are literally no predators which can kill you on land.

In many cases I know of somebody did live alone for a few decades, but when they got old they eventually gave it up.