On Sat, 29 Dec 2012 14:32:59 -0500, Wes
wrote:
Ignoramus10903 wrote:
Then what would a "prepper" do? Not much. They are ****ed just like
everyone else.
I am not really against hoarding, and I have always been a bit of a
hoarder, but I wanted to show that hoarding has its limitations. There
is some important preparedness that goes beyond hoarding and spending
big $$$ on bulky perishables.
C'mon, Ig. Hoarding is a different ballgame. Prepping is simply
doubling your pantry with things you normally eat/use, etc.
Prepping is a mindset that tomorrow may not be just like today and making some
preparations a head of time will greatly improve your comfort and ability to deal with
events at a future time.
Some of this is just little things like making sure you have enough food in the house so
that you can stay stuck at your home for a week. Make sure you rotate it though your diet
during the typical 2 year shelf life so you don't waste any.
Having a generator, transfer switch, and some gasoline so you can run the well pump, keep
the food in the fridge from rotting, charge cell phones, and maintain communications isn't
something that is way out there. For many it is dealing with periodic storms that one
never knows when it will happen but on average one knows it will happen. A prolonged
outage you are going to have to practice power managment as in the generator only runs for
short period of times.
Keeping your meds topped up if you are on life supporting meds. I keep 90 days minimum on
hand.
Ditto.
Making sure you have some water in your car, a shovel, some sand, a flashlight, just stuff
so you can take care of your self and get yourself out of a jam on your own.
That reminds me: I need to get some sandbags and leave them in the
truck.
Keeping the camping gear in good order, keeping spare mantels, coleman fuel, and the rest
of the outdoor gear ready for use.
Making sure the chain saw is ready for use. Spare fuel, chain, oil, gas.
I could go on.
Candy, munchies, reading material, movie for the portable DVD player,
propane for the BBQ. I should probably get a backup 20# tank. I
spend the $22 for a new tank and then it only costs $7-8 to refill it
each time. That's 1/2 the price of replacement tanks like Blue Rhino.
March of this year we had a statewide snow storm that really made a mess of things. I
lost power for over a day, others near me up to 6 days. My portable radio had batteries
with a 2004 expiration date. That didn't last long. Pretty quiet in winter w/o power.
So I'm a bit of a preper now.
We all should be. Especially the city folks. Once cities run out of
fuel/food/electricity, the zombies come out. (I hate this new zombie
everthing trend, but that's a good word for what people turn into once
their regular routine is totally hosed. The incident at Donner Pass
wasn't a lone happening in humanity's past. Not by a long shot.)
I have 6-8 weeks of food stored now. Tent and sleeping bags are
ready, solar system ready to be installed, 8 extra gallons of gas,
extra batteries/flashlights/books, toilet water stored up (but I just
read that milk jugs start going bad after 6 months, so I'll be
replacing them soon.
I'm ammoed up so I won't have a problem persuading them otherwise if
someone wants to try to take my food/water/warmth/house/guns/tools.
Some folks in town have been without electricity for 5-6 days last
week. My power has only been off for a max of 10 hours once, luckily,
but my across-the-street-neighbors were without for a week last year.
I'm installing the 12v LED emergency lights
http://tinyurl.com/c4bu7y2
in the ceilings this coming week. 9w bulbs light up these fixtures
right nicely. They're spots but light diffuses through the globe very
well. I added pull chain switches, and they'll be wired into the
solar system next week, if I can get that Birch down in the interim...
This is a fun project, other than running the wiring in the attic.
--
Inside every older person is a younger person wondering WTF happened.