Have you thought about Long Term Disaster Prepardness???
 

Driving into work tonight and listening to the local talk radio station, they were talking about the massive number of folks in Chile, who are now homeless and introuble from the Earthquake...

I'm sure everyone of these folks (ok almost everyone, Chile and Hati) were in the Not me, it will never happen to me... I'm not that worried about disaster striking...

Got me to thinking...

WTF would I do, how would I handle it...

I'm prepped up on many of fronts to go a week or so, a week or so longer than that and we start roughing it... Any longer than that, we run into real issues...


How would you handle it, if your house (city) was pretty much destroyed, I'm guessing this would include many of the jobs wiped out too....

This is not something that going to go away in a week... We're
talking long term in my eyes, before, if things start to return to Normal...

Not trying to cause panic, just some food for thought...

I honestly, don't know how I'd handle it... When I mention stuff like this to my wife, folks or friends they either laugh it off, or don'treally want to engage it...

Re: Have you thought about Long Term Disaster Prepardness???
 

Let's take your question a step further: Assuming GIMmers are among those people who have not just thought about long-term disaster preparedness but have done a lot to prepare for whatever disasters we might be most likely to experience, what can we do to persuade other people to prepare (and thus have fewer people looting, waiting on FEMA, etc.) so that they will also become self-sufficient?

Smullen, with regard to your wife and others who are just laughing it off, I think the aftermath of the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, and here in the U.S. the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, would be a great starting point in getting them to think about WHY they SHOULD prepare. Disasters are usually a good way to get most people's attention, and considering the destruction in two countries in two months from two separate, unrelated disasters, what makes any of us think we're immune from such situations?

Check out the links on Hurricane Katrina at this URL: http://realcent.forumco.com/topic~TOPIC_ID~11963.asp If that's not a reason to join the ranks of those who are prepared, I don't know what is.

This might be helpful as well--a quick-start guide to preparedness for newbies: http://realcent.forumco.com/topic~TOPIC_ID~8940.asp


Also, Smullen, I just noticed from your profile that you're in St. Louis. I'm assuming you and your family felt the earthquake in southern Illinois two years ago? How did your wife and others react to that?

Re: Have you thought about Long Term Disaster Prepardness???
 

Smullen,

Sorry to hear your advice falling on deaf ears. I think Nickelless was right:

Prepping for the collapse of the system sounds like crazy talk to most squares. Talking about being prepared for a flood or earthquake..... heck, I'm sure you can even go to Fema's and your local government websites an get brochures from the gov telling people what a good idea it is to prep for a disaster. Prepping's not only a good idea, it also makes you a responsible citizen now.

Keeping it in that light makes you sound like a healthy and normal good citizen to the squares, as opposed to having them ignore your advice cause you sound like a nutty survivalist.

Re: Have you thought about Long Term Disaster Prepardness???
 

Excellent point. My wife having gone through Camile as a young child was IMO instrumental in prepping seeming normal to her. My growing up in tornado country had that effect on me.

I think people laugh to not be afraid. So just making it a common sense thing done because stuff happens, like big snowstorms, hurricanes, quakes, etc, is psychologically a great starting place.

If you are somewhere it snows, just saying 'I'm glad you don't have to go shopping in this mess.' might get you there in a non threatening way that can be heard.

If you want a year's supply go at it from a standpoint that you'll save money by buying bulk, maybe one item at a time so it isn't 'the five year family plan' hitting her all at once, and casually gripe about food going up, so you might as well buy bulk before the next round of price increases.

And figure out your storage space that she won't hate ahead of time, so that problem does not arise.

Re: Have you thought about Long Term Disaster Prepardness???
 

California could find itself in this situation one day.
Might be prudent to have a home a good distance away from the powder keg.

Re: Have you thought about Long Term Disaster Prepardness???
 

I realized you were asking more than how to persuade your wife, but how to manage a long term disaster.

Though I have prepped, I don't have a good enough tent or RV for a house down situation, and it worries me. Good sleeping bags, but shelter could be an issue.

No job = extreme frugality to not use up savings. There I am incredibly grateful for a wife willing to be frugal when needed.

In my area there are sometimes bad fires which could create a lot of homelessness, and occasional severe tornados. One of my nagging worries is forced evacuation. (Those news stories of Katrina evacuees out of gas on the freeway with their checks and plastic offline really stuck in my mind. They thought they had money, and suddenly they didn't. Or still in a motel in Texas after 3 months and broke.) Without a better system than I have I would have to leave most preps behind. My preparedness presumes sheltering in place. And that is a hole you could drive an RV through, so to speak.

I'm looking at old vans, gas hog older trucks... various ways to evacuate with more stuff and a dry place to sleep. But I haven't done more than look so far, so I hear you.

Most of the victims in Haiti were already eating dirt patties mixed with a little food, so preps were out of the question for them. They went from very bad to even worse.

Re: Have you thought about Long Term Disaster Prepardness???
 

I'm not convinced they're unrelated at this point.

Nevertheless, a very real concern to prepare for. Shelter, water, food.

Re: Have you thought about Long Term Disaster Prepardness???
 

I'm just starting on the prepping journey, but let me throw my newbie thoughts out here.

I've been trying to talk the wife into going along with my "nutty" prepping. After Haiti, she wasn't convinced (but not as against it as before). After Chile, I reminded her about our modern "just in time" supply system (read: KanBan).

After the recent snow storms we had in the DC area, I reminded her about the empty store shelves in the local Giant and the commissary that we normally shop at.

I know that if society starts to slip in a manner where we're fighting for food in the streets (read: looting), we're not far from having problems getting cash and credit cards to pay for day to day items.

Fortunately, a few years ago, I bought a small cabin in the woods about 2 hours outside of DC. I bought it as a place to go and relax. Now I'm considering it as my bug out place. It's not very defendable, but it's 150 miles inland and there are 2 mountain ranges between me and DC. It'll certainly do as a place to run to and ride out any "storm."

• I've got a handful of gold and silver.
• I've got a couple of handguns and plan to buy more.
• There are at least an AK-47 and a 12 gauge pump on my shopping list
• I'm going to be dry canning a couple hundred pounds of dry foos in 2 weeks.
• I have 5 * 55 gallon barrels that I need to get the soy sauce out of before I fill them with potable water.
• I'm waiting to pull the trigger on an LP powered generator (damned electric well pump!)

I hope to be at least semi ready should there be an issue.

The way I see it, I'd rather rep and not need it than not prep than be standing in Giant hoping to find water and food!

OK - that was my 2 cents...