Emergency Preparedness

[GoVegan]

I keep watching these videos of what happened in Japan and am shocked. So shocked that I am going to dedicate the next couple of weeks towards getting ready for a disaster. I live in California and they have been warning us for years that a major quake can come at any time. So I plan on getting space blankets, water, fire starter, food and other essentials to pack away in an ice chest. I am a bit curious here. Is anyone here prepared for the next major disaster and have you thought of anything clever, besides your favorite roll of snus, to add to your emergency kits?

[Premium Parrots]

I'm pretty much ready. What I don't have I do know where someone is storing in 8 semi-trailers full of emergency supplies and food and water. And I am heavily armed so I can go get whatever I need.

[rickcharles606]

We've got at least 4 months of food on hand & seed to grow veggies, several hundred gallons of fuel for the generator, water filters (RO) and purification tablets. And of course fire starting tools (including steel wool & 9 volt batteries), camping equipment, weapons with 1000's of rounds of ammo, knives...small hand tools are a must too. Never know what you'll need them for. I'm pretty much ready. I can't imagine a natural disaster that would force us to leave our home in this area, so we'd stay here and live off the land. We live in a very rural area in the mountains, small community of friends and family. I suppose this area would pull together and do okay, all things considered. Hope we never find out, honestly

[Premium Parrots]

We've got at least 4 months of food on hand & seed to grow veggies, several hundred gallons of fuel for the generator, water filters (RO) and purification tablets. And of course fire starting tools (including steel wool & 9 volt batteries), camping equipment, weapons with 1000's of rounds of ammo, knives...small hand tools are a must too. Never know what you'll need them for. I'm pretty much ready. I can't imagine a natural disaster that would force us to leave our home in this area, so we'd stay here and live off the land. We live in a very rural area in the mountains, small community of friends and family. I suppose this area would pull together and do okay, all things considered. Hope we never find out, honestly

Shit we both are dam prepared. Sorry I just didn't want to list all the stuff I have stached in trunks. I have 50 gallons of gas I have to rotate to keep fresh for the generator. How the hell do you store 100's of gallon? I siitting on 40,000 rounds of various caliber love taps so I can get whatever I need, mostly .223.

8 military gas masks and cartridges

[Kstolen23]

I doubt I need to prepare for anything sudden here in Perth, Australia but we do occasionally get large bush fires but none close to home. I'ts a shame about over east, pretty much the whole of Australia except Perth and SA have been hit from natural disasters.

On another note I going to start growning my own tobacco plants so if anything does happen (2012) I will will have a valuable commodity to trade with. . . Just need to get my dodgy friends to help guard the supply. . .

[GoVegan]

OK Rick I have to admit a few packets of seeds might not be a bad idea and I haven't though about that one. They could be handy especially in a prolonged disaster. I also know that certain vegetables like radishes and carrots grow pretty quickly.

[rickcharles606]

OK Rick I have to admit a few packets of seeds might not be a bad idea and I haven't though about that one. They could be handy especially in a prolonged disaster. I also know that certain vegetables like radishes and carrots grow pretty quickly.

Potatoes dude...grow some potatoes ;-)


PP...my father has a couple old gas station holding tanks from many many moons ago, and we cut the ends off got in there cleaned them up, had the end welded back on and use one for storing fuel. Works great too, have a nice hand pump with something like 100ft of hose. Remember dude, we live in the sticks now and my parents live less than .5 mile away. These mountains will be the last bastian of freedom, lol. They offer great protection from the elements and privacy. They also offer easily defended positions, if you know what i mean...;-)

[rickcharles606]

I doubt I need to prepare for anything sudden here in Perth, Australia but we do occasionally get large bush fires but none close to home. I'ts a shame about over east, pretty much the whole of Australia except Perth and SA have been hit from natural disasters.

On another note I going to start growning my own tobacco plants so if anything does happen (2012) I will will have a valuable commodity to trade with. . . Just need to get my dodgy friends to help guard the supply. . .

I should probably add some tobacco seeds, great idea seeing as I'm a nicotine junky, lol. Also in a time where currency may not be "dollars", tobacco would probably be sought after.

[Frosted]

We're not predisposed to natural disasters here so the only thing that could realistically happen would be a huge terrorist attack - dirty bomb, poisoning the water supply etc. Social unrest could be a realistic problem as well.
I'm not worried about fuel but I am worried about the food supply as people panic buy. Mind you, in a disaster I'd eat anything - there's loads of pigeons, rabbit and squirrel about and despite the strict gun laws here, I'd get an air rifle and I know I'd get a shotgun very quickly - there's a lovely gun shop just around the corner from me.

[devilock76]

Survival is a mindset and a skill set.

Ken

[Mr. Snuffleupagus]

I'm in pretty good shape, but still lacking in a couple areas. I've been preparing for years, but stuff costs money. I need more guns and ammo still. PP's right. Doesn't really matter what you have if you can't protect it. First thing that always happens when the shit hits the fan is looting. Sucks but true.

[sgreger1]

@GOVegan, the best tool I have in my survival arsenal is my portable gasoline stove w/ pump. It is small, about the size of a lantern, and runs off of regular car gasoline. I carry with it a nice syphoning tube with a small manual pump lever on it for stealing the gas out of parked cars.

With these two items, I have a stove for food, heat for fire etc no matter where I go, because in the concrete jungle ,ESPECIALLY AFTER A A DISASTER, I will have lots of parked/broken cars filled with fuel at my disposal, and I can go steal gas from their tanks easily. A few squirts cooks dinner for a night and gets a bondfire started. I also bought a $5 container for holding gas, that way I can fill it up and carry enough fuel with me to last a day or two, and the whole thing weighs like 2 lbs, can be tied onto your belt loop if you had to.

Costs like $40 man, really this is a huge tool. You will always have fire and a stove to cook on with this thing because in CA I don't care WHAT catastrophe happens, there are millions of gallons of gas sitting in cars at every second, and every out-of-service car won't be needing that gasoline anymore.



This $40 gives you near unlimited source:

Fire
Cooking
Boiling Water to clean it/shower with it.



#2. Go to an army surplus store of online and order the army field survival manuals, you know what to look for. With this small reference book in your shirt pocket, you will have all of the instructions necessary for surviving outside. It will show you simple ways of collecting water with leaves, buildign shelter, and setting traps for animals that you can make out of stick and trees and shit. I'm sure you've seen them before. I always keep one with me because even though I know how to do most of those things, just having it written on paper is extremely valuable and once you have memorized it, you can help others by giving them the book to memorize or you can even sell them this important survival info.


Gold and guns willboth be useless in any real emergency. Though it's always good to have a firearm, we must assume that the gov will confiscate them as their first order of business. Worry about food and water first. Having a firearm will be usefull in the hours immediately following the disaster (for them looters), but you can expect that once the cops show up everyone will be turning in their weapons including you. I personally am not willig to have a firefight with the swat team over keeping my revolver. Plus, those kevlar jackets they wear stop bullets pretty good but a knife cuts throgh them like butter (and a knife is reusable), just learn to think like a prisoner and know how to sharpen anything down to a weapon.



#3: Seeds may be good to have, but are mainly useless in a real emergency. Getting a crop to grow takes months and carefull attention, even radishis which are one of the fastest growing crops will take a few weeks/months. To get any real nutrition from "survival" seeds, one would have to have a very long time to get the food growing, and you would have to guard the food etc. I personally keep some seeds because you ever know, but I don't think they belong in the arsenal of someone preparing from a natural disaster in CA. If disaster breaks out I am heading south to some of the farms down there in the central valley!

[Hanske]

I read yesterday that Norway's got two atom reactors. I didn't know that. They are only used for research, and some of the best men are already in Japan.

Have anyone heard of "Ghostofmatsubara"? He's an American, living in Japan. On his youtube account he posts everything about how it is there, and he's selling some t-shirts for his friend. All the money they earn goes to help the wounded in the tsunami areas.

[sgreger1]

The biggest thing to remember is that your plan probably won't work. The irony of the universe dictates that Rick's house would be destroyed ina disaster and all of his supplies lost lol. What if a tornado comes and blows it away or a flood or earthquake? The reality is that in a real disaster, many of us are going to find ourselves starting with little more than the shirt on our backs.


Real preparedness is knowing how to survive if you are thrown outside naked with no tools. In a real disaster, we don't know what will be left or what we will have time to bring with us. A knife and a zippo will get you a long way in a real apocolypse I would imagine, assuming you were cutthroat enough to use it. Keep in mind that most people's preparedness plan is essentially the same as PP's minus the preparedness... they pretty much just plan on taking it from someone else. Due to financial limitations, I am probably going to have to acquire things that way as well if the disaster lasted more than a few days.

[RobsanX]

Nah, I just got the book "Say Goodbye to Your Paranoid Personality Disorder". It just cost me $3.95 used, and with the money I saved on supplies, I bought a new big screen TV...