When we talk about preparedness... this is it...

Where I'm at we don't have a lot of snow or ice storms but when we do we usally get hammered pretty good. We have a good stock of firewood and a couple of kero heaters for backup heat. Food prep can either be done in the fireplace or also on 2 Coleman camp stoves or our propane outdoor grill. Food stocks are pretty good since this was a good garden year and we managed to put up right much in the way of veggies. My store bought stuff is also pretty well stocked but I would like to have some more in the way of fruit stored. I updated my medical supplies last summer when we had some extra funds so I'm OK there. We have water ready specificlly for flushing toliets and my genny is also wired into our most importent items, well pump, freeezer etc....to keep them going. Comms for us are cell phones and our backup is our computer phone line which can be used as a voice line if need be. We also have a couple of CB's and walkie talkies for use around our property.

What I REALLY need to do is get the vehicles winterized and check all the BOB bags in them and it's time to rotate my gasoline cans that backup them and the genny.

I'm a goofy country kid, and we don't 'Prepare for Disaster', we prepare the garden produce for basement or root cellar storage and we prepare prepare the water system for 'Outages' when the river floods every year an we get a 'Boil Order'...

We prepare for some drunk to take a out power pole with transformer or for storms to drop trees across the power lines in several places...

Crap like that happens WAY too often around here...
And since I'm a fat guy, I don't want to miss any meals!
Have generator and propane, will eat and heat!

In '78 we had a blizzard that had the kids out of school for almost 6 weeks...
Except for milk and store bought bread, we really didn't have any problems on the farm...
We DID have to make a trip out to the highway when dad ran out of cigarettes!
(Making the trip was a lot less risky than dealing with my dad going cold turkey!)

When you know stuff like this is coming, freeze a few extra loaves of bread and buns, and maybe even freeze some half gallons of milk.
Other than the cabin fever, it's just business as usual!

George_H_M said:

I agree . I live inside 20 miles of NYC , but I am more worried for my family for food and shelter if I or my wife was to be unemployed for a long period of time.

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I agree with you.

Preparing for hurricane season is something we live with (my child looks forward to Nov 30th when there is a windfall of ravioli's and spagettios as I rotate the supplies).

What causes me the most preparedness anxiety now is "what if I pull my back wrestling an aggressive patient and I'm laid up for a couple of months?" Or "what if I loose my job or die, what will my wife and child do for health insurance"

My preparedness focus now that I've got the hurricane's-knocked-the-power-out-for-a-week issue covered is getting our financial/logistical operating a lot leaner and meaner so that we can maximize savings and live on less.

TEOTWAWKI is easy, you don't need to pay the bills or have your insurance premiums paid up.

It's the "I've just lost my job and our house and we still have to send the kids to school while living in the car" that's more realistic and tougher.

peace,
samhain

LVmutineer said:

in my neck of the woods we get a flurry every year- that's it. I don't miss it (winter)! I take the kids to the mountains go go sledding a couple of times a year. But it does get cold (for us). The heat is electric here- I was thinking of getting or building a small wood stove to plop in the dining room in the event of an emergency, and stick the pipe out the window, but it doesn't seem that practical. I thought of perhaps a propane heater, preferably one that would use the same fuel as the coleman stove but I'm worried about carbon monoxide. Anyone got any advice on that?

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When I was a kid, my parents house was 100% electric in a tiny town in the mountains of British Columbia where the power-grid was flakey at best. We had electric hot water heater, electric furnace, etc. We also had a kerosene heater (see picture below) in the basement and a small fan blowing near-by to help circulate the heat. Even when the power went out, our little kerosene heater did amazing and always did well to keep us warm.