Home Preparedness Guidelines

 

Source: Sensible Survival

Before you start on a program of home preparedness there are several questions that you need to ask yourself:

(1) What am I preparing for?

This list could include short-term power outage, seasonal weather like tornadoes or hurricanes, earthquake, unemployment, interruption to the economic system, collapse of the economic system, break-down of the social order, insurrections or riots, nuclear or biological war, electro-magnetic pulse attack, asteroid collision, and who knows what.

(2) Am I currently living in a survivable and defensible location?

Are you in a big city? (not good)  Do you live in a small town? (better)  Do you live in a rural community? (better still)  Do you live on a farm at least two hours from a major metropolitan area? (very good)  Are you well established on your farm with a good support group of like-minded neighbors? (best)

(3) What kind of financial resources do I have to devote to preparedness?

Preparedness is an investment, just like a bank account or stocks and bonds.  Some people live paycheck to paycheck and don’t have funds for investment.  Don’t let this stop you from preparing to the extent that you can.  Some people have money to invest, but they spend it on things that they want in the here and now.  Not a good approach to home preparedness or to life in general.  If this is you, you’re probably not reading this anyway.  Some people invest in bank accounts, stocks, bonds, 401K’s, life insurance, health insurance, long-term disability insurance, etc.  A person with this kind of money to invest can easily redirect part of their investment to home preparedness.  The amount would depend entirely on what level of commitment the individual wants to make, but I wouldn’t cash in my 401K or cancel my life insurance for the sake of preparedness.  Keep things in perspective.  You’re a lot more likely to retire than you are to get hit by an asteroid.  I hope.

So how should you go about preparing?

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Paper Plates as a Survival Tool?

Originally published on Hank’s site Sensible Survival.

I am all about recycling and reusing stuff.  I try to avoid buying things that are designed to be thrown away.  But I make one serious exception to this rule, and that is that I keep a good supply of paper plates, Styrofoam bowls, plastic cups, and plastic tableware.  Now these items are not for any kind of long-term, end of the world as we know it type of survival scenario.  My paper plates are for short term emergencies, like when there is an ice storm and the power is out for two or three days.

If you don’t have paper plates during one of these short term emergencies you have, basically, just three choices about dishes:

Choice 1 – You use your dishes and pile them in the sink and hope that the power comes back on before you run out of dishes.  When the power does come back on you will be faced with a sink full of dirty dishes, covered in dried out food, that have to be washed.

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