Something Completely Different…..

Time for another series by me, I have been doing some research on the topic of Prepping and the idea of what that means? In my research I have found many different types of preppers, wait I don’t know if I like the word preppers, how about we call them, well I guess you can really only call them preppers because they are preparing for something. Some kind of emergency be it a hurricane, an earthquake or other natural disaster or even the really big events such as EMP, nuclear war, invasion from another country, etc. But they all have one thing in common they are preparing.

But wait let’s start at the beginning, my father was in the Military for nearly 27 years and he had a philosophy that went something like this. It’s all great to have extra things you need on hand especially if you live in an area that is prone to natural disasters, floods, foul weather, heavy snows and such, but when it does come time for something major to happen the simple fact is that you have to physically survive that something before you can go on living. Now he says that most of today’s generation (us millennials, as he calls us) wouldn’t survive taking a shit in the woods due to our lack of situational awareness because we didn’t see the bear behind the next tree that ate us. Thanks Dad, but I spent 14 years in the military myself and well that may not make me old school like him I do know that bears don’t usually attack people unless there are extreme circumstances, geez I am way off my subject point again but if you are a follower of my blog this tends to happen quite frequently.

Ok back on topic, where do 90% of the United States population live? They live in an urban area. One of the things that hit me the most was the overwhelming fact that (and this has been verified by numerous sources) most homes have at most three days of food on hand and less than one day of water on hand. The other fact that hit me was that all grocery stores and gas stations have the same issue; they rely on multiple shipments of goods on a weekly basis. I am not going to say go out and buy lots of MRE’s or start stockpiling water, guns, and ammo because if you just Google Prepping you will see a hell of a lot of sites dedicated to just that. What I want to know and to talk about is if and when a, let’s say a natural disaster hits the area you live in (an urban area) what do you really need to get by until services are restored? You could be without power for several days, how will you cook food for yourself and family? If you live in a colder region how would you keep you and your family warm? And what about drinking water, some prepper sites say to fill your bathtub and sinks and any available clean bucket with tap water, ok I get it but really if you don’t clean your tub before filling it then you really don’t want to drink the water you have just filled your tub with. Yes, what I am saying is basic but if you look at the overall situation it’s just not a good idea. Now comes the part where most would tell you to use bleach, iodine tablets and boiling the water to make it safe to drink and they would be right but using bleach to purify water is iffy. If you have a gallon of water it takes 1/4 teaspoon to make the water drinkable. What they don’t tell you is that this is not a long-term solution. If you use a tincture of iodine to purify water it takes 5 drops per quart if the water is clear, and 10 drops per quart if the water is cloudy and you have to wait at least an hour before you can drink or use the water. Again they don’t tell you that this is not a viable long-term solution.

What I am going on about is what can you do in the environment you live in to sustain you and your family for at least 72 hours or until your local services come back on. I myself live in an urban area and this is what I am going to find out and share with you over the next few entries.

 

Stick with me folks because this just could get a little fucking crazy, and trust me I know crazy.