Feel free to drop and debate your best prepping advice for a single family of 4. What you believe should be prioritized over mistakes youve made in your preps.
PLEASE, for the love of god, do not go out and buy 30 1 gallon water jugs, or 20 cases of bottled water. The plastic will degrade before you ever use it all, its terrible for the body, and its likely to leak out all over the floor..
Sardines are the most protein and nutrient dense canned food you can buy... Taste like shit, but make it work.
Do not build fires or use generators in your home, I feel like this is common sense, but after the last ice storm, im not so sure.
Brush up on any skills you can right now... Welding, carpentry, fencing, fortifying, weapons management, botany.
Have enough medical supplies for your family. 3 packs of great value bandaids will not suffice. You need guaze, anti parasites, anti inflammitory, ibeprofin, asprin. More advanced items like tourniquettes, quick klot, splints will do nothing but increase your preparedness. Be familiar with how each item works.
Some people recommend HAM radios, its great to have but will likely be useless if there aren't major communicators there to bounce comms off of.
Alcohol is a commodity, Weed is a commodity, illicit drugs can have medicinal purposes. Some people can use raw opium for pain and wound management.
Appearance is 98% of someones perception as per AR 670-1. In the event of a catastophic event, knowing FEMA paint symbols, and how to board up your shelter/home is absolutely imparative. Keep plywood on hand specifically for these purposes. People will often find the easiest targets first. Adding barriers that take an immense amount of time to remove will only help your fortification. Think Hurricane Katrina....
NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER QUIT. 10 more feet, 10 more seconds... always keep putting distance and time between you, and whatever it is you're escaping from. Your body can give our and rest when youre dead, not a second sooner...
Many of you will be pushed farther than you've ever been pushed before, welcome to your awakening..
Some of you may not experience anything at all, you will be the spared, but it is likely almost everyone will face some sort of tribulation during this transition.
I wish each and every single one of you the very best of luck. Hopefully this is a mild transition, but plan for the worst.
If nothing happens and the world keeps spinning then great, at least your prepared if it doesnt.....
Keep in mind that the civil unrest we are likely to see is NOT a complete SHTF scenario. It will be a few weeks of disruption.
The government will NOT allow the electrical system to go down, nor water treatment. You can store water if you want, but it's not critically necessary.
Think food and commodities. Think grocery stores being disrupted, trucking stopped for a few days, transportation shut down except for critical needs.
Plan to have what you need in case martial law is declared, there are hour long lines at the few stores that still have merchandise... and you can't get anything more for 2 to 3 weeks.
You can freeze a few gallons of milk. You can buy and freeze bread... or get frozen loaves that you can unthaw and bake yourself. Think about foods that you can keep ready and prepare at home.
Don't worry about eating canned beans for months on end, while seriously considering the neighborhood cats as a possible food source. This is not an end-of-world scenario. This is about storing gasoline and basic things NOW, so if there is a disruption, you are ready.
I thought that, too. Till I got hosed by the ice storm.
Basically, they cut power to some of the pumping stations. A few froze, and the system ended up losing enough pressure to push water to houses. When things warmed up there as potential for some backflow, which meant potential for crud to get pulled back into the mains, so the water company put out a boil water notice for 2 days (4 for some areas) even after service was restored.
Since I'd kind of written off water as a priority, I had only put away about 4 gallons of bottled spring water. Being miserly with it for drinking, cooking, and hobo bathing, I ran through about 1/3 to 1/2 a gallon a day while power (and thus water) was out. I'm sure consumption would have been much higher during the summer time.
Where I got hosed was when it came back on... I only had a saucepan to boil water in. It was ok if you're boiling as you go, but it was about a 7-8 minute process per pot. Second purchase I made after we got power back was a 2 gallon aluminum pot... first was a bunch of 7 gallon stackable water jugs.
The lesson I took from that is don't assume the infrastructure is going to be operational. If a few key points in the system go down, everyone is hosed (or at least inconvenienced).