By Ourselves, For Ourselves: Part 2

This was originally posted on December 20th, 2004 and has been revised/updated for posting today.

Updated: 01/02/07

Last week we covered the minimums on armament for holding your home safe during tough times.

Preface

Part 1

Today, we’ll cover nearly everything else, supply wise. Namely: food, water, light, heat, communications, clothing and toiletries. I am going to hold off on the topics of both electricity and medical equipment until later posts, as they are whole topics in and of themselves.

Continuing on last week’s theme, we are assuming that you are able to stay home in this situation. This means we have the shelter portion of the equation taken care of.

Also, please remember that we are doing this in a way so as to not alarm your family. These things are being done to keep them safe, and we don’t need for them to get spooked, scared or frightened that something bad is going to happen or that you have fallen off your rocker. For reasons unknown to me, seeing others getting prepared for hard times frightens folks. I have yet to figure that one out.

Now let us go below the fold,

OK, let’s say that there have been multiple terrorist acts in your locale, including a rash of bombings and shootings in public areas and/or jihadis driving vans filled with explosives into the transfer stations of your region’s electrical supply and/or the police and fire stations. Muhammed and Malvo had a section of Virginia in near lock down after a few random shootings. Imagine that, five times larger, being done by a sleeper cell of just ten jihadis who watched the television during those couple of weeks.

If that is too much to believe, then just imagine Mother Nature coming through and kicking ass in your region. An earthquake, hurricane, tornado or even an extra heavy snowstorm can shut down the system and make your life suck for two to four weeks (or even more). You and your neighbors are screwed and the Red Cross isn’t or can’t come to help any time soon.

Food:

After shelter, this is one of the first things you need to think of because you don’t want to starve. It is also the easiest because you know what you like and where to get it. Hell, you could even get it this weekend.

You can forget the government’s suggestion about having three days worth of food. We had people in the Seattle metro area going without electricity for 6-12 days just because of a windstorm. Think of a minimum of thirty days worth of two meals a day for each member of your family.

The only real difficult part about food is storing it because improperly stored food can kill you, and rather painfully I might add. The food needs to sit for possibly months/years at a time, un-refrigerated, and still be safe for human consumption.

Myself, I like canned goods. They’re stackable, there is no need for dishes and you can easily count “one can = one meal”. Like last week with my ammo, I like to use the 105mm Arty boxes for storage as you can fill them with about a week’s supply of food. Sugary snack foods are also good. Salty ones are better though, as they instill upon you a need to get water into your system. Granola bars, energy bars, etc. are good. Foil wrapped items store better than one which are paper wrapped.

Where you store it is as important as how you store it. A basement, mudroom, closet or cool corner of the garage is the best since we need to keep the supplies at room temperature or cooler. Putting them in a garden shed or something of that nature is problematic as that space generally heats up and cools down with the elements of day/night and the seasons. You want your food’s temperature to be stable. Also, having to drag your supplies into the house during a time of emergency is a pain in the ass.

Remember to date your containers and rotate them out. If your chosen food comes with an expiration date, use that. Even though canned goods are supposedly good for years, I rotate mine every other year.

Some folks prefer the easy storage of MRE type meals. You can start looking for them here, here and here, but there are literally dozens of places on the internet where you can find them.

There are other companies who make MRE type foods, if you know of any not listed here, feel free to put them in the comments and I’ll get them added to this post. Remember, these posts are about sharing ideas.

Some folks have entire, multiple freezers full of frozen meats and fish. If you are one of these lucky folks, then you need to buy a generator as of yesterday, just for them. Depending on the quality of its seal and insulation, getting power to a freezer for just four to six hours per every twenty four hours is enough to keep the contents of said freezer good and cold. I know that if I had a freezer full of food and the power went out and I had to toss all of it because I couldn’t send electricity to the freezer, I’d kick my own ass.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, we’ll get into generators and other power supplying devices in a later post.

You’ll also need a place to cook this food. If you have a wood burning stove, then you will have heat to warm both you and your food. Otherwise, you’ll be needing a propane or charcoal grill, or a fire pit. The downside of these last three options is that you need to use them outside, obviously the last one. I have a 3×3 window in my garage as well as a poor door seal. I have grilled with propane in there with the window open, but I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone.

If you must resort to a fire pit, make sure to observe the same rules that you use out camping. Make sure the pit is lined and that outside said line is clear of all flammables. You wouldn’t want to go burning down your shelter now, would you?

Also, if you’re pit burning, make sure that you have some sort of fire starter and fuel available. Trioxane tabs work well for starting in all weather conditions, though if all you have is newspaper, that’ll do with the right care. A friend of mine has a three sided wood stove that he salvaged from a house demo someone was doing down the street from his home. The door was busted off, but it works well for summer nights and would probably do a decent job cooking with its flat top surface. Total cost to him $0 + carrying it home.

Water:

You will need at least a gallon a day per person for each member of your household. That is just for drinking. Make it two per person per day if you will have to cook with it.

Unless you buy your emergency water supply in cased bottles, you will find that water is a hell of a lot harder to store than food, since almost anything can make water unsafe to drink. If you decide to keep your water in portable containers, first make sure that it is a safe container, then, when you fill up that container, be sure to put in the appropriate amount of safe water tabs in beforehand. There are also a good number of pour through filters on the market that you can check out. You will want to conduct your own tests on items like these to see what works best for you, though I would have a little if both, JIC.

Rotate and refill your supply every six months. Use the old stuff for something useful, like washing the dog or the car.

You will also want to keep a supply of water bladders for bathing. The quantity depends on your climate. If you live in Arizona, you will want more water to wash with than if you live in Wisconsin.

Also, do not forget that your water heater stores water. My house has a 48-gallon model. But since I’m still currently a renter, I did not get to select it, so I have one with a drain plug instead of a valve. Another thing to keep in mind is where your incoming water filter is. If it is before the tank, you’re probably OK. If it is after the tank, the contents will have to be boiled before use. I have seen filters after the tank more than once, so, if you didn’t build your own house, check it out.

And don’t forget about your pets! Rover or Fluffy will be wanting to eat and drink too. Make sure you have a source of food and water for them. Different sizes of animals require different amounts of food. You know what you feed them now; cut that to two-thirds and store it for them.

Medicines:

What are your medical conditions and do you have a minimum thirty-day supply of your medicines available. Are you diabetic, have high blood pressure or an ulcer? Folks with heart, liver, kidney and intestinal problems all need to make sure they have spare amounts of their prescriptions available. Even if you can get to the pharmacy/hospital, it isn’t guaranteed that they’ll be open during tough times.

You can talk to your doctor about getting some emergency quantity meds if you know him or her well, but you will have to be the judge of that relationship. As of late, doctors have been getting nosy about firearms ownership, going so far as to call the police to have them remove firearms from the elderly and infirm. Their justification is that “they don’t want the person to think of suicide”. So be careful when expressing interest in stocking up on your meds.

The same goes for folks with “allergies”. Everyone out there with “Hayfever” knows what it is like to be stuck in high pollen season with no meds. Stock up and rotate.

Also, are you addicted to anything, like say, tobacco products? You could use the emergency as a good excuse to quit, but going through a full-on nicotine fit in the middle of a disaster would be horrible.

Light:

When night falls, it gets dark and you will need light. There are three easy sources of light: electric based (flashlights and lanterns), fire based (candles) and chemical based (glow-sticks). I suggest that all three be partaken of since each of them has their own strengths and weaknesses.

Flashlights are best for portable light, but they don’t light up a room well and they run on batteries, which are finite. The LED flashlights use batteries more slowly than standard bulbs, but they’re more expensive. Battery powered lanterns work well for lighting up a room, but again, they use batteries.

Candles are good for stationary light, but they themselves are of finite supply and can burn down your shelter if not carefully watched. Since the Analog Wife is a big candle fanatic, I encourage her to buy as many as she wants. At any one time, we have around a dozen medium-to-large candles in the main room of the house. Also, IKEA sells bags of 100 tea lights for less than $5 and she usually has 4-6 of those around. Keep this in mind the next time your wife/girlfriend goes shopping. She can take part of this job off your hands and go shopping at the same time (Win-Win!)! And because of this candle habit of hers, we have boxes upon boxes of wooden matches (Win-Win-Win!).

Glow-sticks can be used for either portable or stationary light. Tie a string to one end and hang it from the ceiling and you have a decently lit room. You can walk around with it and not have to worry about fire, but it does not project a beam, and they too, are finite and are more expensive than candles. Though, if you keep them cold, it slows the chemical reaction and they last longer.

Update: Reader Quilly Mamoth reminds me about self-generating flashlights such as these crank flashlights and also the shake lights like these. I’ve got two of each: the shake lights are in the trucks where their motion helps generate power for the light, and the crank lights are in a kitchen drawer.

These are indespensible and if my examples weren’t outside the home and or in a far away srawer, I wouldn’t know how I forgot to mention them.

Again, take stock of all three four types and you should be covered. Four sets of batteries for each flashlight or lantern, one flashlight or lantern per person, six to eight medium-sized candles and a hundred or so tea lights, plus 30 glow-sticks should be a decent supply of light for thirty days.

Heat:

Other than the candles, none of these light sources provides heat, and even then, a candle’s heat radiation is minimal. If you don’t have a fireplace, and you don’t live in the southwestern half of America, then you should start thinking about a heat source.

A fireplace is the simplest, but most of them are designed to be decorative rather than kick out heat. But any heat will do. Either a free-standing woodstove or fireplace-insert work better than a fireplace for kicking out warmth. If you have any of these options available to you, a cord of wood should easily last you a month. Just keep one on hand along with your regular firewood supply and you shouldn’t have any worries.

Another option is pellet stoves. Pellet stoves really kick out the heat, but they require 110V to roll the pellets in, so you’ll need a generator for one of those. You can also just bundle up and be your own heater, but playing Nanook of the North in your own home gets old real quick.

Propane tank mounted thermal heaters work well in partially enclosed spaces, but I would not suggest using these inside your house, even with an opened window. Another thing to think about is cordoning off the rooms of your home with something like curtains made from wool blankets.

If you have one of those homes with a “convenient open floor plan”, you may need to shrink down the size of the area you are trying to keep warm by getting a hammer and nails and hanging up some wool blankets over door-less passageways between rooms or dividing a room in half via a curtain of blankets.

If you have a fireplace in the family or recreation room that is, say, 20ft by 40ft, you might want to cut that room down to 20ft by 20ft in order to only have to use half the amount of fuel to keep it warm. Yeah, you’ll have to patch the holes later, but you want to be warm now.

Make plans for which room with be the “main room” ahead of time so that you can make up your room dividers ahead of time, as it is a real bitch to be sewing together and putting eyelets in wool blankets in the cold and dark.

You might also want to think of keeping materials handy that you can use to cover up your windows. If your main living area is breeched wind in the disaster or by an intruder’s attempt to gain entry, you’re in trouble if you cannot seal that opening up. Cardboard works well. Wood works better. Either way, make sure you have an extra set of blankets to add an extra barrier of insulation over whatever your patch will be.

Along these lines, having an extra piece of plywood or two and some things like shingles and/or exterior siding is always handy for patching the top of your shelter up.

Bio-waste:

Now we have come to the ugly part of “living without” for an extended period. You will have enough food for thirty days, but what happens after you eat? Yes, your body wants to get rid of yesterday’s meal.

Unless you get a good deal on Depends, you’re going need something to act as a toilet to dispose of bodily wastes. This is surprisingly simple. Go to the hardware store and buy a 5-gallon bucket or two and a couple bundles of trash bags. If the bucket lids come separately, buy two of them: One lid to cut a big hole in, and the other to seal the bucket up.

That is, unless you want to keep your “poo-bucket” outside in the cold. There are numerous versions of this idea on the market if you want a bucket with a pre-formed ass-groove or if you don’t feel like doing your own cutting.

Just line the bucket with two bags and change it every couple of days. Put those bags as far away from your living area as possible, for obvious reasons.

Clothing:

I spoke above of living like Nanook of the North, I meant being bundled up and holding in the warmth your body creates. It gets cold everywhere in the winter, at least at night, and being cold is painful, plain and simple. Make sure that every member of your family has at least three changes of cold weather clothing.

Polypropylene is the best, in my opinion. It wears underneath everything else and washes easily. That, and it wicks like crazy.

Wool would be and is my next choice. It wears above everything else and creates a barrier that is resistant to water (but not waterproof).

Poly-Fleece is a distant third as it is wears on the outside and reacts poorly to any kind of moderate/high heat source you may come in contact (heavy scarring of your body usually results).

Cotton is the worst. It gets wet whenever it can and retains that water like a sponge, thereby making you cold.

You may also want to look into some sort of camouflage/outline disbursement clothing. You will get the itch to take a short look around and it would be nice if you weren’t dressed in hunter orange and stuck out the proverbial sore thumb. Urbanites will have different requirements than suburban and/or rural living folks. Take a look around you, you’ll figure out what colors/patters you need rather quickly.

Communications:

One thing that folks usually forget when they’re “staying at home” are communications. You may have to step out of your abode to try and find a good mobile phone signal or to talk with friendly neighbors. When you are doing this, you want to be able to talk with your home base. The little handheld radios made by Motorola or others are a must. Follow the same steps with these that you use for flashlight batteries.

Hell, depending on the size/layout of your house, you may just want to use them to communicate between rooms. Your wife is at one end of the house cooking and you’re at the other standing watch, someone tries coming in through the kitchen door. Also, think of just being to communicate between firing positions.

You will also want to keep in contact with the outside world. Knowing when/if help is en route is always to your advantage. A simple wind-up and/or solar powered radio is indispensable. Even better, if you have the cash, is a short-wave receiver.

Know you local emergency channels, your city’s street names/numbers and the local landmarks. If the damage is widespread, emergency services organizations are going to break down cities and neighborhoods into grids by the preexisting city blocks, helping each grid one at a time. They will announce these over the emergency band in the hope that you are listening and will help spread the word so that people will be ready.

Most folks are going want the help, but sometimes it is also helpful to know when to hide from it. You can hope that they just want to drop you supplies, but in most situations, they will not help you where you are at and will forcibly evacuate you “for your own good”.

I’m sorry, but if I’m doing all right, I’m not leaving until I want to or have to, and it will be under my own terms.

Remember during Katrina when the evacuation crews came through and people were literally being dragged from their “unsafe” homes? I remember seeing a CNN reporter and camera crew that found an entire block doing just fine, BBQing on the sidewalk and making the best of it. There was no standing water nearby or even anything really wrong with their brownstone houses other than they had no power. The CNN guy talked to them for a while and then left. It ended up he told the emergency services people about them and the next day those folks were forcibly moved.

There were a number of lies started by the managers of these crews and spread by the media during Katrina. The one I remember best was about the water being toxic to the touch. It may have been unsafe to drink or wash with, but getting some on your arm was not the instant leprosy that was being told.

The “rescue teams” were also the ones forcibly disarming people. I’m sure we all remember them dislocating the shoulder of a little old lady and shoving her into a “rescue vehicle” that looked unsurprisingly like a paddy wagon. The sole reason for the arm-twisting was that she was armed and they wanted her out of there.

Or if you remember the Boxing Day Tsunami in Thailand and who came to help? The UN. They can bite me. I’m not leaving to go die of disease in one of their camps. I’d rather take my chances at my own home.

Remember, the government is only going to “help you” under their own terms. Very few, if any, rescue operations will let you take anything, especially your firearms, on their rescue vehicle. I am not the one who will be leaving my only means of protection from my fellow disaster victims (and possibly the rescuers) at a place where looters can sift through my stuff at their leisure. This may sound harsh or extreme, but judging from the recent past, sometimes hiding from the “rescuers” is the better of the two options.

Think of it as giving up your spot for those in need. Good karma to you.

And there we are.

Being prepared is nearly just that easy. Minus buying the firearms spoken of in the previous post, or a generator, you can get away with spending less than a couple hundred bucks on getting yourself ready with what is listed here.

And you may never need it. Or you might need it next 4th of July. Take care of yourself and your family members, give yourself peace of mind and thumb your nose at the Jones. When the lights go out and they’re eating raw cake mix, sit back, kick up your feet on your porch with a good book and a hot cup of cocoa and wave.

Next time, we’ll cover getting some electricity going on.

Again, any suggestions of anything I may have missed are absolutely welcome. I can’t think of everything that may be necessary, so if you have anything to add, please feel free to do so.

And if there is a topic that you would like discussed, please feel free to let me know and I’ll see what I can do for you.