With these two big lifechanging events in our rearview we can't be dense and just say they were once in a lifetime occurrences. Like I told my family, we are not poor, we can afford to buy some things in case SHTF (shit hits the fan) and not be caught waiting for the government to put things back in order. My family, for example back home was without power for more than four days, the first time that happens is a big surprise and the fault of outside forces, but if it happens again, then I have to conclude it is partially your fault, you had time to prepare between incidents. No one can predict what will happen tomorrow, but what if we have another freeze like we did in January? Hopefully, people have done some preparations.
I had mentioned earlier in the year that I bought a generator which is my back-up power to keep my freezers from becoming useless with all of our food, then bought an A/C to run off the generator, when talks of rolling blackouts started. Although that never materialized, I want to say we would have been prepared. Now that we are approaching "winter", not that it gets real cold here, we have been warned that we might get another cold snap, so I have now bought some portable heaters that can run off propane tanks and are approved for indoor use. This, along with some candles, batteries, flashlights, lanterns that run on oil (approved for burning indoors) started my preparations. I don't see why everyone shouldn't have these things in their house anyway.
Yesterday, I went and cleaned out the smallest closet in the house and bought a rack that fit perfectly. This will be where I stock food and other emergency supplies. Until yesterday, we had two big packs of toilet paper, for example, just on the floor outside our bedroom, I went ahead and added two more of these 48 rolls per pack to the basket, so now we have close to 200 rolls of toilet paper, which should last awhile even if we stop buying it because stores run out. I had been leaving the big cases of water bottles by the entrance, now I have a rack and can start actually stocking it as an emergency, not just so the boys can take some on the way out the door. My newest idea is to start getting a water service going, like Culligan water, that drops off bottles of water at the house, so if our water from the tap becomes contaminated, as it did during the freeze, we have back-up water in the form of those 5 gallon bottles. Water, food, and power are the big three to survive, and at this point I need to start focusing on stocking more food that will keep on the shelves for longer periods of time. I bought some bins which I will fill with beans and rice, which all the preppers seem to recommend, I also like peanut butter and that keeps for a long time too.
There is an unlimited amount of preparation one can make and I don't want to go crazy, I mean we can plan for a week or maybe even two, but if the government really collapses, then that is another game plan altogether, and being overly prepared in a big city might just make you a target, so there is that to worry about (this is where the guns might unfortunately come in handy). In that case, Mom, make some space because we would be scampering down to the small city. All the doomsday folks do seem to say over and over that the only way to survive long term is to have alliances with people you can trust, and I don't know how long that would work here. The reality is you can tell people over and over and most won't even listen and buy an extra can of peanut butter for storage, so preparation is being done by too few people, in my opinion.
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