Note: Today marks the final day of National Preparedness Month, but that in no way signals the end of your need to prepare. Preparedness is a year-round job.
Over the past 30 days I’ve posted more than a dozen preparedness blogs, so today I thought I’d explain how I became a `prepper’.
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# 6597
I confess that I didn’t really start to think seriously about preparedness until 1984, when I bought my first sailboat and began to outfit it for extended coastal cruising.
I knew there would be times when my wife and I would be absolutely on our own – often miles from shore or in some remote region of the Ten Thousands Islands - well beyond the puny range of our VHF radio.
Suddenly, I was faced with playing the `What if?’ game.
- What if one of us got hurt?
- What if we were dismasted or driven hard aground?
- What if the outboard motor or radio died?
- What if we sank!
What if . . . what if . . . what if . . . the possibilities for disaster were endless and daunting, and then there were the less emergent considerations.
How much food and water could we carry? How much fuel? How would we generate electricity for anchor, navigation, and interior lights . . . and for the radio?
As the only thing smaller than our 23-foot Grampian sailboat was the budget we had for outfitting her, it took nearly a year to get her ready for the cruise. Twelve months, and $7,500 dollars later (and that included the price of the 12 year old boat!), we headed south.
Cheryl at the Helm of Halcyon
I’m happy to report that while we did see our share of storms, gear failures, minor injuries, and accidental groundings we managed to enjoy the better part of a year cruising without any major mishaps.
But it wouldn’t have had a happy ending without proper planning.
During the mid-1990’s I moved from the water to the land, and tried my hand at taming 24 acres of Missouri backwoods. Once again, living miles from the nearest town and occasionally cut off for a week or more by snow and ice storms, made preparedness and self-sufficiency paramount.
The view from our 4000sf garden
I confess - I’m not really much of a backwoodsman - and while I learned many skills during that time, I finally was able to return to Florida in 2005 (the statute of limitations had expired).
So you see, I come by my preparedness streak honestly.
Even though I no longer live aboard a boat, or in the backwoods, I still believe in being prepared.
Not for the end of the world - as seems to be the popular perception of preppers - but for the very real and all-to-common disasters and emergencies that happen all the time.
Thirty days ago, on the first day of National Preparedness Month, I highlighted a very effective graphic from Ready.gov that shows the `day before disaster’ for all 50 states.
The date when it was still not too late to prepare.
Click through to the interactive map, to see each state’s date with destiny.
If you click on California, for example, you’ll get:
You get the idea.
The takeaway point is, you never know whether today is the day before your disaster . . .
The thing that keeps emergency planners up at night is the knowledge that during a disaster, far too many people will be unprepared to fend for themselves until emergency help can arrive.
Which is why the Federal government wants all of us to be prepared for emergencies, as they know that during a `normal’ disaster (of which dozens occur every year) citizens may be on their own for up to 72 hours.
In an extreme disaster (like we saw with Katrina in 2005), some people may end up having to fend for themselves for a week or longer.
Based on the events in Japan (or after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, or the earthquake in Haiti) 3 days of supplies many not be enough for a truly worst case scenario.
The County of Los Angeles Emergency Survival Guide calls for having 3 to 10 days worth of food and water.
Personally, I believe that 2-weeks of supplies isn’t an unreasonable goal, particularly if you live in earthquake or hurricane country.
The L.A. guide may be downloaded here (6.5 Mbyte PDF).
The bottom line is everyone should have a disaster plan. Everyone should have a good first aid kit, a `bug-out bag’, and sufficient emergency supplies to last a bare minimum of 72 hours.
For more on disaster preparedness, I would invite you to visit:
NPM12: Disaster Buddies
When 72 Hours Isn’t Enough
NPM12: The Gift Of Preparedness
An Appropriate Level Of Preparedness
