It's always, always good to have at least a few weeks and maybe a couple months' worth of non-perishables on hand, and a well-stocked first-aid kit.
Most of the "prepper" stuff about long-term emergency food storage and living off the land is pure fantasy: in an actual crisis, the most valuable things are mobility and personal connections. If you're not already a farmer/homesteader, raising meat animals and canning your own garden produce, then any situation where you'd need to have six months' food stored away... is a situation where you stayed too long when you should have packed your bag and moved to another town/state/country, probably last year.
The most valuable things you can "prep" are personal/family/social connections, whether that's keeping in touch with relatives or belonging to a good church community or other local in-person organization or social group, contingency plans for if/how/when to leave and where to go (mobility!), and how you will communicate in a crisis (we ran into this problem after a hurricane: cell towers went down. But also: if your phone battery dies, will you even have the numbers you need?).
If you live in an area where there are floods, hurricanes, or wildfires, perhaps you already have some experience at having a bag packed and knowing when to get out, as well as what kind of supplies are actually useful "after" (hurricane zone: cash, gas cans, a chainsaw with extra chains and oil, sturdy shoes, granola/trailmix/energybars, drinking water, spare tires, leather gloves, and a good road atlas). Some of that experience is transferable to other sorts of crisis.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2021-11-17 03:50 am (UTC)It's always, always good to have at least a few weeks and maybe a couple months' worth of non-perishables on hand, and a well-stocked first-aid kit.
Most of the "prepper" stuff about long-term emergency food storage and living off the land is pure fantasy: in an actual crisis, the most valuable things are mobility and personal connections. If you're not already a farmer/homesteader, raising meat animals and canning your own garden produce, then any situation where you'd need to have six months' food stored away... is a situation where you stayed too long when you should have packed your bag and moved to another town/state/country, probably last year.
The most valuable things you can "prep" are personal/family/social connections, whether that's keeping in touch with relatives or belonging to a good church community or other local in-person organization or social group, contingency plans for if/how/when to leave and where to go (mobility!), and how you will communicate in a crisis (we ran into this problem after a hurricane: cell towers went down. But also: if your phone battery dies, will you even have the numbers you need?).
If you live in an area where there are floods, hurricanes, or wildfires, perhaps you already have some experience at having a bag packed and knowing when to get out, as well as what kind of supplies are actually useful "after" (hurricane zone: cash, gas cans, a chainsaw with extra chains and oil, sturdy shoes, granola/trailmix/energybars, drinking water, spare tires, leather gloves, and a good road atlas). Some of that experience is transferable to other sorts of crisis.