An Emergency Preparedness To-Do List

If you don't have an Emergency Survival To-Do List, maybe it's time to think about writing one up. Figure out what you've done and what you still need to do to prepare for an emergency situation. 


What food have you stockpiled? What do you still need in the way of food for one year?


What about water? 


What about weapons?


What about gathering and storing firewood ahead of time? 


These are all things you need to think about as a Prepper.


This is not the same thing as your Emergency Survival Plan.  Your Emergency Preparedness Plan is what you create first. It's your overall plan of how you and your family and friends plan to survive a catastrophe. 


The To-Do list is what you're going to focus on in the next few months or during this year. For example our To-Do list includes the following:


* Buy more oats. We plan on breakfasts of Oatmeal each day and for a year's worth of such breakfasts we need a specific amount of oats. This year's focus is to reach our goal for enough oats for one year for 6 people. 
* Buy more corn - need to reach our goal of enough for one year for 6 people
* Buy more dried beans - need to reach our goal of enough for one year for 6 people
* Make a manual pump for our drilled well. The time to build this is now, not after a disaster. We need more than one.
* Cut and store firewood. Firewood takes time to cure and it takes time, effort and gas to power a chain saw to cut trees. The time to do this is now
* Make a root cellar. We have a work weekend coming up in July. Both my step-sons are coming up to help me dig out under the mudroom to make a small root cellar. We need it now so that not only is it done and ready but my wife and I can experiment with how best to use it to keep our vegetables and fruits for prolonged periods of time
* Buy more baking powder - this is something my wife has worked out that she needs to bake one Irish Soda Bread loaf for 365 days for 6 adults. 
* Extend the herb garden and rhubarb patch
* Plant squash and pumpkin this year in addition to last year's vegetables (zucchini, onions, peppers)
* Organize our available storage areas and figure out what items need to be kept in each. We have some climate controlled areas but we also have some with extreme fluctuations in temperature and humidity so we are starting to create a  list of what items can go where.  I'll go into detail on this in another blog post.


What's on your To-Do list? 

Naked Man Killed Eating Another Man's Face in Miami

Here's a timeline of the bizarre events that took place a few days ago in Miami when Police shot and killed a man eating the face off another man at the side of a major highway.


http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/30/2824430/timeline-here-are-the-key-moments.html


You've probably been reading the news stories about this. The headlines range from Miami 'zombie' face-eating attack video spawns dark humor, jokes on social media to Naked man killed after refusing to stop eating person's face to Zombie Attack in Miami, Man Killed While Eating Victim's Face 


It's pretty gruesome and police aren't saying much about the cause. The victim is still alive and in hospital. Conspiracy theorists are flooding forums with their ideas and it all makes for interesting reading. 

Doomsday Preppers - An Interesting Show

Are any of you watching Doomsday Preppers on TV? There are some good ideas and tips on Emergency Preparedness from some of the preppers. I have to say that some of them come across as total nutcases but that's just my opinion. Others are just regular folks, like you and me, who want to be prepared for any emergency survival situations.

I've been thinking about how the one guy made his own bows out of wood from the forest, and another made his own tomahawks. Both items can be used for hunting food or as weapons for defending your home and emergency food supplies.

One thing I hadn't thought about was cutting and preparing my firewood ahead of time. I've been pretty busy in other areas of emergency preparedness but need to get working on this. I'd like to have something that saws my cut and downed trees into logs a lot faster than me with a chainsaw though!

We've got other items on our To-Do list and my wife has a list in her Food Storage Inventory book of foods she needs to stockpile this year.

A To-Do list is a really helpful tool in preparing for emergency survival. I'll share ours in another post.

My step-son came up and took a one day Trauma Course which he shared with us as best he could afterwards. My other step-son is in the military and he's going to come up this July and teach us some radical first aid techniques that he's learned.  It's important to have a good First Aid kit on hand and to know how to use it. I don't just mean some peroxide and bandaids, I'm talking about being able to treat more serious medical problems. But that's another blog post!

Asteroid 2001 AG5 is on the way

According to astronomers at the Mount Lemmon observatory in Arizona, asteroid 2001 AG5 has a 1 in 625 chance of hitting Earth in 2040. At 460ft wide this asteroid could obliterate a city. Further observations will be carried out next year that will help to get a better idea if their really is a risk of this thing hitting us. Fortunately for us 2040 is a long way off so we have plenty of time to deflect it.

Food Hoarding in Iran

Hoarding of goods is becoming a significant issue in Iran as the economic sanctions start to take hold. The Iranian Minister of Industries, Mines and Commerce Mehdi Ghazanfari said, advising Iranians against hoarding goods. “Piling up goods at home isn’t to the benefit of consumers and we don’t advise it”

Now this may not be affecting us in the West but its important to learn the lessons that observing what happens in the rest of the world can teach us and apply them to ourselves. Food shortages can happen for many reasons. Its best to be prepared.

Over 600 Dead in Europe

The death toll for Europe rose to well over 600 in the cold snap that froze much of Europe for the past two weeks. While most of the dead have been in the vulnerable populations like the homeless. The cold snap is a reminder to all of us that its important to have a backup heat source for our homes. It is no good relying on gas or electricity. They are often the first thing to go.

Bird Flu Reasearch Publication Moratorium

In what may or may not be a good thing, researchers have agreed to a 60-day moratorium on some of the more sensitive aspects of their studies involving H5N1 in order “to provide time” for international discussions. Back in December, the U.S. government had asked scientists working on a much more dangerous man-made version of the avian flu virus to hold back some details of their studies out of concern terrorists might use the information to manufacture and spread the virus, causing a worldwide pandemic.

The Little Ice Age

A new study indicates that a cool spell that started in the 13th century, sometimes called the Little Ice Age, appears to have been caused by a series of volcanic eruptions and sustained by sea ice.

During the cool spell, which lasted for about 600 years, advancing glaciers destroyed northern European towns and froze the Thames River in London.

It is not known how many people died as a result.

No one can say if or when this will happen again but it is just one more demonstration of how vulnerable our climate is to sudden change. With all the pollution and green house gasses we are pumping out each year and the ever fluctuating solar cycle. We really don't know what sudden event could change every thing we take for granted.

Time to stock up on gas

If you have any extra cash you may want to consider stocking up on a little extra gasoline.  Iran has shrugged off Europe's oil embargo and moved ahead with plans to hold naval exercises alongside the oil tanker shipping lanes it has threatened to block.

Now we all know that Iran cant win a war against the West and they would be foolish to start one. But it may be in their interest to disrupt shipping a little bit. In fact they would not even have to do anything really nasty to disrupt the shipping. If Iran simply sent a few mine layers out into the shipping lanes and had them drive around for a bit. And perhaps dump some large objects into the water. That would be all it would take to shut down the shipping for a few days while the Western Navies look for the non existent mines. All the while the price you pay at the pumps will go way up.

I am off to the gas station.

More Bird Flu

A 39 year old man in southwest China died of bird flu on Sunday after three days of intensive care treatment in hospital. And in related news two separate teams of scientists trying to develop a vaccine for the H5N1 strain of bird flu have agreed to temporarily postpone their research because of growing concern that a highly-infectious airborne version of the virus the researchers are working with could fall into the hands of terrorists or escape the laboratory and trigger a deadly pandemic.