I would recommend focusing on things that get you more equipped to “bug-in” and your bags for leaving the house contain what you need to get by at a friend’s house or hotel.  Our bug-out-bags are pretty simple and light since we’ll also be moving around with a toddler.  He came into the world about the same time as COVID so we’ve navigated a lot of supply chain issues.  we just but things in bulk and follow FIFO.  We typically bought a couple big boxes of his current diaper size and the next size.  It wasn’t too big a deal to eat the cost of a box of diapers if he grew out of them while we still had some.  The local diaper bank was happy to take them.  We have a change of clothes stashed everywhere, often a size or two too big to minimize having to swap them out frequently.  It doesn’t get very cold here so over-sized t-shirts go a long way in a pinch.  A battery-powered sound-maker is pretty good when the power is out.  You can also get phone apps that would work too but I haven’t looked into it. I hope that helps.  I’m typing while being told it’s ‘his turn’ to use the laptop.  I think it’s great that you are working to make you and your family more resilient.  In a way it simplifies things — anything that involves tents and camping isn’t practical for us.  Luckily kids are pretty resilient.  

I can’t speak for those specific areas but where we are a couple hours north of Sacramento the trees are in rough shape.  Drought combined with crazy summer heat haven’t been kind to them.  The lawn watering restrictions have caused a lot of residential trees to die or get weak.  I’m surprised the trees around us are holding up as well as they are.

It’s probably not as straightforward as not washing the sheets.  Molds and fungi spread via spores that are quite durable.  It’s not surprising that some make it through an industrial laundering process.  Mucor is pretty rare and this “outbreak” was 16 cases over 4 years, half of them in the unit full of people with basically no immune system because of chemotherapy.  I’ve never heard of anyone routinely testing laundry for fungi, so it’s hard to know how to interpret roughly 10% of their sheets growing something. The CDC does track hospital-level data for hospital acquired infections but I’m not sure if it’s publicly available.  There are third-party organizations that try to assess quality.  It can be helpful but hospitals have to choose to participate in the programs and generally aren’t going to sign up for one they don’t think they’ll do well in.

Like many others I was preconditioned by influences including depression-era grandparents, scouts, and hobbies that involved being off the beaten track for several days at a time.  I became intentional about it while living in Klamath Falls, OR.  It’s a town on the eastern slope of the Cascades in Southern Oregon, a long way from anything.  A freak snowstorm hit Portland and suddenly a lot of the supplies we needed at the hospital where I worked were stuck on the freeway in more snow than that area could handle (which wasn’t much).  We started to run out and things got a little stressful.  During another storm the local airport ran out of deicer so we couldn’t fly patients out when they needed more care than we could provide.  When thousands of people from CA decided to watch the total solar eclipse a few hours north of us, fuel and a some other supplies got scarce as they passed through.  I realized that being prepared wasn’t about post-apocalyptic fantasy but rather being ready for unpredictable breakdown in our fragile economic system and infrastructure.   I do think another milestone was early 2020.  I was caring for COVID patients before we knew much about it and staying in a camper to prevent possibly exposing my wife and 2 month old if I got it.  I think I was trying to find diapers online and not having much luck.  I searched for something like “prepping for people who aren’t crazy” which Google mapped to The Sane Prepper Mantra on this site.  The articles and community have definitely helped me be more thoughtful in what we are doing.

We use a lot of rice and beans as well.  We don’t really do long-term food storage but usually have several pounds of rice and beans in the pantry that we slowly cycle through.  I like recipes that have a lot of flexibility.  Fried rice is basically rice and soy sauce but you can add a lot to it.  The timing of everything takes some work, but there are a million recipes online to start practicing.  Chili is another favorite.  We use a mix of black and pinto bean, an onion or two, and chili powder.  You can then add just about anything based on what you like and what’s available.  We also keep garbanzo beans because I like to make hummus.  I’m experimenting with falafel.  It’s just ground garbanzos, seasoning, and some flour.  Making something edible from it is pretty easy, although really good falafel eludes me.  I think it’s well worth your time to be comfortable cooking rice and dried beans.

I live in the Sacramento Valley and have given it a fair amount of thought.  I think the original ARKStorm 1.0 study did have inundation maps, but the published maps were too low-res to see where we live in detail.  You might be able to get the data but I wouldn’t be savvy enough to make use of it if I could find it.  Generally, our house is about 100′ above the Sac River elevation at the same latitude.  I think it’s reasonable to expect we’ll be above water.  Whether we’d be able to get groceries or have functioning public utilities would be another issue.  I work in healthcare and would have a hard time leaving town in the midst of a regional disaster, but I would try to get my family and our camper over the mountains to Reno or somewhere.  I think the best prep is getting FEMA flood insurance.  The up-side of FEMA flood maps underestimating risk is that the insurance is pretty cheap unless you live in a swamp or immediate flood plain.  The ARKStorm 2.0 article you referenced said they were going to do more work including inundation mapping, but I think you can learn a lot by studying local topography and seeing what happens with more ‘typical’ atmospheric river storms. I wouldn’t trust the weather media either.  When your weather is really boring 300+ days/year, anything out of the ordinary is given the same crisis-level attention.  I think flood risk here comes in 3 varieties.  One would be local weather events which are hard to predict (inches of rain in a few hours with localized flooding).  Levee and dam failures are also unpredictable (Marysville flood in mid 90’s, Olivehurst in mid80’s, Oroville dam near-failure 2017).  Bigger flooding events should give some warning.  You can watch the snowpack levels, river/reservoir levels (water.usgs.gov) and rain accumulation forecasts (I use the Windy app).  Big snowpack, full rivers and lakes with an impending warm rainstorm in late Winter/early Spring means you should be on the lookout.   CA is tricky — too low and you risk flood.  Too high and you will burn.  There are some areas that seem to balance the risk of both but it’s a narrow band.  Definitely look into FEMA flood insurance.

I can’t say that I’ve done exactly what you are doing, but I have some experience in other types of solar projects.  We bought our house’s grid-tied system through a local Consolidated Electrical Distributors office.  Locally they have staff who help design on- and off-grid systems and then sell you the parts.  I think they have offices nationwide (assuming you are in the US) although I don’t know if that’s a service they offer everywhere. Outback and Renogy both sell package solutions with Outback focusing on relatively large projects and Renogy generally a smaller scale.  I don’t know what their customer service is like.  I don’t see a value in name-brand panels.  They tend to be 25% more expensive and may function 5% better. Regarding RV sized systems, we have a GeoPro 19bh travel trailer with a somewhat modified system.  It has 2 no-name 12v 190w panels in parallel ($200 each) and a GoPower PWM charge controller ($150).  We have two Interstate 6v golf cart batteries wired in series.  The good Interstate ones are ~$150, but you can get a cheaper version for less than $100 at Costco.  That gives us roughly 100 Ah of usable storage (ie 200Ah total).  The fridge, lighting, and TV are all 12v which is great.  I’ve heard the inverter it came with is inefficient, but we haven’t ever used it.  I’m not very excited about the GoPower controller, but don’t see a reason to replace it.  Our battery monitoring system is just turning everything off, looking at the voltage and guessing.  Over 12v is good. Not sure if any of that is helpful.  Even if you don’t DIY it, I think there is a lot of value in understanding these systems.  A 12v system isn’t as complicated as the folks at Renogy would like for us to think it is.  Regarding your pressure cooker, I found a video on YouTube of a guy using an RV system to run a mini-instapot.  It took 17Ah out of his batteries to cook a chicken.  That’s a lot less than I expected.

The main question for us is how to limit how much the house heats up on a summer day when the power is out.  On the interior that means sealing air leaks and making sure our insulation is adequate.  On the outside it means shading the south and west sides of the house and limiting heat transfer through windows.  Sealing air leaks is also really helpful when our air quality is abysmal due to fires.  There are a lot of details that really matter, like our house being on a slab that includes the back porch (southern side of the house) which is a giant heat conduit into the house.  On the west side the path isn’t connected to the slab which is better. I’m wondering if passive solar design will start to become more mainstream in our area with hotter temps and more frequent power outages.  It wasn’t a design consideration in our house and in a sense we are doing it by hand with shade sails and deciduous trees that create shade against and around the house.  We can put the shades up in summer and in the winter when we want the heat they come down along with the trees’ leaves and let the sun warm our house.

A lot of what to look for is regional and depends on your preferences. We live in-town in Northern CA. I agree that 1-5 acres would be great, but we couldn’t afford that in a location where I could still ride my bike to work and walk down the street to get coffee which are things I value. Additionally, in Northern CA, if you aren’t in town you are frequently at risk of either flood or wildfire, so there are disadvantages to being out where land is cheaper.  We are in a boring neighborhood with cookie cutter houses and small lots. In general, layout, space, and sun/shade are huge considerations if you can’t sprawl out. Some top thoughts from our situation: Fancy architectural things like nooks, dormers, and hipped roofs make things like rain water catchment and solar more difficult Where is your gas connection relative to your electrical panel? Having them nearby makes putting in a gas generator a lot simpler. Do you have several feet of wall space for batteries and a transfer switch near your service panel if you want to do that? Similar regarding space for water catchment barrels and how to get them elevated enough to get the water where you want it without having to pump or carry buckets. Do the house have two sources of heat if winters are an issue (ie central heat and fireplace)? How the sun passes by a house is important in many ways including keeping it cool in a summer power outage, harvesting solar, and gardening.  I’m still experimenting with where to shade and where to plant, where we want trees etc. General energy efficiency will help you make the most of functioning off grid Again, it all depends on where you are looking.  Here fire is a huge concern and if we were even 20 feet lower in elevation flooding would also be a concern.  Hurricanes and earthquakes not so much of a concern.

We recently covered all the windows on South and West facing sides of our house.  I used the kits from Solar Screen Outlet.  It was about $50/window and the frames are pre-cut for fairly easy assembly.  They have an attachment option that uses industrial strength velcro which would probably work on your roof.  Having a shade on the exterior is better in that it prevents the heat/energy from getting to the window and into your house rather than putting a shade on the inside.  The down-side of course would be getting on your roof twice every year to install and remove them.  Something to think about.  I also lost just about everything I planted.  We haven’t had 110+ this year but have been consistently 98-105 for weeks which is unusual here.

I’m sad to report that Paul Auerbach passed away last week.  No idea why…he was a fairly healthy 70 year old.  I’ll second his books, WM Forgey’s Wilderness Medicine, and the Where There is No… Series.  Where there is no… books in particular assume no medical background which can be helpful. Some of my lesser known favorites are a little more on the technical side but surprisingly useful: Netter’s Concise Orthopedic Anatomy.  This book isn’t just great as a guide to anatomy but also because it goes through each joint/bone/tendon and explains how they are often injured and how to identify the specific injury. Oxford Handbook of Tropical Medicine.  It’s title is a little misleading because while it does cover all the usual tropical stuff, it’s also a guide to medicine in resource poor settings.  Sadly, coming from the UK they misspell a lot of basic terms like diarrhoea and oesophagus. Trott’s Wounds and Lacerations, Emergency Care and Closure.  Suturing and wound management comes up a lot on this forum and in my opinion, this is the best book around.  It is a textbook, but it’s surprisingly readable and has a lot of pictures/diagrams. These books are all a little pricy but most of the info is timeless and the older editions are available at a discount.

As others have said, there are some really solid sources out there but there is also a lot of garbage.  I’ve been elbow deep in this, watched a lot of people die (slowly, painfully, and alone) and seen the healthcare system in this area on the verge of collapse.  I had misgivings about the new technology and the fast rollout, but when I was notified that I was eligible in mid-December I didn’t think twice about scheduling an appointment to get my first dose.  The risk of being a stethoscope-length away from 20 people a day with COVID prevented me from falling into my usual trap of overthinking things. High vaccination rates among the elderly here have dramatically reduced our inpatient COVID census.  Now we are seeing a handful of people under 65 who are often very sick but didn’t think COVID was a big deal or thought they wouldn’t get it.  The reality is that it’s still spreading just as fast in groups with low vaccination and prior exposure rates, potentially faster and with more virulence as the new strains get a foothold here.  I’ve seen over and over again that people think they are safe since they don’t know anyone with COVID.  The way this spreads, frequently by the time you have one close contact with COVID, everyone you know will have it. I’m not sure if that helps.  I don’t have much of a stomach for 99% of the online and news media discussion of COVID and vaccines, but from what little I have read, there is a dearth of opinions from people who really have up close experience with this. I guess that as someone who has, I wanted to let you know my side of it. 

I wouldn’t give up on a propane camping stove and think it’s still the only real option.  A single burner hot plate or electric kettle will pull about 1500W, which would require one of the larger Yeti power stations and deplete it quickly.  Both at the same time or two burners would exceed their max output.  I looked at the CA Burn Ban rules and it’s mostly about open flames.  All of the bigger propane stoves I’ve encountered are contained.  I would of course suggest using it on an non-flammable surface with a few feet around it.  We are currently without our gas range and are using a two burner propane camp stove on the porch (concrete) and I have no concerns.  Between that and our propane grill we can cook just about anything. I don’t take the gas appliance bans very seriously for the near future.  I also don’t l live in the bay area which seems to be where these are popping up.  I think it will be the thing to do in a decade or so if/when our power is primarily renewable, we have lots more batteries, and the grid is more reliable.  For now though I think more electric appliances will mean more gas burned at plants miles away and then sent here through an inefficient and unreliable grid (though I admit I haven’t and can’t do the math to prove it).  There are many other code changes that could be made to move to a lower-carbon future, but they are boring, technical, and don’t grab headlines.

My plumbing math is a little rusty, but you get .433 PSI per foot of elevation difference (from the water level in the barrel to your toilet tank or faucet).  It sounds like you are working with single digits.  Flow is related to pressure and pipe diameter.  The lower flow rate in the toilet could simply be because the water has to go through a narrow tube or opening in the fill valve, although it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a spring-loaded valve somewhere in the toilet innards.  A small amount of back pressure wouldn’t be noticed at 60 psi but would really slow things down at 3-5.  Still sounds like a great backup plan.  In more austere parts of the world, a 5 gallon bucket full of water sitting next to the toilet with some sort of scoop is the standard way to flush a toilet.  It gets the job done and you just need to refill the bucket every few flushes.  

I will be bold and give myself 10 days assuming I could choose to be in Southern Appalachia where I grew up and during a decent time of year.  I spent a lot of time outside in my youth and could forage pretty well.  Having said that, I suspect I would spend the first couple days doing okay, then decline mentally over the next few days from hunger, bugs, general discomfort and boredom.  That would lead to me doing something stupid (like tripping or falling somehow) and receiving some other injury that would slowly kill me over my several remaining days.  Not particularly glamorous.   I think the location is crucial.  There was a great Survivorman episode where he was on a tropical beach and within a day was sitting by the fire eating crab and clams steamed in a coconut shell.  To prove a point, he decided to then go inland through the jungle to ‘look for help’ or something and within hours had been stung by some terrible insect, was overheating, and I think injured himself somehow.  Likely scripted to some degree, but was consistent with my experiences.  There are many environments where I would measure my survival time in hours rather than days.

We have set a 60% local vaccination rate as a threshold to start doing things that involve being indoors with strangers, like going to the gym or starting music classes with our toddler.  It’s a somewhat random number, but hopefully at that point the combination of vaccine and natural immunity should keep spread down pretty low.  Everyone’s situation is a little different.  My wife and I are both vaccinated but out toddler isn’t.  He’s low-risk but we are in a position to keep him pretty well protected from COVID, so that’s our goal.  If we weren’t worried about him we would do a little more, but not much.  Until community spread is very low or he gets vaccinated we are going to stay on the side of caution.  Relaxing for us has been wearing cloth or surgical masks instead of N95s to go shopping and having outdoor get togethers with a few vaccinated friends and family.  We won’t see the inside of a restaurant, theater, or bar for quite a while.

I won’t claim these are the best but they are what I use with the pros and cons as I see them.  Of note, I’m an Android user.  Most Android phones have a built-in microSD slot, and most mapping apps (including those below) will allow you to store offline maps on an SD.  A $10 SD can store a LOT of maps. Maps.me, probably my all around winner.  It’s free if I remember correctly and you can download their maps by region.  It’s not the most powerful but it’s really easy to use.  Their basemap (OpenStreetMap) has roads, waterways, railroads and a few other things but no topography.  I’ve used it in the US and several other countries and found it to be good enough.  I have the western US downloaded and would download maps of wherever I was traveling back when that was a thing. Gaia GPS:  Far more powerful but also harder to use.  Premium membership is $40/yr.  You can select from MANY basemaps (USGS, USFS, Satellite imagery, their own version of OpenStreet, and more) and download whatever area you select.  It can layer basemaps, but I’ve found my phone is too slow to do that effectively.  Because the maps are far more detailed, the file sizes are much bigger and you can’t quickly pull down a region as you can with maps.me.  I have the area around me downloaded, but what I really use it for is hiking and will pull relevant maps before each trip.  The premium membership gets you access to really nice trail maps of national parks which is what really sold me on it.  When you are using USGS or USFS basemaps you are subject to all their limitations Google Maps:  Google maps basemap is surprisingly good and seems way more accurate than federally produced maps.  I have been on some mountain bike logging road adventures using downloaded google maps, but I stopped using it since I got Gaia.  Still, it’s free, and you can download a good map of your area with very little effort. Takeaways:  Maps.Me makes it easy to download hundreds of miles of decent map with just a couple taps.  Hiking in the mountains requires more info but the cost is decreased usability with Gaia.  The NPS maps are however well worth the premium membership if you spend any time in national parks.   It will depend on what you need from an app.  From a prepping perspective, Maps.Me seems like it would cover the majority of needs reliably and with the least cost and effort.

I agree.  When I was a kid I spent an afternoon trying to start a friction fire.  I failed miserably (and I think hurt myself)  but have carried two means of starting a fire or lighting a stove on every camping trip since.

These would be my top tips, mostly related to traveling abroad in ‘developing’ countries. Most of my bad encounters have been with animals.  That has led me to principles: Don’t f@$ with monkeys Keep a couple smallish rocks in your pocket.  The action of throwing a rock at a dog is one that transcends language and culture.  I’ve found that dogs in developing countries are often more aggressive at first but also more easily cowed. Following animals, I’ve had more trouble with foreigners than locals.  That usually happens late at night in areas known to be party hubs for tourists.  Relatively easy to avoid. Beyond that, I usually keep a small amount of money in my pocket and the rest hidden.  If I get mugged I can give them $20-40 US equivalent and hopefully walk away.  I always use cheap phones anyway, but if I had a fancy phone at home I would get an ~$80 unlocked gsm phone for international travel.  In the modern era I download local maps of wherever I’m going (I use Maps.me). I always wear something with a zipper pocket.  When making big moves or going to an ATM I’m very focused and pay more attention to what’s around me.  I try to make it a direct trip.  From one hotel to the next with as little as possible between, or to the ATM and back, no side trips.  It can be a challenge but I think it’s important to know something about where you are going.  It makes being there more interesting and rewarding, but it also helps make sense of all the things you see around you.  Are there any elections or national holidays coming up that might be disruptive?  Reuters and BBC are good for news, and I think all countries have English language news sources if you really want a deep dive.  I’ve often felt safer in other countries because violence may be more prevalent but is less random than it is here.  The violent actors (outside of big cities at least) have an agenda and causing drama with a tourist would only cause problems for them.

I would suggest not getting lost in the big picture and focus on simple skills that will be vastly more useful than being able to set up an operating room with Doritos bags.  “First aid” is not definitive care.  I also think your time would be better spent practicing basic skills than trying to unwire a deep-seated response you have.  One of the reasons people who work in stressful situations train so much is so you can turn your brain off (to a degree) and do what you’ve practiced a thousand times.  Here are a few tasks that would get you through a lot of injuries: Wrap a roll of gauze around an arm or leg efficiently and without making a mess of it, then tie it back on itself. Splint a wrist, forearm, elbow, ankle, lower leg and maybe knee using a SAM splint, 1×4 board, and maybe sticks (actually very difficult to do well) Tie a sling and swath with a cravat and/or shemagh. Learn how to use a tourniquet (maybe not that likely to be needed but a popular skill and easy enough).  Use a popsicle stick to splint a finger All of the above are fairly easy but take some repetition to get right.  None of it involves any gore.  If you ever are in a situation to use those skills in real life, you might surprise yourself and just do what you’ve practiced without giving it much thought.   I just watched some youtube videos on how to apply a bandage with rolled gauze and most were pretty bad.  This one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V8dCfJp2M8 is a fairly standard way to do it.