Welcome Forager! Three quick thoughts to offer that have helped me: 1. It’s way too easy to get overwhelmed with all the possible needs as you look into the future. I worked gradually from “If the bananas totally hit the high speed fan and make a big mess, what am I likely to need in the next two hours?” up through “If the bananas totally hit the high speed fan and make a big mess, what am I likely to need in the next year?” Small victories along the way are encouraging. 2. Know yourself before purchasing “stuff”. I don’t buy the “next thing” on my “want list” until the last thing I bought is paid for, and I am VERY trained at using said thing the right way.  It’s just as hikermore and Redneck have pointed out, skills are what keep you alive and safe. Gear without skill is useless. And that is dangerous when the bananas hit the fan. If you love to rotate food to keep your pantry fresh, canned and glass jar preserved food will probably be your thing. Me, I’m not a “rotator”, and thus 20 year shelf life food and water make more sense. Planning will help keep preparedness a passion and fun, instead of drudgery. 3. Test EVERYTHING and look ahead ALWAYS. Store food that you know you can eat and like and be nourished by. Living off grape flavored soft drinks for three weeks does not work, no matter how much you like grape flavored soft drinks. Stuff (and pets) you can easily lift now may be way too heavy to handle in 5 – 10 years. I moved from 20 liter water storage containers last year to a 10 liter version of the same container because they are WAY EASIER for me heave into the cars when the county sheriff just told us to beat feet out of here because wild fire threatens our home. And finally, let me offer that you have come to the right place. This site is FULL of good information, all put in place by GREAT people. I learned LOTS by just reading, and gained lots of encouragement along the way.

Good Evening pnwsarah, Thank you for your kind words! Major thanks to the first responders of the time from me also. They got us through all the confusion, traffic, and bridge failures to get us where we needed to be to do our job and thus restore communications.

Good Evening Steve. I got started in preparedness as a condition of employment at the beginning of my career (1978). In those days, working for one of the big national / regional phone companies meant always holding your place of residence ready to go on its own for 10 days with no outside support. Big natural (or man made) disasters meant we worked until communications was restored. Most employees had standing arrangements with extended family, neighbors, or friends to “watch out for each other” for as long as it took until disaster recovery was complete. When the Loma Prieta earthquake hit the San Francisco bay area in October of 1989, it was just under 92 hours before I got to sleep in my own bed again. But groups of neighbors, family, and coworkers banded together to keep everything well at home during that whole time. It was also a HUGE learning experience for which preparations worked and which did not work. Advanced preparation gave us the tools, and GREAT PEOPLE made it work.

Just finished reading through this thread. There is SERIOUSLY EXCELLENT stuff here. Thank you one and all. Everyone is different, and thus I think “what works” will manifest itself a bit differently for each person. Let me toss out two ideas I picked up from a psychologist I worked with for a while. First, let feelings be indicators, not dictators. And last, taking care of your own wellbeing will often seem less urgent than taking care of those around us. But taking care of ourselves is no less important than taking care of those around us. Like lots of other folks here, I’m convinced community is vital, particularly in times like these. And if preparing “adequately” seems overwhelming, let me encourage you to try just doing one small thing to be more prepared every day, or even just four days a week. It has kept me from being “snowed under” and frozen in discouragement more than a few times over the years.

Thank you Cia. And I will try to reply sooner next time! I was taking my yearly “week with no internet” last week to stay “centered”. Be safe out there.

Good evening Eric, First, no offense taken! There is nothing wrong with being passionate about your beliefs, and it appears that you and I agree on more than a few things. Second, my apologies for getting back to you after so long. I just finished my yearly “week with no internet” to stay centered. Third, I backed off earlier and suggested the moderator as the answers we all wonder about on this issue (to my way of thinking) would go into talking about subject matter that is not allowed by the rules of this forum. And my favorite thing about The Prepared is that it isn’t a “debate forum”. There are SCADS of places to do that. Be safe out there.

I will keep my own counsel, thank you. Maybe you want to take this up with the moderator. For me, the matter is closed.

Sad, but true. Some shooters don’t care if they survive or not. It’s similar to the suicide attackers we see in the middle eastern conflicts. But a “hard target” makes it easier to eliminate the threat they pose before lives are lost. Long term statistics show hard targets have fewer lives lost over time. 

Really good points on this thread, involving HUGE consequences for all involved. Let me say up front that I have no military / law enforcement training, but I do carry concealed under permit in my home county. And I have no conclusive answers, just some thoughts. It is a different time and culture in this country than it was. When I was in high school, we were never concerned with this kind of thing occurring in our (then) small agricultural town because half the students in school had a rifle or shotgun locked down in their pickups / cars in the school parking lot so they could go dove or pheasant hunting before or after school. And we routinely shot squirrels as a squirrels tunneling holes in the side of dikes and irrigation canals could set off flooding that could quickly spread into being deadly for humans, and cost millions in crop / property losses. Moral of story, it was our miniature version of the “Mutually Assured Destruction” doctrine. Nobody was going to start anything because they knew that if they did, the odds were extremely small that they would make it off the campus alive. It seems to me that making the “Mutually Assured Destruction” principal work in favor of protecting the innocent is wise. As noted in earlier comments, Israel (among other countries) have already done so and it is effective. Another earlier comment I would echo is this. If you are competent with firearms and choose to take action to protect the innocent, be VERY good at thinking clearly under stress, and at staying aware of what is going on around you. I have read way too many “after event” reports from way too many countries about folks being taken out by “misdirected friendly fire” because someone did not drop their firearm fast enough, sometimes because they did not hear commands given them due to being exposed to muzzle blast with no hearing protection. I would encourage folks to think through (in advance) what they would do if confronted with an attack like this. Trying to think with your heartbeat at 130 and irregular is a really good way to end up dead. I do not consider myself highly trained by any means. But I have talked to dozens of military combat vets, law enforcement types, phycologists, etc. who all tell me the same thing. When a huge threat like this happens, we all think we will rise to the greatest level of our knowledge and abilities. But the fact is that when the huge threat happens, we will only rise to the level of our training. No matter how noble our motives and desires are, over-estimating our abilities will only result in more destruction. Think through what you would want to do in advance, and train for that. And in that line of thought, take time to sort out the truth from the lies that surround an event like this terrible shooting. A lot of what’s being portrayed as truth in this situation is total lies that would not survive examination by a high school level logic student. Be safe out there.

Good Evening Robert, My apologies for the typos in the last post. Turning me loose with a keyboard at the end of a 12 hour day is not a good idea. On your inquiry about talking with the neighbors on prepping, it happened pretty easily by circumstance. I was introduced to folks through the Ham radio realm and working with CERT when we moved here. There are lots of retired military folks in our area, so being prepared is in their nature. One of our “next door close” neighbors spent his whole career working for one of the “national flag carrier” airlines in Europe. His job was making sure said airline had everyone and everything ready to go in case the airline had to “turn into a giant aid and rescue machine” in the wake of some large disaster event. And this is an area where the “prepper” magazines sell more copies than fashion magazines do on the magazine racks in the grocery stores. Being prepared is a popular thing in our area. Thank you for your interest! Take care of each other.

Good Evening Robert, Happy Soul here from “out in the boonies” Nevada, USA. We are kind of “on the edge” of civilization here, so our preparations are a mix of “town” and “country”. For us, it’s a cell phone and sat. phone both, and keeping everything to where we can go 10 days on our own with no outside support. The supply chain that keeps us going comes from as far away as Sacramento, CA. Las Vegas, NV. and Salt Lake City, UT. And that means our supplies are subject to 8,000 foot mountain pass snows, and the formidable heat and cold of crossing the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Carrying (and training with) sidearms is routine. It is not that far out in the desert from here that one finds animals that consider we humans to be edible. But then again, if you’re buzzing down the highway on the way home and find yourself in the middle of an Elk migration, and you really have to do is put the windows up to keep said Elk out of the groceries in back, and keep moving – slowly. LOTS of things are different from my early days of prepping in San Mateo, California: First, is water. Without no water, the winds, dry air, and high elevation up here will kill you in 72 hours easily. Planning and lots of back up plans on water are vital up here. we have Puravai bottles everywhere, as it can also be used for wound irrigation as it’s (basically) bacteria free. We also maintain the cars religiously. There are a few spots where you do NOT want to be stuck with a dead car. And all the cars are full of enough stuff to hold you for a week in hot or cold. Search crews can’t always launch instantly here because of weather. Weather is big up here. A high temperature of 90 degrees during the day and 15 to 20 degrees that night is not unheard of. The other biggie is snow in the winter. For us, it’s usually measured in inches rather than feet. But we had to learn LOTS about ice driving when we moved here. Setting aside potential threats from proximity to military targets, the biggest thing we prepare for here is fire. Just like the big forest wildfires of the three Pacific Coast states moving in the trees of the forest, we have fire move just as quickly through the scrub brush of our deserts. We don’t have all the trees, but fire is quite happy to move just as quickly through all the dead scrub and bushes (that are full of oils) that burn like mad. That and wind can make things very dangerous very quickly. Keep those Division of Forestry cameras bookmarked on your computer. And lastly, be ready to live without technology out here. ATM machines are not always very good at spitting up the cash you requested when it was 11 degrees last night. And be ready to pay cash for stuff as the phone company microwave that carries data to Los Angeles to verify your debit card does not always work so good when the microwave antennas are frozen under a four inch layer of ice 20 miles from nowhere. As usual though, the people are what makes it all worth it. we are blessed with SERIOULY GREAT neighbors and friends around us. Prepping is as much community with good people as it is about survival. Be safe out there.

Good Evening Jay. We use 2 1/2 pound (of powder) ABC extinguishers from Ansul. These are old critters that were purchased before Ansul associated with Sentry. At least they have no “Sentry” markings on them. I have done no research on Ansul / Sentry joining forces. But they did the job when the time came for us. Ansul extinguishers have not failed me yet in the 8 to 10 times I pulled the pin and squeezed the handles.

We’re subscribers to the theroy of multiple small fire extinguishers in the cars instead of one big one. Trying to be effective with a 50 pound fire bottle can get hard if you have an injury from being involved in a car accident. Having several smaller units paid off for us a few years back in stomping out a dry grass / vegetation fire that started as a result of an automobile accident we came up on right after the collision happened. The only reason the fire didn’t get large is because I could hand 4 small fire extinguishers off to people so we could form a “mass attack” on the fire from different positions. By the time we emptied the extinguishers, the first fire truck was on scene and unfurling “attack line” hoses to finish up the flames and start cooling the engines of the vehicles involved. Preparedness paid off! And no major injuries to anyone. What a deal!

Good Evening NewPrepper, I applaud you taking time to think through what your needs and priorities will be when the next big emergency event comes. Let me offer a perspective on your question of keeping your cell phone charged up. I spent 40 years working inside one of the “biggie” telephone companies, doing their network electronics, fiber optics, and microwave goodies. One caveat first. I retired a bit over three years ago, and in telecom, two-year-old information is “ancient”. Working the job however, gave me the chance to talk with hundreds of other telecom technicians all over the US and Canada. There are a few principles that apply nation wide.  Whatever comes up the next time the bananas hit the fan, you will be looking at either a “bug in” or a “bug out” scenario. I’m a great fan of the “bug in unless forced out” school of thought.  But either way, being able to communicate is HUGE to your morale, your ability to protect yourself and your loved ones, and being able to help yourself and those around you. In a “bug in” event, if the event is bad enough that is has knocked phone voice service off-line, virtually all phone companies prioritize bring cell service back on line first, before land lines. And, that may not take as long as you think. Even if cell phone antennas / buildings have been destroyed, cell service is routinely restored by rolling in trucks called COW’s (Cell on wheels), or COLT’s (Cell on light trucks). Once in place, they simply crank up (telescoping) antennas, spin up on board generators, run diagnostics, and start hauling cell traffic, usually in under an hour. And text messages will usually move even when voice traffic will not because of overloading. When you call 911, land lines will generally show the emergency dispatcher the street address you are calling from. when you call 911 from a cell phone, the emergency dispatcher will see a map showing where you cell phone is, but the accuracy of that location could be anywhere from within a meter to within 300 to 400 meters depending on the area you are in and whether or not all the cell towers around you are in service. Lots of areas have “smart 911” programs where you can voluntarily register your home address to be matched with your cell phone in emergency databases. If you do that, generally when you call 911, the emergency dispatcher will see both a map of where your cell phone is located, AND a graphic that shows the home address that you voluntarily registered. That can be a VERY good thing if you can’t talk because you’re choking on something and live in a large apartment building. In a “bug out” event, a charged cell phone can be “pinged” for its location by authorities. Emergency dispatchers, say, working a large wildfire, can simply take an electronic stylus to an electronic map of the fire on their screens, draw a circle around the fire area, and whatever distance they like outside the fire perimeter, say 10 miles, and punch a button. A few seconds later, every cell phone within 10 miles of the fire area gets a warning message to evacuate. And rescuers can find you WAY EASIER if your cell phone is on, as it is chirping its location to all cell towers within range of the phone. And that chirping is BIG to rescuers, because it also gives them a pretty decent estimate of how many locations in the fire area have people there. So, enough “information overload”. The point is simply that, for all the reasons above, I’m a big advocate of having a cell handy all the time, and of having (redundant) ways to keep the thing charged all the time. Panels, car chargers, wall outlet chargers, they’re all good. Heck, I just bought a lounge chair / recliner that has a USB jack on the side of the chair without even realizing it until they delivered the chair! Also, keep track of how old your cell phones battery is, and get it replaced before it gets so old it won’t hold a charge. You do NOT want a cell phone dying on you 20 minutes after you took it off the charger. Thanks for reading!

Alisa, you are so right! These photographs are classic evidence for the old adage in the preparedness community: “Get your beans and your bullets ready first”. We live around 60 minutes out from two mountain passes that top out just above 8,000 feet in elevation. When recent snows shut down the only two routes through said mountains for 140 miles north and south, it only took 60 to 70 hours for supermarkets to be reduced to about 10% of their normal stock. One state trooper told me the two highways through said mountain passes normally carry around 4.5 million dollars AN HOUR in cargo. Most people who live in large cities I talk to have no concept of how dependent they are on commercial truck and rail transport. It pays to be prepared to take care of yourself and your loved ones. And it pays to have a strong, well-developed community of neighbors and friends around you, so you can help those who are not prepared when trouble hits, while minimizing risk to yourself and your allies in times in trouble. Truckers call the lane lines the life lines of the USA for good reason.

Water, sealed up for long term storage, water. You can go a week or two with no food if you have to. But 3 days with no water will kill darn near anybody. Keep that water supply “rotated up” and ready to go.

I’m with everybody else on this. If your water storage is going onto a concrete slab supported floor, and you have something to elevate your storage a bit, you should be fine, particularly in a garage as slabs there are engineered to support your car.

Good Evening, I’ve have no experience with coolers like the one you mention for water storage. But there are some options in the 1 gallon range. This site has some wonderful information on water storage. Simply put “water brick” in the search box on the upper right of the screen for information on 1 gallon stackable containers. You are wise to recognize the question of lifting ability in storing water. As with all things preparedness, space, money, and your energy level are all considerations. If you are not already aware of them, let me offer a couple of possibilities in the 1 gallon and under range. Blue Can water sells water in 12 ounce (I think) soft drink size cans that is good for YEARS without doing any rotating, and the cans will fit in lots of small storage places in your house and car. But cost is a factor. I’ve also had good luck with Puravai water, which sells water in 1 liter bottles and is also good for YEARS of shelf life. But again, cost is a factor. But if you factor in that these two sources come in their own containers, there is no need to buy your own containers, no need to buy bleach, etc. to clean containers regularly, and no need to carry around lots of water weight to maintain rotation, these two might be a good option for you. And there are folks on this forum with WAY MORE experience in these matters than I have. These are just the two sources I use. There are LOTS of options for water, containers, filters, reverse osmosis, etc. on the market. For our household, I use the two sources mentioned above for long term storage drinking water storage, and use rotated (reverse osmosis) water for cooking, cleaning, hand washing, etc. Our “rotated” water supplies are in 10 liter and 20 liter Scepter water jugs, also shown elsewhere on this site. But a 20 liter jug full of water is roughly 45 pounds. Let me encourage you also to consider the structural capabilities of your water storage area in making your plans for water storage. There are 55 gallon drums out there made specifically for water storage, which can be both filled and drained by hand pumps a bit at a time so you have no water lifting to do as you use the water. But if I remember correctly, water is 7 to 8 pounds per gallon. Not all homes have floors that are built to take 400 pounds dropped on them in a couple of square feet of floor space. Good Hunting!

Good Evening Everyone, A couple of things to add after what I posted at the end of Jan 2022 about asking a first responder to check you out before you leave the scene of an emergency to make sure you’re over the adrenaline rush BEFORE you try to make decisions again. My cronies off in California tell me a (thankfully) small minority of EMT / ambulance units are looking for any excuse to charge anyone for anything, trying to balance their budgets. Example, you stop to help clean up an auto accident, a medic asks if you want a water bottle, you accept it, and you get a $80 “field services” bill in the mail a month later. It may pay to be careful who you ask to evaluate you. Also, a recent quote from an E.R. physician friend of mine: “When you first arrive at the emergency, DON”T just do something. Observe, evaluate, banish impulsiveness, and take action. When the emergency is dealt with, DON’T do something, just sit there.” Be safe out there.

Good Evening jgrif, Wanted to chime in on keeping drinkable water in the Scepter water jugs. The information already posted by Redneck and Olly Wright tracks exactly with what I’ve found to work with the Scepter jugs. Light and air are indeed the enemy when it comes to storage. I rotate both 10 liter and 20 liter Scepter jugs, and use Dawn as noted in the other posts here. As an added thought, your wife’s desire for some form of filtration might be something that can work to both her advantage and yours.  Because of really hard water where I live, we put in a fancy, (seven stage) reverse osmosis water unit at our home. The Scepter jugs stay in our garage, and get filled (via a Naglene pitcher) with water from the R.O. unit. Said R.O. units are expensive, but against what you may be paying for filters, (or filtered / bottled water), the R.O. unit may pay itself off over time, particularly if you do the yearly maintenance on the R.O. unit yourself. And R.O. water brings the risk of bad stuff growing in your stored water WAY down. I store R.O. water for 5 months in sealed Scepter jugs and have had no contamination issues in the five years I’ve been rotating. And the last 5 month old sample I had a lab check came back WAY cleaner than the stuff that comes out of our taps. And for you, the only time you have to lift that 20 liter (5 gallon) jug is to dump the old water and clean the jug. I dump that water on our yard trees because of our high desert environment. But it’s very drinkable at that point. I suspect also that your wife will be happier if you can do this as R.O. water tastes really good (at least to us). Let me encourage you also to consider buying at least one 10 liter (2-1/2 gallon) Scepter jug to use in “emergency” times when you are actually living off your stored water. A full five gallon jug is in the neighborhood of 40 to 45 pounds. That can be difficult to control and pour accurately, particularly if you are in the post 50th birthday crowd. Pouring half the contents of Scepter’s 20 liter jog into a 10 liter jug and then using that 10 liter jug to fill water bottles / glasses / pet water bowls, etc. without spilling any water is BUNCHES easier, at least for me. And keep in mind please that some states limit how many gallons of liquid you can move in your vehicle before you need a special class of drivers license to carry said liquid in your vehicle. A county sheriff friend of mine recently said he had issued a verbal warning to guy he pulled over because the guy had 150 gallons of (unsecured) water in containers in the back of his SUV. In a freeway speed crash, it would only take one of these full jugs to the back of your head to kill. The good news is there are racks manufactured specifically to secure the Scepter jugs available from two or three sources. Thanks for reading my two cents worth!