lets discuss preps for disasters

[Soundguy]

maybe because people in the city don't know how to cook from scratch or what to do with a generator?

concrete jungle may be harder to covertly scrounge in. IE.. harder to find a junkyard to dig for parts un noticed, vs setting out on the roadside!

 

[GreenYellow]

I haven't actually tried. It is a big double oven that pulls more like 6,000 watt, but unless the power went off right before Christmas dinner we wouldn't need both ovens anyway. The 50 gallons electric water heater is probably a bigger concern. There are also lights to factor in.

Always keeping me laughing 4570man. Water heater is only 4,500 watts.
Water heater, double oven, and dryer ALL at full power is ~ 14,000 watts.

 

[Jstpssng]

concrete jungle may be harder to covertly scrounge in. IE.. harder to find a junkyard to dig for parts un noticed, vs setting out on the roadside!

Plus the author of the letter had flown in for a week and probably wasn't familiar with the area. His account shows how quickly strangers can start pulling together.

I had little sympathy for his comments on the helicopters though... it may seem easy to land one but under those conditions there were too many variables.

Plus the armed guards which he suggested = less payload for food and water...

 

[Jstpssng]

concrete jungle may be harder to covertly scrounge in. IE.. harder to find a junkyard to dig for parts un noticed, vs setting out on the roadside!

Plus the author of the letter had flown in for a week and probably wasn't familiar with the area. His account shows how quickly strangers can start pulling together.

I had little sympathy for his comments on the helicopters though... it may seem easy to land one but under those conditions there were too many variables.

Plus the armed guards which he suggested = less payload for food and water...

 

[GPintheMitten]

What I really noticed was the beginning of the letter; where he basically blames everyone else for not getting the people out. It's everyone's own responsibility to get them selves out. Just cause there's an event, he expected someone (the city I guess) to come find everyone and protect them?

If all you have are your feet, it is hard to get out, especially if you have young children or are elderly or something less than full physical capacity. The city leaders let the people down. They should have and could have used school buses and any city buses to evacuate people that had no viable option. Then again state and feds took way too long to help.

 

[dmccarty]

...

One of my favorite [fiction] books is "Lucifer's Hammer" an old comet-strike story by one of my favorite authors- Larry Niven, and in it, there are a lot of useful real world tips given by the way- one of the characters is an old relatively frail scientist, who stocks a bunch of rally useful "how-to" books and uses them to trade his way into a camp where otherwise he might not've.

There was a spate of end of the world books back in the 70's/80's. Seems like Niven and Pournelle had a couple and Stephen King had a least one. Then there is Alas, Babylon which is a classic I need to reread. All of them discuss having to deal with the hordes roaming from the cities...

I well remember the part of scientiest packing/protecting his books.

Good books to have on hand are the Fire Fox collection, the USDA canning guides, books on emergency medicine, survival, gardening, farming, etc. The wife's family has some animal husbandry books from the 60+ years ago that are outdated for today, but would be worth their weight in gold if one was out of power and not able to get modern animal medication. A TBNer recommended years ago some pocket references that I bought. They are small, and the print is smaller so you need a magnifying glass to read some of the tables but the books are great resources.

Later,
Dan

 

[paulharvey]

I've got one for the mid plus term, that no one had mentioned; Maps, good maps. You can't Google it, and after major event there may be no signs left. In a true SHTF, 3rd degree type incident, knowing that it's 2 miles thru the woods due east or 15 miles by county road would be useful. Heck, a Google Earth shot covering your 6 mile radius could be worth it's wait in gold; even if it's for finding homes to loot (if that's the path you choose to travel).

 

[Soundguy]

i think i'll grab the AAA large format usa map outta mine or the wifes truck for that. or at least a us fold map.

ont he book maps.. might just tear out the couple pages showing your state or a neighboring state maybee, unless you were planning on a road trip.

 

[dmccarty]

I've got one for the mid plus term, that no one had mentioned; Maps, good maps. You can't Google it, and after major event there may be no signs left. In a true SHTF, 3rd degree type incident, knowing that it's 2 miles thru the woods due east or 15 miles by county road would be useful. Heck, a Google Earth shot covering your 6 mile radius could be worth it's wait in gold; even if it's for finding homes to loot (if that's the path you choose to travel).

True. We always travel with an atlas that covers the area we travel to/from home. In general traffic backups, it is quicker to get out the paper map and look at alternatives than try to use the small phone display. We always travel with a fair amount of food and water. I have been stuck on the side of the road for four hours once with little water and I won't go through that again...

If the SHTF situation is away from home, one really should be traveling in the woods. Everyone else will be on the roads and that will be were the rapes, robberies and murders occur. Easy pickings.

A map for our area would be good to have but I already know the area.

I figure our neighborhood would have to join up as a group to get things done. A great deal will depend on the county sheriff. He is an elected official and has some pretty broad powers. The sheriff will really influence the mayhem that would be occurring the rural NC counties. The city counties will just be chaos and really out of control.

Later,
Dan

 

[dmccarty]

i think i'll grab the AAA large format usa map outta mine or the wifes truck for that. or at least a us fold map.

ont he book maps.. might just tear out the couple pages showing your state or a neighboring state maybee, unless you were planning on a road trip.

We buy this companies state atlases because it is so detailed. Florida Atlas & Gazetteer (Delorme Atlas & Gazetteer): Delorme Publishing: 9780899333991: Amazon.com: Books We also have a big Rand McNalley atlas as well. Since most of our travel is from NC to FLA we keep the atlas from each state in the car along with the Rand McNalley.

Later,
Dan

 

[Soundguy]

agreed on the road.

piled up cars and tempers and wants and needs...

 

[Garandman]

concrete jungle may be harder to covertly scrounge in. IE.. harder to find a junkyard to dig for parts un noticed, vs setting out on the roadside!

:laughing: Do you even city? Cities have their problems, but they also have a lot of resources, like hospitals. Every person wounded in the Boston Marathon bombing was in a hospital within 25 minutes.

But you go scrounge in a junkyard, and I'll take Conley Container Terminal. Roughly 1,200 containers at any given time. Surely in 600 tractor trailer loads of goods I can find something useful.

This is a small portion of some of the warehouse district, which happens to be nearby where we live. I've stocked up on booze as trade bait.

All that said, I still worry most about water and medical supplies, first.

 

[riptides]

On maps and roads,

I tended to avoid major roads during bad times, and if GPS isn't working, well your going to need a compass, or some other point of reference like the North Star or the Sun.

I recall leaving Washington in a hurry one time, I travelled down one-way streets the wrong way just to GTFO.

 

[Soundguy]

:laughing: Do you even city? Cities have their problems, but they also have a lot of resources, like hospitals. Every person wounded in the Boston Marathon bombing was in a hospital within 25 minutes.

.

using your logic, every large city inthe US has a container port and food warehouse storage capable of supporting a sourounding multi state region.

sorry... wrong.

PS.. I'm more rural, and i have a hospital 8m from my house. if I drive inthe oposite direction, i can be at the next hospital up the road in about 20 minutes. Every sunday morning i drive to breakfast with friends.. the ihop is across the street from one of the 2 hospitals in the small city.. takes me no more than 20minutes to drive.

If I instead go towards that one 8m away and PASS it.. then I can be at the next one in an even MORE rural area in about another 10 minutes!

Hospitals are not hard to find.. nor are emergency walk in clinics.

On the other hand.. I'd have to drive about 3 hours to find something even remotely similar to that container yard you seem to think is in every city...

every location in the us is not the same as every other location in the us.

In general.. the higher the population density.. the more chances for problems during catastrophic break downs in civilization.

Want to kill a million people in new york? easy... bomb a few blocks. Want to kill a million people in montana? you have to bomb the ENTIRE state practically ( 1.02m per 2014 data ). NYC is 8.5m per 2014 data.

montana is 147,164 sq miles

NYC is 469 sm.

Population density.

drop a 1Kt bomb in NYC and you will have +body count guaranteed, no matter where you drop it.

drop a iKt bomb in montana and you may only blow up grass!

When utilities stop, roads get blocked, quarantines happen, ... and no help from the govt is coming within the normal few hour to few day periods... I want to be far and away from people.. not cooped up with 8.49 million of my not so best friends ...

 

[Soundguy]

On maps and roads,

I tended to avoid major roads during bad times, and if GPS isn't working, well your going to need a compass, or some other point of reference like the North Star or the Sun.

I recall leaving Washington in a hurry one time, I travelled down one-way streets the wrong way just to GTFO.

I remember in ? 2001 my cousin ( now deceased ) was driving for a co hauling cars by semi load to new york.. blizzard hit so bad that the road was closed and trucks froze and snowed in on the road. ( interstate ). nothing on that road for a couple days.

I can also remember during 04/05 florida hurricanes it was so bad in central florida, many roads were unpassable. flooding in the center of the city north of me was 3' and 4 ' in intersections.

I had to drive to hammond lousiana immediatly after that and the 18m bridge on 10 had no exits open and diesel was hard to find. roads were all buckled. I drove into houston, then up to lampassas, finally stopped at 2am and had to wait till morning because finally depleted fuel in the truck, the transfer tank, and the 25 emergency gallons I was toting... parked between 2 stations, and one of them got fuel the next morning.

As much as many sheeple want to believe that uncle sugar has everything under control and nothing bad happens in gloryland.. those of us that have been thru it know better.

People freeze in big cities when radiant heat goes out in lower economy appt buildings during the winter.. in the same places people die during the summer.

and this isn't a 3rd world country!

 

[RSKY]

I may have missed it but nobody seems to have mentioned the one thing you must have in a one month emergency. That is CASH. We pay for everything with credit cards. Never use cash. During the Ice Storm of 2009 there was no power to anything for a week or so. If you could find something to buy you had to have cash. I ended up borrowing five gallons of gas from a neighbor to drive sixty miles to fill all our gas cans. Also found a bank to get cash. Even though there was a station or two running on generators they didn't have ability to take cards. We now keep a stash in a lockbox in our house sufficient to provide basics for a couple months. RSKY

 

[Soundguy]

I may have missed it but nobody seems to have mentioned the one thing you must have in a one month emergency. That is CASH. We pay for everything with credit cards. Never use cash. During the Ice Storm of 2009 there was no power to anything for a week or so. If you could find something to buy you had to have cash. I ended up borrowing five gallons of gas from a neighbor to drive sixty miles to fill all our gas cans. Also found a bank to get cash. Even though there was a station or two running on generators they didn't have ability to take cards. We now keep a stash in a lockbox in our house sufficient to provide basics for a couple months. RSKY

I think Paulharvey mentioned it in post 2, sentence 2, and a couple other times, but it's still a good point to bring up.

If power is down or phone lines / internet is down.. checks and credit / debit won't work, and even assistance programs that use aid cards won't work... thus any transactions will be cash.

In places with limited power but no infra structure, atm's may run out in a day. That happened here in 04/05. Places that had power on the outskirts, atm's cleaned out fast. Small bills are good too.. as someone else pointed out.. if all you have are 5-10-20's.. then small items will cost 5...

 

[Sprinklerman]

And there is a hurricane heading for the east coast right now . Time to get ready

 

[Garycw]

On maps and roads, I tended to avoid major roads during bad times, and if GPS isn't working, well your going to need a compass, or some other point of reference like the North Star or the Sun. I recall leaving Washington in a hurry one time, I travelled down one-way streets the wrong way just to GTFO.

we're not always in our preferred bug in location and have mapped out alternate routes avoiding major highway. One of the challenges was we need to cross two major rivers.

 

[KiotiKowboy]

What I really noticed was the beginning of the letter; where he basically blames everyone else for not getting the people out. It's everyone's own responsibility to get them selves out. Just cause there's an event, he expected someone (the city I guess) to come find everyone and protect them?

The city was a BIG help - in disarming everyone and leaving them to be preyed upon by looters and thugs.