I've done three things for emergency preparedness that are actually quite fun and I'd recommend to anyone:
1) Become a certified emergency medical responder. It's a one semester course you can take at your local community college. It's the first step to becoming an EMT if you want to keep going. You learn things including CPR, wound management, dealing with broken bones, heart attacks, car accidents, transporting patients, even emergency childbirth. I enjoyed the class immensely. Now I'm a lot less afraid of medical disasters because I have a plan and an impressive first aid kit, and I know how to use it.
2. Become an amature radio operator. As a technologist, it's fun to get in touch with my roots using older technology. I've been working on being able to operate using battery and solar panels, which has been a blast to learn about and experiment with. I can also operate portably while camping, bouncing waves off the atmosphere and back either towards the horizon to talk thousands of miles away, or straight up towards space and reflecting off the atmosphere back down to talk within a 300 mile range (this is called NVIS). Learning and practicing these skills is awesome fun.
3. Camping, and having the food water and equipment in hand to camp for several days. We have a few 7 gallon water tanks we use for camping which we keep full, in addition to our always evolving camping supplies. We take frequent camping trips.
Doing these things is educational, challenging, enriching and fun! I encourage everyone to do it.
It's also worth noting that you can get a ham radio for $40 that's higher power and will work at longer range than the FRS/GMRS radios. The FCC limits FRS radios to half a watt, and ham radios don't have that limit.
> Since the amount needed is directly proportional to how much you currently make, it makes relatively little difference if your household brings in $70k or $140k a year.
I have to take issue with this. If your salary doubles, your needs do not double along with it. $100K is right around the 80th percentile of US household income. That means 80% of households (~250 million people) in the US are living on less than that. Maybe you can too, despite your paycheck being higher. And if your household's take-home pay suddenly increases from $70k to $140k, see if you can fight the urge to follow that increase with your spending habits. Keep the old car, pay off your debts, and save for a rainy day (layoff, medical emergency, etc).
It absolutely baffles me that prevailing financial habits in the US seem to include spending as much money as possible.
The term is "Lifestyle Inflation". It's seductive.
Now you don't have to slum it in an economy class seat. You're now able to afford a real laptop. You can treat yourself to...
Near enough everyone does it. If you've ever thought "I'm going to buy the brand-name [pasta|batteries|phone|insurance]" you're susceptible too.
The thing is, it's not much fun living as though you were poor - cutting coupons, spending time working out which vegetable gives you the most nutrition per Kg, scrimping and saving. So for every extra $£€ you make, you can give yourself a short-term dopamine hit at the expense of long-term planning.
It's one of the reasons why, in the UK, we're moving to mandatory pension provision. Unless you take action, a fixed percentage of your wage will be placed into a pension scheme. As your wage rises, so will your long term savings.
The subsequent paragraphs address that, I think. It does not have to be this way, but the reality is that most people spend as much as they earn. You know, anecdotally, I talked to people in the Bay Area who claim that they couldn't really save any money even if they wanted to, because they were only making $120k a year. But I don't think it's a US-only phenomenon; it certainly happens in Europe, too.
I suspect it comes down to a belief that a raise entitles you to a better life, right now: so you go out and buy more expensive groceries, get a nicer car, etc. I was actually raised in a fairly poor family and it's a habit I picked up very early on; took me a fair amount of work to overcome this.
> It absolutely baffles me that prevailing financial habits in the US seem to include spending as much money as possible.
If you're an average American who works 50h a week, 50 weeks out of the year, wouldn't you want to feel compensated for that? And not in green paper IOUs but in goods and services?
Beyond having a rainy day fund and moderate retirement fund I don't really see the point in saving. You can't take it with you...
I am earning roughly triple what I earned 16 years ago and I'm living more comfortably but I'm just comfortable. I'm not living extravagantly by American middle-class standards. I drive an 11 year old, paid off vehicle. I live in a middle-class neighborhood, 15 miles outside of the city.
I'm living comfortably on money that I would have killed to make back then.
I went from an apartment to a house. Higher utilities. A couple of credit cards with modest balances. I had children. I started paying for health and life insurance. Contributions to a retirement account.
It happens gradually and it's easy to not notice, until you reflect on long term changes.
If my income tripled again, instantly, it would be a game changer. With my current standard of living, I could retire by 50. If it triples again but over the next 16 years, it would likely be a different story.
The closest it gets is "Make friends with neighbors", but plenty more is possible. I did see the comment that many will "pray for the government to bail us out", but that leaves out the people who will volunteer to be part of the NGOs to help others, and suggests that we, the people, have nothing to do with the actions of the government.
It's very detailed on what you can buy, but doesn't give any advice on figuring out which are real worries, and which are movie scenarios. Consider "Respiratory and environmental protection", where "If you worry about releases from chemical plants or overturned ammonia tankers, 3M multi gas cartridges ($17) and half facepieces ($12) offer robust protection when sized and fitted properly. In such an event, it would be also important to develop a plan for sealing your home".
Why not recommend visiting the Local Emergency Planning Committee to learn about any dangerous chemicals in your area? That would give an idea of which chemical plants are nearby, and a better idea of how to respond. It may be more likely that there's a fertilizer plant nearby (as residents in Waco discovered in 2013) or gas pipeline (as residents in Adair County, KY discovered in 2105, and residents near Carlsbad, N.M. discovered in 2000) and you need to worry about explosion more than gas problems.
In any case, I've now looked through a few dozen news reports of chemical plant problems, and found no example where gas masks, etc. would be useful.
On the other hand, and using the recent news report about Flint as an example, it seems that occasional water and air testing for long-term, low-grade poisons would more useful and cost effective than worrying about short-term, acute events.
Personally, I would prefer to see things structured around known problems - what does one need should there be a heavy metals spill upstream of you, like what happened at the Animas River? How much money would you need in order to be able to move, and no one wants to buy your property because the well water on the land is now toxic? How should you prepare for an oil pipeline spill in your backyard, as the residents of Mayflower, AR (and many others) have had?
When would it be better to put the money into applying more pressure on the EPA and FEMA, for more oversight and more funding for oversight, than to assume that individual preparedness is the right solution?
BTW, as it stands, its discussion about what to do in case of hurricanes is nearly non-existent, mostly saying "If you own a house, especially in a region prone to earthquakes or tropical storms, you should probably have a sledgehammer, a chainsaw (with a charged battery or some fuel at hand), bolt cutters, and a pry bar." Chainsaws after Hurricane Andrew were worth their weight in gold - as part of the cleanup process. But if we're talking planning, then window storm shutters are also important, as is tree trimming before the season starts.
What it should really do is point to more complete resources, like http://www.ready.gov/hurricanes or http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/prepare/ready.php . Viewing the latter, I see it includes things like "Make sure schools and daycares have School Emergency Plans" and "Pet owners should have plans to care for their animals" which should also be part of any plan.
Hm, I sort of suspect that you skipped much of the first part of the guide, which talks about identifying the relevant risks, including - say - studying flood maps, identifying nearby industries, walking around the home to spot fire hazards, etc? And talks a lot about not obsessing about unlikely issues, when your greatest worries may be your own financial security or a house fire. It specifically instructs people to map out plausible risks and write response plans before they buy a single thing listed in part II.
The whole purpose of part II is to go over some cost-effective purchases iff you have a robust basis to prioritize a particular threat and a rough idea of how you want to solve it. So yeah, for example, the mention of respirators has to be interpreted in that context; very few people can meaningfully benefit from a respirator.
There are also mentions of being able to board up windows in locations prone to severe weather, etc. I would really like to address your concerns and improve the doc, but as it is, I'm sort of struggling to pinpoint the nature of the complaint :-(
>Rational prepping is meant to give you confidence to go about your business, knowing that you are well-equipped to weather out adversities. But it should not be about convincing yourself that the collapse is just around the bend, and letting that thought consume and disrupt your life.
I don't think funding watchdog organizations really fits the goal of the article.
The article also went over realistic and unrealistic risks and urged the reader to focus on realistic risks and not zombie apocalypse scenarios.
It's useful to peruse publications of these agencies in depth in order to understand what the government and NGOs plan to do in the case of major disasters - when you're planning for scenarios that don't involve the government turning on you, you should understand what these organizations will and will not be able to do for you. Hint: while they will try very hard, do not count on government or NGOs coming in with plenty of supplies particularly quickly. ARC emphasizes being prepared for 72 hours without aid, and I think this is a lowest-common-denominator strategy. It will take longer when there is serious infrastructure damage, even assuming that everything goes to plan.
One of my major concerns with the prepper community though is that they frequently overemphasize your own property. The most common type of disaster to affect people, by a huge margin, is home fire. The most likely disaster to happen to you is your house burning down. So while stocking supplies in your house is a great idea, do not take it too far: be sure that you absolutely minimize irreplaceable items in your home. If your house burns down, have a plan for where you will go for temporary housing, make sure that you will be able to access money for food (don't keep it all under your mattress!), etc. Have a longer-term plan for smooth economic recovery. Important documents like deeds and titles are almost certainly safer in a bank vault than in your own home because of the careful fireproofing of these vaults. Anything of that sort that you keep in your home should be kept in some sort of fire safe (which should be watertight as well), but be aware that a cheap First Alert fire box will only be rated for less than one hour of exposure and probably won't last that long. You need to spend a lot of money for something with good fire durability.
Yup. In fact, the guide talks about home fires as one of the most significant dangers (right after going insolvent or getting hurt); and cites the 72 hour figure. It also highlights that some of the prepper ideas, such as stockpiling gasoline, actually make you less safe.
I run a site that deals with alot of these people. I look at it like a risk vs reward. I think for the vast amount of calamity's that could happen, you only need to 'survive' for about 6 months before things would stabilize. If after 6 months you are still in trouble, chances are you are not going to particularly enjoy life moving forward anyways.
So with those thoughts, it almost seems prudent to just buy 1k in freeze dried food ( http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-YEAR-MOUNTAIN-HOUSE-FOOD-ENTREES-R...? ) which can last you a year if needed. The only other things you really need is water (tons of purification options out there).
The next steps are protection and information. You can get a firearm for about 500$ with ample ammo and a world radio with a solar charger for 100$.
The page talks about it a bit, but in an attempt to differentiate itself from the usual, mildly paranoid "prepper" content, it does its best not to get hung up on more outlandish scenarios, such as fighting off zombies and surviving for months without water and food.
I basically tried to approach it from the perspective of threat modeling / risk management for real life; and by that metric, incidents such as losing a job are far more likely than a zombie apocalypse. I have seen far too many people in the Silicon Valley discover that the hard way :-(
This still falls foul of the simple numbers problem: there's going to be more people without then with, that's why its a disaster in the first place.
Now, humans are social animals - we naturally form groups. And the group which will have the most necessity is anyone without sufficient immediate resources. And who has the most resources? Why, the guy with 6 months of food rations. 6 months of food rations will feed him for 6 months, or my group of 30 for 6 days - which gives us say, 10 days to find more.
The real question in that scenario then, is how stupid is the guy with 6 months of supplies planning to be about distribution?
A much better risk-mitigation plan is this: either die preventing the catastrophe, or prevent it.
I've been following the prepping scene for a while, and in a professional capacity since I started AllOutdoor.com as a side project for some friends. We figured out really quickly that preppers were a massive audience for outdoors content, so the site skews that way.
What is interesting to me is the degree to which collapse has gone mainstream. At this point I've seen prepping go from something that you didn't want anyone (including your spouse) to know you were into, to something that is the topic of serious, non-snarky discussion (with 165 points!) here at Hacker News.
I predict that at some point in the next 18 months or so, we'll see an article in The New Yorker about prepping that takes it seriously. Once the New York media scene is able to talk about it openly, it will have moved out of the realm of "crazypants stuff that we don't talk about here, except to snark at it" and then it will be time to go all-in on the stock market because we will have reached Peak Doom.
Anyway, I just skimmed the linked article but it seems like a very good intro. About the only thing I quibble with (so far) is the faint whiff of goldbuggery in the financial section.
I personally can't wait to see this urban agriculture technology arrive in every city coast to coast, so that collectively we aren't so dependent on "just in time shipping" grocery store infrastructure.
I do think that this day is on the horizon, but until then I personally try not to think of people as 'crazy' when they feel the need to get their beans, bullets, and band-aids squared away.
I personally think the "crazy" label kicks in when the person has severely diminished their actual, real life in order to prepare for an unlikely future scenario. Especially when that scenario is strangely specific and seems more like fantasy where the preparer will become a vigilante hero in the new world.
Simply being prepared for emergencies is certainly not crazy. Saving money for an employment emergency seems like the most real threat to most of us. But I guess that's not as much fun as stock-piling guns and ammo for a zombie apocalypse.
Oh, I don't think that trying to prepare for historically plausible contingencies is crazy - quite the opposite - but it's definitely easy to approach it in a haphazard, disorganized, or wasteful way.
The Bay Area culture definitely has a distinct aura of invincibility to it, though; we have many young folks, including immigrants with no familial safety nets and a messy legal status, living paycheck to paycheck while working in a very volatile industry on exorbitant salaries. And all that next door to an active seismic fault =)
Elsewhere, especially in rural America, the prepper culture seems a lot stronger, perhaps owing to the echoes of the Cold War. It always shocked me that the movement is virtually non-existent in Europe (where I grew up); if you look at their history, they certainly have more to worry about.
Between Christmas and New Year a massive surprise blizzard hit the area I live in. We were on vacation and got home a few days later. We couldn't get back into town for 2 days because the roads were closed (snow in infrequent enough here the city and county don't have snow plow equipment).
The neighbors called (they are in their late 70s). Half a mile down a dirt road they hadn't been able to get out for 3 days and were getting a little scared. We picked up a few groceries (the store shelves were pretty empty as trucks hadn't been able to get into town) and parked on the highway and hiked them in. Then it was hike half a mile through deep snow to the car parked on the highway for the next two days until the county managed to get the dirt road to our houses cleared.
Very revealing experience. It's not a good idea to imagine technology or society is going to solve all problems in a timely manner. When things go bad on a massive scale, especially when it's unexpected, you are on very often on your own for a bit even in this day and age. It's a good idea to be at least mildly prepared.
What's funny for a foreigner like me is that the "preparedness scene" seems to exhibit a lot of American cliches :
- it's never reasonable : you prepare for the end of the world or a "multi generational collapse" not "just" a "little" earthquake or a flood
- you need a Hollywood budget : a well stocked retreat that will allow you to "survive" without changing any of your habits
- guns, lots of guns : I remember someone recommending having 10'000 (yes, ten thousand) ammo for each semi-auto carbine you had (no less than 2 per member of your family of course, not including handguns, knives, handgrenades etc)
- fatality is never an option : end of the world, multi generational collapse ? So what ? You just need to store more food, dig deeper for your bunker, and buy more guns (of course ;-)
In fact I believe it's the first time I read something reasonable about preparedness in English !
The author touches on a lot of important points, without going overboard, and the article is worth reviewing as a list of things to consider if the SHTF, for whatever reason...
Tailoring a "plan" to fit your individual circumstances is probably the key take-away...
Putting yourself in a position to provide the big four--water, food, shelter, and security--for a month for yourself and those dear to you is not incredibly expensive or time consuming....
> Insolvency. If a person over the age of 40 tells you that they have never lost a job, they are pretty lucky (or lying).
I know a lot of lucky people then. It's absolutely smart to be prepared in the case you lose your job, but is it really that rare to make it 40+ without getting fired or laid off?
For this audience? Yes. Startups have finite lifespans, and even when they succeed they are likely to go through a period of upheaval which could involve job instability.
I've been laid off several times in the last 20 years, always due to either the company running out of runway, or being pivoted out of a job.
> Pepper spray. An excellent, temporarily incapacitating weapon - very difficult to resist and capable of buying you just enough time to escape. Works quickly and reliably at distances up to perhaps 10 feet; can also stop some animal attacks. Usually not heavily regulated, making it easy to obtain and carry even in places that frown upon other forms of armed self-defense.
This is not good advice everywhere. Here in the UK pepper spray is regulated by the same law as firearms.
I really don't have time to make this, but I am going to make a wish and hope either someone else runs with it, or points me to it. I'd love to have a subscription service where I put in $X/month, lets me select from a few priorities and maybe check off things I already have, and start shipping sensible supplies to me on a schedule.
(I googled around and saw http://www.myapocabox.com/ , but to my mind that's more parlor trick or even just something you sorta do for fun if you're in that culture. I'm talking something more like where you put in $X/month, and unless you say you already have one, it starts you off with basic first aid, moves to other basics, maybe throws some long-term food supplies in after a few months, etc. Something meant just to make you robust against reasonable disasters moreso than something to help you recarve civilization out of the nearest copse of trees.)
It's important and useful to be robust against real issues like power loss for a week (it's happened) or other such basics, but it's hard to keep a list yourself and expensive enough if you try to prep for it all at once that it inhibits doing it.
So you're not in the camp of 'the government will help me' but you're in the camp 'a private company will help me' ?
Only you can know what supplies and know-how you will need for the specific disaster scenarios that you might encounter.
I'm sure you don't need more than 2 hours to make a plan and one hour a month after that to buy the things you would need. If you care enough you should be able to find the time.
> But the universe is a harsh mistress, and there is only so much faith we should be putting in good fortune, in benevolent governments, or in the wonders of modern technology. So, always have a backup plan.
Has Nature been unfaithful to us?(!!) A mother must discipline her children. As far as I've seen, she does it out of love, even when it hurts. She simply wants her children to grow up, far beyond what limits and mistakes they currently make, preferably before getting burned.
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I wonder if anyone's written a guide for surviving a not-too-long term emergency for residents of a large city. Everyone basically agrees that the best thing to do in case of a large-scale emergency is to leave the city - but my wife and I aren't prepared for camping, and we're definitely not prepared to walk out of Manhattan with five million other people into Jersey.
Where's the guide for what to do in case of a solar storm that knocks out the power grid for a month when you're a resident of Chicago, or New York, or Los Angeles?
This is general advice for earthquakes and other disasters:
- As soon possible, gather fresh water. Drain the pipes in sinks and showerheads; if you don't have enough containers, fill up the bathtub.
- Have non-perishable food on hand (cans mostly). Mind the expiration date.
- Have a deadbolt (if you are worried about your neighbors).
- Invest in a good first aid kit and learn how to use it. They sell larger ones designed to live in your car or home (not the portable, throw-in-backpack kind).
I'd question the presumption that any calamity requires city dwellers to "bug out". Doing so means you'll be part of a massive hoard of scared and desperate people, and you can only carry so many supplies.
Worth consideration is staying put, fortifying your apartment or house and working with neighbors as the situation calms down.
Sounds like you're at the mercy of government emergency planning at that point. (Not saying that it's a bad thing, but as you and the other reply say, it's not practical for millions to "bug out" to Jersey.)
It's interesting that the author doesn't talk about insurance in the money sections much. I find I sleep a lot better at night knowing that if we do have a fire, or crash a car, or have a major health situation, or someone slips on our sidewalk and sues us, we have adequate downside protection.
Keep in shape, learn basic survival skills suitable to your climate, and keep a small kit of portable tools. If anything catastrophic happens, enable hunter-gatherer mode and start migrating. Our species did this for 95% of its existence, you’ll be fine.
I grew up in the rocky mountians, and even though the snows have been less so, it was the sort of place my grandpa tells stories of blizzards 8ft deep that would get people trapped in for weeks.
The number one thing you want is water or a way to get water.
Number two is food or ways to get food.
Number three is heating/shelter.
You get those three things and learn how to get them (hunting, fishing, foraging, etc) and youll be just fine.
As for food, to give us a comfortable buffer, we had an entire wall dedicated to 5 gallon buckets of freeze dried stuffs like egg, milk, beans, rice, basics such as that.
Water is best to have you own independent well, and a filtration device for us while foraging and a bigger one for local high volume water if there is no well.
These basics are what anyone preparing for almost any disaster or emergency should do.
The best thing about the apocalypse that I have read is Justin Cronin's "The Passage" - book one of a trilogy, I'm a little way into book 2 "The Twelve".
Although, if The Passage were to happen all your preparations would be for naught!
[+] [-] unoti|10 years ago|reply
1) Become a certified emergency medical responder. It's a one semester course you can take at your local community college. It's the first step to becoming an EMT if you want to keep going. You learn things including CPR, wound management, dealing with broken bones, heart attacks, car accidents, transporting patients, even emergency childbirth. I enjoyed the class immensely. Now I'm a lot less afraid of medical disasters because I have a plan and an impressive first aid kit, and I know how to use it.
2. Become an amature radio operator. As a technologist, it's fun to get in touch with my roots using older technology. I've been working on being able to operate using battery and solar panels, which has been a blast to learn about and experiment with. I can also operate portably while camping, bouncing waves off the atmosphere and back either towards the horizon to talk thousands of miles away, or straight up towards space and reflecting off the atmosphere back down to talk within a 300 mile range (this is called NVIS). Learning and practicing these skills is awesome fun.
3. Camping, and having the food water and equipment in hand to camp for several days. We have a few 7 gallon water tanks we use for camping which we keep full, in addition to our always evolving camping supplies. We take frequent camping trips.
Doing these things is educational, challenging, enriching and fun! I encourage everyone to do it.
It's also worth noting that you can get a ham radio for $40 that's higher power and will work at longer range than the FRS/GMRS radios. The FCC limits FRS radios to half a watt, and ham radios don't have that limit.
[+] [-] linuxguy2|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sirsar|10 years ago|reply
I have to take issue with this. If your salary doubles, your needs do not double along with it. $100K is right around the 80th percentile of US household income. That means 80% of households (~250 million people) in the US are living on less than that. Maybe you can too, despite your paycheck being higher. And if your household's take-home pay suddenly increases from $70k to $140k, see if you can fight the urge to follow that increase with your spending habits. Keep the old car, pay off your debts, and save for a rainy day (layoff, medical emergency, etc).
It absolutely baffles me that prevailing financial habits in the US seem to include spending as much money as possible.
[+] [-] edent|10 years ago|reply
Now you don't have to slum it in an economy class seat. You're now able to afford a real laptop. You can treat yourself to...
Near enough everyone does it. If you've ever thought "I'm going to buy the brand-name [pasta|batteries|phone|insurance]" you're susceptible too.
The thing is, it's not much fun living as though you were poor - cutting coupons, spending time working out which vegetable gives you the most nutrition per Kg, scrimping and saving. So for every extra $£€ you make, you can give yourself a short-term dopamine hit at the expense of long-term planning.
It's one of the reasons why, in the UK, we're moving to mandatory pension provision. Unless you take action, a fixed percentage of your wage will be placed into a pension scheme. As your wage rises, so will your long term savings.
[+] [-] f-|10 years ago|reply
I suspect it comes down to a belief that a raise entitles you to a better life, right now: so you go out and buy more expensive groceries, get a nicer car, etc. I was actually raised in a fairly poor family and it's a habit I picked up very early on; took me a fair amount of work to overcome this.
[+] [-] aianus|10 years ago|reply
If you're an average American who works 50h a week, 50 weeks out of the year, wouldn't you want to feel compensated for that? And not in green paper IOUs but in goods and services?
Beyond having a rainy day fund and moderate retirement fund I don't really see the point in saving. You can't take it with you...
[+] [-] LordKano|10 years ago|reply
I am earning roughly triple what I earned 16 years ago and I'm living more comfortably but I'm just comfortable. I'm not living extravagantly by American middle-class standards. I drive an 11 year old, paid off vehicle. I live in a middle-class neighborhood, 15 miles outside of the city.
I'm living comfortably on money that I would have killed to make back then.
I went from an apartment to a house. Higher utilities. A couple of credit cards with modest balances. I had children. I started paying for health and life insurance. Contributions to a retirement account.
It happens gradually and it's easy to not notice, until you reflect on long term changes.
If my income tripled again, instantly, it would be a game changer. With my current standard of living, I could retire by 50. If it triples again but over the next 16 years, it would likely be a different story.
[+] [-] dalke|10 years ago|reply
The closest it gets is "Make friends with neighbors", but plenty more is possible. I did see the comment that many will "pray for the government to bail us out", but that leaves out the people who will volunteer to be part of the NGOs to help others, and suggests that we, the people, have nothing to do with the actions of the government.
It's very detailed on what you can buy, but doesn't give any advice on figuring out which are real worries, and which are movie scenarios. Consider "Respiratory and environmental protection", where "If you worry about releases from chemical plants or overturned ammonia tankers, 3M multi gas cartridges ($17) and half facepieces ($12) offer robust protection when sized and fitted properly. In such an event, it would be also important to develop a plan for sealing your home".
Why not recommend visiting the Local Emergency Planning Committee to learn about any dangerous chemicals in your area? That would give an idea of which chemical plants are nearby, and a better idea of how to respond. It may be more likely that there's a fertilizer plant nearby (as residents in Waco discovered in 2013) or gas pipeline (as residents in Adair County, KY discovered in 2105, and residents near Carlsbad, N.M. discovered in 2000) and you need to worry about explosion more than gas problems.
In any case, I've now looked through a few dozen news reports of chemical plant problems, and found no example where gas masks, etc. would be useful.
On the other hand, and using the recent news report about Flint as an example, it seems that occasional water and air testing for long-term, low-grade poisons would more useful and cost effective than worrying about short-term, acute events.
Personally, I would prefer to see things structured around known problems - what does one need should there be a heavy metals spill upstream of you, like what happened at the Animas River? How much money would you need in order to be able to move, and no one wants to buy your property because the well water on the land is now toxic? How should you prepare for an oil pipeline spill in your backyard, as the residents of Mayflower, AR (and many others) have had?
When would it be better to put the money into applying more pressure on the EPA and FEMA, for more oversight and more funding for oversight, than to assume that individual preparedness is the right solution?
BTW, as it stands, its discussion about what to do in case of hurricanes is nearly non-existent, mostly saying "If you own a house, especially in a region prone to earthquakes or tropical storms, you should probably have a sledgehammer, a chainsaw (with a charged battery or some fuel at hand), bolt cutters, and a pry bar." Chainsaws after Hurricane Andrew were worth their weight in gold - as part of the cleanup process. But if we're talking planning, then window storm shutters are also important, as is tree trimming before the season starts.
What it should really do is point to more complete resources, like http://www.ready.gov/hurricanes or http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/prepare/ready.php . Viewing the latter, I see it includes things like "Make sure schools and daycares have School Emergency Plans" and "Pet owners should have plans to care for their animals" which should also be part of any plan.
[+] [-] f-|10 years ago|reply
The whole purpose of part II is to go over some cost-effective purchases iff you have a robust basis to prioritize a particular threat and a rough idea of how you want to solve it. So yeah, for example, the mention of respirators has to be interpreted in that context; very few people can meaningfully benefit from a respirator.
There are also mentions of being able to board up windows in locations prone to severe weather, etc. I would really like to address your concerns and improve the doc, but as it is, I'm sort of struggling to pinpoint the nature of the complaint :-(
[+] [-] orik|10 years ago|reply
I don't think funding watchdog organizations really fits the goal of the article.
The article also went over realistic and unrealistic risks and urged the reader to focus on realistic risks and not zombie apocalypse scenarios.
[+] [-] jcrawfordor|10 years ago|reply
http://www.redcross.org/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m4...
It's useful to peruse publications of these agencies in depth in order to understand what the government and NGOs plan to do in the case of major disasters - when you're planning for scenarios that don't involve the government turning on you, you should understand what these organizations will and will not be able to do for you. Hint: while they will try very hard, do not count on government or NGOs coming in with plenty of supplies particularly quickly. ARC emphasizes being prepared for 72 hours without aid, and I think this is a lowest-common-denominator strategy. It will take longer when there is serious infrastructure damage, even assuming that everything goes to plan.
One of my major concerns with the prepper community though is that they frequently overemphasize your own property. The most common type of disaster to affect people, by a huge margin, is home fire. The most likely disaster to happen to you is your house burning down. So while stocking supplies in your house is a great idea, do not take it too far: be sure that you absolutely minimize irreplaceable items in your home. If your house burns down, have a plan for where you will go for temporary housing, make sure that you will be able to access money for food (don't keep it all under your mattress!), etc. Have a longer-term plan for smooth economic recovery. Important documents like deeds and titles are almost certainly safer in a bank vault than in your own home because of the careful fireproofing of these vaults. Anything of that sort that you keep in your home should be kept in some sort of fire safe (which should be watertight as well), but be aware that a cheap First Alert fire box will only be rated for less than one hour of exposure and probably won't last that long. You need to spend a lot of money for something with good fire durability.
[+] [-] f-|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBlake|10 years ago|reply
So with those thoughts, it almost seems prudent to just buy 1k in freeze dried food ( http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-YEAR-MOUNTAIN-HOUSE-FOOD-ENTREES-R...? ) which can last you a year if needed. The only other things you really need is water (tons of purification options out there).
The next steps are protection and information. You can get a firearm for about 500$ with ample ammo and a world radio with a solar charger for 100$.
[+] [-] f-|10 years ago|reply
I basically tried to approach it from the perspective of threat modeling / risk management for real life; and by that metric, incidents such as losing a job are far more likely than a zombie apocalypse. I have seen far too many people in the Silicon Valley discover that the hard way :-(
[+] [-] XorNot|10 years ago|reply
Now, humans are social animals - we naturally form groups. And the group which will have the most necessity is anyone without sufficient immediate resources. And who has the most resources? Why, the guy with 6 months of food rations. 6 months of food rations will feed him for 6 months, or my group of 30 for 6 days - which gives us say, 10 days to find more.
The real question in that scenario then, is how stupid is the guy with 6 months of supplies planning to be about distribution?
A much better risk-mitigation plan is this: either die preventing the catastrophe, or prevent it.
[+] [-] ars|10 years ago|reply
They also sell bulk quantities of food ingredients that are otherwise pretty expensive to buy.
[+] [-] jonstokes|10 years ago|reply
(FWIW I keep a few weeks' supply of food for my family on-hand, but I'm not interested in prepping for anything bigger. More here: http://www.alloutdoor.com/2015/03/11/doomsday-prepper/)
What is interesting to me is the degree to which collapse has gone mainstream. At this point I've seen prepping go from something that you didn't want anyone (including your spouse) to know you were into, to something that is the topic of serious, non-snarky discussion (with 165 points!) here at Hacker News.
I predict that at some point in the next 18 months or so, we'll see an article in The New Yorker about prepping that takes it seriously. Once the New York media scene is able to talk about it openly, it will have moved out of the realm of "crazypants stuff that we don't talk about here, except to snark at it" and then it will be time to go all-in on the stock market because we will have reached Peak Doom.
Anyway, I just skimmed the linked article but it seems like a very good intro. About the only thing I quibble with (so far) is the faint whiff of goldbuggery in the financial section.
[+] [-] hackercomplex|10 years ago|reply
http://www.freightfarms.com/
it's an example of how the startup ecosystem is attempting to disrupt some of the areas of concern that fuel the 'survival culture'.
here's another example: http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/10/built-in-brooklyn-gotham-gr...
I personally can't wait to see this urban agriculture technology arrive in every city coast to coast, so that collectively we aren't so dependent on "just in time shipping" grocery store infrastructure.
I do think that this day is on the horizon, but until then I personally try not to think of people as 'crazy' when they feel the need to get their beans, bullets, and band-aids squared away.
[+] [-] jakejake|10 years ago|reply
Simply being prepared for emergencies is certainly not crazy. Saving money for an employment emergency seems like the most real threat to most of us. But I guess that's not as much fun as stock-piling guns and ammo for a zombie apocalypse.
[+] [-] f-|10 years ago|reply
The Bay Area culture definitely has a distinct aura of invincibility to it, though; we have many young folks, including immigrants with no familial safety nets and a messy legal status, living paycheck to paycheck while working in a very volatile industry on exorbitant salaries. And all that next door to an active seismic fault =)
Elsewhere, especially in rural America, the prepper culture seems a lot stronger, perhaps owing to the echoes of the Cold War. It always shocked me that the movement is virtually non-existent in Europe (where I grew up); if you look at their history, they certainly have more to worry about.
[+] [-] jqm|10 years ago|reply
The neighbors called (they are in their late 70s). Half a mile down a dirt road they hadn't been able to get out for 3 days and were getting a little scared. We picked up a few groceries (the store shelves were pretty empty as trucks hadn't been able to get into town) and parked on the highway and hiked them in. Then it was hike half a mile through deep snow to the car parked on the highway for the next two days until the county managed to get the dirt road to our houses cleared.
Very revealing experience. It's not a good idea to imagine technology or society is going to solve all problems in a timely manner. When things go bad on a massive scale, especially when it's unexpected, you are on very often on your own for a bit even in this day and age. It's a good idea to be at least mildly prepared.
[+] [-] jmnicolas|10 years ago|reply
- it's never reasonable : you prepare for the end of the world or a "multi generational collapse" not "just" a "little" earthquake or a flood
- you need a Hollywood budget : a well stocked retreat that will allow you to "survive" without changing any of your habits
- guns, lots of guns : I remember someone recommending having 10'000 (yes, ten thousand) ammo for each semi-auto carbine you had (no less than 2 per member of your family of course, not including handguns, knives, handgrenades etc)
- fatality is never an option : end of the world, multi generational collapse ? So what ? You just need to store more food, dig deeper for your bunker, and buy more guns (of course ;-)
In fact I believe it's the first time I read something reasonable about preparedness in English !
[+] [-] Outdoorsman|10 years ago|reply
Tailoring a "plan" to fit your individual circumstances is probably the key take-away...
Putting yourself in a position to provide the big four--water, food, shelter, and security--for a month for yourself and those dear to you is not incredibly expensive or time consuming....
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] xirdstl|10 years ago|reply
I know a lot of lucky people then. It's absolutely smart to be prepared in the case you lose your job, but is it really that rare to make it 40+ without getting fired or laid off?
[+] [-] Rantenki|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lmm|10 years ago|reply
This is not good advice everywhere. Here in the UK pepper spray is regulated by the same law as firearms.
[+] [-] mycroft-holmes|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerf|10 years ago|reply
(I googled around and saw http://www.myapocabox.com/ , but to my mind that's more parlor trick or even just something you sorta do for fun if you're in that culture. I'm talking something more like where you put in $X/month, and unless you say you already have one, it starts you off with basic first aid, moves to other basics, maybe throws some long-term food supplies in after a few months, etc. Something meant just to make you robust against reasonable disasters moreso than something to help you recarve civilization out of the nearest copse of trees.)
It's important and useful to be robust against real issues like power loss for a week (it's happened) or other such basics, but it's hard to keep a list yourself and expensive enough if you try to prep for it all at once that it inhibits doing it.
[+] [-] jmnicolas|10 years ago|reply
Only you can know what supplies and know-how you will need for the specific disaster scenarios that you might encounter.
I'm sure you don't need more than 2 hours to make a plan and one hour a month after that to buy the things you would need. If you care enough you should be able to find the time.
[+] [-] mitchtbaum|10 years ago|reply
Has Nature been unfaithful to us?(!!) A mother must discipline her children. As far as I've seen, she does it out of love, even when it hurts. She simply wants her children to grow up, far beyond what limits and mistakes they currently make, preferably before getting burned.
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[+] [-] pavel_lishin|10 years ago|reply
Where's the guide for what to do in case of a solar storm that knocks out the power grid for a month when you're a resident of Chicago, or New York, or Los Angeles?
[+] [-] amk_|10 years ago|reply
- As soon possible, gather fresh water. Drain the pipes in sinks and showerheads; if you don't have enough containers, fill up the bathtub.
- Have non-perishable food on hand (cans mostly). Mind the expiration date.
- Have a deadbolt (if you are worried about your neighbors).
- Invest in a good first aid kit and learn how to use it. They sell larger ones designed to live in your car or home (not the portable, throw-in-backpack kind).
[+] [-] cloakandswagger|10 years ago|reply
Worth consideration is staying put, fortifying your apartment or house and working with neighbors as the situation calms down.
[+] [-] lfowles|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zrail|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yodsanklai|10 years ago|reply
first world problems :)
[+] [-] ismail|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timdeneau|10 years ago|reply
Keep in shape, learn basic survival skills suitable to your climate, and keep a small kit of portable tools. If anything catastrophic happens, enable hunter-gatherer mode and start migrating. Our species did this for 95% of its existence, you’ll be fine.
[+] [-] arca_vorago|10 years ago|reply
The number one thing you want is water or a way to get water.
Number two is food or ways to get food.
Number three is heating/shelter.
You get those three things and learn how to get them (hunting, fishing, foraging, etc) and youll be just fine.
As for food, to give us a comfortable buffer, we had an entire wall dedicated to 5 gallon buckets of freeze dried stuffs like egg, milk, beans, rice, basics such as that.
Water is best to have you own independent well, and a filtration device for us while foraging and a bigger one for local high volume water if there is no well.
These basics are what anyone preparing for almost any disaster or emergency should do.
[+] [-] sgt101|10 years ago|reply
Although, if The Passage were to happen all your preparations would be for naught!