preparedness – Page 2 – The Boring Old Man

So many fails!

This morning has me facing a big reality check in my ability to deal with “unforeseen circumstances”. In short, I’m beating myself up pretty good this morning.

As I write this, we’re at about 30 hours without power. I realize that for some of you, this is nothing. For us, it is extremely unusual. I’ve lived within a 25 mile radius of where I am now my entire life and to the best of my recollection we’ve never gone more than 24 hours without power. Outages are usually resolved within 12 hours, most in less than 8. So yes, we’ve historically been a little spoiled.

But that was then… Our utilities company (Pacific Gas & Electric) has been really dropping the ball the last couple years. One of my colleagues that lives close by, but in a more rural section, has routinely gone without power for 4-5 day stretches half a dozen times a year since 2019.

Around 5:00am today – 27 hours into the failure we got an update from the Utilities stating the “expected” restoration is by 10pm TOMORROW. This is unprecedented in our area. We’ve lived in the same apartment for 16 years and have never, ever gone 3 days without power.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been a big believer in preparedness since my days as a Boy Scout back in the 70’s and 80’s. Emergency preparedness has been part of my job for the last 20+ years. I’ve been an active member of my Town’s Community Emergency Response Team (C.E.R.T.), I’ve trained with County Fire Depts. in two different counties, and done FEMA emergency response training. In short, I know this stuff, and have a knack for imagining a “worst case” for any scenario.

I’ve spent years and countless dollars preparing for emergencies and this minor blip caught me with my pants down…

Don’t get me wrong. We’re not suffering or in any kind of danger, but I have never felt so unprepared in my life.

I’ll start at the beginning…

When I woke up Tuesday morning, I just went to the gym expecting that by the time I got home the power would be back on, but stopped off at a 7-11 on the way home to get coffee for the Mrs. and I, just in case. Which turned out to be a good thing, ‘cuz the power was still out when I got home.

I showered and dressed for work by battery operated lantern and got ready for a day at the office. The Mrs. happened to have the day off and was going to be home, so before I left I pulled out our “solar generator” and hooked up the TV and our modem so she wouldn’t be bored and also have the capability to recharge her phone if necessary. I left for work fully expecting the power would come back on at some point during the day. So far, so good.

By mid-afternoon, still no power and no update from PG&E on restoration. By this time, we’re getting concerned about the food in the fridge and freezer.

I left work a little early so I could stop by our mini-storage unit and pick up our “big” cooler, then detoured to the nearest Quickie-mart and grabbed 20 lbs. of ice.

I got home to find the Mrs. had distributed candles throughout the apartment and had a couple battery lanterns running as well. She’d turned the solar generator off to conserve energy – it was down to about 70% capacity by that time.

I got busy loading the contents of the fridge into the cooler, only to discover we only had cooler capacity for about 2/3 of the refer, using 2 coolers and an insulated cooler bag. Not good.

The freezer was packed pretty solid, so it acted as sort of a cold-battery. Everything was still pretty much frozen solid, but I hooked it up the to generator for a couple hours to recharge the cold, and put the small insulated bag into the fridge for extra insulation.

After all that, I ran up the road where they had power for some takeout tacos and burritos. Then we unplugged the fridge, and hooked up the modem and TV, watched a little TV for a distraction and then got ready for bed.

Again, I was expecting a resolution overnight. Turned out to be wishful thinking.

I got up this morning and went to make some coffee. First problem, I cannot find (in the dark) our kettle. We ordinarily use an electric kettle, but I bought a “camping” kettle for situations such as this. Well, I couldn’t find the darn thing anywhere. (FAIL!) No worries, says I, I’ll just boil the water in a regular pot. Now for the stove. I purchsed a single burner propane stove for emergencies several years ago. Nice little unit, never had to use it. I’ve got a dozen bottles of propane for it, which I found immediately, but again could NOT, for the life of me, find the stove. (FAIL!) No worries, says I, I’ll just grab the Esbit stove out of the go-bag. So I went to the wife’s go bag, and NO DANG STOVE!! (FAIL!) I know I got one for her, and was sure I put it in there, but I emptied the bag and it was not to be found. Then I had to dig out my go-bag, and turned one up.

I set up the stove, put the pot of water on and let it start heating. Unbeknownst to me, this little stove would NOT bring the water to a boil. Why was it unbeknownst to me? ‘Cuz I never trained with it! (FAIL!) I got impatient after the second fuel tab, and made the coffee (in a French press) with water that maxed out at 161 degrees. It wasn’t gross, but it wasn’t good either.

Another shower and shave by lantern light, then thought I should run the fridge a bit more before I left. At this point the generator is down to 12%. I was able to run the unit for about 30 minutes and then it died out at 0%.

Now I’m back at work, thinking about all the food that will likely be spoiled by the time the power comes back on.

So, a lot of lessons learned here.

I had a good solar generator BUT I had only one extension cord to plug things into it. (FAIL!)

Once the battery was dead, I had no way to recharge it since there is NO sun for the solar panels. (FAIL!)

I had a little backup battery for charging cell phones, but I’d let it die by not keeping it on the charger, so it was useless. Using that for charging phones could’ve given us a little more capacity on the generator. (FAIL!)

I wasted time and added stress looking for the propane stove, which I never found. (FAIL!)

We were both having issues with our cell phones – they were barely working without wifi. We realized we no longer have an old fashioned “land line phone”. We have the line, we just didn’t replace the last phone when it broke. And the last one was a cordless phone, which needs electricity so it wouldn’t have served us well anyway. (FAIL!)

Our “big” cooler is wholly insufficient for emergencies. Way too small. It’s fine for cookouts or weekend camping trips, not preserving the contents of a whole fridge/freezer. (FAIL!)

Also, it occurred to me that had the power been out at our storage place, I wouldn’t have been able to get to our cooler at all…

Having go-bags is GREAT, but clearly just throwing stuff into a backpack without a clear inventory is a rookie move. (FAIL!)

Having a bunch of emergency supplies is also great, but having said supplies so disorganized you can’t find what you need, when you need it, is plain dumb. (FAIL!)

We did have a couple fortunate things, our hot water is still working and we had heat in the apartment. That was especially lucky, as our furnace hasn’t worked for about 3 years, and we just got a new one a few days before Christmas. Up til then we were relying on electric heat. We’d have been sunk if that were still the case…

All things considered, this has just been embarrassing. But I have learned a great deal from this excersize and can guarantee that the next time will NOT be like this.

Most importantly I’ve learned there is a HUGE difference between “knowing” and “doing”. I know a lot about survival and preparedness but I’ve never really had to put that knowledge to the test before. Now that I have, at best a very kind instructor might give me a C-. Test your gear folks. You don’t want the first time use to be during an emergency situation, trust me on this one.

I’ve got a lot of work to do…

Thanks for stopping by. Be careful out there!

Back at it!

First workout of the New Year this morning.

It was rough getting outta the house – 5:15am, pitch black, cold and pouring rain – but once I got there I was glad I did it.

Today was chest, biceps, triceps and abs. I dropped 20lbs off all my previous weights, so as to not over do it my first time back out. I clearly made the right decision, cuz I’m still feeling it!

I wish I could say it was fun. It wasn’t. But it’s not fun being sluggish and being squeezed into your clothes either.

Listen, if I can do this you can do this. A little really does go a long way. Get out there, lift heavy things. Push yourself. It sucks mightily at first, then you’ll wonder why you went so long without it!

We’ve got a lot of missed time to make up for. The last couple years have put a hurting on a lot of people for a lot of reasons, and there is nothing on the horizon telling us this year is gonna be much better.

Better to face adversity with a clear head and a strong body right?

And like it or not, fitness is one of those things you simply can’t outsource. It’s up to you to make the best possible version of you. Nobody is going to do it for you.

Ok, I’ll get off my soapbox now. I wrote that as much for ME as I did for my readers – I’ve got a lot of ingrained laziness to overcome!

Thanks for stopping by!

Uh…wrong again.

We’ve been getting some real rain in the Bay Area over the last week, which is very welcome but good grief! The forecasting has been so outta whack.

The first burst hit us on New Year’s Eve, and we knew we had rain coming, but as it turned out the resulting rainfall was 3 TIMES the amount forecast! Oops. Surprise!!

I spent most of that day stressing about the creek that forms the property line for the facility I work at. When I left Friday night, the creek had 25-30 feet to go before it breached the bank (and flooded the building I’m responsible for!), and by 4pm the next day it only had about 10′ capacity left. By 10pm it was between 5 and 7 feet.

Sunday we got a respite from the rain, the creek dropped considerably and we thought we were in the clear…

Then Monday we get flood warnings and high wind advisories from the National Weather Service. Then the “news” is non-stop with coverage on the impending horror storm coming Wednesday. “It’s going to be the storm of the century!” “Expect massive damages!” There WILL be LOSS OF LIFE!”…

I spent Monday and Tuesday battening down the hatches, clearing all storm drains and rain gutters, prepping response carts with necessary equipment, alerting all other departments, getting stacks of sand bags ready, staging our giant water barriers that will (hopefully) save our basement from flooding and keeping a vigilant watch on the creek. I put my entire staff “on call” for Wednesday night.

When Wednesday rolled around, we were as ready as we could be for this Biblical storm, everyone on high alert.

And then…not much of anything.

Sure, it rained. For a bit. There were a few pretty good gusts of wind. I may even go as far as to say is was the biggest storm we’ve had in the last 2, maybe 3 years. You know, the years California has been in a massive drought?!? Overall, it was pretty much a nothing burger.

I don’t know which is worse, the utter incompetence of the National Weather Service and our local meteorologists or the repulsive fear mongering of the “news” media.

The silver lining in all this is that we didn’t sustain any damage and it was a good drill for my team.

I’m a firm believer in preparedness, so I don’t look at this as wasted time. That being said, I could have done without the added stress that was induced by the over-hyped “news” being churned out nonstop.

We’ve got rain in the forecast on 8 of the next 10 days, so maybe something will happen but now my blood pressure should stay a little more normal, since we’re well prepared.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to diminish the adverse situations some folks have experienced during these storms – there has been some flooding, there have been some power outages, there have been some folks trapped in cars and whatnot. Mostly, we’ve lost a LOT of trees.

No, my issues is with the fools that got it all wrong. There was more distress and more problems on NYE than there should have been because they underestimated the situation, and city/county/state resources weren’t ready for what we got. Then they OVERestimated significantly, causing much undue stress and anxiety for much of the population.

In the end, we got what we desperately needed, some good steady rain and some preparedness training. I guess it wasn’t all bad…

Thanks for stopping by!

Caught unprepared…

Well, this was embarrassing!

As anyone that knows me knows, I’m a bit of a fanatic about preparedness. It started way back in my Boy Scout days, but had been kicked up to a “way of life” for the last 15 years or so.

Well yesterday I had a lapse and it came back to bite me!

Long story short, we’ve got an “extra” car that I’ve kept around for those times when a car is in the shop or for hauling duties (it’s a station wagon, roughly the size of a mini truck in the back with the seats folded down).

I’ve been “planning” to sell it, as I don’t use as much as I thought I would, but as with most things I’ve got more plans than time, so it sat for a while. Then it wouldn’t start due to a dead battery (purchased in February 2022, so it wasn’t old). I took the battery in for an exchange on Tuesday and Wednesday I decided to drive it to work (26 miles each way) to get the fluids working through the engine and transmission. The trip to work was without issue, but coming home the dash lit up with red warning lights about “low coolant” and advised me to stop the car.

I pulled off the highway, into the nearest gas station and steam started blowing out from under the hood- uh oh!

I went in to the store (this was NOT a “service station”) and bought a gallon of water to top off the coolant (yes, I know this isn’t correct, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and all that…) and when I went to pour it in, I discovered that my upper radiator hose had come completely detached and had spewed coolant all over the engine. D’oh!

Now, had I been in my regular ride, I would have had fluids and tools, flashlights, etc. But because this was a “spare” I planned to sell, there was NOTHING in the car. Nothing.

Luckily I had a Leatherman multi-tool on me and with it’s little screwdriver I was able to get the hose reattached and limp the car home – still low on coolant, but it never got hot on the remaining 10 miles home.

I kicked myself all the way home for leaving so unprepared. Thank goodness I was able to sort things out with a $10 bill and a multi-tool, at least to get home. It certainly could have been a lot worse.

So, let this be a lesson for you that you don’t have to learn the hard way! Problems rear their ugly heads when you least expect them, which is why you should ALWAYS be prepared. Even if all you’re doing is going to work, just like any other day…

Thanks for stopping by! Be safe out there!

My Favorite Bison is Still Missing…

Roughly 15 years ago I became involved with my local C.E.R.T. (Community Emergency Response Team) and while I considered myself to be living the Boy Scout’s motto “Be Prepared”, after going through the training for C.E.R.T. and working with our local LEOs and EMS/FD, I recognized that while I was better prepared than most, I was not even close to where I needed to be.

This lead me down a very long, twisted, sometimes horrifying rabbit hole in the world of preparedness, survivalism, resource depletion, world events and politics.

In the course of study, I ran across a website by the name of “BisonPrepper” and was immediately intrigued. This guy was unlike EVERYBODY in the “preparedness space” on the web. He was living proof that “conventional wisdom” could be thrown right out the window, and survival could still be possible on next to nothing financially. All you had to do was unlearn everything we’ve been taught was ‘necessary’ and learn to embrace frugality. How was he living proof? He was doing it, living off grid on ‘junk land’ in the wilds of NE Nevada, living without an automobile, without plumbing, without ‘utilities’, basically living without most modern conveniences that the majority of people in “first world” countries deem essential to life. Like refrigeration, for example.

I followed his blog for years and would comment frequently, and James and I would exchange emails occasionally on things that were too big to discuss in a comments section. I bought (almost) all of his books, and while I didn’t agree with him 100%, I enjoyed his point of view and his out of the box thinking enough that I kept coming back for more, year after year. And besides, he was funny as all get out (unless you’re easily offended, that is).

Fast forward to June 2020 and Lord Bison (as he was affectionately called by his loyal minions) announced he was going really off grid, discontinuing his blog and moving to a monthly subscription newsletter via snail mail, so naturally I signed up.

It was at this point Lord Bison and I became friends. We used to correspond frequently via the Post Office, and I’d send small gifts and holiday greetings and what not, anxiously awaiting every new monthly installment. Then suddenly it stopped.

I’ve sent a few letters, sent a few emails and all have gone unanswered. I tried the phone number I had for him and got the old “this number has been disconnected” recording. His last newsletter was in May of this year, or maybe it was April, with a May electronic update (he started doing one post a month after a year or so of Mail only, but I digress) and not a peep since then. Not even a comment on my blog here, which were frequent before his disappearance.

It’s a weird feeling, not knowing what in the world happened to someone that you “talked” to almost daily for a dozen years or so. It’s unsettling to say the least. It’s difficult to wrap my head around how someone important to you can suddenly be gone without a trace…

Jim, you magnificent bastard, if you’re still out there, know that your presence (and your majestic hair!) is missed. Sido mentioned your disappearance a while back, and a few of us chimed in (including Wilder) in concurrence that none of us had heard from you, which is worrisome.

My hope is that you’ve ‘gone to ground’ out in the BiPOD you told us all about, but it gets harder every day to convince myself of that. My pessimism, so finely honed under your tutelage, keeps telling me otherwise. Six months is a long time for someone with as much to say as you do, to keep quiet.

If you’re reading this, let me say Thank You once again for everything you did for me and the greater collection of Minions. Living through these crazy times we find ourselves in is going to be a bit less frightful thanks to you and your life’s work. I agree with the notion that nobody is ever “fully prepared”, but I can say with 100% certainty that I’m miles beyond where I was when I found you, and my fear of the unknown has DEcreased by 90%, at least. And that is because of you.

Whether we meet again in this life or the next, your next jelly-filled donut is on me Buddy!

Thanks for reading.

Closed for Maintenance

This past Monday afternoon, I underwent a pretty significant oral surgery. As of this morning, it still feels like I was hit in the face with a baseball bat… Good times.

This mouth rebuild was supposed to take place prior to the Plague, but as with everything it was pushed out by a couple years…

So consider this a Public Service Announcement…in light of how terribly sideways things seem to be going these days, if you have medical/dental/wellness needs, take care of them now. While you can. I was lazy and more than a little fearful facing what I needed to do, so I kept putting it off. Then the Plague hit and I couldn’t do what I needed to do, even if I wanted to.

Now, I’m two years older, healing more slowly than I would have two years ago and it cost me a lot more financially than it would’ve two years ago. Luckily, things didn’t get (much) worse before I was finally able to get treatment. Live and learn!

Take care of yourselves. I should be back shortly, with something a little more fun to read.

Thanks for stopping by!

Training Day!

Today it was time to get my recertification for CPD/AED and First Aid. Good times…

I did my first CPR certification back in 1982 or so, and have been through more of the classes than I can count, as the certification expires every two years. And in spite of having been trained over and over and over again, I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never had to put these skills to the test. Well, I’ve done first aid about a thousand times, but fortunately have never (knock on wood!) had to administer CPR or use an AED machine on anyone in duress.

Nonetheless, it’s a good idea to brush up on these skills if you’re rusty. If you’ve never been trained in First Aid or CPR, what are you waiting for?

The entire course was just shy of four hours. Just about anyone can find four hours to make themselves a more prepared and useful citizen…

Who knows, you may save a life some day…

Thanks for stopping by!

Don’t be Fooled…

I write this as an American that was raised with firearms, taught to respect firearms, and also to respect “the Law”.

We have been enduring an onslaught of talking heads and politicos telling us we have a GUN problem in the USA. Anyone espousing such nonsense is either a complete moron or they are a liar. My money is on the second one, but it’s entirely possible some of these people could be both…

Firearms, and more specifically the dreaded semi-automatic firearm have been around a hell of a lot longer than “mass shootings” have. And more importantly, they do not shoot themselves.

When Cain killed Abel, God blamed Cain, not the rock. For my entire adult life, all you ever hear about is how evil the “rock” is…

There are a lot of “reasons” why somebody might go off the rails and kill someone, too many to list. Some even justified, in my opinion. But a gun is simply a tool, it isn’t the reason somebody does what they do. If somebody REALLY wants to kill someone, they’ll find a way to do it, regardless of the access to a firearm.

And if you happen to be the poor bastard on the receiving end? You’d better hope you’ve got more than 911 on your cellphone for help, or your ticket is gonna get punched.

There are only two reasons the political class gets involved in gun control – neither of them being care for their constituents – money and control.

On the money side, pols that “take a stand”, either for OR against, can count on “donations” to their election campaigns from the various gun organizations for toeing the line. If you want to get “endorsed” by anti-gun orgs for example, you better not say ANYTHING about the responsibility of the criminal or mental health – ALL your ire must be directed at the gun. “Guns are bad, mmm’kay?”

As for the control side of things? Does that REALLY need to be spelled out? Every despot over the last 100 years disarmed their populace before visiting unspeakable horrors ON said populace. China. Russia. Cambodia. Cuba. Germany. The list goes on, you get the idea. I’m curious to see what happens to Australia and New Zealand over the next decade or two… Judging by the gratuitous strong-arm tactics employed by the cops during the Plague, I’d guess the general population is basically under complete “iron fist” control down under, which is bad news for the citizens.

Seriously, think about how bad things are right now, half way through 2022. Think back to the unbelievable restrictions /they/ put their people under during the Plague. And that’s what /they/ did knowing we have more weapons than PEOPLE in this country…just imagine what they might try to roll out on us if we were unarmed?

If, and that’s a BIG if, the politicos tried everything at their disposal and we still had a problem with violence, then maybe, just maybe it might be time to see if there are in fact some “common sense” solutions around the guns themselves but we are a looooong way from that. That isn’t the place to start, making the law abiding sitting ducks for the lawless. All you ever hear about “justice reform” involves leniency for repeat offenders, and all you hear about mental health care on a National level is…zip, nada, ziltch.

I believe anyone charged with a felony crime committed with a firearm should have 20 years added to their sentence and no “gimmes” for juvenile offenders. Make the penalties that much harsher. If they can add on “hate crime” penalties, why NOT? Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows a loaded gun could go off in someone’s hands, especially in a heat-of-the-moment situation. Why not consider every brandishing of a firearm in the commission of a crime, attempted murder? If you actually kill someone in the commission of a crime – I say you should get the death penalty. No 20 years of appeals, no legalese nonsense, you just get your lights turned off, forever. Maybe 90 days for a post-trial review, to make sure no glaring mistakes were made. Felons caught with a firearm? 20 years, hard labor. If that firearm happens to be stolen? 20 years AND your thumbs removed… When getting caught up in “the system” is seen as a right of passage and not a deterrent, clearly things aren’t working and you’ll never have a civil society, much less a safe one.

As for the whole mental health angle? That’s a whole different ball of wax, but yes I’d wager that ALL mass shooting events were due to seriously disturbed INDIVIDUALS, that may have been stopped with the proper mental health affirming intervention. Duh. But since that didn’t happen, and likely never will because our government is far too corrupt to help its citizens, we get whackos going off instead of simply being put to sleep for the benefit of society. Yes, I know, very non-PC there. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; we as a society are doing ourselves an unforgivable disservice by allowing so many mentally deficient people to run rampant over our country. Hell, some of ’em even get elected to office!

And now, in this day and age, knowing what we do about these sub-human wretches that do these things, I also believe any “news” outlet that publishes photos of these killers should be fined substantially at the very least, and publishers jailed if they make a habit of it. Same for social media. No more “press darlings” made from psycho/socio-pathic cretins, please and thank you.

In short, crazy people are gonna do crazy stuff, guns or no guns. How many maniacs have gone on knife attacks in the last decade or so, racking up double digits of victims? How about the bombers? Or the twisted sacks of excrement that drove vehicles into crowds to rack up a nice, high body count? Or the dealers cutting their product with Fentanyl, killing untold thousands? There are myriad ways to take someone’s life, guns are just one. The flip side of course, is that a gun is the BEST self defense tool you can own. And with all the ways someone else can try to ruin your day and/or end your life, I think being a responsible gun owner is the smart way to go for strictly defensive purposes. “If it saves one life”, right?!?!

Compassion and empathy are very valuable traits, but when your compassion leads to actually endangering your society on behalf of the criminal element, it’s past time to reassess. If there is a truly “revolving door” in prison and recidivism is really as bad as they say it is, that’s your low hanging fruit right there. Put a hard stop to that, and watch violent crime decrease. How many times do they let a dog bite before it’s deemed a dangerous animal and euthanized? We should follow the same guidelines for “career criminals”. We need to face up to the reality that some people are just no damn good, and deal with them as the problem they truly are, not some sociological experiment.

I’m no scientist or social worker, but I’d guess that IF criminals are locked up, or buried, the chance of them committing violence against an innocent victim are pretty slim…regardless of how many guns are in the hands of responsible citizens.

Of course, this is just my 2 cents on the subject…

Thanks for stopping by!

A Bird in the Hand…

It has been said by many who know me, and I will admit it’s true, that I am predisposed toward paranoia. Well, that makes me sound like a whackadoo, so let’s just say I’m drawn to pessimism.

I’ve never had a day so bad that it couldn’t get worse.

I guess it all started as a young Boy Scout and my introduction to their motto “Be Prepared”. I took that to heart at a very young age (12, I think??) and it has stayed with me these last 4 decades or so.

After the panic of Y2K (what a nothingburger that turned out to be!) I was seriously lulled into believing that we were beyond catastrophe. Sure, we’d have earthquakes and hurricanes from time to time, but “end of the world” stuff? Pfft… That was crazy-talk.

Part of it, for me personally, was the final nail in the coffin of my religious upbringing and beliefs. I had been so indoctrinated with Penecostal “End Times” rhetoric growing up, that part of me still believed the the Millineum was going to be Game Over for humanity. When NOTHING happened, the weight of the duplicity I’d carried my whole life finally fell away and I felt like life was good and I had nothing to worry about.

Then we had the events of 9/11. Then we invaded Iraq for no good reason. Then al Quaeda. Anthrax scares. George “Dubya” Bush at the wheel was enough to give you nightmares, throw in Cheney and Rumsfield and Holy moly, the Rapture seemed like a WAY better option, but alas! No Jeebus was coming back to save us from those lunatics.

On top of all the swell news of the day, there was also the fallout of the “dot com bubble” bursting and causing untold havoc in our country. I too was a victim of that bubble bursting…lost my job, lost 70% of the value of my investments and had to cash out what was left to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads because jobs were non-existent. But I digress…

So in my life so far I’d gone from lower middle-class as a kid, to “working poor” as a young adult, to borderline destitute when I hit my early 30’s, with a wife and child I was also responsible for.

At some point, the dust settled and I was able to see clearly for the first time in a long time, and I realized the ONLY person that would look out for me and mine, was myself.

There was no “luck” coming my way. Thinking “everything will work out OK” was nonsense. Believing in the Government was beyond fairy tales. No, it was time to make some serious changes and get my family in a better position.

All of this is taking the long way ’round to explain WHY I firmly believe in personal preparedness and why I came to believe in its importance.

Well my friends, at the risk of sounding like a crazy person, some sort of Chicken Little, screaming the sky is falling, I have a feeling, a deep unshakable feeling, that we’re in for a rough ride over the next two or three years.

I’m not speaking about politics (a pox on ALL their houses!), or even a resurgence of the Plague. My biggest concern (that has been keeping me up at night, literally) is the food supply.

I believe everyone, and I do mean everyone, should have – at MINIMUM – 3 days of food in their home. I don’t care if you need a cookbook to boil water, you NEED to have food in your home.

But all that aside, just consider the following:

1. US farmers were paid to plow crops under last year.

2. A significant portion of the world’s wheat supply comes from Ukraine. I suspect this is going to be an issue come harvest time.

3. A significant amount of the world’s fertilizer comes from Russia. Do you think they will want to sell it to the US? Will the .gov even ALLOW farmers to buy it, if they could?

4. Crop yields in the US are expected to be lower this year.

5. Numerous food plants in the US have sustained damage in the last year, closing them down or at the very least diminishing their output. This one is very suspicious. More food plant fires in the last year than in the previous 10 years, combined?

6. Pressure from the .gov to divert grain (corn) to ethanol, to lessen the fuel problems we’re currently experiencing.

7. Millions of livestock fowl have been culled this year, supposedly to deal with yet another “bird flu” epidemic.

8. The clarion calls are already ringing out with news of another Covid surge fast approaching. How many more food plants will we see closed down due to the Plague?

9. The cost of diesel has skyrocketed to unseen levels. “But what does this have to do with food?” you may ask? Well, the tractors that plow, seed and harvest crops all run on diesel. The trucks and trains that get the crops to the processing facilities run on diesel. The same, or similar, trucks and trains burning diesel then deliver the processed goods to distributors who load even more diesel trucks and trains to get those processed goods to your local retailers. Do you really think the farmers, the truckers, the rail lines, the distributors…are all going to simply give away any small chance of a profit by NOT charging more along each and every step of the process to cover THEIR expenses? Not bloody likely. Oh, and just in case that isn’t bad enough, a lot of places use diesel to run generators when the power is out to keep the food from spoiling. Lest anyone tell you otherwise, the cost of diesel fuel is DIRECTLY RELATED to everything you eat that you didn’t grow, hunt or harvest yourself. Period.

10. Weather is wreaking havoc on crops this year. We had flooding that caused problems with planting in the US, then cold snaps/freezes that damaged crops in the ground. I read recently that California strawberry farmers lost 80% of the first crop this year due to a “late freeze”. Eighty percent!?!?! Of course, better we lose strawberries than grains in the big scheme of things, but grains are in serious trouble too, world-wide.

None of these things are fringe ideas or “conspiracy theories”, you can find stories on all this stuff all over mainstream media. And frankly, that what freaks me out. If there were only stories about these things on the crackpot websites, or it was only one “personality” talking about it I might be able to dismiss it, but these things are no secret.

Preparedness has many facets- water, food, medicine, shelter, self-defense… but for right now, it’s all about food people.

If you have nothing in your house, get something.

If you have a little, get a little more.

If I had the space, I would happily store 2 year’s worth of food, but in our tiny apartment we can only do so much. But seriously, anything you can do to put yourself and your family in a better position with food, do it. Now.

Once the harvest season is upon us (just a few short months away!) and the reality of the situation becomes more clear, expect prices to soar and availability to dwindle. Then things will start to get nasty. You do not want to be brawling at your local grocery store over the last bag of noodles!

In all honesty, I hope I’m completely, utterly wrong about all this. I would love nothing more than to have y’all back here in a year, making fun of me over my crappy, outlandish predictions. But look it this way, if nothing happens and all the crops turn out great, Russia, Ukraine and NATO all hold hands and sing Kumbayah, and several million gallons of diesel suddenly appear out of nowhere, you’ve still gotta eat, right? You might as well “buy when the market is low” and try to stay a little ahead of inflation. When people are getting “cart-jacked” in grocery store parking lots or standing in line for hours for a government handout, you’ll be glad you did!

That’s just my 2 cents on the subject. Take it or leave it, we’re all adults here. I’m not trying to tell anyone how to live or what to believe.

Thanks for stopping by!