Welcome to Survival Sundays. I hope your Sunday is as relaxing as mine is so far. As we head into April, it's in that perfect not cold-not warm 55-60 range, windy, and mildly overcast, the perfect weather in my books.
I've been dropping in and out of Frugal Fridays, mostly in lurk mode for some time, and felt that perhaps a tag-along short term series could be useful, given the current 'climate'.
While Frugal Fridays is all about living life in a cost-effective fashion to stretch the budget, this series (well, if it generates enough interest for it to continue as a series) will focus on making yourself prepared for unexpected or expected emergencies. There will be overlap, as a large part of being prepared lies in using your money effectively.
Follow me below the fold if you've ever had a sneaking suspicion that climate change, economic and societal unrest might be breathing down our collective necks.
You came along? You must be as paranoid as I am ;) I'm going to start off with some generalities which we'll expand upon in future diaries, if people seem inclined. The next diary will probably be on creating and managing a food cache and the foods best suited for long term storage. But for now...
Be prepared!
(That's the Boy Scouts marching song! (Tip of the hat to Tom Lehrer for a snarkolicious song.))
Be prepared for what? Well, anything that seems likely.
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Emergencies can be broadly classified in a few ways and may be related:
Personal Financial Problems
What happens when you lose your job? Do you have the resources to continue on with life without going further into debt? For how long? What if you're rendered unable to work? Are you limited in education or job skills, or have you got multiple skillsets that might let you find work in another field if yours is offshored or automated?
Financial Disasters
Notice that your pay doesn't seem to stretch as far as it used to? With a weak and dropping dollar, you simply can't buy as many imported goods as you used to. And with demand growing, our export economy is growing too, which pushes up prices for domestic goods as well. In other times and places, the fiat currency that governments issue (dollars that are no longer backed by a commodity, such as gold, but by the promises of the government) has become so debased that bundles of currency were used in place of firewood. While I certainly hope we're not headed that way, we're continually heading in that direction as long as we don't have politicians who say 'Enough. We can no longer push debt into the future. We have to spend LESS than what we make, and shrink our National Debt.'
Acute Natural Disasters
Hurricanes. Floods. Fires. Tornadoes. Earthquakes. Blizzards. While you may know, based on where you live which of these are possibilities for your area, we're likely to see more and more extreme weather and disasters in areas we hadn't seen them as climate change continues.
Chronic Natural Disasters
Climate change at its worst. What's going to happen as we head forward. Global warming, Global dimming, and the related processes we don't yet know about will continue to affect us as long as we're alive.
Social Unrest
This can include random criminal activity - breakins, muggings, theft and vandalism. Depending on where you live, these may be currently rare, or depressingly common. In times of stress (high unemployment, inflation, anger and distrust of a government shredding civil rights) you can be guaranteed rates will be on the rise.
Medical Emergencies
Heart attacks. Strokes. Traumatic injuries. Shock. Hypothermia. Hyperthermia. You need to recognize and be able to respond to same to keep yourself or your loved ones alive until first responders arrive.
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What we'll find is that while emergencies of any sort may have special needs, many will have overlapping needs or that one will lead to another.
What might we need in an emergency?
Communications - Ideally, you need to know about increased likelihood of an emergency in advance. You need to be able to contact emergency personnel as needed - EMT's, firefighters, police. You'll want to be able to reassure friends and family.
Transportation - You may need to evacuate. If the disaster is widespread (flooding, tornado) emergency personnel may be too busy to come to you, and you may need to reach hospitals or shelters on your own. You might even wind up living out of your vehicle if it survives a disaster that destroys your home.
Energy - What are you going to do in a power outage? Will you survive if an ice storm takes down lines for days or weeks at a time? Will a loss of electricity remove your ability to communicate, to stay warm or cold as needed? Are you grid dependent?
Water - If a water main breaks, do you have a supply of water to tide you over? Will you be in trouble if something major happens to your city's water supply that takes a week or more to fix?
Food - Prices keep going up and up. Hundreds of millions of people around the world are going hungry, millions will die from hunger this year. On a closer to home scale, in the event of a local emergency, grocery stores that only carry a few days' supply of foods might be emptied in hours. How long can you go without hitting a store?
Shelter - What happens if the integrity of your dwelling is compromised? Can you make emergency repairs? How can you recognize when it's unsafe to remain at home? Do you have an established 'safe' place to go for short term localized problems?
Medical supplies and skills - Do you know enough first aid to keep someone alive til emergency responders arrive? What if you're in an area inaccessible to responders? Are you prepared for an epidemic or pandemic?
Money - How much do you keep on hand? Will you be able to ride out an emergency? If the US dollar devalues, will you have anything else of worth?
and, yes, possibly self-defense, as wingnut as it might sound. If you own any weapons, are you properly trained in their use? Do you know when NOT to use them? Have you had any martial arts training?
Nervous yet? Seem like an awful lot to think about, a lot to be prepared for?
Well, it is. But the good news is, you can start preparing NOW, if you haven't already started. More good news is, some of the tricks of preparedness are going to save you money. The bad news, on the other hand, is that many steps do require you to invest time and, yes, money, before you can start saving money.
As I stated at the beginning, I'm planning to start the series with food and food storage. Food supplies can be quickly disrupted in the case of emergencies. Depending on the specific emergency, so can water, but I've been reading up on food most recently, so that's where I'll go first. Have an interest or experience with one of the topics? Email me and we'll see about either incorporating your info into upcoming installments or coordinating diary releases so we can crosslink when the appropriate topic is discussed.
I think we're in for hard times no matter who our political leaders will be, and we'll all weather the upcoming storms better if we plan ahead. I hope you can all share your experience and knowledge of the topics to be discussed in this series. I'm no expert on any of it, though I've picked up a smattering here and there. I have semi-relevant degrees in geology and nursing, a bit of gardening know-how, and try to pay attention to finances. I'm not a firearm user yet, but I'm planning to learn, as I suspect hunting may play a part in putting food on the table in years to come, and I don't know if my bow skills are up to it. I'll try to put in as many resource links as I can in each installment.
So, unless the poll comes back overwhelmingly 'total waste of time', I'll see you all next Sunday for Food Caching and Food Storage. And, BTW, it's not Sunday, so get to work. It's April Fools day, and I'm a foolish guy, but I will start the real series this coming Sunday ;)
UPDATE I'm going to archive the series on my webserver at home, although as I don't have blog software installed, it'll be as flat html. That way I can set up all of the resources and books that people suggest in a single spot that can grow as the series progresses, without folks having to dig back through comments to find a specific link or title. It's not there yet, but I'll set up another button off the nav bar for the series.