Yesterday I tried to refocus attention to personal preparedness with little luck.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/1/15439/55356
So, I'll go at it again with a very simple solution to a complex problem--
Clean drinking water in an emergency
Q. How many people walked by the laundry section of a looted grocery store and ignored the tools to save their own lives and the lives of others?
A. Amost every one of them.
More below
How to make 3,800 gallons of drinkable water.
http://www.i4at.org/surv/bleach.htm
(Make multiple copies of this and tape one to a bleach container. Put a copy anywhere you might get stuck in an emergency to remind yourself that you can help yourself when nobody else can.)
A couple of gallon jugs, perhaps some coffee filters or a roll of paper towel, and A GALLON OF REGULAR BLEACH.
This can be between life and death in extreme circumstances.
Q. How many people walked through the baking aisle and didn't recognize the simple ingredients to rehydrate a dying family member.
A. Almost all of them.
Home Remedy for Oral Rehydration Therapy
Prepare a solution, in a clean pot (jug,) by mixing
- one teaspoon salt and 8 teaspoons sugar
- with one litre of clean drinking or boiled water (after cooled)
-administer in small amounts frequently
In dire circumstances, bleach purified water is an option.
Please do not commence with the histrionics about how impossible this is.
Many people have these things in their home...or they can easily be "appropriated." Many people simply dodn't know they often have the tools in front of them.
Poor people are not stupid.
I assembled my first emergency kit (now a full blown Bug Out Bag) from info I got from a pamphlet at an inner city library BEFORE there was an internet. I first learned these skills in a course I took at a public junior high school.
Now everybody google-
Bug Out Bag
72 hour emergency kit
etc...
Anything can happen to anybody at anytime.
Learn something. Pass it along.