Survival and "Prepping"

    Many of you know that I would not consider myself a "prepper" as much as a mom who has survived a lot of odd situations.

    I do not have 5 gallon buckets of freeze dried foods in my garage or closets or basement. I do not have 25 lb bags of rice on the shelf.

    I have survived more than a few weather events that effected our electricity and our ability to travel to a store to get basic needs.

    So, I go through our "emergency" supplies twice each year.

    In one box, I have a manual can opener, matches, a dozen or so small candles that have been given to me as gifts, and a small bag of kindling. In another box I have vacuum packed a few older blankets. These are blankets that we don't really use, but would be handy in an ice storm if we lost electricity.  (We don't normally use candles at all, so I place them and their little containers in the box for an emergency.)

    In another box, I have a multipurpose tool, a couple of flashlights, a couple of packages of those little hand warmer packs, a package of baby wipes and a pack of mad libs and a pencil.

     In every emergency situation we have had, it always comes down to the very basics. If you store batteries for too long, they just don't work when you remember that they are there. We have a battery charger on the kitchen counter and a small container for batteries. I have children. They use batteries. When the batteries are "dead", the put them on the charger and grab charged ones from the box. In an emergency, that is where I will find batteries.

     When the weather alert for an ice storm is taken seriously, it is already too late to go to the grocery store. In my garage is a bag of ice melting pellets and shovels. We don't let our cupboards get too empty ever and we generally have a pretty good variety of items. What we have will have to do.

      If we lose power, we have to make sure that we have a way to cook all of the foods in our freezer. Come on over, we will likely have a buffet. We keep an extra propane tank for the grill just for this purpose.

     NOTE:  NEVER EVER bring a grill inside to warm your home. The carbon monoxide produced by combustion is too dangerous! 

       No matter the storm, we have survived. We all get a bit of cabin fever, but we survive. We haven't ever once felt the need to go rob our neighbors or shoot anyone for food.

      My point is that right now, if there is ever anything THAT bad, bad enough to turn society on itself, bad enough to last more than a couple of weeks, I am clearly not prepared to survive.

      The things survivalists talk about are beyond reason to me. I think some of them may be missing the point entirely. During every tornado or ice storm, there have been opportunities to share or to help. We have helped others by providing a meal and a place to shower. We have let others stay with us while our power was on and theirs was not. We have used our thawing foods in our freezer to feed others who had nothing.

      I think this is the main part of survival that I like to teach my children about. I will not be taking my children to target practice. I will not teach them that our food is more important that another human life. I will not teach them to fear their neighbors.

      When bad things happen, I hope that we all work together. Those that chose to barricade themselves are going to miss so much more than that meal they are so worried about. Human connections are always more important than freeze dried foods and expired medications.

      By the way, PLEASE, if you are actually considering "prepping", please do not store items beyond their expiration dates, especially medications. You will not be helping your family at all if you accidentally poison them.

     

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