Re: Just beginning to prep? Please start here
JJackson said:
And now we come to Where.
I think the best arrangement would be a group of about a dozen, out of town with some land. If you can find a suitable place this seems a good size to provide a range of skills, some protection and some variety. The key thing now is talk to those around you about what they plan to do, make sure everyone?s preps are complimentary and progressing.
Good luck & post your tips or questions.
Spending time in the countryside was how Isaac Newton rode out the major pandemic of his time. It was what those with means (money, friends in the countryside) tried to do. Cities were bad news.
Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" is about a party (in both senses) of wealthy folks riding out the plague in a country manor. My namesake's "The Decameron" is about just such a haven in the countryside.
I happen to live in a semi-rural area, on top of a hill with one access road, a steep hillside on three sides, a 25,000 gallon tank of water (shared with others, however, and likely to empty in a week or so of normal usage if not replenished from the well--ergo, in a longterm power outage, it will be gone unless emergency rationing is done, which I'm not betting will work).
The house is on a septic system, so sewer backups are not an issue. All that is needed is water. (And the surrounding wooded areas and hilly areas are fine for other waste disposal--I have a bunch of 6-gallon buckets and a toilet seat that fits them called "The Throne"--combine this with garbage bags (everyone should have boxes and boxes of these) and maybe some kitty litter and this provides another option.)
Power is possible with a couple of generators, though the idea wouldl be use them sparingly, and then only in the first weeks of a disruption (it's probably not a good idea to use them with most neighbors in the dark...I might gauge whether to use them based on how many others I can hear in the distance, and on any reports of raiding parties or "requisitionings" by local government). Details are not too important, but they are a nice 2.2 KW Honda with overhead valve (OHV) engine and a cheaper 5 KW Generac with "lawn mower engine" (Tecumseh). These will keep my chest freezer going for a few weeks. And in the winter, most importantly, my furnace blower (propane, from a 500-gallon tank on my property).
Not wanting to count on generator power except in the first days-weeks of an outage, I've added an 18-watt solar panel and trickle charger and deep-discharge battery. (Another 7-watt panel will be wired in parallel, for a total of 25 watts peak. This should give me about 25 WH x 6 hours of "good" sunlight per day = 150 watt-hours of stored energy. Enough to power a laptop for a few hours per day, charge some NiMH AAs and AAAs, for LED headlamps and radios, etc. Even enough to feed through a good inverter and run my furnace blower for a short time per day (I've measured the starting amps and running amps and a battery-inverter can provide this, albeit not for many hours. But getting the house warmed up can be done in small bursts.)
I also picked up a couple of portable propane heaters, including "indoor-safe" versions that attach to either small 1-lb tanks or, with an adaptor, the larger 20-ib tanks. (I also use the 20-lb tanks for an outdoor grill, for a turkey fryer rig which works well with woks, and for a Coleman stove which can be used indoors with some normal caution--"bottled gas" was the norm in many indoor kitchens for decades, so the moderns dire warnings about using bottled gas indoors are somewhat overblown.)
The propane also runs Coleman lanterns. (However, in all recent power failures at my house, of which there have been about 3 in the past year, my LED headlamp has been my primary source of light. The rest of the house may be dark, but I can walk around, read, see what I need to see, etc. A true modern marvel.)
Power, water, waste disposal, food...
(Security I won't talk about, in deference to Florida1's recent statement that this site is a pacifist site.)
In these weeks, months, years, or even "never" before a pandemic hits, my general preps are the same ones I've been making for most of the past 10 years (since I moved to my semirural place). Namely, the same ones that would be useful in a major earthquake (my house is about 3 miles from the San Andreas Fault, in California of course). Though my house survived the 1989 Loma Prieta quake with no significant damage, a larger and more disruptive quake could affect water, power, and even civil order. (A 7.5 Richter quake is likely to hit the LA area sometime in the next quarter century or so, experts estimate, and the effects could be "Katrina-like" in terms of people stranded and cut-off.) Having preps is good for earthquakes, pandemics, even other events.
In the back of my mind is always a thought of how something might be useful in some emergency. In this way I've accumulated water filters (Katadyn, FirstNeed, tablets), radios (shortwave, conventional Walkman types), alternate power sources, shelves of canned goods, several hundred pounds of rice (some of it several years old, so it'll be my food of last resort!), FRS walkie-talkie radios (useful for communicating with others in the house, and for giving one or two of to neighbors further down the hill), and a variety of other little gadgets. My LED headlamps have turned out to theb
If BF goes H2H in a big way (more than just isolated cases), my "shelter in place" plans go into effect:
-- make about 2-3 last-minute runs to Costco, Target, supermarkets for more supplies (I have about 3 months's for 3 people of canned goods, packaged goods, rice, beans, etc...more if we eat mostly rice, and buying another several 50-lb sacks of rice is cheap enough...a pound of rice per day per person is more than half the people in the world basically subsist on)
-- top of gas tanks on both vehicles, fill any unfilled gas cans. Ditto, exchange any empty propane cylinders for full ones.
-- fill every available water holder: nonfunctioning hot tub (350 gallons), two bathtubs, every pot and pan I can dig out, my water heater (70 gallons), various Rubbermaid containers (about 100 gallons), 5 50-gallon drums (bought for $20 each), collapsible water bladder called "The Bag" (200 gallons), several collapsible water carriers (about 40 gallons), all available empty water jugs (some already filled, some empty, awaiting filling with fresh water), and, then, finally:
-- inflate the el cheapo "child wading pools" bought for $10 each at the end of summer, several years ago. This water may not be safe for drinking (due to chemicals in the plastic, notably PCBs), but will be useful for washing and flushing (a septic system)
(By a rough count, about 1000 gallons of drinkable water (with some minor filtering or treating) and about 500 gallons of nonpotable water. Plus whatever I can rig to collect from my roof (probably not drinkable due to asphalt chemicals, unless I set up a food-grade tarp, etc. According to some of the wisdom on water usage, the drinking water should last 3 people for at least 6 months (1 gal/day/person), with cooking needing the rest for this time. (I don't plan to use the "gnarly" water from the wading pools or other suspect containers for even cooking, due to the PCBs.)
(Further planning for water collection will likely happen during those long weeks or months of being cooped-up at home. Which is why I've bought rolls of plastic sheeting, extra drain pipe, a few other things which might figure into schemes for diverting rainwater.)
-- plug every single battery charger in and get all batteries topped-off
(NiMHs self-discharge a few percent per day, so this is not all that useful in an extended outage...but every little bit helps)
-- contact the people I expect to stay at my house and coordinate with them--advise them to bring prescription drugs, food, security items, etc. (they will not have as much as I have, for obvious reasons...but if they can each bring several boxes of canned goods, dry goods, etc., this will be a help)
-- take pictures of house and contents for insurance purposes, in case anything happens to my house during the disruptions (I usually keep digital photos, so this is really just a last minute addition thing)
-- back up all computer files, a couple of times, and place the back-ups in a few different places
-- make more lists of things which _might_ be needed, once the urgency of a pandemic is upon me (such an event will likely "have a way of concentrating the mind," as the old saying goes) and then decide whether ONE LAST BUYING TRIP is safe to make.
By the way, I got a few boxes of N95 masks (about 60 in total). But my main gizmo is a woodworker's dust respirator, a Triton unit with a full face shield attached to a safety helmet, with a Tyvex-type flexible hood with drawstring, and a belt-mounted, battery-powered blower which sucks air in through a pre-filter and then through an N95-rated inner filter. A flexible hose between the blower and the helmet. This has some advantages: the shield is full-face, covering eyes, nose, mouth. Beards are accomodated. There is very little "backwash" (outside air pulled in around the hood), depending on how tightly the drawstring is pulled. The air intake is low and to the rear of the wearer, so this may have some small effect on the number of virus particles filtered out from a contaminated person one is facing.
(Also, I can use this Triton unit for ordinary work around my house, such as when installing insulation in my attic, working with drywall, even cutting pollen-laden brush. Or any grinding or sanding work.)
As for Tamiflu, I have none. And no prospects here in California of getting any. My main strategy is to avoid the virus for as long as possible....conceivably a treatment of some kind (either antiviral, or a better system for hydrating, sedating, etc. a sick person) will be available later in the cycles. Also, later in the cycles the hospitals may be partially running with recovered healthcare workers, presumably now safe from repeat infection (assuming another virus mutation has not happened and spread).
So, that's my plan.
In other fora where I have mentioned these plans, sometimes in even more detail, people have responded with comments good and bad. One reaction is: "I can't afford those kinds of preparations, and I don't have a place to put water tanks and pools and all that."
Well, we all do what we can. Apartment dwellers are more constrained in their options, but even they can do things which will make a serious pandemic situation more survivable:
-- they can fill Rubbermaid containers, bathtub, etc.
-- waterbeds are legal (and safe) in nearly all apartment buildings, and they can easily store 200 gallons or more (beware the algicides and fungicides!) (People who question whether water can be stored in volume on upper floors of buildings should calculate how much weight a typical party of people puts on a floor: 6-8 people standing in a small group can easily put a 1000-1500 pound load on a small patch of floor, more even than a waterbed puts on the floor. Floors are well-designed to not sag or collapse under these kinds of loads. Most times we hear about building collapses under loads of people it's because they were crowded onto a cantilevered balcony or deck. Ordinary floors can support many thousands of pounds of load--people, furniture, refrigerators, and, yes, water storage.
-- they can rig coffee tables made out of stored items. My 6-gallon buckets of rice would make a nice, if rustic, table: stacked 2 high, by 3 long, by 2 wide, this is 12 buckets of rice, beans, other items. With each bucket of white rice weighing about 50 pounds (if I recall correctly from when I weighed them several years ago), this is about 600 pounds of rice. A half pound of rice per day per person is a LOT of rice (got to have other stuff, too, else beriberi, scurvy, and other problems). So, do the math. The point is that even apartment dwellers can easily store a year's supply for a few people in a relatively small space, if they are creative about it.
-- total cost of the rice mentioned above is small: a few hundred dollars
(Do I recommend storing this much rice? Not for an apartment dweller. I use rice for the storage volume/weight and cost calculations because it makes the point that rice feeds most of the world and can easily feed pandemic avoiders. Other items, for variety and for diet, will likely cost more, but the calculations are straightforward to do.)
So, this takes care of water and food, as the bare basics.
Heat depends on location. For many, a major issue. Apartment dwellers in a cold locale, with power and gas cut off, may face serious problems. Options such as wood stoves are probably not available to them.
Sewage backup in apartment buildings is often cited as a problem. One possible fix is to find the master shut-off valve, assuming it exists, and turn it off. (Someone said recently it's now "code" for all residences to have such a shut-off or isolation valve, but probably many residences lack them, or they're rusted open, etc.)
Light is the easiet problem to solve. Either use natural light or small lanterns or LED flashlights and headlamps. I favor the LED headlamps, one for each person, plus a few spares.
A small radio, maybe even a small LCD television (Casio). Katrina folks cherished their radios, allowing them to hear what was being done to help them. (In a pandemic, the news will not be about the outside world riding in to the rescue, of course, but news will still be good to hear.)
Defensive measures as one sees fit. Extra deadbolts on doors are almost always a good idea anyway.
Sorry for the long message. Writing about preps is partly a soothing action, partly a stimulating action (as it stimulates me into thinking about things I may have overlooked).
One thing I'm NOT doing, and this was a controversial topic over on Flu Wiki, is _talking_ to my neighbors about bird flu. Most people are dismissive of such fears, as the lack of preparation for earthquakes clearly has shown over and over again, and there are significant downside risks of being known "as the guy who has stockpiles of food."
The downside for me and those in my house of being known for having stockpiles is MUCH GREATER than the upside of having, at best, 3 or so of my 10 nearest neighbors slightly prepare. (In a community of several thousand, not counting the town of 25,000 about 10 miles from me, having a few neighbors with extra preps is no upside for me. The downside is all in the dozens or more of the utterly unprepared who may _hear_ about those who have food to "share.")
I suppose there is a scenario in which my several nearest neighbors, even all 15 households on this particular hill, all get together and decide to jointly set up a security system, or even a communal stockpile of food (ugh, but that's a political point of view, so I'll say no more on this), or spend the necessary $$$ to have our main well pump fully backed-up with a large generator (though that entails the usual generator noise issues in a pandemic situation).
Well, this scenario ain't gonna happen. Knowing my neighbors, it just ain't gonna happen. And anyone who lobbies hard for it is first, not going to get people to attend any such meeting, second, not going to face any favorable reaction, third, will be dismissed as a "survivalist nut," and fourth, will be remembered as "the guy with the stockpiled food" if anything actually DOES come to pass.
Telling people about one's personal preparations, especially those living within walking distance, is a disaster waiting to unfold. Talking about preparations in a _general_ way, such as on fora like this, may help a few people, maybe a few dozen people, and maybe even help spread the preparedness meme....though years of exhorting people to have a 72-hour earthquake kit has shown that most people won't have such kits.
If there were some good way of communicating with my actual neighbors that didn't mark me as a survivalist and didn't hint to them that I have stockpile and that cut through their normal "don't bother me with this stuff" filters, I might try it. I haven't found it so far. (And, no, sending them an anonymous letter likely would have no effect. Those receptive to such a message are probably already preparing, as the bird flu and earthquake stories have been out there for long enough. Some of them may even be on this forum, one never knows.)
Again, sorry for the length. I'll shut up for a while.
-- Boccaccio
