You may be a pandemic flu prepper if.....

[Amish Country]

You may be a prepper....

If the cashiers at the local food stores ask you questions like; "Just what kind of party are you having?"

If the stocker at the local pet store has trouble understanding why you need 3 cases of food for one small cat?

If the local hardware store manager knows you by name and smiles when you walk in.

If your young kids know what words and phrases like "shelf stable", SIP and "sneeze etiquette" mean.

If you have kids shoes and clothing for your kids in graduating sizes for the next two years.

If the words volcano, camp, multi-fuel and wood burning remind you to pick up more fuel, just in case.

 

[Shannon Bennett]

Re: You may be a pandemic flu prepper if.....

Looking for an affordable house to buy that;

Has running water so you can be off the grid.

Has tons of storage space for food that remains cool even in August.

Has enough room your family can join you when things get really bad.

All of which means the house itself will be a major disaster requiring years of labor and money to fix.

Also;

Decide that canned milk isn't really that bad in your morning coffee. (One of the few ways to rotate the stock)

The hard candy and other goodies in your stores aren't there for you to snack on every time you pass them.

Look for more creative ways to use up the canned vegetables and meats. Anyone have new and interesting recipes for tinned hams or oysters?

 

[cartski]

Re: You may be a pandemic flu prepper if.....

"Anyone have new and interesting recipes for tinned hams or oysters?"

Maybe use SPAM recipes....

http://www.pitt.edu/~blair1/spam.html


The famous Spam Haikus by Michael Lubic

Back to the Spam page.
Blue can of steel
what promise do you hold?
salt flesh so ripe

Can of metal, slick
soft center, so cool, moistening
I yearn for your salt


Twist, pull the sharp lid
Jerks and cuts me deeply but
Spam, aaah, my poultice.


silent, former pig
one communal awareness
myriad pink bricks


you wait to feed me
stoic vigil on the shelf
ah my vibrant pink


jelly for mortar
seven hundred tins and more
i build a Spam house


my friend pork shoulder
I return to you. this time
i've brought mayonnaise


above all others
porcine treat without equal
there is but one Spam


clad in metal, proud
no mere salt-curing for you
you are not bacon


and who dares mock Spam?
you? you? you are not worthy
of one rich pink fleck


Grotesque pinkish mass
In a blue can on a shelf
Quivering alone


Like some spongy rock
A granite, my piece of Spam
In sunlight on my plate


Oh Argentina!
Your little tin of meat soars
Above the pampas


The color of Spam
is natural as the sky:
A block of sunrise


Little slab of meat
In a wash of clear jelly
Now I heat the pan


Oh tin of pink meat
I ponder what you may be:
Snout or ear or feet?


In the cool morning
I fry up a slab of Spam
A dog barks next door


Pink tender morsel
Glistening with salty gel
What the hell is it?


Ears, snouts, and innards,
A homogenous mass
Pass another slice


Cube of cold pinkness
Yellow specks of porcine fat
Give me a spork please


Old man seeks doctor
"I eat Spam daily", he says.
Angioplasty


Highly unnatural
The tortured shape of this "food"
A small pink coffin


Slicing your sweet self
Salivating in suspense
Sizzle, sizzle..Spam


Pink beefy temptress
I can no longer remain
Vegetarian

 

[tropical]

Re: You may be a pandemic flu prepper if.....

A home made can recipe:

Grotesque pinkish mass
In a blue can on a shelf
Quivering alone

Are you realy food
Or maybe an botulin mood

 

[fab4]

Re: You may be a pandemic flu prepper if.....

Kitty brings a dead bird to your door as a special present...

And you break out the p100s, gloves, and hospital gowns.

 

[FrenchieGirl]

Re: You may be a pandemic flu prepper if.....

You may be a pandemic flu prepper if.....

You have 3 boxes of seasonal flu vaccine for the last two years stocked up in your fridge, not wanting to throw them away, just in case, even though the efficacy might lower to almost nothing as time passes away.

You have several 100 ml bottles of injectable cattle antibiotics in said fridge.

Your friends and lodger call you when they're sick as you have all medicines for current ailments, and some for more complicated illnesses.

Your dentist says the antibiotics you took for your tooth abcess was the right one in the right dosage for the right time until you saw him, but "where did you get the prescription?"

You insist on trying to find some good use for an ancient septic tank, and use the muck you found there as fertilizer for a weeping willow (so it grows well and can yield enough bark to make aspirin)

You save on food by using preppers' recipes in order to pay for the solar hot water panels on the roof and the heat pump for the heating, both of which have crushed your budget.

Your neighbours start calling your property the "Gipsy Place" as you have accumulated so much odds and ends you can't hide them in the shed and they're protected from rain with tarps.

You don't force your lodger to get rid of his ancient non-working car, just in case some parts could come handy.

You persist in trying to find some way to filter out sand, clay and fines from your bored well, and have been unsuccessful for the last year.

Your not-so-pleasant colleague smiles at you when he speaks about his hide-away in a long-lost country, and then stops you to ask how to dig a well or use a water-water heat pump from the springs in his garden.

Your unsavoury boss tells you with watery eyes and running nose he should have listened to you when you preached on and on about seasonal flu vaccine.

Your dear colleague asks if the cockatiels aviary is well covered and if they are safe from over-flying birds whenever there's an item in the news about a death in Indonesia or a sick swan in England.

Oh yes, when you start seeing the 5 baby cockatiels as potential sources of proteins! And recall with emotion the day you fried an infertile canary egg, sunny side up, for your young child, thinking it might happen again, out of need the next time...

 

[Amish Country]

Re: You may be a pandemic flu prepper if.....

If friends ask why aways tuna noddle cassorole (made with canned cream of mushroom soup) for the pot luck dinners?

If just about anything that remains too long in the garden is in danger of being pickeled, jellied, jammed, preserved, dried, canned or frozen.

If the canned sodas and comfort food are stored in containers marked: "ORGANINC KIDNEY BEANS" to hide them from the two footed, light fingered pesky pantry varmints.

If someone complaining about loosing a freezer full of meat during a black out brings on thoughts of "Why didn't they salt, smoke, jerk or can it?"

If family looks forward to stormy weather as a good excuse to raid the pantry.

If someone at a bird flu seminar displays a mask and asks what it is and you can tell them where to get N95's on line, in bulk at a good price....

 

[tropical]

Re: You may be a pandemic flu prepper if.....

Because you posting folks pictured the prep situation very well, I must wrote an serious heretic parentesis in those comical reviews of your preppings:

IMO, that are also the reasons why the official statements for prepping from the gov. (Mr. S. Lev.) rely on only 2-3 weeks of suggested storidge for the low income masses of citizens.
No matter that it is better, and more proper to have 1 year of storidge.

Obviously it is not easy to live a modern way of life, and at the same time implement the preppers idea of circulation of the previously prepped food by eating, instead of donating, or vasting.

Also:
"You have 3 boxes of seasonal flu vaccine for the last two years stocked up in your fridge, not wanting to throw them away, just in case, even though the efficacy might lower to almost nothing as time passes away."

I suggest to FrenchieGirl to thrown the boxes, because there will be more danger from an failured vaccine, than be without - the existed seasonal vaccine would not have any efect on the presumpted pandemic strain anyway.

For those who aspect a bit of comics, the "Savage chickens":
http://www.savagechickens.com/blog/2008_05_01_savagechickens_archive.html

 

[Amish Country]

Re: You may be a pandemic flu prepper if.....

If you can feed your entire church congregation a fellowship meal and still keep the total cost under the $30.00 amount budgeted

If you have a plan for heat, water, lights and cooking if the power goes and you have secondary plans if the first ones are not appropriate and a backup plan if those don't work either

If there is an emergency everyone in the family (down to and including the youngest toddler) knows where they are supposed to be and what they are supposed to be doing.

If everyone in the family have an emergency backpack (including age appropriate ones for children) and know how and when to safely use their contents.

If you have an emergency grab and go backpack for your pets

If you have every bent a window screen getting your kids out of the house during a practice home fire drill

 

[Amish Country]

Re: You may be a pandemic flu prepper if.....

IMO, that are also the reasons why the official statements for prepping from the gov. (Mr. S. Lev.) rely on only 2-3 weeks of suggested storidge for the low income masses of citizens.
No matter that it is better, and more proper to have 1 year of storidge.

tropical I have a funny feeling that if any national or world wide emergency dose occur those "low income" folks (not the distressingly poor) maybe the among the best prepared segment of society to meet the challenge. Many of them know hard times happen. Many have developed plans and tools to deal with "hard times". Also many folks who have survived hard times in the past have a survivalist attitude that, ?We've done it before we can do it again!" They will probably not be the ones wasting their time panicking or wondering who is going to fix the problem and how soon?

A lot are probably still using the technologies that brought their grandparents thru the Great Depression and their great grand parents thru the 1918 pandemic. Falling back on canning to preserve their garden's harvest to stretch the grocery money and help provide more high quality food for their families. Some may regard these skills as family traditions providing home canned jellies and jams for special occasions or smoked meats for the holidays but during emergencies these skills are still in the living memories of many especially the older generation.

Then again I'm an optimist.
AC

 

[tropical]

Re: You may be a pandemic flu prepper if.....

Hi AC,

I partly agreed with you, but the assertion:
"Also many folks who have survived hard times in the past have a survivalist attitude that, ?We've done it before we can do it again!""
IMO don't reflect the majority of the developed countries, only the ones of under developed world populations where the way of life are stil more rural.
For them, the survival will be doubtful because of (no)health care, little incomes/storidges, and for many, poor agricultural incomes.
For them, the situation can be like the actual post-cyclon in Burma.

What can remained a small village size numbers of deads, maybe smaller in developed countries with all the previous pre-alarms and organization helpings, there became maybe a 100.000 because of other non-cyclon colateral reasons, challenging a milion others.

When we read the above line "We've done it before", and the:
"A lot are probably still using the technologies that brought their grandparents thru the Great Depression and their great grand parents thru the 1918 pandemic.",
it can be true only for the un-developed citizens.

The others rely massively on modern transports, subways, electricity, cell phones, choped meat, and store prepacked food.
Without the above they will be lost.

If you added than the cruel triages, because the societies can't(?) affords the meds/care to the majority, I should not be so optimistic.

"They" done it before only for tornados, blackouts, and for succesfully quarantined illnesses, lately by vaccines.

All that in a time (1918) when the masses travel mostly by horse coaches, slow ships (2 quarantine periods for distant oceans), and the railroad was the faster way.
No plain travels at the time.

With a international policy of "the plains will not be grounded because that will only slower the pandemic" relying on the grandparents wisdom for all world city folks is not a real option.

Looking at the actual preparedness efforts, and the guidelines which don't give any new inovative aproach to enable basic medical care in an very serious pandemic, where food will be important only after successfuly surviving under flu contaminated air, and surfaces (plus the "wanted" works), seems to me that our prepping efforts are like the sqaring of the circle.

 

[Amish Country]

Re: You may be a pandemic flu prepper if.....

If you have ever given an N95 mask as a Holiday gift.

If you hear the word "clade" and do not think of contract agreements or metal plating.

If you tell the family there is a new recipe for dinner and their first question is, "Dose it have beans in it?"

If the emergency bag in the car contains more gear and supplies than needed for an average camping trip.

If on the school trip anytime someone says "Ouch!", "Opps!", "I forgot my ...." or "Oh No!" you're the one everyone looks at to fix the problem.