Yea we've talked about starting a thread, its a good idea. I've been in that mindset for 5 or so years now. First step is to define just what you are preparing for, then make a plan to cover that. When you feel good about that step, branch out into areas that cover different situations and needs.
I guess I could post the prep list we have of items... I've emailed it to quite a few people over the past 8 months. So the interest of preparedness is definitely increasing among folk.
I've said it a few times in the past here, I'll say it again. Many years ago I had a conversation with the wife about the most realistic, worst case scenario we could prepare for. The best "most likely" event I came up with is a moderate to major earthquake here during a heavy winter. Heavy snow would make it hard to make utility repairs. Power could be out for 4-6 months. Water and Natural gas lines might be ruptured as well and be unavailable for supply for 4-6 months.
Setting that as bench mark, we planned towards that. Perishable foods in the fridge / freezer are simple, just put bottles of water outside to freeze or cool, place in fridge / freezer. But how could we heat the house? How would we get power?
Its easier to prep when items have dual use. A good example is a Big Buddy Heater, we use one ice fishing and its worked great without a hiccup... but in the event of a disaster, it can be used to heat the house as its indoor safe. It needs fuel however. 4 or so years ago I started watching KSL and bought a couple 100lb Propane Bottles. They were surprisingly cheap. Propane never goes bad so its a perfect fuel source for prepping. We also have 4-5 more bottles from barbeques, trailer etc for another 100lbs. I made sure to buy appropriate fittings and adaptors so that in the case of emergency, I can hook just about anything to any bottle. I can run a copper pressure line into the house to run the buddy through the dryer vent. I figure we can run it nonstop for nearly 2 months, and double that if we run it on for 30 min, off for 30.
Electricity can easily come from a portable generator, again used for both camping and emergency's. Fuel is a issue... I generally kept about 20 gal of "blue" gasoline around for whatever, this past winter I filled up the trailers fuel station with an additional 35gal. It wont go bad before we can burn it in the spring. Alternatively, generators can get Propane adapter kits to run off propane, but be aware they dont make as much power as off of gasoline.
Make a plan of what electronics need to be powered and what can be skipped. We'll run critical things internally off extension cords rather than try and power the entire house circuits. A Solar panel just doesnt have the power density yet to really do much more than trickle charge up a battery to run some 12v stuff or charge some usb ports. If you had ALOT of panels things change, but they cost about $1 a watt for a panel. Storage of alot of panels is problematic, how would you set them up, what wiring will you need to get the power to the charge controller? What battery bank will you use? An inverter would run a battery bank dry very quickly unless you had alot of batteries totaling 200-500ah of reserve.
So that kind of covers our heat and power plan... for our family at least.
Most things we use year around, so its easier to justify the cost, and also we know they will work if an emergency does happen (ie: Generators)
I do NOT have a bunker in the back yard... nor any plans to make one. But I feel in more than a few ways we're a couple steps beyond the normal prepper. We have a store of antibiotics and some other misc emergency medications. Suture kits, steri-strips, numbing agents, splints, military bandages etc etc. Lots of useful stuff can be had off ebay for cheap (lots of good items come out of Israel of all places that you can't just buy in stores in the USA) .
I'll probably add some stuff later. Maybe post a list of our stuff or something.
-DallanC
