As I’ve noted before, I believe that our society is in a state of decline. I don’t believe that it will be the end of the world (the world kept going after the Roman Empire collapsed, after the British Empire collapsed and even after the Soviet Union collapsed), but I do believe that within the next decade, two at the outside, we’re going to see some pretty serious upheaval. I’m also very firmly of the opinion that even if you don’t believe any of that, it’s worthwhile to do some basic disaster preparedness. Nobody knew Katrina was coming. Nobody knew the earthquake in Japan was coming. In my neck of the woods its mostly tornadoes that we have to worry about but you don’t get much warning with them, either. So it’s good to be prepared.
I’ve believed this for a long time yet failed to do anything about it. Until now. In the past couple of weeks my wife and I have put together the beginnings of a disaster preparedness kit.
What we’ve got so far:
- 4 gallons of water
- About two days worth of canned meat
- 3-5 days worth of canned vegetables
- A couple of cans of oranges
- 4 pounds of pasta and a few cans of tomato sauce
- A pretty decent start at an emergency first aid kit (on order, should be here in a few days)
This is survival rations, not gourmet stuff. It’s mostly tailored toward the kinds of things we eat anyway. We trend paleo in our diet so we don’t usually eat pasta, but in a pinch that four pounds of pasta will keep us fed for days. It does, of course, need to be kept sealed against the weather (all our supplies are in a sealed plastic bin, and the pasta is further sealed in ziplock bags).
The food and water portion of the kit cost $40 total. There’s probably enough food for most of a week if we’re frugal. I kept the costs down by sticking to what was on sale. I also tried to stick to stuff with very long expiration dates – most of the food is good until 2013. I don’t want to have to replace it often.
This is only a start. We plan to expand it. Most important is the water supply. That’s only enough for a couple of days. Rather than stock up on gallons of water, however, I’m going to invest this summer in a good backpacking ready (ie lightweight) water filter and a bottle of iodine tablets. We’ve got a pretty sizable lake that we like to take the dogs and the baby on a walk around, and if we’ve got a good water filter handy we’ll have water for months. If it can serve double duty for backpacking trips, so much the better. The iodine tablets make a good backup because they’re cheap, although I’ve used them enough on camping trips to know that I’d prefer the filtered water.
We plan to expand the food portion of it over the next few months by picking up a can or four every week as part of our normal grocery shopping, continuing to look for whatever’s on sale at the time. I’d like to get up to about two to three weeks worth of food. For anything short of a worldwide nuclear holocaust that’s enough time for things to return to normal, for relief agencies to start getting food in, or for us to figure out that it’s time to get out of here. And if the nuclear holocaust happens then we’re kind of fucked no matter what we do.
There are still a few major things we need to add. We need something to cook with. I’m thinking a cheap Sterno type stove and a couple of cans of food. We need some good flashlights with some spare batteries. And as many other shave noted we need a couple of firearms and some ammunition around so that we can hold on to what we’ve got if law and order goes out the window like it did in New Orleans. Other than the firearms I think we can fill out the entire set for around $300 total. That’s cheap enough that if it never gets used it’s not a major loss – but if it ever does get used, it would be cheap at ten times the price. A good used pistol could be had for around that much more (for firearms I’d rather go old than cheap; there are some darn good guns available that people would turn their noses up at just because they’ve been fired before). I plan to spend a bit more on that. Shooting is becoming a new hobby for me and I’m also planning to take up hunting this year. They’re good alpha sports and hunting also a useful skill in the case of a true disaster. And I started to do the math on how much meat we could get off of one good deer and I think that even at only 1-2 per season it would pay for the firearms plus a deep freezer pretty easily over the course of a few years. But if all you’re interested in is something for the emergency kit you really wouldn’t need to spend much at all.
Again, I think that every family should have a minimal emergency kit around just on general principal. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to do it, but if a disaster strikes and you don’t have one you’ll wish you did.
