Do you have a disaster-preparedness kit/plan?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Earthquake, most likly.

Big kits and preparedness at home. Food, water, batteries, candles, radios, the works.

Small kit at work, smaller yet in car, and a few basics in breifcase.

Fols, you need shelter, water, and then food. Other than a bag of hard candy, food is something you can skip in the car kit.

Cheap kit at home is a couple LED flashlights or lanterns, some of those gallons of bottled water, and some cheap canned food that is edible right out of the can.

X-tra Meds if you need them to live.

22
  1. Tornado
  2. Nuclear strike ( I live within 150 miles of Oak Ridge)
  3. Basic camping gear, always at least half a tank of gas, non-perishables to last at least a week and a folder with copies of personal documentation.
  4. N/A
23

  1. I don’t know, tornado maybe.

  2. Zombies

  3. Purchased Evil Black Rifle and many many rounds of ammunition. Watched countless zombie movies to research tactics, trained my dog to identify zombies, taught dog to fire his own gun as well.

  4. I haven’t done shit about tornadoes because I don’t know of any way to defeat them.

24
  1. What is the most likely disaster to strike the place where you live?

Hurricane, and the flooding that comes with.

  1. What disaster is less likely but still worrisome?

Tornado. No power for up to a week.

  1. What preparations have you made for such a disaster?

a. car emergency kits; camping gear(that needs to be checked), beer,water, books
b. We keep the car and truck gassed up most of the time, and each has so-so emergency stuff in them.
c. plenty of food in the cupboard, water in jugs, and beer in the closet.
We have ridden out many hurricanes in the past. The only time we ran was for Rita, and that was a big mistake IMHO. Everyone was scared due to Katrina’s devastation, and ran at the same time. Actually, I have tried to convince my wife that if a big one comes again, we will go to the airport and take the first plane out to wherever!

25

  1. Marshal law during political upheaval (stretching “disaster” here)

  2. Earthquakes

  3. The embassy has my contact details in event of an evacuation, but I would refuse to go unless they took my wife too, but she’s not a US citizen. Otherwise, we’ll just hole up in our condo.

26

  1. Hurricanes or large Nor’easter snow storms that might knock out power for an extended period. The last big hurricane (Isabel), we were without electricity for a couple of days, and without phone and cable for two weeks.

  2. Nuclear strike (50 miles or so from DC) or some sort of disaster at a nuclear power plant (50 miles or less from three big ones) or at Fort Detrick (40 miles downwind from there, so to speak)

  3. Better-than-average and fully-stocked first aid kit, and the training to use it. I have several flashlights and three battery-powered lanterns, plenty of candles, and a battery-powered radio/TV. I could live for maybe a month on the food I have at any given time, if I stretched it. I should stock up on batteries, I think.

27
  1. What is the most likely disaster to strike the place where you live?

Conventional bombing. I live in central London. A bomb has already exploded on the street opposite my house, but, fortunately, they were crap terrorists. On July 7th 2005, my daughter was supposed to be on the tube line that was bombed, on a trip with her school; one of her teachers, late for work, was injured.

  1. What disaster is less likely but still worrisome?

Nuclear or biological warfare. As I said, I live in Central London. I live in between Liverpool St and Docklands.

No natural disaster is very likely to happen here, though.

  1. What preparations have you made for such a disaster?

I have tons and tons of food in, and tons of drinks. But then, I always do. :smiley: I know a few places where we could go, with basements, if there were a bomb that we could survive. That’s it, really.

  1. If you’ve made no preparations, why not?

I’m too close to any putative centre for there to be any hope of surviving a serious attack. We’d just die quickly.

28

Two excellent articles on disaster preparedness.

29

  1. Earthquake.

  2. An even bigger earthquake? I live in Japan.

  3. Bugger all, really…

  4. Laziness. And I’m not sure what good most things would do in a major earthquake. I don’t think a month-long supply of food would even fit in my kitchen, but I do have a fair amount of canned goods. But honestly, I live literally 2 minutes away from a grocery store and a convenience store. Even if they were destroyed during an earthquake, that is what looting is for, right? (Or since I’m white, “salvaging supplies.”) I do have a fire extinguisher, conveniently stored right next to my stove. Come to think of it, that might not be the best place since if there was a fire it would be between me and the fire extinguisher. I know all the exits (not difficult, since my apartment is quite small.) Umm, first aid… hell, I can’t do first aid. I can barely manage to bandage my finger. I do have some supplies but in a major disaster, I don’t think I’d really be able to do much. I don’t even have a table to hide under (my flimsy computer desk will have to do the job.) I’ve got hope and blind optimism on my side, though. Even if those recent earthquakes up north gave me nightmares for weeks.

30
  1. Fire, I guess
  2. Ics storm/other severe winter weather
  3. Not much. We have winter clothes, and keep some food on hand, but we tend to be day-to-day shoppers, so food-wise, we wouldn’t last long. We do have some cash in the house to grab on the way out, since we tend to be credit and interac people! We have 2 uncles who live within a 2 and 10 minute walk, respectively, several friends within the same radius, and we could walk/find transportation across town to the other 3 relatives, or across the river to the 2 that live there, etc. It’s 175km to my parent’s house and about 110km to my in-laws: we could walk it if we had to.

I’m just not that worried about these sorts of things.

31

  1. Hurricane - I live about 6 miles from the Gulf of Mexico.

  2. Tornados - I hear reports of them, but never saw one myself.

  3. My apartment’s on the second floor and I’ve got a lot of bottled water…that’s about it.

  4. Money, storage space. During the most recent hurricane, we were told not to board up our windows and sandbags were provided for those on the first floor. I haven’t bought a radio or extra batteries or anything like that because I’ve never been in a hurricane so bad I thought I’d need them. Although they are very unpredictable, so I suppose I should eventually.

32

  1. Nor’easter. Power outages + no access likely for a week or more every winter.

  2. Flooding - not at my house, but the road washes out every 10 years or so, and when it washes out it’s a deep gully for miles. Forest fire - not highly likely, as it’s wet here, but this is the only thing I’m not ready for that is worthy of concern.

  3. Shelter: My house is built stronger than most, and I have a 12:12 pitch on the roof with metal standing seam roofing, so snow load is not an issue. I built it knowing that I’d be without power frequently, so I wired a transfer switch into my house, so I just plug the house into the generator and flip switches to run the fridge, water pump, 2 lighting circuits, and 2 circuits of outlets. I have at least 6 gallons of gas on hand at all times. I do need to cut the woods back away from the house a little to make it safer in case of forest fire.

Water: I have an artesian well that overflows a few gallons of clean water per minute, so I can get water at the well head even if I run out of gas or the generator dies.

Food: Not just for emergency preparedness, but for quality and economic reasons, I have tons of food on hand. My pantry is currently probably 6 months deep, and geting deeper. I raise chickens + hogs. I garden + harvest wild berries. I can, dry, or freeze lots of food. I’m also armed + in the woods, so I could always eat venison, moose, bear, etc.

Heat/Hot Water: My heat source is wood anyway, so no worries. My water heater is propane, and a full tank would probably last a year without rationing. No electricity required to start it, as it has a pilot.

Ligting options: Six or so battery powered flashlights, 1 shake light, 2 hand crank flashlights, oil lamps, white gas, propane, and multifuel (gas, oil, diesel) lanterns, and thanks to my wife, a metric assload of scented candles.

Cooking options: Wood stove, gas grill with side burners and 60-80 lbs of propane on hand, Coleman (white gas) stove, propane cooktop using 1lb LP cylinders (3 or 4 on hand for this, the lantern, and my torch), firebox for my smokehouse.

Communications: Two hand crank radios, weatherband in the car, walkie-talkies.

Medical supplies: 30 day supply of all meds (none critical anyway), first aid kit that’ll handle anything up to sutures.

Transportation: Subaru Outback, tractor, 4 wheelers.

  1. What else can I do? I’m prepared like freakin’ batman. I just stay home if a Nor’easter or major flooding is expected, and the Subaru will go damn near anywhere.
33

A plague of Zombies or possibly an atack by space aliens.

My plans for these eventualities are…

I have kept on and on about the liklihood of these events being very real and have persuaded all of my close neighbours to lay in stocks of tinned food,bottled water and medical supplies.

I also have a loud hailer which in the event of any disaster happening I will go to an upstairs window and make official sounding announcements directing everyone in my locality to go one mile down the road where they will be evacuated to a safe place by helicopter.

Then while they are out of the way I will steal all of their supplies,lock my self in and wait it out.

Actually thinking about it a terrorist outrage or civil disorder is much more likely in this neck of the woods.

But never the less the principles of my plan still hold true.

34

  1. terrorist attack, major breakdown in social order

  2. Hurricane or hurricanelike major storm

  3. I generally have enough food and liquid at home to last 2-3 weeks easy, probably a month. I have — stashed in a small bag — an emergency kit consisting of

typical first aid supplies…gauze pads, bandaids, etc
a respirator mask
batteries and more batteries
several flashlight including some hand-crank models that don’t need batteries and one that has a radio built in
a quantity of prescription antibiotics,ointments and painkillers plus all my prescriptions
cash – 5K or so in various denominations

In the car trunk

Blankets and pillows
an airbed
a universal air pump
a small generator built around a car battery with a 120v outlet, can also be used to jump start a car
A battery operated fan

Plans
Well, I have an arrangement with a friend that lives about 2 hours away in the country…if I need to flee the city for any reason I can go to her house, I know how to “break-in” in an emergency, in case she isn’t home and I have explicit permission to do this in an emergency if I can’t reach her.

35

  1. Evenly split between weather-related and forest fire.

  2. Hazmat spill

  3. While I have food and other materials necessary for a survival kit, I’ve not assembled them into one location.

  4. My plan, in any type of disaster, is to get myself to either the fire station or the rescue squad ASAP. I’m a first responder.

36
  1. What is the most likely disaster to strike the place where you live?

Fire

  1. What disaster is less likely but still worrisome?

Tornado

  1. What preparations have you made for such a disaster?

Live less than mile from the fire station. Important papers, wills, deeds, etc. are all in a waterproof, fireproof safe and on file with our attorney. Family pictures have been burned to DVDs and copies given to relatives. Good insurance policies on life and property. I don’t see the possibility of us being stranded without any supplies given that the major likely disasters are so temporary. I’m not likely, in a large city, to be stranded without access to supplies/water for any significant period of time. A significant power outage could impact us, but we have enough dry goods to live on for a few days without refrigeration and only using the camp stove/gas grill. We have adequate first aid supplies(and training) and sealed first aid kits in both vehicles. We have a well stocked pantry, deep freeze, and generally about six gallons of juice/sports drinks at any given time.

  1. If you’ve made no preparations, why not?

I don’t have anything resembling an “emergency kit” aside from a first aid kit. I don’t believe I’ll need large amounts of water/tuna/etc. since none of the disasters I can foresee would cut me off for any significant period of time from the rest of the city.

Enjoy,
Steven

37

1. What is the most likely disaster to strike the place where you live?
Prolly the dreaded tornado.

2. What disaster is less likely but still worrisome?
Some sort of military clusterfuck or maybe a forest fire. We don’t live near a military base, but in these troubled times, you never know.

3. What preparations have you made for such a disaster?
Absolutely none. Neither of us are on medication (does Boniva count? Could I stabilize my life in time for my next monthly dose?) We don’t approve of bottled water anymore. We don’t have a generator. We don’t have a ton of cash on hand. We might have enough smokes to last a week if the disaster strikes on “carton day.” I have nothing packed. I have a puney little first aid kit that I got as a door prize somewhere. There’s a steep ravine I can go into should I need to find low ground in a tornado situation, but I’d never have time to do that because I don’t have a storm radio. :smiley:
**4. If you’ve made no preparations, why not?**Because I’m not fearful that a disaster will actually befall us. It MIGHT happen, but the odds are strongly against it. I never think about it.

38

  1. What is the most likely disaster to strike the place where you live?
    Snow/ice storm.

  2. What disaster is less likely but still worrisome?
    Nothing.

  3. What preparations have you made for such a disaster?
    None.

  4. If you’ve made no preparations, why not?
    The worst conceivable disaster occurred here in 1998. We had an ice storm that knocked out the power at my house for 6 days. Some people in outlying areas, and in Quebec were without power for weeks and weeks. I honestly can’t imagine a worse disaster of any kind happening here: no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no earthquakes of any real magnitude, no forest fires, no terrorist threats, no nuclear plants, no civil disobedience, nothing. I now have a wood stove in the basement, so I would still have heat during a power outage. Apart from that I could BBQ food and I could melt snow for water.

39

  1. Hurricane

  2. Tornado

  3. We have well stocked CPR kits, thanks to MIL, who’s an RN; lotsa batteries; battery operated radios, sturdy flashlight and a halogen light; 5 gal gas can for the truck; map of the major evac routes and contraflow plan.

Plans to leave BEFORE mandatory evacuation is called. Good friends in central TX.

  1. In addition to above I wish I’d made a list of evac supplies and important documents to take, but just haven’t gotten around to it. Not worried about stocking water & food, because we are NOT staying to see what damage the hurricane will wreak to the city.
40

  1. Earthquake.

  2. Godzilla. (Around here, it’s pretty much earthquake or nothing.)

  3. I am very well prepared. I will be the guy fighting off the starving hordes with a machete. Except for that one neighbor with a nice rack, she can earn lunch every day.