The Red Cross has some helpful suggestions about what to do and what to have on hand. I didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to go to the basement because many chemicals/gases that could be used are heavier than air and if they get into your house would settle in the basement.
I have most of the stuff for a kit (just not all in one place), but it looks like I’d need more duct tape and some visqueen and I should stock more water. The MIL lives 70 miles away, upwind from the big city, so we’d probably want to get there if possible if there was some sort of bio/chem attack in our area.
Feel free to loot my house; just be careful of the two booby-trap shotguns I’ll have set at the most likely entry points. Just kidding (maybe).
I’m in New York. I might as well have a “kick me” sign in Arabic on my back. I’m planning on the “put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye” approach.
C’mon Eve. You’ve got to do better than that. We New Yawkas have got to stick together. While a nuke might finish us off to quickly to do anything about it, you could probably survive a chem/bio attack depending on your preparation and location at the time of attack.
Attention New Yorkers: If you guys get bio/chem attacked, you would probably be able to live long enough for the stuff to blow away or get diluted if you stock up on several days worth of water, have some canned goods ready and can seal your windows/door shut. Just don’t send your contaminated trash to Indiana to be buried in our landfills like you currently do with your regular garbage.
Well, if they do release chemicals, they’d do it during the daytime, when I’m at my office. How am I going to get home to NJ to tape up my windows and drink my clean water?
Oh, wait . . . “NJ” . . . “clean water” . . . What was I thinking?
We have quite a bit of food stored, and about 2 weeks worth of tap water stored in juice bottles. Our emergency kit, though, is way out of date and needs redoing.
The Red Cross’ contact idea is a pretty good one, but our family lives pretty locally–in-laws are only 1.5 hours away, and we live in the least likely area. Everyone else lives in important cities, which we do not. I guess we’ll be the contact people.
Wait a minute. Who has a room without windows, besides a closet? And how long do they expect the air to last in this closed room?
Pertaining to the OP: Unfortunately Yes, my wife and I have an emergency plan. And I have most of the stuff needed in a large RUBBERMADE container stowed in the back of my Cherokee. I have all the usefull stuff, plenty of water and all the medical supplies we could need as well as 3 extra inhalers - we both have athsma - and 4 R95 face masks.
We could survive for months in any season. Doubt we’ll ever have to use it. But I can safely say the survival kit has been in place in Sept.15 2001
Again, it’s a precautionary measure, thats all.
Food for thought:
We live with-in 10 miles of a nuclear power plant. About a year ago we received KI pills - Potassium Iodide - in the mail with fall out zones and evacuation routes, this came from the federal gov’t. That was enough for us to raise an eye brow and to be extra careful in our day to day lives. I work 20 miles away from my wife, but we both knwo where to meet in case of an emergency. And we also know never to take the evacuation routes outlined in brochures…
I dont have an anti-terrorist e-kit but I’ve had an earthquake preparedness kit for years.
*9mm handgun and 500 rounds
*semi-auto rifle with 750 rounds
*2 10 gallon tanks of water
*2 dozen toliet paper rolls …oops gotta restock this.
*pantry full of canned goods to last 2 or 3 days. 1/2 day for teenagers (EEEWWW SPam??!)
*Blankets, sleeping bag, tent, air mattress (my back hurts)
*analgesics, first aid kit, recreational drugs.
*axe, knife, machete, throwing stars …hey how dat get in there?
*cars can double as emergency radios.
We’re immune to gas attacks. We live in Los Angeles. City too wide to worry about small nukes or dirty bombs. Already innoculated for smallpox. Anthrax too slow to worry about. If they do strike here, they’ll take out the most vocal population that is advocating No war in Iraq (movie frikken stars) wont that be a funny peice of irony?
I can think of so few emergencies where-in a roll of duct tape and a tarp will help. C’mon, If I can’t get to Maryland in less than 2 hours during rush hour, what happens when all of DC goes nuts?
As I tend to have way too much time on my hands to do unproductive things like thinking about this skata, I have a vague plan. The only thing it covers, though, is the possibility of a nuclear attack on Chicago. No one’s likely to directly hit my university (we’re in the middle of nowhere, almost), but it’s possible that they could hit either the nearby City (Chicago is the City), or that they’ll hit the stuff up along Lake Michigan in like Gary and stuff (far less likely). In either case, the plan is the same:
Go south, then west, meet up with the SO or my family, depending on how bad things are and the direction of the wind. Check up on the people that I didn’t go to.
Otherwise, I don’t have a plan. I think that, in my case, at least, it’s almost pointless to have a plan. No one’s going to bother to hit the middle of nowhere, and if they do, I’ll use common sense.
Forgive me for being Canadian, but for the life of me I can’t see how guns and ammunition are a necessary component of an earthquake preparedness plan. Could you elaborate a bit on what your thinking is here?
There really are some advantages in living in Buttcrack, USA.
So far, our preparedness has constituted of absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. We live in an extremely rural area, so grocery shopping is done monthly, with at least a two week supply of non-perishables on hand all the time. That’s not counting the 1/4 beef and 1/2 pig that are in the freezer, nor the root cellar with the root veggies from last summer’s garden. Water? I’m not worried. I’ll get water. Heat? That’s what the woodstove is for, and why it’s installed in such a manner that we can close off most of the house and live very comfortably in three rooms. Cooking…again, that’s what the woodstove is for. Gimme a heat source and a pan and I’ll be able to cook almost anything you give me.
We could probably hole up here for about a month before things started getting tight, and barring any serious medical emergencies we’d probably come out of it OK.
Just saw on ABC news tonight that duct taping the plastic sheeting over your doors and windows is useless. Ah well.
I’m 10 miles south of Boston right now which is where my family and I live, and I have a little house in the woods 100 miles northwest. I guess I’d go there if the shit hit the fan - if I could.
I’m not really doing anything prep wise. It feels like tempting fate.
If it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go. I simply am too busy to tape plastic sheeting all over my windows, and store bad canned food in my basement, then sit around for the next five years in mortal fear of what MIGHT happen…
People love to feed on their own fears. If there is an attack, I’ll run out and get shit then. But for right now, it’s a big waste of time, as far as I am concerned.
I was asked this same question by a worried-looking lady in the grocery store. I stared at her, dumbfounded. We live in a tiny town in the midwest, where the most horrific act of sabotage has been when some local teens set loose a flock of cows. This is the LAST place on earth that a terrorist would be interested in: small body-count, and they probably couldn’t even find it on a map. It astounds me that this woman would think that the terrorists would be interested in us.
Maybe if I lived in a large city on the east coast, I might prepare, but I don’t think so. There’s only so much you can do, anyway, and I won’t spend my life panicking over a “maybe.”
Maybe I’m just cynical, but I have a dark suspicion that the rise in the terrorist threat level might have a little something to do with impending war with a certain Middle Eastern nation, especially since a recent poll showed that 66% of Americans believe that Saddam was involved in the terrorist attacks, and 23% believe that all of the terrorists were from Iraq.
I work in the in a small town in Michigan at a food manufacturing facility. The afternoon of Sept 11 some guy came in off the street and said he couldn't believe we were still running. We asked him why we wouldn't be. He said well you have the highest buildings in the entire county, (a pair of 110 ft silos) and would be a prime target if terrorists ever decided to attack here. We tried to keep a straight face and said we would risk it.
