Most likely, you’re right, and I’ll never have to use this stuff.
But I believe that fortune favors the prepared. If something DOES happen, my family will stand a much better chance of staying safe and fed than those who have not prepped. Those who were unprepared may be wailing about how unfair it was that they never had a chance, and that I was “lucky,” totally ignoring the fact that a large part of the “luck” they’re talking about was the preperation they didn’t choose to see as useful.
Keeping prepared gives me a measure of peace of mind. If it seems silly to you, then don’t do it.
Well, I don’t have a generator, but I do live in an earthquake/mudslide zone (with a flood zone downhill), and we lose power sometimes. I don’t know that I’ll wind up in a shelter or out in the woods with a truck full of cats ‘n’ ammo, but I do know that when the power goes, so does my heat and stove, and we’ve gone several days at a time without power.
BY the way – I used to have 15 1 ounce gold coins, purchased at a time when gold was under $300 per ounce. When gold went over $600, I sold five of them for enough profit to cover much of my other costs for my emergency supply.
Of course, I was just lucky that gold went up like that.
I keep the pantry well stocked and we always have duct tape around somewhere, but living in an apartment in a metropolitan area I couldn’t store all those supplies if I wanted to. My goal is to always have enough of whatever I would need for several days (food/water/etc) to prevent me from needing to leave my apartment so the world has time to correct itself. I also have empty backpacks and suitcases in case I needed to haul it with me somewhere for whatever reason. Really though, I have a few thousand dollars set aside in an emergency fund in the bank and empty credit cards. I can’t imagine the amount of sobbing I would do if I had $500-$1500 in the apartment for emergencies and then I was robbed or had a fire of something.
It was asked before, but I’ll ask again: how do you get the antibiotics? My doc’s stingy enough with them as it is, though she knows I understand not to ask for them for a cold or something. I doubt she’d prescribe some for me because I was putting together a survival kit.
You don’t know until you ask. We’ve had personal doctors prescribe both antibiotics and Darvon to members of our group for emergency kits. The Darvon was with the stipulation that if it gets used, we submit a police report on the accident, and turn in the old pills each year before we get the new batch. Ditto the antibiotics. Of course, the group includes a fire captain who regularly climbs Yosemite, and who has rescued any number of climbers who got over their heads. But if you lay out your reasoning to a personal physician, you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting the necessary drugs.
I don’t agree. I may wish to buy something off a private citizen who doesn’t take cards. Perhaps a few of Bricker’s shotgun shells or sat phone time. In addition, cash works well for bribes.
I was in NYC on 9-11 and I have been through a few hurricanes and near misses. On 9-11, things seemed to function pretty normal (aside from fear that we were trapped and all going to die). As soon as I heard all planes were grounded, I got on the internet, used my credit card and rented a car for 2 days later (my flight was supposed to leave on 11-12). My phone worked well and I ate at a deli for lunch and I think I had a Burger King burger that night- all using my credit card. No money or supply issues then.
With hurricanes, you get a fair amount of warning, so it is possible to be prepped. You fill your bathtubs full of water for the toilet, you might get some extra non-perishable food, a few batteries, dust off the ol’ camping equipment and basically camp in your house. People usually get at least one or two scares per hurricane season, so you usually have that stuff around anyway. I actually used to think that hurricanes were fun when I was little (we lived on relatively high ground). No need for money, everything is closed for a day or two.
I have never been part of an evacuation, but those seem scary. When Rita was headed towards Houston, there were horrible traffic jams and gas was in short supply, it did not matter if you had $5 or $5,000- it only mattered that you got out early. With thousands of people heading towards San Antonio, San Antonians freaked and filled up their tanks and stocked up on food. Most gas stations were out of gas and the grocery stores were running out of non-perishables- there seemed to be a fear that the Houston people would take them all.
As for myself, I got enough food and water at any given time to last a few days, plenty of camping stuff, bbq stuff, first aid stuff, ammunition, and yes, I do have a couple of hundred bucks cash- even though I know I don’t need it.
Hmm, it never occurred to me to keep an emergency stash of money around.
That said, if something bad did happen, I think we’d do pretty well, even without cash. I have a good supply of water (two wells on the property, and a creek that is drinkable in an emergency), lots of canned goods, frozen food if the electricity is working, and several means to cook things (gas stove, grill, wood to make a fire.)
If things got really dire, I have a brother and parents who have all of the above within walking distance.
If things got even more dire… say huge natural disaster, or war that got so bad that someone bombed this god-forsaken wilderness that I live in… we have an “off-the-grid” cabin that we could live in for many, many months, if we brought enough canned goods. That’s also withing walking distance (loooong walk, but we could make it.)
I think what microbubble is saying, is that even cash will be worthless with a large scale disaster that would effect normal commerce. It wouldn’t matter if a private party didn’t accept plastic, what could he do with worthless paper currency? At that point, you’re going to be trading goods for goods, instead of money for goods.
I don’t think cash would become “worthless”, if it did - we’d have a lot more things to worry about. It might become heavily discounted however - or in simple terms essentials would be expensive as hell. I’m finding it difficult to see the utility of large gold coins too - how does one buy small items with such a high value item, and how do they make change? And smaller bills with which to make change might become relatively scarce? It might be better to have a good mix with lots of small bills - $5 and $10 rather than all $100s.
You guys are thinking a lot longer term than I was. I was more on the level of “my house burned down!” or more like, “a wildfire burned our town down! And all the towns in a fifty mile radius!” vs. aftermath of nuclear attack.
That said…I suspect you are right about the value of cash vs. commodities in a situation that goes on for more than a week, say. I think I’ll pick up a half-dozen bottles of booze to add to my basement larder. We are heavy drinkers ourselves, but it might be just the ‘currency’ we need to gain something vital we forgot to stock.
Too bad cigarettes go stale – some cartons of those might be good to have, too.
I’m going to Bricker’s place when the apocalypse comes.
Well, okay, seriously, my plan is to hop in the car and drive out to the farm. Food, water, and shelter not dependent on civilized things like the power grid or retail establishments, though we’d have to rig a bucket on a rope to get water out of the well I guess.
I live in a fairly rural area. Having a stock of ammunition and various firearms about, if I’m stuck there and cannot get to a population center to find food, I will have to kill it myself.
If I have to resort to ‘can’t buy it so I’ll take it’, the lighter more easily portable firearms will be with me, along with various knives.
I’ve got lots of water, but water is heavy to carry, so purification tablets are important.
My neighbor across the hall when I lived in the city was a big Y2K person - she thought everything was going to collapse and proudly told me about all the food and water she stocked up on. Then she asked me what I stocked up on. I said ‘Ammo.’ She scoffed. I asked her which one of us she thought would go hungry now that I knew where to go for supplies. I also told her that I likely wouldn’t be the only armed person if the fecal matter hit the oscillating air circulation device, and that I was in a position to defend my survival supplies where she was not.
She marveled at my planning and foresight and then offered to share her food if I would hole up at her apartment when the Y2K disaster hit. I agreed knowing that it wasn’t going to come crashing down.
I doesn’t have to be nuclear winter before credit cards become useless. A couple of weeks ago the Seattle area had a huge windstorm that knocked out power to a lot of the area. My parents had no power for 9 days. My parents have a good emergency kit and a generator so they didn’t have too many problems except that they had trouble getting gasoline. All the gas stations were out of power and the gas pumps need electricity to operate. Eventually the stations brought in generators to power the pumps but they still didn’t have power to the rest of the premises so they weren’t taking credit or debit.
