Author: brettfernau

Emergency Preparedness for Beginners – Part 3 – Bugging In: Water

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Emergency Preparedness for Beginners
By Brett A. Fernau

Part 3: Bugging In – What you need to survive at home – Water

Read Part 1 and 2 of this series first. In those articles I discuss what you will need to survive the initial disaster event and what you will need to get home from wherever you are when that event occurs. This, Part 3, is the first article on what you will need to survive at home in the event of a short-term and temporary situation where power and water are not available. By “short-term” I mean a few days up to a couple of weeks without access to the usual sources of power and water, but with the strong possibility that both will be restored fairly quickly. When power, water, and communications are interrupted you are “off the grid.” The “grid” is that publicly-owned infrastructure that supplies you with electricity, water, cable and broadcast TV, and telephone communications, both hard-wired, land lines and cellular.

A long-term, off-grid, emergency situation is a much more complicated and difficult subject to address and consider, and is not for beginners. You will quickly overwhelm yourself, if you delve too deeply into it. For now, don’t do it. We’ll talk about it later, once you have learned the basics.

The Rule of Threes is one of the first things you need to know in preparing for an emergency situation. The Rule of Threes is: You can survive for 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food. So, the first thing you need to do to begin preparing your home base for a disaster is to create some water reserves. Under normal conditions, you should plan on using one gallon of water per person per day just for drinking. In very hot conditions, the level of usage may climb to two gallons per day. Start with one gallon per person per day. So, for a family of four, you would need four gallons of water per day, 28 gallons for a week, and 56 gallons for two weeks. Again, this is just for drinking. This does not include water for cooking, cleaning, or sanitation.

Probably, this already seems overwhelming to you. How and where will you store a fifty-five gallon drum of water that weighs 440 pounds? Where do I get a barrel? How long will the water last inside of it? How will I get the water out of it? How much will that cost me? Stop!! You don’t have to do it all today. Let’s hope that if there is a disaster where you live, that it won’t happen right away. With that hope in mind, you still should start stocking up on some water right away. You can buy a case of bottled water at the grocery store the next time you go shopping. Stash that case in a closet with a note attached to it that indicates the date you purchased it. The plastic in which that water is packaged does not last forever, so you will need to rotate your water supply periodically, about every six months if you are storing bottled water in those flimsy containers. You could put a reminder on a wall calendar to remind you to use and replace that case of water when the six months has passed. I started storing tap water in one liter bottles that previously contained sparkling mineral water. The plastic of these bottle is a little thicker than the standard bottled water containers since it has to hold the pressure of the carbonation (the fizz). I bought some inexpensive plastic crates from a local discount department store. The crates hold 12 bottles each, or about 3 gallons per crate. They are stackable so they don’t take up much floor space, but they are heavy when you get them stacked up.

There are other ways to store water. Plastic drums designed for water storage are available in a variety of sizes from 5 to 55 gallons; pumps are available to get the water out of the drums. The home water delivery companies use those 5 gallon bottles. You can store those and use and replace them as appropriate. There are water containers available at sporting goods stores that are square or rectangular, hold from 3 to 5 gallons and can fit into the back corner of a closet. It is recommended that any water that you store in plastic containers not be left sitting on a concrete floor as there can be some leaching of toxins from the concrete into the water. Use wooden pallets or platforms to keep your water containers off of the concrete. If you live in an apartment, keep a close watch on your water containers so they don’t start leaking down into your neighbor’s apartment below you.

If you have a water source available nearby, such as a pool, a lake or river, or a well with a manual pump, you are one of the fortunate ones. But even then, you will need a way to treat that water to make it safe for drinking. After a disaster that disrupts the public water system, any water that isn’t in a container that you filled or purchased and know is safe for drinking, should be treated. That includes tap water. There are a variety of water purification methods and systems available. You should plan on having and being able to use more than one method. All methods have their own plus points and minus points and you should understand those before you decide upon which method or methods you use. Distillation removes pretty much everything from your water, but its long-term use for drinking is not recommended since it takes minerals from your body on its way out. Boiling clear water for 10 minutes is a highly recommended way of purification. You can clean up muddy or dirty water by straining it through a cotton rag to remove the particles; then, you will need to boil it or filter it to remove the contaminants. The liability of boiling water is that it takes fuel to bring the water to a boil. If you have unlimited fuel, then boiling is a workable method of purification. There are some very good high-tech filters available that claim to remove 99.99 percent of contaminants. Do your own research and decide if that might be an option for you. Chemical purification tablets are another option, as is bleach added to clear water. Follow the instructions carefully to use the tablets. For bleach, be sure to use the unscented product. There are a couple of different ratios out there about how much bleach to use per gallon of water. Somewhere between 8 and sixteen drops seems to be the standard, but do your own research and testing to make sure you get it right. Both the chemical tablets and the bleach method require you to allow the water to sit for a time (30 minutes for bleach) before it is safe to drink, and you need to stir up the mixture after you’ve added the tablets or bleach.

For the short-term, have enough water on hand to keep you going until municipal service is restored and declared safe for drinking. For the long term, consider more than one of the above options

Leading the Way to a New Civilization – Part 2

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Leading the Way to a New Civilization
By Brett A. Fernau

Part 2: Helping or Hiding

There are some emergency preparedness enthusiasts, often referred to as “preppers,” who advocate extreme secrecy in all their preparedness activities. I understand their viewpoint, though I do not altogether share it. If you are concerned only with your own survival, or the survival of your own small group, then I can see where secrecy is a priority. You wouldn’t want to advertise the fact that you have water and food supplies cached in your basement, or that you are prepared to defend yourself, your group and your supplies by whatever means you deem necessary. You want to survive, you want your group to survive and you don’t want to be overrun by those around you who have not prepared. I understand that, however, in a major, long-term, disaster where most of your fellow human beings are thirsty, hungry and desperate, hours or days away from death, the breakdown of society will be of such magnitude as to make survival impossible for even the most well-stocked individual or group. Consider how many hundreds, thousands or millions of people surround you. If they are not prepared for an emergency, they will be looking everywhere for sustenance. In their search, they will find you and your group and they will take what you have. You cannot long survive a breakdown of civilization in this modern world, unless you are isolated, fortified and self-sufficient. Even if your small group does survive, what will you have left to work with in the aftermath? However, if your goal is to help your friends and neighbors, then withdrawing and withholding yourself from them will not serve that end. Hiding, staying under the radar, keeping a low profile, and withdrawing from society in the name of emergency preparedness is not a viable way to ensure long-term survival of yourself, your friends and your society.

If a major disaster of some sort is inevitable, then so, at this time, is the breakdown of society in the aftermath of that disaster. One aspect of emergency preparedness which, I believe, is being almost completely neglected is preventing that seemingly inevitable societal breakdown. Our civilization, in its current state, is extremely fragile. Our supply lines are long and easily interrupted; the distance from farm to table is very, very long and our reserves are limited. There is no common bond of civility which holds us together, no overriding concern for the physical and spiritual well-being of our fellow human beings. Our society as a whole has no moral compass pointing the way toward cooperation with our neighbors to ensure the survival of our civilization. When a disaster strikes, it will be, for most people, every human for himself or herself with little or no consideration for the preservation of society as a whole. Without some sort of common moral grounding, we have no reason to cooperate, no reason to consider important anyone’s survival but our own. This is where we are right now as a society, no matter which society we consider. As far as I can tell, there has never been any agreed-upon moral code that included every human being on earth, no fundamental agreements that bind us together as a species. We can fix that. Not easily, not quickly, but it can and should be done. If we are to survive as a species, it must be done.

I have found only one moral code that can be broadly implemented, accepted and agreed upon. This secular (meaning non-religious) moral code is called The Way to Happiness. To date, it has been tried and found successful in helping restore civility, hope and morality in a number of very different cultures and activities throughout the world. Explore it’s precepts for yourself here . I believe you will find it of great value.

I would argue that emergency preparedness to be effective must be done overtly and promoted broadly. If we are to survive in any sort of disaster, be it long-term or short-term, widespread or local, we will all need to work together. We need to have common agreements, purposes and goals in order to be able to help each other; we can only have those things if we share them with each other. Would it not be better to help your neighbors get themselves prepared for a disaster than to have to watch them struggle and probably perish in the aftermath of that event? Is it not in your own best interest to be surrounded by people who can help each other survive? Would you be able to turn away that family down the street when they came to you for food and water for themselves and their children? How would you feel if you did? Better to help them get prepared. If you help them become stronger, smarter, and more able, you enhance not only their ability to survive, but your own.

To that end, it is essential that we communicate with each other in order to share information and concerns. Throw a block party and invite all of your neighbors. Make it pot-luck and have everybody bring something to share. Talk to them and get them talking to each other. Hand out a list of suggested emergency preparedness actions that they can get started on right away. Reach out to those of your neighbors who did not come to the party. Find out what their concerns are and offer to help them get started on their own emergency preparedness plans, or, better yet, have one of the people who did come to the party talk to them. Don’t try to do it all yourself, get everyone to help. That’s what you’ll need to be doing in the event of a disaster – helping each other; you may as well begin practicing that immediately. Follow up the first meeting with others. Get everyone talking about what they are doing to get prepared; help them solve whatever problems they might be having in their efforts; throw the question out to the group and invite everyone to offer suggestions and help. Get yourself a few copies of The Way to Happiness and hand them out to your friends and neighbors.

What you ought to be working towards is being surrounded by people who agree that it is in everyone’s best interest to help each other survive, both physically and spiritually. With that agreement in place, you can start to work on improving everyone’s ability to live a better, more productive, more satisfying and, dare I suggest it, happier life. You can accomplish this in the name of emergency preparedness, but you can’t do it by withdrawing yourself from society. You will have to do it by stepping to the front of the room and leading the way.