National Preparedness Month Wrap Up Event
I'm excited to be a part of a program this week where each day, a group of bloggers will answer a particular prepping question, and link to each others' sites so that our readers can compare our answers and be exposed to other ideas. We also invite our readers to participate by answering the day's question in the blog comments section.
Please also visit the other participants:
http://doomandbloom.net
http://modernsurvivalonline.com
http://prepplace.blogspot.com
http://rethinksurvival.com
http://seasonedcitizenprepper.com
http://apartmentprepper.com/
Sit down, strap in, and please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle... Enjoy the ride!
Monday's Question:
When did you start prepping and why?
I touched on this the other day, but coming of age in the early 80s, I was acutely aware of the commies, nuclear war, and terrorists. Two TV shows that helped get me interested were the miniseries, The Day After (I still have vivid memories of Jason Robards' car cutting off and as he ducks down to check his wires under the dash, his car protects him from the blast) and a show that I can't remember the name of, but it was shortly after CNN came on the scene and this show was done as if it were a real emergency news break alerting us to terrorists having a nuclear weapon in Charleston, SC harbor and threatening to detonate it.
I started reading survival magazines and books at that time, and still have many of them. I did not grow up around guns, but starting in middle school, I was able to start building my collection and was able to go out to the country and shoot every now and then. Survivalism and guns seemed to go together, and my interest was grown that way. As I became an adult, my interest and activities ebbed and flowed over the years, but when my wife and I got married a week after Hurricane Isabel hit Virginia, and we were totally unprepared for it, I got back in to the lifestyle and have been going at it intensely ever since.
How did you start prepping and why?
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ReplyDeleteI started ‘Prepping’ in earnist in 2002. Prior to that I maintained +/- a 30 day supply of the very.. very basics. Ok now the Why? My employeer actually set off my actions when ‘they’ issued a refinery wide memo while ‘hardening’ the refinery perimeter and ‘enhancing’ security… not unlike the proverbial frogs hind end. In the memo we where told in blut terms that we could not expect either direct corporate, local or federal agencies to provide needed family support during or after a major “event” As the indicated blast radius for 2.5 million tons of compressed gas augmented by well over 11 million gallons of ‘stored fuels’ exceeds the Western downtown limits of my fair city…. I paid attention. My lil burg is a city of just under 300.000 souls. Don’t intend the Drama here… you asked. Coupled with the hydrocarbons, I have other reasons more poliical and social/economic that motivate as well.
the movie about the bomb in Charlesto Harbor is "Special Bullitin".
DeleteGreat story, thanks for sharing!
DeleteSpecial Bulletin is right, thanks!
H1N1 grabbed my attention but only after I read about he 1918 influenza epidemic that swept the world did I take it seriously.
ReplyDeleteI did research on food storage and soon had a varied supply of #10 cans for my family for three meals a day with at least one serving of fruit and vegetables a day.
Unless we are camping we don't use siphon water filters, stoves, or other equipment. The one exception is the solar oven which we use every week. It has been a quite a few years since I thought I would realistically use my food storage but I am always glad to have it.
After Katrina I was curious about just how FEMA operated have taken a large number of the online classes. I found more online classes at Michigan State, John Hopkins, Texas A&M, etc.
That led me to CPR/AED/First Aid classes, CERT training, and the local police and fire department citizen academies.
You are doing it right! Thanks for sharing! If you would like to do a guest post about CERT, I'd love to post it.
DeleteI have to say that everyone should take the CERT class and I will never understand why it is not a required class to graduate from high school.
DeleteAt the very least, I am far better prepared to secure my family and home. After that I can check on my elderly neighbors and others in the neighborhood and hopefully won't burden the professionals.
My CERT experience is very similar to many across the country. After the nine or ten sessions there was no further CERT-related training and as a group we could not hold it together ourselves.
In my situation, the fire department (which provided the class) wanted us as volunteers to sit at downed power lines and such. The chief wanted us for rehab (supplying food and drink to firemen in the event of a large fire) not just for our town but for the entire division using a huge, unused decontamination truck.
The chief was unhappy when I pointed out that no one in the group had valid license to drive the thing and maybe we should start with the FD pick up truck in our town and see how it goes.
At the next meeting we were given waivers to sign which said if we damage any truck we had to pay for it and there would be no workers' compensation in the case of injury at a dangerous fire ground, and other moral defeating line items.
Some people signed it and others turned it in unsigned, but I learned later that the result was no one showed up for the next meeting. We were never contacted by the chief again, although the firefighters (who we see every day in town) remain our great friends.
If you want to make friends with the fire department and live in a snowy location, shovel the fire hydrant out. At our first class we introduced ourselves and provided our address. When I said I lived at 000 Madison every firefighter looked up and one said, “Oh, you must be the guy who shovels out the Nordic Road hydrant.”
It's a shame that the FD failed to take full advantage of what CERT can offer. It's pretty darn easy to schedule an EVOC class to get a few folks trained up on driving a tanker, and the waiver was rediculous. Glad you got personal improvement from it!
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