The Event : Are You Prepared in September?
September is National Preparedness Month.
Since 2004, September has been National Preparedness Month. I forgot to mention that part in The Event time line, but it does make for a nice addition to the overall theme.
The Event : Time Line for 2017
FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) sponsors the month and they have a website called https://www.ready.gov to help people get all the nice images, icons and brochures they need so that they are prepared for September.
Joking aside, they do provide the base information you need to get yourself started on being prepared for a disaster. The main three tabs are:
- Be Informed
- Plan Ahead ~ apparently it used to be "Make a Plan", but I guess it doesn't help to make a plan afterwards, so they had to clarify.
- Take Action ~ I guess, get involved seemed to give off the wrong vibe
Each of that tabs provides a good amount of starting information and then you can drill down on other links for even more information. So if you haven't started preparing for anything, the government will help you with a list of items you need to become a beginner prepper. Yes, even the government supports being a prepper.
They even help you with starting your first emergency supply kit.
A basic emergency supply kit could include the following recommended items:
- Water - one gallon of water per person per day for at least three days, for drinking and sanitation
- Food - at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food
- Battery-powered or hand crank radio and a NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert
- Flashlight
- First aid kit
- Extra batteries
- Whistle to signal for help
- Dust mask to help filter contaminated air and plastic sheeting and duct tape to shelter-in-place
- Moist towelettes, garbage bags and plastic ties for personal sanitation
- Wrench or pliers to turn off utilities
- Manual can opener for food
- Local maps
- Cell phone with chargers and a backup battery
~ https://www.ready.gov/build-a-kit
Not a bad list. Good luck on finding those local maps. And of course, make sure figure out how to put all of this stuff somewhere that will be useful when a disaster.
In conspiracy circles, FEMA is usually the bad guys just waiting to round everyone up and put them in camps or "centralized locations for better handling of people and resources". Well, that is there goal with a disaster hits, so it does seem like a nice fit if you want to point out that the government Boogie Man is gearing up to snatch everyone away. But, more closer to reality is what happens in every disaster. The government comes in, but a lot of civilians do the work to help stabilize the area affected. If it wasn't for those civilians helping, then things would be much harder to do and I assume the government knows this to be true.
Proof of this is the current is the Cajun Navy. I am sure everyone has seen videos and pictures of these volunteers coming in and helping rescue people from the Hurricane Harvey flooding. It is a great site, but I wonder about those that they didn't have to rescue.
If people are serious about being prepared for disaster and they follow through what is provided from the Ready.gov site, then they should be at the point of not needing to be rescued, by citizen or government means. We talked about this in the last show of Politically Correct : Be Prepared - For Disaster!. Everyone should be aware of the dangerous of their location. Houston has seen floods like this before and people know what happens. It shouldn't matter if the governor, mayor or president gave an evacuation order, individuals should have made that part of their plan in the first place.
Regardless of someones financial, physical or even mental condition, people should know what their limits are and plan accordingly. If you can't afford a bugout location or even a camper trailer, then maybe you should make sure you have friends you can go to on a temporary basis to out last a disaster. Of course, you might want to make sure that they have planned for that possibility as well. Plans should always be updated. Anything that changes in your life could affect your preparedness plan. Even getting another year older affects how well you could handled a situation, so celebrate that birthday by making changes to your preparedness plan.
Now, I don't think everyone should go out and become a 7th Level Prepper, but I do think people should focus on self-reliance as much as they can. Because, no matter how well you or the government plans, there will always be the unknown unknowns and if you haven't planned well enough for the known knowns, then you will have a much harder time with the other.
Get Out There and Prepare!
It is September, after all.
Thank you for tip
This is a great topic, especially watching Harvey. Be thinking about cooking without electricity, cleaning water with out running water, and how to survive until systems get back up running. Thanks for posting!
It does seem timely for the season and there are probably obvious reasons that they picked September to the preparedness month back in 2004.
I'm considering buying a water purifier and was wondering if you could recommend one? It's difficult to store water for more than a few days and if a crisis were to happen we may need more than that. I was looking at the Lifestraw Family Purifier.
Lifestraw and those like those are good for single use and emergencies. If you want to use the Family one for a Get Outta Of Dodge situation, that would be good, since it won't take a lot of room.
Berkey is highly recommended. They are a little pricey, but they do come in a variety of sizes. This would be good for every day use or if you stayed put.
I was thinking of a purifier that could be used for an extended period of time in our house for purifying rainwater or water from the local stream. Would the Berkey work for that?
Yes, the Berkey would do that.
As mentioned, it is highly recommended by off-grid people.
However, depending on what gets fed into your stream, you might still want to boil that first. I know I would, just to be on the extra cautious side. In other words, if you know upstream isn't being fed by a toxic city/plant/etc... then the Berkey will do fine by itself.
Yeah who knows. I live in the PA suburbs of Philly so the waters can not be trusted. I pray things will never get so bad that we don't have water but I think about the food I have stored that needs water to cook. It will do me little good without an adequate supply of water so I should have some backup plan in a worse case scenario. Thanks for your help.
HODOR