RE: Liberty & Preparedness Series: #1. | What Are Your Emergency Preparedness / 72 Hour Food Supplies? Do You Have Your Stock Ready? Community Engagement Post!
I grew up in earthquake country, then moved to hurricane country, so yeah, I've learned to buy in bulk and keep extra food on hand for emergencies, and just to take advantage of lower prices.
The State of California always recommended at least a 72-hour supply of food and water on hand, for household members and all animals, so I've always considered that as the minimum to keep on hand.
There are just two of us, so we can probably subsist just fine for at least a couple of weeks on the non-refrigerated food in our kitchen cabinets alone; longer if we were more sparing with portions.
My grandfather took us wilderness camping as a kid, and I've been a sailor and diver for years, not to mention a bit of a gadget geek, so we have an assortment of useful tools and skills to fall back on should the need arise.
Never been to California, and have never studied its weather, so this may be a dumb question, but what is the humidity level out there. With as much sun as you have, by keeping a few clear plastic tarps stored, you should easily be able to make a quickie solar powered water purifier and/or be able to pull and capture all the moisture from live green plants or make a make shift solar still to purify dirty water. I wrote an article 2 weeks ago giving instructions on how to build it. You can find it on my Steemit Blog.
I've actually done that before, as a demonstration on how it can be done. Pretty cool as an experiment, and yes, in a life-threatening situation, it can mean the difference between life and death.
Southern California is part of the Desert Southwest, so the humidity is typically quite low, but you can still usually come up with several ounces of water in several hours time; enough to keep you alive, but not enough for much else.
Florida, on the other hand, is the land of humidity, and it's not hard at all to convert a standard dehumidifier into a water purifier, extracting pure water from the surrounding air. And, typically, quite a lot of it, especially by comparison with Southern California.
Tennessee is between the two. We're still in the South, so summers are typically quite humid, and winters are quite dry. Of course, we have a reliable water source here, that is close to pristine, so it is less of a factor here.
I actually wrote an article for the Sand Key Sun, in Clearwater, Florida, on a number of different ways to purify and store pure drinking water in a pinch, after going through back to back hurricanes in 2004 (Frances followed by Jeanne).
We had actually expected to be more affected by Hurricane Charley, which was forecast to march straight up through Tampa Bay, but it hung a right at Port Charlotte and missed us completely. And Ivan, though it was a far more menacing storm, stayed out to sea until it came ashore far north of us, in the panhandle.
Frances and Jeanne were glancing blows, as both came ashore on the east coast and came across the state before they got to us, but they still did a lot of damage. During Frances, we lost half of a two-trunked Ficus benjamina tree outside our kitchen window, when the entire trunk was snapped in half by the wind.
During Hurricane Jeanne, the winds were blowing in the opposite direction, and the remaining trunk was literally aimed at our kitchen window; I said a number of prayers for it to survive the storm, which it did.
I was lucky, and only lost phone service, but I had close friends who were without power for weeks.
That is wisdom right there.
I have to give credit to my grandfather, and to my mom.
That's their influence, through and through.
Never leave to chance anything that you can so easily mitigate. Especially when others are counting on you.