Preparedness

Preparedness is, obviously, the state of being prepared.

Prepared for what?

That is difficult to say.

Different places and different people in different situation have different things that they are more likely to need to be prepared for. To come up with an answer appropriate for you, you need to understand what kinds of things you may have to deal with.

Preparedness is being ready to deal with loss of the support systems that we take for granted. Being able to get safe, running water to drink from the faucet. Having a furnace heat your home. Having a grocery store to buy abundant, inexpensive food from. Being able to buy as much relatively inexpensive gasoline as you want, without waiting in lines for hours or days. Being able to go to a doctor. Calling for an ambulance. Calling for the police.

What would you do if these things were no longer available?

Being prepared means having a good answer; one that is doable and doable with what you have in your home right now.

As a good starting point, think about shelter, water and food.

For example, if it gets below freezing in winter, you need winter clothes and sleeping bags or blankets for everyone likely to be in your household.

As far as water goes, for a bare minimum for survival purposes, consider a gallon per person, per day. Double that to include minimal hygiene and cooking uses. Do you have pets or livestock? How much do they need to drink? If you have 4 people in your household and no pets or livestock, that works out to 4-8 gallons of water you need every day. How many days supply do you need? I don’t know. The basic answer is to have a much as you can practically afford. Emergency preparedness gurus talk about 3 days being the amount of time it takes rescue workers to come to the aid of people in a crisis. 3 days would be 12-24 gallons for the 4 people above, and would be the barest of minimums. 2 Weeks worth would be better. A month would be better still. 30 days of water for 4 people is in the neighborhood of 120-240 gallons. That is a lot of water. Water is heavy too, and there may be structural concerns about storing large amounts.

For food, the easiest thing to do is purchase extra food. What kind? Ideally, for short-term emergency use, I think that canned food is a very good choice. It is inexpensive, doesn’t require refrigeration or freezing, doesn’t require cooking, contains some water to lessen your water use, and generally stays edible for a few years. If you are able, purchase a week or two’s worth of canned food to eat. Try to stick to things your family already eats. If you cant afford to do that, purchase a few extra cans of things every time you go shopping. Then do FIFO rotation. If you eat 3 cans of beans every week, you should have 9 cans of beans, as an example. Every week buy 3 more cans of beans and put them on the shelf behind the 6 cans already there. That way, you are always eating the oldest cans, and nothing should be more that a few weeks old. Some people buy things and don’t use or rotate them and that means you will have to check and throw out or use hastily things every year or so. That is generally more of a hassle. Buy 3 nice, manual can openers.


Remember, in a crisis, your household may end up being more than your immediate family. Parents, siblings, friends may show up cold, thirsty and hungry. Are you ready for that?

If your area is subject to natural disasters, you should know what they are and what the likely consequences of them are, and be ready to deal with them.

A very general but detailed guide to this kind of preparedness is Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Complete Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival by Jack A. Spigarelli. It is a great place to start. Like all (so far) of the products I recommend, I have no financial relationship with Jack or his publisher. I’m not selling his book. I am recommending it because I think it is the most helpful one you can start with. Go get it, from a library if you have to.

Get moving.