Preparedness on a Shoestring Part 16: Beyond 30 Days

Beyond 30 days, the idea of preparing for “come what may” becomes a real Pandora’s box of possibilities and challenges.  The possibilities against which we might prepare are limited only by our imaginations.

Here’s a short (very short relatively) list of just a few of the possibilities.  Now please understand that not everybody believes that some of these things will or even could happen, even in the prepper community.  To be honest, I don’t buy into some of the scenarios that are talked about within or outside of the prepper community, including some of these things.  There are other scenarios that I believe are not only possible, but inevitable.  Natural disasters and the sorts of atrocities that humans can do to one another have been so thoroughly proven throughout history as to be indisputable.

Here’s the short list:

• Power outage (short or long term)
• Contamination or loss of municipal water supplies or utilities (short or long term)
• Snowstorms, tornados, hurricanes, flooding, mudslides, volcanic eruption, earthquakes  (area specific)
• Climate change (global warming or ice age)
• Economic turmoil or collapse ( October 29, 1929 duration approx. 10 years)
• Life changing injury or illness of yourself or a family member that affects your ability to  provide for your household or the death of a primary provider for your family.
• Social unrest, rioting, gang turf war, civil war, foreign invasion, tyrannical government
• Selective, theater wide, or Global Thermonuclear War
• Terrorist attack of whatever type they might nightmare up (9/11, Oklahoma City bombing)
• Biological pandemic along the lines of the Black Death in the Middle Ages
• Chemical catastrophe (Union Carbide in Bhopal, India Dec. 3, 1984)
• Nuclear accident (Chernobyl April 26, 1986)
• Asteroid, comet, or rouge planet impact (Tunguska event, Siberia, Russia 1908)
• Planetary magnetic pole shift resulting in massive, planet wide upheavals
• Solar flares or other cosmic phenomena
• Alien invasion (Think Will Smith in Independence Day)

Hey, I said the possibilities ranged from the common to the, uh, bit far fetched.  Still, what I or anyone else thinks about any given possibility is immaterial and frankly irrelevant.  It is what YOU believe is possible and what YOU think should be prepared for that is important.  If you prepare for a given scenario and are wrong, you are wrong.  Big deal.  If you do not prepare for a given scenario and you are wrong, you are reduced to the prayer, hope, and luck methods of survival. That is never a good place to be.  While all three of these are, and should be, a part of preparedness, they do not a plan make by themselves.

The 30 day store is your gateway.  It, along with a secure home base, makes you almost as prepared as you can be to weather most anything Nature can throw at you and gives you a good fighting chance against all the other stuff.

Deciding what specific threats you believe are possible will guide you from here.  It is this decision that will guide you in making threat specific preps.  We will be discussing those preps in greater detail in future segments of this series.  For now, it is time for another break.  I think another weekend getaway is in order.  Go, have fun, and refresh yourself.

Good luck and happy relaxing!