This is a guest post from community member Rick Ryder. Like most places around the western US, every year my area seems to get worse with wildfires and the resulting smoke that blocks out the sky. I live off-grid in Eastern Washington, in an area firefighters refer to as a Wildland Urban Interface (WUI; pronounced
Soft drink producers have only a few days of carbon dioxide left. The UK is helping to bail out a US fertilizer manufacturer to help restart CO2 production—a shortage of which is hammering the UK and badly impacting the UK food supply. It’s a tangled and interesting web, and apparently most companies (and countries) were
We recently discussed steps to localize your supply chain. One of those steps is buying hardy, well-made hand tools that will last decades and don’t require fuel. The more you can take care of those tools on your own, the less you’ll be dependent on the external supply chain for replacements or repairs. That includes
Supply chain disruptions are hitting school lunch lines. Those relying on school breakfast and lunch programs should send along extra snacks with kids if at all possible. 65 container ships are now languishing off the coast of California. It gets worse and worse. Do your holiday shopping early, folks. We are once again facing a
Hundreds of thousands of people lost power after the Nicholas storm surge. That particular region of Texas has been slammed over and over again: Meat, produce, floral, deli, and bakery goods are all seeing price rises. The White House is monitoring large conglomerates that control the costs of these goods and notes that price-gouging and
The one question The Prepared has been asked the most over the last few months is how to prepare for supply chain disruptions. If you keep up with our twice-weekly news roundups, you’re aware of supply chain bottlenecks, rising meat prices, bare shelves, and the worldwide chip shortage that has screwed up everything from game
The container ship bottleneck on the West Coast continues to grow: Medicare might cover vision, hearing, and dental soon. The proposal to expand Medicare still must pass multiple legislative hurdles: It’s also possible that a broad childcare subsidy could be passed in the near future which would help millions of American families. The Gulf Coast
The Biden Administration thinks it’s possible to ramp up solar production to 40% of US electric supply in less than 20 years. I see milk and cereal for sale with price tags over 5$ each, so I’m not so sure that meat is the actual bulk of the problem when it comes to food costs
Until society figures out better ways to handle the ever-worsening wildfire problem, we’ll continue to see planes dropping impressive plumes of chemicals in an effort to control the fire’s spread. But what do the planes actually drop? Is the fire retardant harmful to people, animals, or the environment? How do you clean it up if
Another hurricane has formed in the Atlantic—this one is named Larry. It is currently a category 3 with winds over 70 miles per hour. It will swerve away from the East Coast of the US, but could cause larger than normal swells to hit the entire Eastern side of North America. Employers are still hiring,
Labor Day weekend is a common sales weekend for prepping gear because it kicks off September’s National Preparedness Month. Here’s what we know of so far, and please add any more in the comments! Amazon We haven’t spotted many good deals on Amazon so far, other than the NESCO VS-02 vacuum sealer for $35, 40%
The FBI says hate crimes rose significantly in 2020—the highest number of incidents (nearly 7,800) in 12 years. Good Samaritans rescued scores of cows from Hurricane Ida floodwater. It could take up to six weeks to restore power to hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents—Hurricane Ida did some serious damage. There have been 80
You probably know that the inside of vehicles can get surprisingly hot — much hotter than the average air temperature outside of the car. That’s why police will break through a car window if a child or pet has been left inside even though it’s “only 90 degrees out.” Everyone with a vehicle should keep
The most recent eviction moratorium has been blocked by the Supreme Court: North Korea might be producing plutonium again. Their reactor has not been active since 2018. Hurrican Ida left 1 million people without power around the Gulf Coast. Multiple transmission lines were damaged and it will take one or more days to repair the
Costco is limiting the purchase of paper household products again, and Lunchables, kids’ juice packs, and lobster are in short supply too: The Rio Grande is low on water secondary to drought conditions: Grain inventories are depleted all over the globe as temperatures rise. The US grain supply is no exception, and grain prices are
