Emergency drills

Ebuleo - November 14, 2020

Hey all,

My wife and I are lucky to have family who are also prepping. We are a group of ~10. None of us have military experience. We are all super isolating so we can spend time together and we would like to run some drills as a group. We currently run fire, and GTFO dills at our individual homes. Do y’all have any ideas of drills we can run to be a better team under stress/attack?

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I am very glad that your family is into prepping and are actively working on drills like this. I think that many preppers just buy the preps, but then never actually do anything with it. This will cause them to not know if their preps are complete (ex. having tons of freeze dried food but not a way to boil water), their preps to fail when they need them (ex. keeping up on maintenance of items like a generator), or they don’t know how to use the items at all or are not too familiar with them and don’t have time to figure them out like when under stress.

You are doing much better than I am, and you are motivating me to do better, so thank you.

I’m not sure if you are firearm people, but if you are, I believe that is a very important thing to train and practice with often. You don’t want to shoot your family member, because you are rusty at shooting and stress out at the last minute. There are many dry fire drills on YouTube that you can watch and practice with family, which uses no ammo. But make sure there is absolutely no ammo around when practicing.

Run various drills such as a home invasion at different times of the day (when everyone is in their bed rooms and asleep, you don’t want little Johnny to come out in the commotion and get shot in the dark, when you are all eating dinner at the table, or watching tv on the couch.)

How about an armed car jacking, or you turn down a corner and you drive your car into an angry protest and they start beating your car telling you all to get out. 

What would you do if there was an EMP that fried all technology (cellphones, internet, cars, public transportation, etc…) and you are at work, wife is at home, and kids are at different friends houses or school. How do you communicate? how will everyone get back together again?

Those are a few ideas that come to mind right now.

 

Good afternoon Ebuleo,

If appropriate for your area, work up as a drill,…

Announce a vehicle evacuation and ask who has the push broom to clear the smow off the vehicles.  Ask if anyone has arrangements to immediately retrieve some de-icing spray bottles. Ask who has some ice scrappers and where are they.  The vehicle doors are frozen so the window stuff is not readily retrivable.

Announce a test.  It’s a vehicle evac.  You see a snake (species not relevant) next to driver’s door. Ask who has some kitchen type cleaner sprays to repel the snake. 

Run a drill when you announce a window and part of frame broken.  Ask who has the tools? the hardware eg L braces, some adhesives.

Run a drill when you announce a portion of house roof damaged. Mimic above and ask about tarp(s).  For debriefing clearly mention to NEVER climb on the roof especially during times of stress.

FWIW;  I’ve got some small nylon mesh pouches that a sponge comes in.  After sponge worn out or MAdam doesn’t see my preparations, I take these mesh pouches – washed and dried – and fill them with moth balls (camphor).  In case my roof experiences damage and I rig a tarp over damage, on inside I use small screw hooks to place these pouches with moth balls next to tarp on rafters of this place.  Objective is to keep the Walt Disney characters out of here.  

~ Bob

 

 

“Never climb on the roof, especially in times of stress.”  Good advice. I smiled because decades ago during a nasty relationship break-up, I decided that I was going to go on top of the mobile home where I was living and throw all the gifts that the person ever gave me off the roof so that I could see them break. I just needed to borrow my neighbor’s ladder to get onto the roof. A friend talked me out of that plan. smh at myself

 

“Run a drill when you announce a portion of house roof damaged. Mimic above and ask about tarp(s).  For debriefing clearly mention to NEVER climb on the roof especially during times of stress.”

What are the other options for placing that tarp besides climbing up there?

 

Fear is a healthy thing but you may not be able to avoid getting on the roof.  Embracing the suck is just part of the prepper mindset.  The real issue is learning how to safely get on the roof and work, even by yourself, before you’re forced to do it in a stress situation.

 

Reviewing for updates and my notes ……

Another drill; 

For a group of ~ 10 in an isolated area;

On the periphery of your land, one of your group members sees a dead human body on the ground.

Who does what ?  Who is dedicated and prepared to write up event ?  Who will attempt to report this to the authorities ?  Does the body need to be covered ?  If the emergency situation, let’s say an adverse weather event, closes down communications, should the body be buried ?  Has this been researched with your state health department, law enforcement community outreach police officers ?

Add to after-action drill report; must research with authorities what to do if deceased has expensive jewelry easily visable, if deceased person should be checked for wallet … yes, ID and money in same place and there are “issues” for private citizens doing any “checking”.

Start the scholarship work now and it fits a pattern – until the rules are again changed.

During your debriefing, ask if enough all weather paper pads and pens available.  Determine who will keep custody of these notes.  

 

You could turn off your water and power for a couple of days as a drill. 

 

This is a great idea Downunder! I got into preparedness when I was in high school. I asked my parents multiple times if we could turn off the circuit breaker for a day and pretend like we didn’t have power. We could practice not having lighting, how to cook without power, and more. They always said no though and I never tried it. 

Now that i’m married i’ll have to ask my wife if she would like to do it with me. She probably would be more willing! I’ll report back if we end up doing it!