In that case you just get creative with what you have!!

One easy one is to cook some rice, then add canned salsa, corn, and beans (or could add chicken instead).  Top with cheese if you have it!

To be completely honest, bottling my own tap water makes me a bit nervous, as I’m never sure if the containers I put it in were completely clean or if contaminants get into it. I could see the average non-prepper going this way. But having said that, I solved that problem for myself by getting a berkey filter and a bunch of lifestraws. I would filter any water I had stored, just to be safe. However, it occurs to me that in those first hours after a disaster, it might be nice to have a few “ready to go” containers of water I trust, so I have a few gallon jugs of commercial water to get me started.  And of course, whatever is already in the berkey. And at this point the source of the water I would be filtering is several 55 gallon rain barrels I have in the backyard.

Sounds like you are doing a great job!  I run my dishes on any setting that includes the extra hot water “sanitize” feature. COVID is really fragile on surfaces, so it doesn’t take much to kill it.  Protecting your respiratory system with air exchange and a good fitting mask is the most important thing. I mainly mentioned the bathroom because I had a “duh!” moment when I called employee health to report my home covid exposure and they reminded me to create a “quarantine bedroom and bathroom” for my sick kid.  The need for a bathroom had not even occurred to me until then! 

This is a great thread and still so timely!  As an RN, a couple of things I would add: 1. If at all possible, give the sick person their own *bathroom* as well!  If they wear an N95 mask going between quarantine room and bathroom, you are well protected.  And have them run the bathroom fan for a while after they are in there.  If you only have one bathroom, you can share it, but have everyone else wear an N95 when they use it too, and definitely run the fan after use. 2.  An alternative to the homemade air filter is to open the window in the quarantine room and put a fan in the window continuously blowing the air outside (on low), creating your own “negative pressure room” to keep aerosols and droplets from getting into other areas of the house.  This works best in the summer, obviously, but it is extremely effective, if you don’t have a filter handy. Just completed a quarantine of my 18yo in a house with 6 people, and nobody else got sick (thankfully!)

This is a fantastic idea! I would add a copy of your advanced directive, if you have one.  And if you don’t have one, then you might want to fill one out.  They are easily available online.  Among other things, it names who you would like to have make medical decisions for you, if you are incapacitated (which can easily happen if you need hospitalization for COVID).  Also, it can guide decisions about use of a ventilator, IV nutrition, CPR, etc.   I was under 50 when COVID happened, and one of the first thing I did was have my then fiance and I fill them out and name each other as decision makers and list our preferences, then put them on our refrigerator.  I didn’t want the burden of that to fall on my then 19yo son.

With all this talk about the upper midwest being a desirable/safer place, I just wanted to point out that there is a “red flag warning” (=high wild fire danger) in central Iowa right now.  Ugh.

OMG if we ever get down to zero cases anywhere, then I will gladly return to my old unmasked, non social distancing ways, because that means we finally have a vaccine that doesn’t allow spread and everyone has either been vaccinated or survived the last variant. It will have run it’s course. But I don’t think that will happen any time soon. With the exception of smallpox, a vaccine has never eradicated a disease. So let’s say it becomes one of those floating viruses out there, that everyone gets every 2 years or so. And the death toll is the same as the flu. As long as we have an effective vaccine that doesn’t allow spread, I will be happy to go back to being back to normal behavior as soon as I can trust that it works for all variants and the rate of infection seems normal. Long answer, but there it is. The last pandemic/plague we had was the AIDS crisis.  It changed human behavior and medicine permanently.  Safer sex and condoms are now the norm, with regular testing for those who engage in risky behavior (sex workers, addicts, etc). And doctors won’t touch body fluids and blood without gloves. And if they do they also get tested. And we developed medications that allow HIV patients to live a long life with the disease. There is no “back to normal,” and the world has moved on and hardly notices. (the first healthcare worker to get AIDS was a married nurse in Iowa who worked the ED. She put pressure on a severe wound with her ungloved hands ((Can you imagine??)).  She had been gardening the day before and was all scratched up by blackberry bushes. Since then we don’t touch body fluids without gloves.) Much of Asia wears a mask when they are sick as a matter of courtesy to those around them.  They’ve been doing it a long time. That (along with masking healthcare practitioners) is probably where we are headed, and one day it will be so normal we will forget where it started.  So that masking  + testing + reasonable treatment + regular vaccine is the future I see. 

The “family sized” lifestraw is a large container to hold water, and is gravity fed through the filter to the bottom and filtered water comes out the bottom. Would work for the pets too. https://lifestraw.com/collections/emergency-prep/products/lifestraw-family-emergency-water-filter Dogs and cats have better immune systems and drink out of puddles all the time. But I also have a couple of sawyer filters that are attached to a flexible bottle you can squeeze to filter the water. And I have a Berkey at home for “bug in”

I caught the middle of a fiction author on the radio when I was driving the other day (not sure who). The interviewer called him a writer of dystopian future.  He disagreed and said he was a utopian future author because “the bar on what is utopia is lowered.  If we survive mass extinction, that is utopia.” 

As a nurse I see nothing wrong with your plan, and I’m pretty impressed!  I’m pretty sure test strips don’t last as long, so that seems like a bigger problem.  I guess if you run out of strips or your final glucometer breaks, you can just continue on and stop testing like so many of my patients like to do at baseline (NOT recommended). Do you know how long a bottle of test strips really would last? We throw them away after 30 days. As for the OP: a backup generator and a small refrigerator would be a good disaster survival plan for storage.  And I have a refrigerator in my RV that can run on propane. Longer term I think pops has it covered. But running out when it’s not available is the worse scenario, and with something so expensive you are not going to be able to stockpile without huge expense. I think those of us on life saving maintenance medications may need to make peace with a shortened survival rate if we can’t get our meds.

I’m not in a hurricane prone area at all (west coast). With current preps, bug out inland sooner rather than later, to get ahead of traffic.  If the new NOLA levee is still intact after this I’ll be impressed. I always have more than one bug out direction I can go in and avoid the main highway. Not prepped to put valuables in waterproof place, so use all the garbage bags, etc that I have. Move furniture upstairs when possible. Travel Trailer(TT) is in our driveway and always prepped with enough to keep us comfortable for a while, a place to potty and waaaay more food than I ever have needed when camping. Truck full of gas. Added extra propane tank to the TT and have a spare always in the truck.  Pets have BOB in the TT already. Many folks on the camping forums will empty their water storage tanks before driving home due to weight, but NOPE that’s 35gallons stored and ready for an emergency. Family sized lifestraw water filter in the trailer, lifestraw individual water bottles and extra cheaper lifestraw for each person in BOB, and chlorine tabs for sanitizing any water we find when the stored water runs out. Would hook up, pull out of driveway and park on street at the first sign of storm, ready to go. Generator for recharging battery and running heat/AC can be grabbed from backyard, and extra propane can be added from backyard if time. Many parks and fairgrounds will allow evacuees to park trailers in a crisis, but there is limited electricity hookups. Second choice is the big truck with full fist aid kit well stocked BOB, kids and pets.  Would grab what the pets need and any extra supplies (like the tent, food, sleeping bags, warm clothes) that are kept in the TT.  This is if we had to leave the TT at home, or had to leave it behind on the road somewhere for some reason. Between the tent and the truck, we would have shelter if we couldn’t find a place to sleep. (2 adults, 2 teens, 3 small dogs, 2 cats).  It’s wildfire season here in the PNW, and this works for that as well.  We have a 3 stage evacuation process (get ready, get set. go) and I would get out at the “get ready” stage to beat traffic jams. This setup is because I was very close to the evacuated areas last year, and so my being ready “someday” got too real.

I respect that.  

I try to keep 3-4 month’s worth of feed on hand. Longer term, I’ve researched compost feeding from the garden. It looks like a good long term solution, but I don’t want another system to maintain right now so I’m not planning on doing it unless I have to: How to Feed Chickens Using Compost (Food Waste) In a scenario where garbage pickup is not reliable, this minimizes waste.  And it would be a win-win to get food scraps from my neighbors (cutting down on their trash needs) and feed my chickens too. But currently we have a rat problem and this would make it worse.  My husband and dog are currently collaborating on a solution: my husband “mines” an area with traps where the dog can’t reach them, and my dog flushes out the rats and drives them through them through the “mined” area 🙂

LOL the funny back story was that I moved out of the house my ex husband’s ex wife picked out.  He got it in his divorce and passed on to me in ours.  I never liked it, and neither did he.  So I sold it and picked out a place I could feel at home.  Planning for prepping helped me figure out what I wanted in a home. I tried to pick well.

It will depend on where you live. We currently have indoor and outdoor mandates in my state, vaccinated or not. But since infection control in the states is tied to politics, that won’t be true everywhere.   Many doctors here are saying it’s no longer “vaccinated or unvaccinated” anymore: its vaccinated or sick. That everyone unvaccinated will get it eventually, unless they want to spend their time as extreme hermits, stay home, don’t work and don’t spend time with other people.  Very few will actually do that.   So being unvaccinated means you are nearly guaranteed to get COVID and get really sick. Probably more than once.  We have some early treatments that are very effective, but that’s no guarantee you will survive. AND right now in most places people are being treated for free, but that will stop at some point.  Regeneron (the best treatment) costs $1500, and you need to go to a hospital or clinic for an IV or injection, and you need to see a doctor for a prescription.  The treatment is free now, but the other two pieces are costing people a lot of money. If you don’t have good insurance you get a big bill. Many unvaccinated will get COVID as well, but are much less likely to need treatment. Honestly I’m at risk of exposure every day and it’s not dying that I’m most afraid of.  I’m much more afraid of becoming a long hauler.  There are healthcare workers who got COVID at the beginning of the pandemic who are now on disability for fatigue, permanant damage to lungs, brain fog, etc. They are still too sick to work. And a good estimate is if you get COVID you have a 30% chance of having symptoms mess with you for a long time.

I’ve been feeling like we are slow decline for a while now (or maybe just noticed it at that time).  Particularly with the climate changes I’ve been seeing. My strategy has been to diversify as much as possible to build resilience. Two years ago I sold my house in a heavily HOA active neighborhood where nobody ever came out of their house, and we were the only kids who played outside regularly.  I don’t think those neighbors would easily come toghether in a crisis, and after 7 years I literally only knew the family across the street. I moved 2 miles away into an older neighborhood that has one entrance to the triangle of 3 main streets and multiple cul-de-sacs.  I live in a cul-de-sac consisting of 7 houses of friendly neighbors who all know each other, and most of us gather for parties and the kids play in the street together and everyone keeps an eye out for cars entering and knows who belongs there.   I have solar panels on the roof and both gas powered and electric vehicles, and a wood stove in case the power goes out in the winter and a finished basement to weather heat waves. And a couple of generators and enough fuel to at least get us through until we eat everything in the refrigerator and freezer. I have enough chickens to provide more eggs than we need for protein, and a large yard to grow a seasonal garden and I’m working toward permiculture with fruit trees and perennial plants.   I don’t think I would be able to subsistence farm (but who knows?) but I push myself to learn how to grow a few new things every year. I probably have enough land to I work in healthcare, so have desired skills and a LOT of job security. And of course I have stored food and anything we can’t do without in a FIFO system.  It is amusing to me that toilet paper is becoming scarce again and so many people around me did’t think to stock up the first time.  I had a year or more worth of the stuff on hand the first time around.  And my favorite prep is the Travel Trailer I bought at the beginning of the pandemic.  We have a truck that always has enough fuel to get us to a bugout location (fire evac) or sleep in at home (earthquake) and it’s stocked with enough to get us by comfortably for a while. And as a bonus is has been a great source of COVID safe entertainment (camping!). In the past year or so we went from wildfires with local evacuation orders and smoke, then an ice storm, then a record heat wave.  And all during a pandemic.  It baffles me that it hasn’t occurred to more people around me that it may be time to start thinking ahead about these things.  My best friend has a BOB and freeze dried meals stored, but when she lost power during the ice storm she “didn’t have any way to cook/eat” because her oven is electric. She has a camp stove in her preps she doesn’t know how to use.