Multitools are fun gadgets, but we all have budgets. You might find there is more utility in getting a bike multitool than a traditional one?  With the repair kit, those things are all invaluable if you need them, but it does seem like it would add up to some weight. Theoretically, a good multitool might give you most of those functions without adding too much weight.

Thanks. The evacuation zone is more of a suburb of the city proper. Except for a few people who scrambled out late (and produced some terrifying dashcam footage that felt very much like California wildfires, not the East Coast) it seemed to go reasonably orderly, at least in the initial phases, and as the fire came under control, they allowed people back into the largely unimpacted areas in successive phases. The aftermath is being compounded by our extremely tight housing market and small base of tradespeople. CBC: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/displaced-residents-struggle-to-find-rentals-wildfires-1.6869678 There’s also been some chatter about the SMS emergency alert system, and whether some of the alerts were a little later than they should have been, or whether others were too repetitive and caused people to tune out, etc. Emergency alerts are a big sore sport in the province after the Portapique mass shooting, in which the RCMP basically only communicated via Twitter.

Canada on pace for a record-setting fire season This week has been a real wakeup call for a half-arsed prepper. We’ve had the largest-ever wildfire in the province of Nova Scotia, and another also struck the suburbs of the capital city, forcing some people I knew to evacuate. I’ve been discovering some of my mistakes, and how I hadn’t accounted for some of the climate change risks that are sort of “new” rather than just “more likely”. I focused on a BOB (imagining a house fire, gas leak nearby, whatever) and a bug-in situation (winter storm, hurricane, extended power outage). I admittedly haven’t done a great job for the food side of that one. I hadn’t really given any thought to the “what if you have a few hours to prepare” kind of scenario that might be involved in something like a wildfire or a chemical spill where you’re waiting for an official order or you have an inkling you may need to leave, but haven’t made the call yet. That’s basically what some friends of mine (whose family and property is thankfully fine) encountered. They did a really good job packing efficiently for the kids and dogs, but after they had evacuated and the status of the house was up in the air, they were kind of agonizing over some of the sentimental/irreplaceable items that were left behind, or ‘why didn’t I think to grab the external drive…’ I had always loosely thought “grab your camera gear and your laptop and throw as much clothes and food in a spare bag as possible”, but it’s probably a case where a list would be helpful, especially since most of us don’t think best in times of stress or crisis. Also, documentation can fall out of date, and if you think ‘I’m sure that’s in the cloud somewhere’, you should probably make sure it’s on the cloud and that you know whether you left said documents on your Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud…That’s obviously pretty self-evident, but following through with recommendations like the annual prep check would have caught some of these things.

Some more on the overall trend from Business Insider. The good: There are also signs that extremists don’t have detailed technical knowledge of the grid’s weak points. Wellinghoff reviewed several pages on sabotaging electrical equipment from the accelerationist online magazine at Insider’s request. He said he wasn’t concerned. Not as good but at least people are working on it: One issue that grid-security experts said they felt didn’t get enough attention is the long lead time required to replace bulk power-transmission equipment. Utilities often build their substations according to custom specifications, and replacing a high-voltage transformer that is damaged beyond repair can take five years, said Perry. He said Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure were adding to the demand. The industry has responded by forming equipment-sharing pools. Richard Mroz, a former New Jersey utilities regulator who now works as a lobbyist and advisor to the group Protect Our Power, said he’d been heartened by the willingness of some state regulators to allow utilities to bill their customers for the cost of membership.

I can 100% understand your reasons for discontinuing the roundups. Thanks for providing them!

That’s an interesting question. I would venture some people focused on green homes do just that, but I’m not sure if it would be ideal for more of a fully off-grid place unless you have quite a bit of solar capacity. I’m not positive, but I think you’d still be dealing with a wattage requirement equivalent to running at least one major appliance. 

Heat pumps are great. Our province and power utility has really been pushing them and offering incentives for a number of years now, and they’re now quite mainstream up here. A side benefit is that most of us in Northeastern climes wouldn’t have previously had air conditioning, and a heat pump helps take the edge off the increasingly erratic summer weather. One caveat about the video: the animation is kind of misleading. Heat pumps exploit the temperature differential of the air, but they don’t actually exchange fresh outside air.  From personal experience, the style of the home does indeed make a huge difference, and sometimes they just don’t work well because there isn’t really a good path for air circulation, such as in some older homes with a lot of small rooms, etc. A secondary heat source is also usually helpful for colder climates. Kind of like a lot of baseboard heat, heat pumps are nice, but there just isn’t anything quite like a nice big woodstove to really heat the floors, etc. In the place I’m renting, there’s a woodstove as backup/for very cold days, but the main heating is from the thermal storage units (ETS) and heat pumps, which are also interesting depending on what incentives your utility or government may offer. In this home, the ETS units have replaced the electric baseboard heaters and do most of the work on colder days, whereas the heat pumps are often most appropriate for slightly cold days and autumn weather. An ETS is basically a big pile of bricks with an element inside, and if your utility offers time-of-day pricing, they warm overnight while power is cheap (half price, here), and then slowly discharge the heat over the course of the day.

Thanks for this Carlotta, good roundup. I was fortunate enough to live in part of Nova Scotia that didn’t really take much damage from Fiona–somehow, we didn’t even lose power. However, I did feel like my (modest) prepping and some things I’ve learned from The Prepared did come in handy. I felt more confident and more relaxed going into the storm since I knew I had pretty much everything I’d need (and I knew where I’d put all of it), including the emergency kit/go bag tucked inside the hall closet in case I needed to leave quickly. There were a few instances where my housemate said ‘What about…’, like having bottled water just in case, and I was able to surprise them by saying “Yep, we already have that.” Although I haven’t done so well at working more foods into my regular meal rotation, I have been doing better at buying more dry goods, and I didn’t really need to scramble to the grocery store for much leading up to the storm. — “Which means you are not actually prepared if you simply buy some gear, throw it in storage, then pat yourself on the back!” Mmmm, yeah, so this is definitely where I’m falling flat and was more of a reality check from the storm. Being a gear nerd and hunting for deals and such is fun. Putting in the work to practice or learn things is less much less fun than leisure activities. For example, I had a tarp ready for water leaks, but did I know my knots, etc. if I were to need to secure that tarp anywhere? Not really. Edit: typo fix

As a Canadian – welcome (potentially) 🙂 I think your timeline sounds realistic. The system is deeply backlogged right now. As Redneck suggested, reviewing accounts of people who’ve done the move would be helpful, but in general, the federal government should have most of the information laid out, and a number of provinces also have their own agencies or departments that help facilitate immigration (ex. ISANS for Nova Scotia, for example). As I understand it, we have an immigration system that is skills- and points-based, so if you are not joining family members that already live here, your prospects will be affected in part by how in demand your skills/trade are. You might breeze right in if you’re in healthcare, tech, etc. due to expedited processes, but otherwise it may take several years. I’m not sure if you’ve visited before or how familiar you are, but I think sometimes Americans tend to view Canada from a ‘grass is greener’ perspective, and Canadians tend to have a sort of insecure superiority complex that can cloud things. Many of the problems in the US are present here, just not always to the same extent. For example, housing costs and availability are very bad in some provinces, and our politics tend to be infected by some of the same strains. Including a right wing with an increasingly MAGA-like base. There are also growing efforts to chip away at the public healthcare system and to start privatizing it, especially since it’s been so overtaxed by COVID-19. I do suspect we’re better at LGBTQ+ issues and codifying rights for various social groups, but there’s still a long way to go here too. It’s also a very big country in ways that are not dissimilar to the US. “Canada” is in many ways a hugely different experience if you’re talking about moving to a major, international, incredibly multicultural city like Toronto or Vancouver versus moving to the Prairies, Quebec, the Maritimes, etc. I think it might behoove you to think about what kind of setting you’d like to live in and visit first to get more of a sense of things.

I suppose it depends on how you see the medium- and long-term prognosis, because there is an opportunity cost for the supplies. In the case of more major purchases (rather than just overbuying some of those non-perishable household staples), some slight gear splurges now may save money if you will definitely be buying those items in the future. However, when we consider the financial side of prepping, that’s less money available in case of emergency, or money that could have been earning some interest.

Hello from the East Coast! Some things are the same for me here, being new to prepping as well. I’m an apartment dweller in an environment that’s technically semi-rural but is basically suburban (there are a lot of small towns smushed together here), with some storage space but not a ton. The most realistic scenario is a protracted winter power loss. Water is something of a non-issue. I’m assuming I’m probably bugging in if a short trip to relatives’ houses in other parts of the province isn’t viable. I tend to be someone who gets fixated on gear and equipment for things, so I have ended up with some stuff that is slightly more wilderness oriented than I’ll likely need or, more importantly, be able to use. I’m struggling a little with how to shift to the less glamorous but more practical issue of having a decent amount of food in case of storm or supply chain disruption, etc. It sounds like you’ve done a better job staying focused on the key scenarios. Based on your post and the fact that you live in a place that actually has mass transit, I’m not sure if you have a vehicle, and it may be immaterial to bugging in anyway, but put some effort in expanding my winter car kit to being more of a year-round GHB, and I expanded the tiny medical kit I kept in the glove box into sort of an EDC/mini-GHB with a spare multitool, space blanket, poncho, N95’s, cash, notebook, etc. stuffed into a little plastic container from Dollarama. Solar is of course great, but depending on the layout of your condo and what a winter storm would likely entail, perhaps focusing on a portable power station would be more practical, although that definitely wouldn’t give you 14 days.

Indeed. Speaking of…https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/29/business/exxon-mobil-chevron-earnings.html Exxon will be using high profits to dump $30B into stock buybacks. Sigh.

I think this is especially acute with one of the most visible (and most discussed on this site) categories: food. Ex. meat processing industry, etc.

I would argue that there is no real way for The Prepared’s core audience to prepare for Russian combat dolphins, but combat dolphins are such a good lede/teaser… Thanks for mentioning that Guardian piece about inflation, it was a good read that I’d encourage others to check out, and I have found that angle continues to be underrepresented in major North American media. While I suppose in one sense it doesn’t matter where inflation is coming from the perspective of individual preparedness, it is helpful for preppers to be informed consumers and to know where they can direct their political/social action energies.

Really appreciate your points here. Like the OP, I’m kind of struggling with what’s overkill for the most likely scenarios, especially in an urban area.  I enjoy some outdoor activities, but I hate camping and there are some bushcraft skills I’m just not going to be great at.  I think your last point is really underappreciated in some prepper communities that glorify the last man standing or homesteader community ideals. The solutions to (or at least mitigations for) a lot of things preppers are concerned about tend to be large-scale problems that require collective action. 

Certainly agree to disagree with you and Bill on some things, but even those of us who are quite sympathetic to MMT would agree that the stimulus packages weren’t exactly executed in the best way. Quite the opposite in a few cases… In terms of government action, no matter where anyone is on the political spectrum, it’s important to note that a big driver of inflation has been pandemic profiteering and governments should be stepping in. There have been a few (imperfect, grain of salt) new studies here in Canada that point to the corporate side. One calculated that over a quarter of inflation was profit-driven, and another pointed out an all-time low in corporate taxation and how much increased sales were driven by widening costs and margins, rather than passing down supplier costs. One can look at the incredible consolidation in certain industries like meatpacking and really see the confluence of a lot of issues that The Prepared‘s readers are concerned about–food security, supply chain logistics, COVID-19 (some of these behemoths treated their workers terribly and had massive outbreaks), and now inflation from profiteering. Pops, your last point about focusing on savings rather than acquisitions is really good and often underappreciated. As someone who has been getting more interested in preparedness over the course of the pandemic, the gear mongering and tool reviews, etc. are certainly a lot more ‘fun’ than focusing on the fundamentals of sound personal finance, etc.

It’s a difficult one to prepare for, but it seems to chip shortage will continue to be with us for quite some time. Aside from the consumer electronics side of things, it has continued to throw the car market totally out of whack. Aside from the strain and distortions COVID put on the system, there’s some vulnerability in that apparently Ukraine produced about half the world’s neon, needed for chip production.