Discussions

That seems like a good approach as long as the family/group is either physically together, or able to reach each other by phone when making the decision.  I’m curious whether you have specific criteria for deciding which location to use.  I can picture (for example) someone waiting in a parking lot while the rest of the family is at a hotel, because they thought “fire = meet at the parking lot” while everyone else thought the parking lot was only for if the fire was about to overtake you.  To avoid any such confusion, we used to use my roommate’s brother’s farm 60 miles away as an all-purpose bugout location. I felt fairly good about that distance.  Sadly he gave up farming in Michigan, sold the place, and moved south. Now we, too, have multiple bugout locations, but it makes me a little uneasy.  Perhaps more so because we are five unrelated adults sharing a homestead, and if someone isn’t home when an evacuation occurs, they need to know where to collect their pets or children.  But with our top two locations now being 12 miles and 600 miles, it seemed unreasonable to commit to either of them for all evacuations.  The 12 mile one is almost like a reverse bugout – leaving a 120 acre rustic homestead in the woods for an upscale lakeside neighborhood near town – but it means much better fire protection.  Obviously, if the whole town/region ever needed to evacuate for any reason, we would head to the 600 mile one.  I just worry about grey areas between the two, where members of the group might make different calls.

The string quote made me smile because it’s something my grandpa used to say (I asked a lot of unanswerable questions as a child, too!) But from a “sane prepping” or 80/20 rule perspective, I do think it should be possible to come up with a practical range that works for most situations. Many other questions – such as how much food to store – are equally “unanswerable” and yet there are established guidelines on this, with two weeks being considered bare minimum, and “as much as you can rotate out before it spoils” being considered ideal.  Even if one has the abilty to spend their life’s savings filling a giant warehouse with centuries worth of survival food for all their descendants, doing so is not considered a reasonable use of resources.  Not because it couldn’t come in useful, but because it would violate the 80/20 principle in a major way. So along similar lines, I respectfully disagree that it depends on one’s abilities.  I think there’s a certain distance that becomes too far even if you expect to have the “ability” to reach it.  Too far in the sense that in the vast majority of scenarios, the extra time/effort/expense/danger spent reaching it would far outweigh any benefit of the extra distance.   Since The Prepared advocates only bugging out to a planned location where you have shelter and other resources waiting, I’m surprised there doesn’t seem to be any guidance on preferred distance to this bugout location.  I feel it’s something that’s missing.  Yes it’s complicated and yes individuals would have to tweak any “standard” to fit their needs, but that’s true in all aspects of prepping.

A few thoughts: 1.  In case you aren’t aware, the “best by” dates on canned goods are not experation dates and have nothing to do with spoilage.  Carefully stored canned goods remain safe and healthy long past their bb date.  It basically just means the “quality” in other ways, like color and texture, are not guaranteed to be up to the company’s usual standards past that date.  We routinely, in order to keep enough in rotation, use canned goods that are two years past their “best by” and the only thing that shows any noticeable decline at that age is canned peas, which turn a slightly duller shade of green.  All this to say that, if you’re currently only storing as much pasta sauce or canned veggies as you can use before their “best by” dates, you could add more to the rotation since they keep much longer.  2. From a nutritional standpoint pulses like beans and lentils pair best with rice, and of them, I find dry lentils store better for longer than dry beans, though unfortunately neither has the encredible shelf life of white rice. I actually find that canned beans outlast dry beans from a quality perspective – though the latter have advantages when it comes to pantry space and cost, so we store some of both.   3. Depending on where you live and your skillset, there may be opportunities to grow, forage, or barter toppings for your stored rice or pasta. Wild mushrooms and rice is one of my favorite meals, and the rice can stretch even a small find into a filling meal for several people.  Venison in gravy over rice, preferably with a side of carrots or greens, is another favorite.  Sauteed dandelion or mustard greens over rice, while not amazing, is certainly more satisfying than eating either alone.  If you garden, or could barter with a neighbor who does, chopped raw tomatoes and fresh basil are absolutely delicious with pasta in the summer.  

 I would like to add:  Find your jack, practice getting it out, and learn where to place it on your vehicle.  On my previous car this was straight forward, but on my current car, not so much.  I found out last summer (after owning it almost a year) that the jack I found in with the spare tire when I first got the car was the wrong one, and not safe/compatible to use (it had a flat surface, and I needed one with a slot in it) I presume the previous owner put it in there because they couldn’t find the real one.  I located the proper jack wedged into a secret compartment in the side, but couldn’t get it out. After consulting the owners manual, found out I had to turn it – basically “jack it down” to get it out of it’s special compartment, which is what the short little screwdriver in with the lug wrench is for.   And my realization that I had the wrong jack in the first place only came up because where to place it was also very different than what I’m used to. I was confused by the prospect of placing a jack on such a narrow edge (it made much more sense once I found the one with a slot in the top) and very confused by the fact that it looked plastic (turned out there was steel behind the plastic, so the jack fits over both.)  I was glad to be figuring all this out in my driveway in broad daylight, instead of by the side of the highway on some rainy night.  The only other car I’ve owned in my adult life had the same type of jack and same exposed frame to place it on as every car my parents drove while I was growing up did, so I had no idea how different “changing a tire” could be.

Another great answer – thanks! I should make a rule for myself that when I learn about an exciting new (to me) product, I wait at least a certain amount of time – say six months – before potentially purchasing it.  Funny story: I like gear so much that sometimes I’m tempted by “backups” for things I don’t have in the first place.  One time someone was talking about a battery operated hot shower for camping or power outages, and my first thought was, “That’s so cool!  I wonder how much something like that costs?” but then my second thought was, “Wait. . .  I don’t have hot running water at home under normal circumstances, so why on earth would I need it on a camping trip or during a power outage?”  On something that obvious I catch myself right away, but there are other things where I start to talk myself into ways an item could be useful under certain circumstances. . .  For example fuel efficient cooking methods are something that I’m always really drawn to (I want them all!) even though firewood is so abundant here that it’s not like we need to worry about running out of dead sticks to build ordinary campfires out of.  Plus my regular kitchen stove is propane.  Plus we have two wood stoves (one in my house and one in a guest house friends are living in) which much of the year have to be going anyway for heat. . .  Still I find myself thinking, “But if TEOTWAWKI comes, the propane tank will run out in two or three years, then in the summer when the wood stove isn’t going, I’ll be cooking outdoors.  I should really get X, Y, and Z to make that easier!”  😀


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That seems like a good approach as long as the family/group is either physically together, or able to reach each other by phone when making the decision.  I’m curious whether you have specific criteria for deciding which location to use.  I can picture (for example) someone waiting in a parking lot while the rest of the family is at a hotel, because they thought “fire = meet at the parking lot” while everyone else thought the parking lot was only for if the fire was about to overtake you.  To avoid any such confusion, we used to use my roommate’s brother’s farm 60 miles away as an all-purpose bugout location. I felt fairly good about that distance.  Sadly he gave up farming in Michigan, sold the place, and moved south. Now we, too, have multiple bugout locations, but it makes me a little uneasy.  Perhaps more so because we are five unrelated adults sharing a homestead, and if someone isn’t home when an evacuation occurs, they need to know where to collect their pets or children.  But with our top two locations now being 12 miles and 600 miles, it seemed unreasonable to commit to either of them for all evacuations.  The 12 mile one is almost like a reverse bugout – leaving a 120 acre rustic homestead in the woods for an upscale lakeside neighborhood near town – but it means much better fire protection.  Obviously, if the whole town/region ever needed to evacuate for any reason, we would head to the 600 mile one.  I just worry about grey areas between the two, where members of the group might make different calls.

The string quote made me smile because it’s something my grandpa used to say (I asked a lot of unanswerable questions as a child, too!) But from a “sane prepping” or 80/20 rule perspective, I do think it should be possible to come up with a practical range that works for most situations. Many other questions – such as how much food to store – are equally “unanswerable” and yet there are established guidelines on this, with two weeks being considered bare minimum, and “as much as you can rotate out before it spoils” being considered ideal.  Even if one has the abilty to spend their life’s savings filling a giant warehouse with centuries worth of survival food for all their descendants, doing so is not considered a reasonable use of resources.  Not because it couldn’t come in useful, but because it would violate the 80/20 principle in a major way. So along similar lines, I respectfully disagree that it depends on one’s abilities.  I think there’s a certain distance that becomes too far even if you expect to have the “ability” to reach it.  Too far in the sense that in the vast majority of scenarios, the extra time/effort/expense/danger spent reaching it would far outweigh any benefit of the extra distance.   Since The Prepared advocates only bugging out to a planned location where you have shelter and other resources waiting, I’m surprised there doesn’t seem to be any guidance on preferred distance to this bugout location.  I feel it’s something that’s missing.  Yes it’s complicated and yes individuals would have to tweak any “standard” to fit their needs, but that’s true in all aspects of prepping.

A few thoughts: 1.  In case you aren’t aware, the “best by” dates on canned goods are not experation dates and have nothing to do with spoilage.  Carefully stored canned goods remain safe and healthy long past their bb date.  It basically just means the “quality” in other ways, like color and texture, are not guaranteed to be up to the company’s usual standards past that date.  We routinely, in order to keep enough in rotation, use canned goods that are two years past their “best by” and the only thing that shows any noticeable decline at that age is canned peas, which turn a slightly duller shade of green.  All this to say that, if you’re currently only storing as much pasta sauce or canned veggies as you can use before their “best by” dates, you could add more to the rotation since they keep much longer.  2. From a nutritional standpoint pulses like beans and lentils pair best with rice, and of them, I find dry lentils store better for longer than dry beans, though unfortunately neither has the encredible shelf life of white rice. I actually find that canned beans outlast dry beans from a quality perspective – though the latter have advantages when it comes to pantry space and cost, so we store some of both.   3. Depending on where you live and your skillset, there may be opportunities to grow, forage, or barter toppings for your stored rice or pasta. Wild mushrooms and rice is one of my favorite meals, and the rice can stretch even a small find into a filling meal for several people.  Venison in gravy over rice, preferably with a side of carrots or greens, is another favorite.  Sauteed dandelion or mustard greens over rice, while not amazing, is certainly more satisfying than eating either alone.  If you garden, or could barter with a neighbor who does, chopped raw tomatoes and fresh basil are absolutely delicious with pasta in the summer.  

 I would like to add:  Find your jack, practice getting it out, and learn where to place it on your vehicle.  On my previous car this was straight forward, but on my current car, not so much.  I found out last summer (after owning it almost a year) that the jack I found in with the spare tire when I first got the car was the wrong one, and not safe/compatible to use (it had a flat surface, and I needed one with a slot in it) I presume the previous owner put it in there because they couldn’t find the real one.  I located the proper jack wedged into a secret compartment in the side, but couldn’t get it out. After consulting the owners manual, found out I had to turn it – basically “jack it down” to get it out of it’s special compartment, which is what the short little screwdriver in with the lug wrench is for.   And my realization that I had the wrong jack in the first place only came up because where to place it was also very different than what I’m used to. I was confused by the prospect of placing a jack on such a narrow edge (it made much more sense once I found the one with a slot in the top) and very confused by the fact that it looked plastic (turned out there was steel behind the plastic, so the jack fits over both.)  I was glad to be figuring all this out in my driveway in broad daylight, instead of by the side of the highway on some rainy night.  The only other car I’ve owned in my adult life had the same type of jack and same exposed frame to place it on as every car my parents drove while I was growing up did, so I had no idea how different “changing a tire” could be.

Another great answer – thanks! I should make a rule for myself that when I learn about an exciting new (to me) product, I wait at least a certain amount of time – say six months – before potentially purchasing it.  Funny story: I like gear so much that sometimes I’m tempted by “backups” for things I don’t have in the first place.  One time someone was talking about a battery operated hot shower for camping or power outages, and my first thought was, “That’s so cool!  I wonder how much something like that costs?” but then my second thought was, “Wait. . .  I don’t have hot running water at home under normal circumstances, so why on earth would I need it on a camping trip or during a power outage?”  On something that obvious I catch myself right away, but there are other things where I start to talk myself into ways an item could be useful under certain circumstances. . .  For example fuel efficient cooking methods are something that I’m always really drawn to (I want them all!) even though firewood is so abundant here that it’s not like we need to worry about running out of dead sticks to build ordinary campfires out of.  Plus my regular kitchen stove is propane.  Plus we have two wood stoves (one in my house and one in a guest house friends are living in) which much of the year have to be going anyway for heat. . .  Still I find myself thinking, “But if TEOTWAWKI comes, the propane tank will run out in two or three years, then in the summer when the wood stove isn’t going, I’ll be cooking outdoors.  I should really get X, Y, and Z to make that easier!”  😀


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