Quote:
Originally Posted by DWB
Please list the top 5 things you NEEDED or ran out of the quickest once power was lost and the storm ended. Can be little things like matches or the obvious like water.
|
The 8 things you MUST have:
Flashlights - Preferably with LED lights which last many hours longer than conventional incandescent bulbs.
Batteries - Stock the standard sizes and also check anything you actually need to get a spare odd size battery to fit it.
Radio - Get a REAL radio, an actual radio with an antenna and battery. Everyone has internet radio and iphones etc etc which don't help if the cell towers are all down. You need an actual radio like your grandfather used to carry in his pocket. One with a crank (usually sold for hunting trips) is a great idea.
Water - We had a real scare here that the main water pumps for our entire area were close to shutting down. Some areas had sewage treatment plants go offline and could not drink their tap water. If you don't have water, everything else is secondary. Keep a couple full water-cooler bottles in your garage just in case.
Gas Can - If you hire landscapers and pay people to do all that kind of work as I do, you may not own a gas can. When you need gas, you need something to put it in and they sell out immediately.
Local Friends - As webmasters many of us have friends all over the world. That is not helpful when your area goes dark. The entire ordeal was made much easier by the simple fact that I have plenty of friends locally. We were able to stay with friends just outside the affected area in Connecticut, come back closer to home and stay with other friends when their power was restored days prior to my own, arrange places for other people to stay when they had no heat. When the power goes out for two weeks, you find out who your friends are very quickly.
Sense Of Humor - Yes I am very serious about it. When things like this happen, some people panic and become the biggest assholes on the planet. It really isn't helpful. People got into fistfights at gas stations waiting to fill up, people stole generators from neighboring houses, those people had an awful time as a result. Be able to laugh about it, be able to make someone else laugh about it. Not insane clown funny... but normal stable person we will get through this 'Hawkeye from MASH' funny. It helps more than you might imagine.
Gun - Again, very serious. There were incidents of looting, threats that the water supply might become unstable, etc etc... All the things that make owning a gun make sense. You don't need an arsenal of 50 guns and a rocket launcher.... you don't need landmines. But having a gun and a few extra rounds of ammo makes the time pass much more calmly.
I am not a 'prepper' and never will be. The people who had a basement full of canned soup suffered just as much as the people who did not. However, having a few simple things in a closet for the occasion definitely made it much easier... and nothing mattered more than being able to get along with friends and neighbors in the community at a time when going it alone would have been infinitely more challenging.
