Elixir of Life - Water

From Floyd...

This is for people just getting started preparing, and wondering what is the first step. Well, if you have a lot of money just type "emergency food" into your browser and you will find many sites that you can go to and simply order a year supply of prepackaged meals. However back in the real world that is not likely your situation. So let's start off a little more realistically. 

You can't start today and be prepared for every thing by tomorrow. Start small and build your way up.  How?  Think of what you would need for a local, short term emergency.  Here in California we think earthquakes, but for you it could be tornadoes or flooding.  In a short term "bug-in" or hunker down and stay put situation, it is recommended that you have a minimum of 72 hours of supplies. Most people have 3 days worth of food on hand. You might not be fixing gourmet meals but you have probably have cans of veggies, baked beans, tuna, enough to get you through (please be sure you have a hand-operated can opener).  But how much water do you have? If the water was out for a few days because of broken water lines or contaminated municipal water supplies, would you have enough?  We take the faucet for granted. Turn the knob and water appears as if by magic. Some of you are thinking "I don't like the taste of tap water so I buy bottled water." That's a start, but how much do you have on hand at any one time? A few bottles in the frig, a couple of the gallon jugs or even a flat of the bottles will not cut it. A healthy adult needs a minimum of one gallon of water per day. More if they are dehydrated or the temperature is high. That is just for drinking and food prep and does not include water for washing up. Before we started preparing we were trying to reduce the amount of plastic we were using (we believe in the old reduce, reuse, recycle thing) so we bought a Brita Water filter. It was a good idea and we still use it, but you need tap water to put through it.  We now we use the filter for our daily drinking water and also store several gallons for "just in case."  We have several 5 gallon containers on the floor of each of the bedroom closets, several 1 gallon jugs in the back of the cabinet in the kitchen and individual bottles in the garage. Remember, you can live longer with out food than you can with out water.  

Stay prepared.  

Note from Dawna:  Don't forget to date and rotate your water.  Commercially bottled water should be stamped with a date.  We put notes on the containers we fill ourselves so that we will know when they need to be rotated.  Also, be sure to use containers made for long term water storage.  

Prepping is Insurance

 By:  Floyd Michael

When our kids first found out that we were "prepping" one of them made a snarky comment disparaging people who were worried about the apocalypse. I explained that we live in California where there are earthquakes, and we should be prepared for those. She then said something to the effect of "What good does it do if there is an earthquake, the house falls on you and you are dead?" How do you argue with that? I explained that it was like having car insurance. You could theoretically go your whole life without getting into a car accident. If you added up all the payments you made you could think that was a lot of wasted money, or you could just be glad that you never had to make a claim. If you did get into a car wreck and were killed then you would not be around to care about getting your car replaced, and again you could think, money down the drain.

People purchase auto insurance in case they are in an accident and do live to need their car repaired. Prepping is similar. We can spend a lot of time, money and effort preparing for a disaster that never comes, or a disaster that comes but you do not survive it. Either way all of your preparation was seemingly for naught. In our family, we don't prepare for either of these extremes, we prepare for the in between. For the disaster that does come, that we do survive. In that instance, our efforts at preparation will definitely be worth the effort, time and money we have put into being prepared. So keep preparing, just in case.