are u prepared for disaster?

[LowBat]

My philosophy is to be highly mobile. I can pack up everything I own in my van in 30 minutes and hit the road, hopefully before the highways clog up. I have routes selected that don't have a lot of bridges and overpasses that could go down in a quake. Oh course, one has to decide whether it's best to stay put or leave depending on the type of disaster and the information available. If I do go, I have a few several destinations worked out depending on if I go north, east, or south; west of me is the ocean.

I have water and food, but not in long term storage as I like to use and rotate supplies to keep them fresh.

 

[roguesw]

talking of rotation of food,
anyone buy MRE's ? even the commercially available ones?
wouldnt that make it more economical than having to always rotate your food?
i am interested in disaster prepardness as tokyo is supposed to get teh big earthquake, as its long overdue

 

[Sub_Umbra]

talking of rotation of food,
anyone buy MRE's ? even the commercially available ones?
wouldnt that make it more economical than having to always rotate your food?
i am interested in disaster prepardness as tokyo is supposed to get teh big earthquake, as its long overdue

MREs have a shelf live of 2-7 years, depending on storage conditions. If you buy MREs be sure to buy them by the case and store them in the original cases as each case has a little dot applied to it that measures the cumulative effect of the storage conditions the case has experienced. Some things will always seem to discolor and/or go bad first in MREs, like the apple sauce.

I have enjoyed nearly all of the MREs I've eaten. I think that they're well thought out and put up. During the aftermath of Katrina we sometimes chose to have MREs on a given day because they were quick and easy to make and satisfying. We both thought that they were a really nice break.

For us, their price (6-10 USD) and shortish shelf life in the sub-tropics make them problematic. We've kept a couple cases some of our friends gave us as they came back into the city, though.

 

[jezzyp]

I keep a few "extras" just in case.

6 2L bottles of water
Loadsa batteries
About 2 weeks food
Inverter & large battery (in a real pinch I can run our two cars to power inverter to run heating (or cooling fans) and freezers for an hour or two)

I try never to let our two cars get less than half full of fuel.

I have a few spares, plenty of tools and I've surfed around for a few tips on the net.

As for the Bird flu - yes its going to be really bad for a while - not so much for the disease but for fear and panic. If the power goes off, normally the guys on call can fix it or work around it in a few hours. If those guys on call are sick (or don't want to go out for fear of getting flu) then the 2 hour fix may run into a day. So no power for a day means, the petrol pumps don't work, stores close...
You get the picture?
Same if the local water pumping station goes down.
Be prepared for a few days absence of anything.

 

[NeoteriX]

I've got a box of 3M N95 respirators... but it's pretty much for fun

 

[cobra-ak]

Hurricanes scare the crap outta me, now that I am a flashaholic at least I can light up my whole builiding cause the first thing that goes is the power.