First, a bit about the author. My name is Luke, and I live in the southeastern United States. I’ve always been sort of a “survival enthusiast,” though I must tell you right off the bat that I possess no formal training. However, I have read a number of books on the subject, and I have talked with a few people who have received survival training.
I do not live on a survival retreat in northern Idaho (though I wish I did). In fact, I’m stuck in the suburbs as I suspect many of you are. While we do hope to one day get away from neighborhood living, for now we are trying to implement some family preparedness strategies to prepare us for any impending emergencies.
Emergencies can come in all shapes and sizes, from a full-scale “The End of The World As We Know It” event to a local natural disaster. Each event requires some unique form of emergency survival, but most of them can be survived by following a few basic readiness principles.
Family Survival Preparedness 101
1. Have enough consumable water on hand. Minimum of one gallon per person per day (12 gallons for a family of four). Hopefully, after 72 hours water treatment facilities could restore water service. Purification systems, tablets, or iodine-based purifiers might be good to have, too, for longer outages.
2. Put together a “bug out bag” for each family member old enough to carry one. What types of survival gear goes in your B.O.B? We’ll discuss that in some detail on the blog, but the basics include a couple rations of food, flashlights, batteries, multi-tool, knife, change of clothes, emergency blanket, firestarter materials, rope, compass, signal mirror, whistle, and so on.
3. Have a family emergency plan and rendezvous point. Establish a rendezvous point within walking distance of your home, school and office. Might be a neighborhood playground, your church, or a landmark that is important to your family. Rehearse various types of emergencies and be sure everyone is on board.
4. Consider arming yourself.I’m not what you would call a gun aficionado, but my family grew up with guns. If you have small kids, or are generally worried about their access, consider locking them up in a safe. Just be sure you can get to them in a large-scale emergency. Past events have shown us that looting and lawlessness is a common in the aftermath of disasters.
5. Store a reserve of money, metals, and goods to barter. If we experience an economic collapse, it is quite possible that we could return to a barter system, at least in the short term. For smaller emergencies, like the kind that knock out power or connectivity to ATM machines, it is a good idea to save a little stash of cash at home.
6. Stockpile non-perishable food and consider growing your own. We have a fledgling garden in our backyard. It doesn’t yield much, but will in the years to come. We like to think of our food storage in three levels: the normal inventory we have on hand, the items we have stockpiled, and the food that we grow. If we were forced to survive on things we grew, it would get lean pretty quick. However, it would be possible to survive on a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables if we lost or consumed everything else.
Those are my rules for family survival preparedness in a nutshell. But there is a lot more to discuss, so I hope you will stick around for more ideas in the coming weeks and months.
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Looks like you’ve covered some basics pretty well, Luke.