Year-Round Disaster Preparedness Guides for Burners?!

[NEXUS]

Good topic and good advice as it's always best to be prepared when Murphy comes calling.

But just in case FEMA and others are a bit too busy to save your heiny, here's one more link. Albeit a bit on the 'radical' side, but literally the A-Z on just about every survivalist skill subject you can think of. Brought to you by people that have invested many long years (and some still do) building A-bomb shelters in the desert; but once you brush off the paranoia, you may find some of these practical tips useful just the same.

http://www.frugalsquirrels.com/survival-lib.html

[Magikal]

...but once you brush off the paranoia, you may find some of these practical tips useful just the same.

Is that like brushing sand off your food?

[NEXUS]

Is that like brushing sand off your food?

Sure, I guess by not doing so, both might leave you more suspicious about every bite that follows.

[geekster]

I believe the key things are:

Ability to get enough water and calories in you to survive for a week without outside assistance.

Ability to make a shelter that will keep out wind and rain. So in this respect, things that work at BRC might not work in the SF Bay area in winter. A geodesic dome with a parachute cover, for example, might be practically useless if it allows rain in.

Ability to tend to basic sanitary needs without causing illness. In other words, you need to think about not only what you are going to eat for a week, but also where you are going to shit. This needs to be handled in such a way that others are not contaminated. For a single person or a couple with no kids, this is less of a problem than for, say, a family of five.

TAKE GOOD CARE OF YOUR FEET! Even if you are seriously reeking, make sure you get those shoes and socks off for some period of the day and let your feet and shoes air out. Try to keep your feet as dry as possible. Exposing the skin of your feet to fresh air and sunshine will reduce the chances of serious fungal infections. A vinegar wash is still the best thing to make the environment of your feet unfavorable for the development of fungus. I don't care how well you are eating, you are going to be a serious liability to people around you if you are unable to walk due to trenchfoot from having waterlogged feet.

I hope nobody here ever really has to worry about any of this in real life.

[geekster]

If you have a “well” that is only 16 feet deep, you do not have a well. You have a ground water run off pit.

Not always true, worth getting tested. The Dept. of Agriculture might test it for you or a local college might too. They are often interested in groundwater quality in the area and would use your well as a data point for their information and would have no problem letting you know the result.

Case in point: My grandmother's farm sits 12 feet over an aquafer that springs at a creek about 1/2 mile from the house. The water is excellent quality. It is basically an underground stream that flows through a vein of sand and pebbles. The flow from that well is awesome too. Even to this day, the water is fine to drink and it is tested annually. It is the same water that comes from the spring that feeds the creek.

In fact, groundwater today is probably of higher quality in most locations than it was in the 1960's before many regulations were put in place.

[geekster]

One other thing about water quality ...

Most water standards are for the long term ingestion of the water over periods of years (a lifetime, usually). Here we are talking about survival for a week or two. While water may test unsafe to be a source of water over the course of someone's lifetime, it may be perfectly safe for drinking over a short period when the alternative is dehydration. Some contaminants such as volatile solvents, petroleum products, etc. can be effectively removed by standing the water in the open air for a day or passing through activated charcoal.

What you need to be most concerned with are heavy metals which occur naturally in many soils and bacterial/viral contamination from a nearby septic field. Water with a high iron content is fine, water with a high mercury or e coli content probably isn't.

One other thing: Don't forget dillution. Water that is only slightly out of acceptable standards can be dilluted with other water and the result be within acceptable standards. This is common practice and many cities use this method where a single well that is high in some contaminate has it's water mixed with other wells to bring the contaminant within standards. The point being that while your well might not be acceptable as a single source of water for a long period of time, it could be used to extend other sources of supply. It could also be fine for bathing too.