suburbansurvivalist.net

In the swine flu scare during April of 2009, hundreds of schools across America were shut down for approximately two weeks when the first student became infected with the swine flu.  It would be wise to have a stock of games, activities, or other forms of entertainment that can be used to keep the children from becoming idle.  Thoughts should also be given to how child care can be provided while the parents are at work.  Before the crisis occurs, communicating with neighbors with children, or family or friends nearby to see if they would be willing to care for the children is a good way to prepare for this minor emergency.

Latex Gloves are a very cheap but useful prep item.  A box of 50 costs about $5 and will last (sealed) for a decade or longer. Often thought of as useful in first aid, they can also be used to pick up dead animals, while cleaning up fecal matter, working with some chemicals, and offer protection when removing poison ivy. In a pandemic, protective gloves will be consumed very quickly and will be very useful in preventing transmission of a disease. In addition, latex gloves will keep from leaving human oils and finger prints on items such ammunition. Some people have (or will develop) an allergy to latex, so having a box or two of vinyl gloves in stock would also be a good idea.  Do note however, that boxes of these gloves are rarely sterile, but packages of sterile gloves can be found (at a higher price).  If affordable, try to put away 100 gloves (50 pairs) per person.

   A posting on Stormdrane’s Blog has a great idea for carrying extra paracord. It is a simple way to secure about 50 feet of paracord around the top of the hat.  Stormdrane uses four or five lanyard knots and loops to make the fasteners to hold the cord to the hat, and then wraps about 50 feet of paracord around the top of the hat.  Stormdrane’s website has several pictures and describes how to do this in an indepth fashion.

Keep a boonie hat in every vehicle.  If for some reason the vehicle has to be left behind, it may be hard to find shade while traveling.  A hat to keep most of the face and head from sun burning can be be of vital importance, especially in the southern states.  Also in the winter, even though it won’t provide much protection, it will offer some assistance in keeping warmer.  If an emergency bag is stored in the vehicle, keep the hat outside of the bag, for easy access and becausee if carrying the bag is necessary, the hat is better warn than carried.

There are many headlines in the news about saving money by having a back yard garden. Fox News even recently had a story where investing $100 into gardening would produce $1700 worth of vegetables.  This can be horribly misleading, as it ignores the time it takes to garden, and the steep learning curve. 

In a test garden, with two people who had some experience gardening (mostly as children, and tomatoes in pots as adults) the results were very different.  In the first year, a raised bed was created with recycled wood (gathered for free), and about $10 worth of seeds, and an hour of labor each day through the entire growing season.  The results were horrible:  A handful of green beans, a couple of cucumbers, and a single tomato was all that survived.   The following year, more seeds and some organic fertilizers were purchased, and composting of leaves and other organic matter in the yard was started.  The results were a little better, but it took almost 5 years of trying to grow a back yard garden and composting to get the soil into a good state that organic gardening was actually working.  Even though, in that small 30ft x 30ft garden there was not enough food grown to feed a single person year round.  Had food not been able to be purchased: Starvation would have occurred.

As it was once said, growing a garden is part science and part art.  The science can be learned from books, but the art must be learned by experience.  There are several magazines that can educate and even offer a glimpse into the real world experience of other gardeners.  One of the magazines that offer advice on gardening is “Hobby Farms”.  The magazine is both in print form, and has online resources.  Using information like this on gardening will help with the science half of learning to garden, but the key to gardening is still: Practice, practice, practice.

Find a printable copy of Morse code, and print it out, and keep it with the survival supplies. It would be better to learn Morse code, so it can easily be used in an emergency, but without practice the skill will not be retained.  Using Morse code to send a message either in writing, airwaves or phone will not offer secure communications from governments or military forces; however it will be a form of communication that is unlikely to be understandable by the major of the population.  It will be less useful for sending messages, but will be more useful for interpreting messages sent by others (both friend and foe): Which could be a valuable source of intelligence.

In reading the SurvivalBlog.com, there was a posting of a simple of brilliant truth: “Time Eats Money.”

Time Eats Money, should be considered the first and more important rule of investing / financial survivalism.  The concept is that cash in hand or in the bank is a rapidly depreciating asset. Often inflation is thought of in longer time frames, but the effect is the same on short periods of time — it just goes less noticed.   Consider this in all the financial planning, and consider converting fiat currency into tangible goods.  

“A 1% per month inflation rate means the purchasing power of $100 in the bank or currency is reduced to $88 in one year. But at 10% per month inflation, $100 goes down to $31 in 12 months! At 20%, just 11 cents of purchasing power left.”

This information is based on a posting to the blog SurvivalBlog.com  (Tuesday, 12th of May 2009) in reference to an update to The Hyperinflation Survival Guide, by OSOM.

As times change, people’s attitudes change as well. Some of the basic concepts of survivalism (storing extra food, self protection and currency concerns) will ebb and wane in the popular culture’s acceptance.  As people begin to get scared (but before real problems occur), many “Fair Weather Survivalists” may appear.  These will be people that scoffed at preparedness in the past (or may have never considered it in good times). Some will be converts to a new lifestyle or way of thinking, but most will return to previous ways when times change (for the better or worse) or they discover how difficult are preparedness and self reliance lifestyles. Consider carefully what is said to others, especially fair weather survivalists:  Today they may be eager to learn, and tomorrow (in an emergency) they may be knocking down doors trying to steal food or medical supplies (that they decided not to purchase themselves).

One of the first mistakes people make is they try to store water in plastic gallon milk jugs.  This type of plastic breaks down very quickly, and become brittle and breaks very quickly.  Any plans of storing several jugs of water in a closet for as little time as six months can meet with disaster, as the water damages other items around it.  Although these jugs have uses, and if there is liberal amounts of free space, they can be stored for garden use and mixing, or holding non-potable water for short periods of time.  There are many options for storing water, but the easiest for those that are considering milk jugs is to use 2-liter or 3-liter soda bottles instead.   Any plastic bottle may leech chemicals into the water, so some long term health risks may apply — but they do not easily break, and do not become brittle (as long as they are kept out of direct sun light).

Not all emergency situations that a suburban survivalist needs to plan for are catastrophic or world changing.  Some are as simple as a bank failure that would barely make the news, but for those with accounts that are seized it can be a major event: If only for a few days.

As an example from history: The federal government closed and seized Indymac Bank on Friday the 11th of July 2008.  Officially, on Monday the 14th, customers were given back access to online services, safe deposit boxes, wire services, etc. The automatic direct deposits and automatic withdrawals were supposed to operate normally during this time frame.  Also, officially the ATM machines were supposed to continue to work.  During the weekend time frame between the 11th and 14th, all online services including checking balances, account status, online transfers, and bill pay services were offline to all customers.   Checking accounts, savings accounts, and IRA were all insured; however mutual funds and annuities were not.

There were numerous reports (mostly online) from customers who were having problems getting access to the funds in their accounts, cashing paychecks, withdrawing funds, etc.  On the 17th, Fox News was reporting that many other banks were refusing to cash the checks that the FDIC was giving Indymac customer’s to deposit in other banks.  Most of them seemed to be relatively short lived (being resolved within a couple of weeks), but high lights the importance of keeping some cash on hand for this kind of emergency.

Also Note: Officially the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act [12 USC 1821(F)] does not set a time limit on when depositors must be paid.  It simply says “as soon as possible”, which is typically interpreted to mean a few business days.