Go to your local library and get a library card.
Same for your husband and kids.
Blog Post:
Information, we are surrounded by it.
Radio; tv; internet; newspapers; what you see, hear, smell, touch, and taste; and many others. But what happens if it stops. I'm talking about something simple, like an electrical outage.
How will you get your information? What if the emergency lasts longer than three days? Three weeks? Three years?
Remember PACE? For me.
Primary: Electronic Files on my computer
Alternate: A Laptop Computer and Compact Disks (CD) I am switching to an archival brand, when I can find one. A switch to DVD when I buy my next computer.
Contingency: Paper Files and Printed Books
Emergency: Microfiche and doubles of selected books packed for long-term storage.
While I was reading some archived blog posts, I found a post by Selous Scout on creating "The Survival Bible" for yourself. You need to read the post.
Selous Scout lays out a great method of building a 3-ring binder, or sets of binders, to hold important emergency preparedness information for you and your family.
What is really neat about this idea, is that the binders can be as simple or as in-depth as you want. Preparing for a multigenerational emergency, you will need, oh, 100 binders. Preparing for an earthquake, maybe, 2 binders.
And this leads to the next point. Do you have an inventory of your home and its contents for insurance purposes? Stored at an off-site location such as a friend/relative's home, safety deposit box, or lawyer's office?
How about copies of the insurance policies themselves? Contact information for your agent?
How about those (evil, vile, despicable, and useful) credit cards? Do you have copies of the account number, procedures for dealing with a stolen card, and account policies?
Birth certificates, passports, marriage licences, divorce decrees; water, sewer, electric, gas, oil, and other regular bills; and tax records to name a few more.
Yes, all possibly stored off-site in a safety deposit box. If you don't like that idea, how about your own safe. Bolted to the floor, of course.
Now remember your threat analysis. The files you create are specific to you. Don't let the threats that I'm/others are preparing for distract you from your preparations.
As you do research, you will read many people preparing for various emergencies, Peak Oil, Collapse of Society, Race Wars, Nuclear War, Economic Disasters, and many others. If you come across something that you think you need to add to your threat analysis, go ahead and add to your list. Just, make sure you prioritize the new threat, OK.
See you next week!
Links:
Selous Scout - The Survival Bible
http://selousscouts.blogspot.com/2008/04/survival-bible_28.html
Advisory:
I suggest you don't purchase "Rawles Gets You Ready" offered by Arbogast Publishing LLC and advertised on Survival Blog.
I say this for a few reasons.
First, the cost. I bought a copy for $80. Now, the manual is $150. That is expensive, very expensive.
For about $150 you could buy:
Making the Best of Basics: Family Preparedness Handbook by James Talmage
The New Passport to Survival: 12 Steps to Self-Sufficient Living by Rita Bingham
Cooking With Home Storage by Vicki Tate and Peggy Layton
Country Beans by Rita Bingham
Nuclear War Survival Skills, 1987 edition by Cresson H. Keary
Additionally, there is free survival information on the web.
Captain Dave's Survival Guide, I highly recommend it!
http://www.captaindaves.com/guide/
Nuclear War Survival Skills
http://www.ki4u.com/webpal/d_resources/survival/books/books.htm
American Red Cross Publications
http://www.redcross.org
click on "Preparing and Getting Trained"
Then click on any of the links on the left such as
Get Trained
Prepare
-Home & Family
-Workplace & Employees
-School & Student
Preparedness Fast Facts
United States Army Publications
https://rdl.train.army.mil/soldierPortal/soldier.portal
click on "Official Departmental Publications" to get to the manuals than
click on submit to get all of the stuff. Over 80 web pages of military information.
Second, I felt the manual was lacking in How-To information. How-To information that is easily found on the internet.
Now don't get me wrong, I think "Rawles Gets You Ready" sucks. It is a waste of money; however, Survival Blog is a great site. James Rawles and lots of other people providing free information for you to use; what more could you ask for?
PS.
The "new" military site for the Reimer Digital Library is
https://rdl.train.army.mil/catalog/catalog/search.html
This site is a whole lot easier to use.
