The First Casualty Is Always The Plan...

When I decided to create this blog several years ago, Id sis so after I began to think about my own personal plans to deal with Emergency Preparedness. Taking into account the natural disasters I with which I was expecting to have to deal, my goal was based on extremes, to be able to survive without food or water for 72 hours without water or electricity in temperatures as low as 0 Fahrenheit and as high as 120 Fahrenheit, and with winds as high as 25-35 miles per hour. This also included the possibility that I would have to "hike" home 40 miles or sheltering in place at work for an over night.

What I did not take into account was that there might be a global pandemic which would force me to shelter in place/self isolate/quarantine for up to eight weeks. Now I need to take a good hard look at my future planning and make adjustments when things get back to "normal."

My earlier solutions needed to be durable, practical, and exclusively assigned to emergency preparedness so that they would always be ready. Ideally they would be things which I already had on hand, but if not, they would be inexpensive solutions to my preparedness plans. These all remain the same, but now as we are confronted by another "worst" from Mother Nature, I am already making plans for the future as I deal with the present.

I am a bit of an Anglophile, so with that in mind, many of my solutions are based around British surplus military solutions, with items found at low cost from companies like Sportsman's Guide or on eBay and/or recommended on Wilderness Survival or Bushcraft Forums online. Of course I could look at American military surplus, but I did not desire to be confused with American military and other military surplus wouldn't serve my Anglophilic tendencies. This doesn't mean those other options are useful, but I will leave those to others to select and review.

I hope my new additions to my solutions, which I will post about in the coming weeks, will provide helpful information for others as they review their own emergency preparedness plans. And remember, emergency preparedness is not about being reactive to situations, but being proactive. By doing so you reduce your own personal stress by being prepared, as well as reducing the stresses on the entire emergency preparedness system by not drawing upon its resources in an emergency, allowing those who cannot prepare to be served in an emergency.