February 23, 2024
Day 875 of the Adventure
Personally, I've never adhered to an apocalyptic view of life in the future. It makes for great movies, but I could never bring myself to that conclusion as a potential reality. Up until a few years ago, I was content trying to prepare for economic hardship and natural disasters. Our longest natural disaster was a five-day power outage in the winter due to an ice storm. Economics has always been on my radar and I'm not sure I've ever had that scenario very far from my focus. Now, after experiencing a myriad of unexpected events along with seemingly obvious events hovering on our horizon, my personal attitude on what to prepare for has changed. Let me list just a few.
1. The 2021 Texas power plant failure during extreme cold causing power outages and plant shut-downs causing homes to freeze and waterlines to burst all across the state. Cause: A combination of cold weather, natural gas distribution plant equipment failure and aging power grid.
2. Economic recession 2023 and beyond that we are currently experiencing causing prices of nearly everything to be anywhere from 20% to 100% (and more) higher than we had just a few years ago. Cause: You name it.
3. Covid pandemic 2020 causing global reactions causing health, economic and social impacts including my personal favorite, mandated business closures. Cause: Opinions vary (which is reason enough to want to be prepared for the whole thing to happen again)
4. Open borders Current causing an increase of potential security threats literally anywhere. Cause: Pick your reason.
My point is that much of this has natural origins, including weather related events. Coupled with aging and inadequacies of the power grid along with increasing demand, the weather can simply be a triggering effect to greater issues. In many of the scenarios one would prepare for, political policy and decisions pave the way towards impending problems. What does all of this mean for our decisions to prepare the best we can for these events as the unfold or are even unfolding right now? Some, like weather and power outages, can be considered mostly short term and have somewhat simple solutions. Power grid infrastructure issues could take the simple power outage events and turn them into longer term events and subsequently, more complex solutions. When preparing for one, it is probably a good idea to take them both into consideration. Applying the 80/20 rule, (explained yesterday) addressing a preparedness plan for power outages would certainly fit into the realm of focusing on part of the 20% of inputs that have an 80% effect on the preparation results. I believe that food production and preservation also fits that model. As does a secure fresh water plan. By focusing effort and energy on these areas alone, most of the likely scenarios we will most often encounter can be mitigated. Obviously, that is my perspective coming from a midwestern, rural, mostly safe from crime point of view. If I were near a large urban area or border town, my perspective may indeed include added security and personal defense measures beyond what I deem necessary and adequate now.
Being adequately prepared for the 80% of likely scenarios I believe that I face is pretty straight forward. We have access to power grid but use alternate forms of power. Our primary power input is generated by solar with batteries for storage. A secondary emergency power source is a generator and back up to that is a second generator. Our primary heat source is wood with currently a five-year supply cut and stored. Fresh water is a municipal water source with a filtration system. Part of our plan is to install a well at some point and add the filtration system to that. By the way, our water filtration system is not a "prepper" sort of thing. We got it originally to remove chlorine and other contaminants from our drinking water. In the researching and purchasing of it, we bought a product that could literally filter out any potential contamination possible. So there's that. Food production and preservation is something we are currently focused on and we will be growing into that over the next several years I'm sure. I'm not going to elaborate on home security........ but it's there.
Does all this make me a doomsday prepper. I suppose to some it does. To me it's nothing more than becoming self-sufficient in the areas of energy, water, food and security. From that point of view, it doesn't sound all that extreme. More tomorrow. until then.........
Carry On
Adventure Quote: “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” ―
Base Camp Coffee of the Day: Lost in the Dark (Colombia Dark French Roast)
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