If we have to shelter in place for a while, is four months enough? If not, would it be enough if the supply chain is only sporadic instead of halted or at a standstill?

Jeanette Isabelle

Four months is more than enough for some situations, just right for others and for what is hopefully a few, quite inadequate. So what specific scenario are we discussing?

Certainly even for a cat 5 hurricane, you are fine, provided that your supplies remain undamaged and are accessible. Connected to the mainland, Florida is logistically easier than Puerto Rico. What was your experience with Maria?

If the dino asteroid strikes on the Yucatan coast, as it did 65 mill ago, Florida and a great deal of the US will immediately have no further worries...

There are a few reasons I can think of such as a long-term shutdown of the power grid, famine and economic collapse; any reason to leave the United States. That in of its self is not a problem for me. A problem I foresee is, for whatever the reason, there is a delay in leaving. The delay could be four months or more.

Jeanette Isabelle

Wait. Did you mean Irma? And do you mean physically or emotionally?

Emotionally? Though we live in a gated community, I felt isolated from the rest of the world as if the nearest human was miles away. I experienced anxiety for an hour. However, by night time, I was at such at pease I had the best night's sleep in I don't know how long.

Physically? Power and Internet stayed on. Only 10% of Marion County had power. As for the house, not even a shingle was out of place. It was as if Yehovah was guarding our home. We had a lot of branches in the yard which took a week to clear away.

Jeanette Isabelle

I'm definitely not what "preppers" would call a "prepper".

That whole thing seems to be to be a lot of reacationary authoritarian religion wrapped up in a barely disguised veneer of paranoia.

I'm more of a Girl Guide. "Be Prepared", but also "No one is an island". The fact of the matter is, the most important thing you need in a mass survival scenario is community. If you don't have community already, don't expect to spontaneously form one in the event of a disaster, though people will generally surprise you with their generosity.

Every good community expects its individual members to at least take care of themselves, if they can. Nobody likes a lazy freeloader.

I generally tell people that the standard 72-hour preparedness guideline is woefully inadequate, and to keep enough essential supplies on hand to get you through at least two weeks cut off from outside assistance.

In the aftermath of the 2012 superderecho storm, we were without power for a week in New Jersey, with so many trees down that it took crews that long to clear the roads so they could repair the lines.

Granted, if it were a true emergency, I'd have gone out with my truck and hauled trees off the roads, myself, but in most cases, it will take at least a week just for relief agencies to get an organised response together.

So, no, I do not have a year's worth of food, ammo, and magic underwear stashed in my hermetically sealed bunker, nor am I worried about my neighbors finding out that I own water and gasoline storage cans.

I have enough stuff to get by for a couple of weeks without power or food shopping, and an all-band Yaesu FT-100 for communications. My only real concern is that my apartment doesn't have a backup heating source in winter. I've got oil-fired forced air heat. Without power, I freeze, unless I heat with my LP oven.

I'm a part of a Torah study group and a member of a gun club.

Jeanette Isabelle

I sincerely hope you don't resort to using your oven as a space heater. That is a very good way to die, usually by CO poisoning. Dress warmly and bundle up in layers. That is what mountaineers do in extremely frigid conditions, where a comfortable day might be minus 20.

I share your opinion of what most preppers appear to be,, at least judging from postings on the internet. For my part, I will try and contribute to the resolution of the problem, a strategy I have followed for the last sixty years, both as part of my job, and as a volunteer.

Turning away from problems and hoarding your supplies isn't contributing to resolution of a problem. Sensible cooperation will win the day - witness the Thai Cave situation just one prominent example.

incidentally, where I am, and where i have been, effective resolution of problems occurs much quicker than a week, typically within hours.

When I lived in Spain, my apartment was heated with a kerosene space heater. It did a nice job warming my small apartment. It was typical for Spain, uninsulated with single pane glass and it wasn’t well sealed so there was no issue with CO accumulation from the heater.

If your apartment is insulated with double-pane windows you have an advantage. Insulation can go a long way to making an unheated dwelling more livable. If you decide to get something like a kerosene space heater, get a battery operated CO detector at the same time.

And yet, I can run my oven for hours while baking something, and it doesn't set off the CO detectors. In an emergency situation, you do what you have to do.

I live in Northern New England. Temps here can easily hit -25F with wind chills of -50F or more. I have personally used an outhouse toilet at -14F. It's very unlikely that I will ever actually need to run my oven to stay alive, but I'm not afraid to bake for two hours at 500F, which heats up the house quite a bit.

The superderecho was an extraordinary event, but I do like to point out to people that in the space of one year, those of us in the Atlantic City area got hit by Hurricane Irene, the superderecho, and Hurricane Sandy, all three making landfall—or in the case of the superderecho, leaving land—at virtually the exact same spot.

The damage from Hurricane Sandy was mostly limited to the beach areas precisely because the superderecho hit Atlantic County with hurricane-force winds just a couple of months earlier, taking out most of the weak trees. While Sandy devastated the beaches and boardwalks, the inland damage was negligible.