Although I posted an after-action briefing on the subject of the Delaware River Flooding See
link I’d like to return to the subject in the context of the current thread.

Of course, experience is the best teacher, and as I mentioned in the aforementioned post, there’s a set of basics that trump pretty much all the other survival gear for shelter-in-place situations, and it’s what we’ve implemented at both at a personal level and in the context of the fire company to some extent.

1. Fuels, Fuels, Fuels. Vehicle fuel, generator fuel, woodstove fuel – it’s been called “liquid civilization” in this forum. It’s the one way to get your water well online, get your lights on and get your phone recharged. Stockpiling fuels is a complete pain in the butt, might be illegal where you live, and requires some up-front money. But it’s proven to be important enough that I put it before…

2. Water, Water, Water, Water, Water. Did I mention water? Not just drinking water, water to flush the toilet, water to wash your hands. Greywater recovery is a good idea where possible. Not having water is miserable.

3. Medical Needs – Oxygen, Insulin, Heart Medications, whatever you need, if you don’t have a 1-month supply in-house you don’t have enough. Band aids. Antiseptic cream. FAK items.

4. Communications alternatives. Phones are a pretty reliable means of communications, as are cell phones. But they are subject to overload conditions and simple mechanical failure from wires down. Radio is an option, CB radio & Ham radio come to mind, but from my first-hand experience, the ability of civilians to directly connect with emergency services during emergencies when the phones are out is severely limited.

5. Batteries – so many batteries, so many kinds. Don’t touch them unless it’s an emergency. Take $75 and go buy batteries. Rechargeable ones are a good idea if you know you can keep track of them. If not, buy alkaline. Put them in a box. Don’t touch them until the lights have been off for 24 hours and all your other batteries are dead.
Don’t. Touch. Your. Stash. Of. Batteries. You’ll thank me for this one day.


Things you don’t need as much of, despite what you might think.

A. Food. You have enough in most pantries to last a month or more, just eat a little less. It won’t kill you to eat only 2 meals a day, heck, I think it might help most of us to loose a bit of weight.

B. Electric. Aside from some electric to run your refrigeration, and that’s only needed if you’re in a summertime power loss, you actually don’t need much electric to get by. And you don’t need a huge generator set either. If you limit your electric use to a few hours a day to chill and charge – especially with LED lights and 15-minute NiMH batteries – an 1,800 watt small unit is really quite enough. If you have to have 220v for your water well and hot water heater, you’re stuck without a choice, you probably need a 5,000 watt 220v machine, which is expensive, but again, once you get things up to temperature, get some water up the pipe, there’s no reason to run it all day long.

C. Lots of Guns and Ammo. Yeah, yeah, Katrina….Katrina….Katrina….I know. We had looting in the last flood, and some guys formed an armed patrol, and we didn’t have anymore looting. Simple enough. But for the most part, and in most of America, the reaction to a disaster is for people to help people. Yeah, it’s not as fun to think of than the Mad Max scenarios that we all imagine, but the reality is that I can look the New York blackouts, the recent ice storms in the Midwest, 9/11, the Mississippi floods of the mid 1990’s, wildfires in the west….and the story there is people helping. Katrina certainly reminded us that there’s a scary potential for violence out there, however, you have to contextualize it – New Orleans was already one of the most violent, unstable places in America, so it didn’t take much to trigger things to go bad. But most of America isn’t so unstable.

That said, I don’t think you should not bother with general preparedness, but I’ve been through these 4 to 5 day scenarios a few times now, and this is what we figured out from experience.