I am not preparing for the apocalypse. I don’t have an emergency bunker. I don’t even have a basement,
because I live in Florida. But I
do have an emergency supply.
How about you? Do you
have an emergency supply?
I remember just a few years ago, when we got hit here in
Florida by three hurricanes in one summer. It was a nightmare.
We lost power for a combined total of three weeks. It was so hot! The most inconvenient thing was
probably the lack of air conditioning, but something else stands out in my
mind. We had to wait in line for
gas. Now don’t get me wrong. We only had to wait for about fifteen
minutes, but there was such a fear that there would be no gas, that everyone
was lined up for it. This made the
price go through the roof. Granted,
it was half what it cost today when it “skyrocketed.” But still, at the time it made an impact on my
thinking.
What if you could not get food for a week? This still seems like a pretty crazy
idea to me…but gas is $4.00 a gallon, and I freaked when it was $2.15, because of the hurricanes. Our gas comes in to port from
Tampa. I live in Orlando. What happens if gas tankers get delayed
by a week or two? Your grocery
store may rely on shipments each week.
Your gas station definitely relies on shipments each week. If you live paycheck to paycheck, this
may throw off your routine for the week.
Do you go out to restaurants instead of cooking your meals each
night? We used to do this. It was regular for our family to go out
to eat at least once or twice per week.
Now we make our lunch, instead of indulging in quick serve lunches
out. We are trying to get our
family out of debt, so we gave up going out for lunch or going out to
restaurants, unless it’s really a need.
Maybe we go out now once or twice a month. But because of our habits of going out to eat, we relied
less on the grocery store. If we
needed something we would go get it the night before or the day we needed
it. What if you couldn’t get what
you needed for a month? What would
have to happen for this to be a reality?
It’s way more likely than you may be prepared to believe, until after it
happens. But we are able to make a
small adjustment in our home to be prepared for things like the occasional
hurricane or panic stricken raid on the grocery store. We have a “Hurricane Supply.”
You also need to make sure you have some way to get water for a few
weeks too. That part may make you
look a little more “end of the world” like. But there are a few things we can get to later for
that. So the question now is why
do I do this?
Answer: 1. Because I can’t predict what is going
to happen six months from now.
2. My wife and
I feel safer knowing that if our panicked neighbors haven’t prepared anything
for an emergency in intensity like a hurricane, they are going to go tear apart
our grocery store before we get home from work. We don’t like having to leave work before the neighbors tear
apart our grocery store. We like
to get there as soon as we can, but not just to beat the panicked
neighbors. Besides, we want our neighbors
to get less panicked by going to the grocery store and getting it all out of
their systems while we are coaxing our co-workers out from under their
desks. Actually, since my
coworkers are all psychology instructors, they’ll probably be trying to coax me
out from under my desk. Who knows
what kind of emergency could come.
Perhaps no emergency will come in the next six months. So why go to all the bother of having a
hurricane supply?
Great question. Now instead
of buying groceries each night, we are able to plan for the week and plan for
the month at the same time. This
helps us save a great deal of money.
Plus, we have a month worth of canned veggies to pull from each
night. No going to the grocery
store for a can of green beans, or corn.
We can also then buy fresh vegetables when we choose to, and canned
vegetables for cost savings. You
can get lots of canned vegetables when they are buy-one-get-one free. There are also lots of coupons for
vegetables when you buy multiple cans at a time. This is when we stock up our hurricane supply. Canned tuna and canned chicken go on
sale too. These products usually
last more than a year on the shelf, so you can eat them when it’s convenient
for you.
After coming to the conclusion that we can be vastly more prepared just
by planning for a one-month emergency, we know that most events that we could
plan for are already addressed. Most
likely the world won’t fall apart.
We aren’t expecting a nuclear war or aliens to take over the White House…this
year. Besides, how would you
really plan for either of those scenarios without putting on a tin foil hat? If we get nuked, we’ll cast our lot
with our neighbors and take part in the same fate as them. If aliens take over the White House,
we’ll just hope it’s an improvement over our own politicians. We believe that the most likely
scenario is that we will be using our hurricane supply for just what it is… a hurricane
supply. But for you people in Iowa
or Kansas, you just never know when a “hurricane” may come your way. If you go to the grocery store, and all
you can get is a week or two worth of food, will you be able to help your
neighbors next door? If one of you
has enough food for a month, you’ll feel better knowing that all you need is
two week worth of food that you can share with them.
Examples of an emergency lasting a month:
Straight of Hormuz blockade=unpredictable gas prices (add at
least 50% to the price of gas for at least a month)
War between Israel and Iran: same as above
War between Iran and America: same as above
Hurricane Katrina:
ask anyone who lived in New Orleans
Another stock market failure like in 2008 would be worse due
to the constant bail- outs of banks and entire countries in Europe (Greece,
Italy, Spain, Portugal etc.)
If Saudi Arabia cut off our oil supply…that would be bad…not
likely, but bad.
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