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Scope: What this is and isn’t Happy National Preparedness Month! Given that half the country is seemingly either on fire, underwater or both and there’s a high likelihood that Antifa supersoldiers will attempt to prevent our beloved President from being reelected, Bored as gently caress and I decided to bring our respective experience, intelligence and devastating handsomeness together to collaborate on a thread introducing the topic of emergency preparedness. This thread is not meant to be a truly comprehensive guide to emergency preparedness, but a foundation for discussion and for people to share their experiences and ask questions. In order to make this more readable, we're going to post this in installments by individual posts. Read it in good health and an open mind, and remember that you’re not a kook or a nut for wanting to be prepared for an emergency. We have insurance for our cars, our homes and our health - consider emergency preparedness your insurance for everything else. This is not a thread for excessive doomer poo poo or rubbing yourself raw over the prospect of shooting “looters” so take that poo poo somewhere far, far away from here. One thing this guide will do is try to be a start, especially for those new to prepping. Many prepper blogs, websites, YouTube pages, and forums lean heavily to the right. We will try to save you from most of that, and try to direct you to some apolitical prepping resources. Though Reddit tends to give you cancer, r/preppers and r/leftprep are actually good resources. We have found r/preppers to be pretty non-political (any political content is an immediate ban), and right-wingers that skirt the line tend to get shouted down and downvoted into oblivion. r/leftprep is for left-leaning individuals like most people here, but it is not active at all anymore. Seems most people have switched over to r/preppers. Threat Assessments The first step in preparing for an emergency is determining what types of threats or emergency scenarios you’re likely to face. There are a variety of methods and ways that you can use to guide your thinking, from the more IT-security oriented threat modeling process to risk assessment matrices and many others, but at minimum, a good assessment exercise will entail examining the following:
This basically means taking a look at your surroundings and doing a little research on issues or incidents that have taken place before. For example, while I live in a place that occasionally gets hurricanes or tropical storms, their frequency is generally pretty sporadic (low likelihood) and the amount of damage they have historically done to my sturdy brick building with nearby well-maintained trees and deep roots is minimal (low severity.) There’s not much I can do to prevent a bad storm, but I can mitigate it further by having a tarp or two and some duct tape so I can secure my windows or prevent water from coming in from my windows if they were to be somehow broken. Another example: if I live near a prominent landmark like a major monument, intersection or plaza, I may want to consider the impact to my area if there’s a major demonstration nearby- is there a history of similar events? What happened during them? How could this influence traffic? Do I have to worry about police firing tear gas? Asking these types of questions and gaming how what could happen in your area can help guide the types of measures you choose to implement. One of the best features of emergency preparedness is that a lot of the ground work you do for one scenario can get you most of the way to preparing for others- for example, the stuff you’d do to prepare for a bad snowstorm can be equally applicable to a civil event that prompts you to stay indoors for several days. Some points we think should be emphasized as far as prepping goes. Some of these are opinions, some are just facts.
Your Home Part I: Fire/Life Safety Take a walk around your home. You'll want to make sure you have smoke detectors installed in common areas; it’s recommended to have them installed inside of the kitchen, living room, and outside of where your bedrooms are clustered. Get a carbon monoxide detector for each room, especially in the area around a boiler. Also, position fire extinguishers in each of these locations and one inside of your master bedroom. If your master bedroom is located on the second floor, also consider getting one of those fire escape ladders that you can hang from a window.I'd also get a crowbar and a pair of heavy-duty gloves in case you had to bust out a window. Crowbars are a very versatile tool for breaking some things and lifting others, and are also cheap. Hatchets can also be used to get through debris. Also take the time to learn where your water and gas shutoff valves are, and whether you need any tools to do so. If you do, acquire them and store them next to the shutoff valves. Make sure you and anyone you live with know how to employ them as necessary. You will also want to possess tarps/plastic sheeting and the means to affix them (a good toolkit with nails, screws, etc.) to your home in case you lose some windows or part of your roof in a storm. Part II: Physical Security  Now go outside and take a walk around your property and take a look at potential vulnerabilities. Are there any large trees that are leaning in the direction of your house? Are there other trees that could fall and hit your roof/home? If so, now might be a good time to address them- a tree removal service can advise on that. Take a look at your doors and windows. What condition are your door locks in? Were they changed when you first moved in? If your locks are in bad shape or if you don’t know if they were changed, you should strongly consider changing them. You can reinforce your doors' strike plates with larger screws that go deeper into the door jamb (this will make them more resistant to being kicked in.) There are commercially available door reinforcement kits like this one but for most people, simply reinforcing the strike plate is good enough. If your front or back door has windows or glass panes that could be chipped out and allow someone to reach a hand in to unlock the door from the inside, you can apply shatter-resistant film to those areas. Also think of getting motion-sensor lights for your backyard area and also for any "dead space" (areas not directly observable from inside of your house, usually along the sides). Getting a camera for your front and back doors is also advisable, but be careful with subscription based services like Ring because of considerable privacy concerns. If you live in an apartment or a managed property, your options may be a bit limited, especially with regard to doing any kind of modifications to the property such as reinforcing the door, adding lights, etc. That said, you can always do things like get more smoke detectors and fire extinguishers, hang heavier curtains or drapes in front of your bedroom windows, cutting a broomstick to prevent a sliding glass door from being opened, and so forth. Part III: Personal Documents Take an afternoon and do the following:
Birth certificates and Social Security cards Drivers licenses, passports Insurance policies and cards (health, homeowners, vehicle, life, etc.) Property/vehicle title documents Major purchase receipts (appliances, TVs, your collection of Victorian-era softcore pornography) Prescription medications (also for vision) and any other important health information, including vaccination records Resumes and tax returns Email and other account passwords in a document (I also recommend using a password management service like LastPass) Pet immunization records (if you are forced to evacuate and have pets, you will need to find a shelter that allows pets, and you will probably have to provide them with immunization records) 2. Scan these documents. Upload them to a cloud-based service such as Dropbox or Google Docs, and also create an encrypted USB drive for them. If you have Windows 10 Pro, you can use the Bitlocker function for this. If you don't have Win 10 Pro and want it, you can get a legit key for $19 via sellers in SA-Mart. 3. Store them in a desk drawer (or even better, a small fireproof safe) that you and anyone else you live with can access. Consider storing them in a distinctly colored file so that you both know that if you ever have to leave in a hurry, these are the documents you grab on the way out. You can get a personal laminator with a 100 extra lanating sheets for less than $50. 4. Also think about doing the same for any important photos, videos you might have. You can also get a system like Carbonite to back up your system and important files en masse to the cloud- I backed up nearly a terabyte's worth of photos recently. If you or your cohabitants are on any prescription medicines, think about talking to your doctor about getting 2-3 months of prescriptions filled in advance to have in reserve. This obviously gets tricky if we're talking about anything controlled, but this is a valid reason to ask and it certainly doesn't hurt to try. Also keep your pets in mind- my dog has at least an extra months’ worth of his prescriptions stashed away.
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Sep 20, 2020 01:20
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Medical At Home You should at minimum have one of these Red Cross first aid kits at home as they’re good for treating the symptoms of most common types of injuries and illnesses. There is nothing worse than an unwrapped first aid kit, so I’d recommend that you open it up and examine each item and where it fits in the kit. I would also recommend augmenting your home medical supplies with single-dose units of Benadryl (diphenhydramine hydrochloride), Tylenol (acetaminophen), Motrin (ibuprofen), antacids, anti-diarrhea (loperamide), anti-gas medications like Gas-X, and any generic Zyrtec or Allegra. Adventure Medical is a great company that makes packets of these things for cheap. Buy several of them and keep them in your home kit and the other ones I’m going to recommend. Also consider your pets - you can get non-adhesive bandages (i.e. won’t stick to fur) like VetWrap for extremely cheap. You can also use this on humans; for allergy purposes, be advised that it contains latex. You will also want a bandanna or something you can wrap around your dog’s snout as a muzzle- animals in pain can react defensively, even with people they know and love. Also, find out the address and phone numbers for both your preferred local vet as well as your emergency one, and store them as well. Vehicle Kits A lot of cars come with something resembling a “first aid kit” and they’re all pretty crappy, usually containing a few band-aids and other stuff that’s not super useful. This Red Cross kit is a good start, but I would also augment it with gauze (preferably one with a hemostatic agent like QuikClot, Combat Gauze or Celox), chest seals (for penetrating chest trauma), a SAM splint (for stabilizing fractures), and mylar space blankets (for keeping someone warm- hypothermia is common with traumatic injuries.) You should store your car kit in an accessible area of the car. Inside of the trunk you should have a couple of gallons of water, some food (granola bars are great for this), some heavy-duty gloves, your flat tire kit, flares/emergency flashers. Trauma Management A lot of weirdo preppers fetishize trauma management because they think they’re going to be treating gunshots left and right. The fact of the matter is that they are extremely unlikely to do so, but traumatic injuries can present themselves via a vehicle collision or an accident at home. Regardless of the mechanism of injury, there are a number of things that you can apply in a prehospital setting that will help a patient’s prognosis SIGNIFICANTLY, require next to no skill to apply, and are minimally invasive, therefore bearing little to no risk to the patient. These are the aforementioned hemostatic gauze, chest seals, and tourniquets. North American Rescue is my preferred vendor for this type of equipment - they make this Mini-First Aid Kit (M-FAK) that are tried and true.These are pricy kits, but they’re worth it. They’re meant to be used for individuals. Training You can have an entire ambulance’s worth of medical gear and equipment, but unless you know how to use it, it’s completely worthless. Fortunately, there are a number of low-cost or even free courses that provide an excellent foundation of medical skills that you can build upon. These are the Red Cross’s CPR/Automatic External Defibrillator (AED), National Outdoor Leadership School’s (NOLS) Wilderness First Aid (WFA), and Stop the Bleed. CPR/AED is self-explanatory, and many cities’ Fire/EMS or Red Cross will offer extremely cheap or free courses. If that’s the case, try to get in on one every few years. NOLS’ Wilderness Medicine Institute has a well-developed…Wilderness Medicine program. Wilderness First Aid (WFA) is their entry-level course and is applicable in austere settings (i.e. post-disaster, areas where definitive medical care may be a lengthy drive away). They’ve partnered with REI to hold courses very frequently. They’re low-cost (around $250) for a 16-hour course that you can do in a weekend, and the certification is valid for two years. They also offer a Wilderness First Responder certification, which is taught over 9 days and significantly expands on the topics offered in WFA. Stop the Bleed is basically an introduction to the equipment and treatment outlined in the previous section on trauma management. You’ll learn how to apply a tourniquet, chest seals, pack a wound, etc. specifically in the context of trauma management. Pre-COVID, these courses were being offered very frequently and will likely be offered again at the same interval. Tactical Emergency Casualty Care is a “civilian-ized” version of the military’s Tactical Combat Casualty Care and is aimed at trauma management during a critical incident. While it’s primarily intended for EMS personnel or other first responders, I’ve seen versions of these courses offered at shooting ranges that strip out things like surgical airway management (if you have to ask what that is, you have no business learning how to do it) so that they can be done in a single evening. [POST]Community A lot of people in the prepper community like to point at the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as an example of post-disaster communal violence and societal breakdown, and they’re wrong. While major emergencies tend to aggravate existing security issues, the complete collapse of community cohesion and order is exaggerated, and in most cases, neighbors and strangers tend to help one another out. The first step in doing so is getting to know your neighbors and learning more about what skills, assets or vulnerabilities they may present. For example, through casual conversation (a skill learned by not being a typical goony shut-in!), I’ve learned that I have one neighbor who’s a doctor, another who recently remodeled their kitchen on their own, another who does most of their own car maintenance. I’ve also learned that I have other neighbors who have young kids and others who are immunosuppressed or require extra help in getting around. Knowing more about my immediate neighbors has given me an idea of who I might be able to look to for help, and also, who I may need to help out should the situation call for it. Beyond getting to know your neighbors, there may be community resources in your area that can be engaged. Look and see if you have a local Community Emergency Response Team (CERT). These are basically teams of volunteers who are trained in a variety of skills, including light search and rescue, first aid, and other disaster response skills in order to support local fire/EMS/public safety. Getting involved with them can be a good way to learn about community resources and give you a view of how your local government/community can respond to an emergency. Again, this doesn’t turn you into a professional first responder- CERT members may do things like administrative work or patient triage to free up more experienced professionals for more critical tasks. Another thing to look into are mutual aid networks. Mutual aid is something that grew out of left anarchism and basically involves organizing neighbors/communities to address shared and individual needs to the extent possible. A lot of communities organized their own de facto mutual aid networks during COVID, and this is something that could be leveraged during a disaster as well. We encourage you to look into other local groups or collectives at your own level- the more you know about the assets and liabilities that neighbors and community at large possess, the better. Additional Resources I’m throwing here a bunch of links and other things you may want to consider. They range from pretty milquetoast things to some more “prepper” type blogs, so I’d encourage you to read with a discerning eye and take from each the things that speak to you. Anyone who’s spent time doing research on emergency preparedness knows that you’ll encounter some really kooky right-wing poo poo out there, so just gloss over it and learn what you can. Website: ready.gov This site is maintained by the Department of Homeland Security and is basically the public-facing information for how the US government recommends people prepare for emergencies. A lot of this information is very general and there are other sites that go into greater/better detail, but this is a very good starting point. Podcast: Worst Year Ever: The Reasonable Person’s Guide to Prepping This presents the topic in a pretty accessible way. The main presenter, Robert Evans, is a goon, a good journalist and also a leftist gun nut but in general is a very even-keeled and good resource. His other podcast (Behind the Bastards) is great and pretty funny. Blog: The Place with No Name: Lessons from Katrina A guy who lived through Hurricane Katrina put a lot of his lessons to paper. There’s some good information here, including workbooks and checklists, that you can repurpose for yourself. Website: The Prepared This was a linked resource from the Worst Year Ever podcast. It’s pretty even keeled and non-kooky. There’s a lot of information here, written in a very no-nonsense and non-fringy way. Book: Field Guide to Wilderness Medicine This is a book that’s definitely meant for a medical professional but a layperson can still comprehend a good chunk of it. There are a lot of things here that are outside the scope of practice for anyone but paramedics or physicians, but there are a lot of useful things to apply to an austere setting. There is also NOLS Wilderness Medicine textbook (6th Edition) that is more appropriate for non-medical personnel and may be easier for someone without a lot of training to comprehend. SA Thread: Post Your Bug-Out Bag We haven’t covered bug-out bags/run-bags/whatever in the initial posts of this thread, but this is a good recent thread from The Great Outdoors. SA Thread: TFR’s June Chat Thread This thread started out with a great conversation about preparing for hurricane season, and has a lot of good stuff in it. SA Thread: Body Armor and Plate Carrier Megathread Fellow GIPper and thread collaborator Bored as gently caress did a great thread outlining the various types of body armor and plate carriers if you assess that body armor is a part of your preparedness strategy. SA Thread: GSW: The pathophysiology and treatment of gunshot wounds. A medgoon breaks down how gunshot wounds cause tissue damage, and the effectiveness of various pre-hospital treatments. This is a fantastic and well-sourced OP and has some great discussion in it. YouTube Videos There are several decent YouTubers that we can recommend. Some decent videos with good knowledge are listed below. Add them to a playlist and explore the YouTuber’s channels - there’s plenty of good info out there, whether the person is a MAGA CHUD or not. Some of the below goes into camping/bushcraft skills - but during an extended emergency, there may be no power for days or weeks - you may need wilderness skills to keep warm, cook food, etc. 15 Things That Preppers Should Hoard https://youtu.be/WkjwpL8LOgI How to Start Prepping: Top 10 List https://youtu.be/hXSV5LXVrqE 7 Campire Techniques Every [One] Must Know https://youtu.be/Y0iwAzEm96A 20 Wilderness Survival Tips and Bushcraft Techniques https://youtu.be/fZndJO2jUJk pantslesswithwolves fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Sep 22, 2020 |
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Sep 20, 2020 01:26
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The Oldest Man posted:"Preparedness" is a collection of related activities that should conform to local material reality, not a single activity that is the same everywhere. This was a good post and basically what I was driving at in the Threat Assessments part of the OP. If wildfires or earthquakes were a thing in my area, my work would be more oriented toward evacuating than staying in. It’s all about knowing your environment and calibrating your planning accordingly. ASAPI posted:Thanks for the level of effort you put into this. Kinda shocked we didn't already have a thread about this. There’s a book called “Left of Bang” that presents the USMC’s “combat profiling” program. The most basic way of describing it is that it’s about assessing a situation and the people within it to determine their intentions, guiding your observations based on a number of criteria. I may do a post about situational awareness in which I’ll try to describe it better, but here’s a link to the Combat Profiling Journal where you can learn a lot more about the topic.
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Sep 22, 2020 05:17
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ASAPI posted:Thanks! Because civil wars don’t just happen overnight, there’s a ramp-up period spanning several months, years or decades wherein people make value judgments as to which political/regional factions they’re aligned with, and to what degree they’re willing to support them. If you take the Syrian example, the lines were largely drawn between rural/urban, secular/religiously conservative, disenfranchised/those with access to the elite or guaranteed success via the country’s institutions. Plenty of time and reasons to allow the societal fault lines to harden. Random aside: the next major war is going to be real loving confusing when all combatants show up wearing Multicam.
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Sep 22, 2020 15:38
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Soylent Pudding posted:Can this thread offer any guidance on getting training or instriction on how to actually use first aid medical equipment and be able to remember it during an emergency? Getting this stuff won't be very useful if the extent of my medical knowledge is a cub scout first aid merit badge I got in the 4th grade. From the bottom of the Medical post: quote:
There are also YouTube channels like PrepMedic or SkinnyMedic (one of those guys is a little bit of a Tactical Timmy good but otherwise offers fine information) that do some instruction; there’s also the DeployedMed app that has videos that you can download for offline usage about the TCCC curriculum. It’s solid and legit.
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Sep 24, 2020 18:27
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I’m going to attempt to talk about a person’s mindset before, during and after a critical incident. I will be very up front by saying that I am not a mental health practitioner, so if you are, please jump in and correct any incorrect information that I may impart here. Pre-Incident In my previous post about medical response and first aid I said that you can have an entire ambulance’s worth of equipment, but it’s useless without the knowledge of how to correctly use it. The same can be said for any kind of emergency plan. For example, let’s say that your plan in case of a natural disaster is to evacuate to a family cabin in the woods. Have you driven the main route and calculated how long it takes under optimal circumstances? How about alternate routes- do they exist, and what condition will they likely be in? What about accounting for heavy traffic? Do you know where the gas stations are, and do you have a fuel can that you can refill as necessary? It’s not merely enough to think “If X happens, then I’ll do Y.” Your thinking should be “If X happens, my first course of action will be to do Y, and I can do 1, 2, and 3 to get me there.” For those of you who were in the military, you probably recognize this as developing a PACE plan. This stands for Primary, Alternate, Contingency and Emergency, and while it originally applies to developing redundancies in communication, you can easily apply this to formulating your plans at all levels. If there’s a fire in my building, my primary course of action is going to be running out my front door, my alternate course of action is to go out through the fire escape on my floor, my contingency would be to run out of our basement’s door, and my emergency course of action would be to bust out a window and use my fire escape ladder. Practice and rehearse your PACE plans to the extent possible- as the old saw goes, we don’t rise to the occasion; we fail to the level of our training. Any practice and rehearsal- even if your options are limited to doing it mentally- is better than just assuming that you’ll be able to execute a plan while under significant stress. Situational Awareness This can be a difficult subject to cover because there’s been a lot of tacticlol ink spilled on this topic, and I’m going to avoid swinging this in a goofy direction. Situational awareness means developing a knowledge of one’s surroundings and assessing potential threats and responses to those threats. While by all accounts Jeff Cooper was a CHUD rear end in a top hat, he did develop what’s commonly referred to as “Cooper’s Color Codes.” Although developed as a “combat mindset” this is equally applicable to everyday life in terms of developing a system of situational awareness.  The biggest takeaway here is that Condition Yellow is where we want to be. In practice, this basically means periodically asking yourself the following questions:
It means being prepared to move to a different color level depending on changes in the environment or the people inside it. This may sound like a mentally exhausting process, and for those who aren’t used to thinking like this, it can be at first. But as you get used to thinking of those questions, it becomes an almost subconscious process that involves very little mental exertion. What we basically want to avoid is going from “Condition White” (no awareness) to “Condition Black” (panic) without reaching any of the steps in between- think of someone glued to their phone while they accidentally walk into traffic. As mentioned in an earlier post, the USMC teaches a “combat profiling” which basically breaks down situational awareness into six domains, which are:
There is way too much to go into here, but it’s basically a much, much deeper dive into applying a system of situational awareness in a high-threat environment. You can learn more by visiting the Combat Profiler Journal or by reading the book Left of Bang. If you’re good with situational awareness, you may have bought yourself a few extra seconds of time to develop a proactive response to an emerging situation rather than being purely reactive to one. Let’s talk about what that looks like in the next section. During an Incident Oh poo poo, something went wrong and it’s on now! Despite being a switched-on, head on a swivel Mall Ninja, Al-Qaeda got the drop on you by the food court and you now find yourself involved in a critical incident of some sort. Here’s what’s happening inside of your body. Your brain is going to shift its functions away from the cortex (our so-called “thinking brain”) over to the limbic system (the “survival brain”), particularly the hippocampus and amygdala. I’m no neuroscientitian so forgive me if I bungle this, but basically- these parts of the brain do a few important things, particularly regulate strong emotional responses and also the production of the hormones adrenaline and cortisol. As these hormones permeate your system, your heart rate and blood pressure will increase, the blood vessels in your skin constrict, the rate of blood flow to your brain and muscles will increase as your respiratory rate, heart rate and blood pressure increase, and your perceptions of events and physical stimuli such as pain will shift. Basically, your nervous system will be largely ceding control to usually dormant parts of your brain in pursuit of one single objective: survival. While this dump of chemicals can aid us by way of faster movement via our large muscle groups and bursts of energy, they come with some side effects. During a high-stress incident, fine motor skills can deteriorate for a variety of physiological factors. This can be mitigated somewhat by introducing stressors during training or practice, such as introducing a timer to achieve a task like putting on a tourniquet or bandage, etc. There’s also auditory exclusion and “tunnel vision,” which entails the degradation of your sense of hearing or fixation on one specific thing in your environment. I’ve experienced the former during some intense training I’ve been through, and the latter when I was so fixated on helping a person injured in a car wreck that I didn’t notice my wife standing next to me. It’s real and it happens, and knowing your own physiological responses to high-stress incidents can help you mitigate it. Post-Incident The dust has settled, the danger has passed, and life goes on. Now, your system is bathed in a rapidly cooling stew of hormones and sensory inputs that your thinking brain may be coming to terms with. Here are some of the after effects of a stressful incident:
A good way to contextualize these deeply uncomfortable symptoms is to recognize that you are having a normal reaction to an abnormal event. From here, it’s important to exercise good self-care for yourself, and in the case of others who may have been affected, applying the principles of psychological first aid (PFA). Self-Care Again, I am not a mental health professional so I can only really speak in generalities here. Taking good care of one’s psychological and physical needs following an incident is important. If at all possible, try to speak with a mental health professional within 48 hours of an incident. The simple act of open communication can help you return to a baseline sense of normalcy by contextualizing the incident, and a professional can offer other techniques to help you cope. Sleep, exercise, and communication are healthy techniques- try to avoid overindulging in things like alcohol, junk food, drugs or other things that provide a quick but fleeting sense of escape. The CDC has some good resources that I’m linking to here. Psychological First Aid PFA is something that’s getting increased attention as a skillset for first and second responders, and is something that’s been touted as improving the likelihood of a satisfactory psychological outcome following a critical incident. There are a number of different models used to describe PFA, but I’m personally a big fan of the RAPID PFA model:
You can take a free, highly accessible and engaging online course on RAPID PFA via Coursera, and I highly recommend it. While intervention by a trained counselor or mental health professional is the best, PFA can help blunt the impact of a high-stress event and improve an individual’s response to a critical incident. So there you have it. The more work you put into training your brain into thinking of PACE plans and being situationally aware, the more you can prevent or mitigate the worst parts of a stress response during a critical incident. Following that, it’s important to take care of yourself by decompressing and coping in an effective way, and if need be, to help others do the same by the application of PFA.
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Sep 24, 2020 19:52
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:How do you budget the maintenance costs of emergency supplies? Most of the things listed in the OP need to be replaced on some frequency if they aren't used, whether it's food, drugs, filters, or medical supplies, so it comes off as an ongoing process and expense to maintain preparedness. And then what's the best way to factor those costs into the threat matrix mentioned, that is, how do you put specific values on the likelihood of a disaster, the impact of being unprepared, the costs of being prepared, and the mitigation offered by being prepared? These are a bunch of good questions. Per the first- I keep a written record and also Google Calendar reminders set up for the expiration dates of my food. When something is getting close to that date, it gets moved to the front of the pantry for use and a replacement item gets added to the grocery list. Things like bandages don’t necessarily have an expiration date per say, but rather that the sterility of the wrapping can’t be guaranteed. In that case maybe I’d consider using an old bandage for a training aid while working on replacing it with a fresh one. Done smartly, preparedness should not be “dump a ton of money on stuff at random intervals” but a gradual, ongoing process that doesn’t have to be super costly. Your question about taking in the costs of being prepared or unprepared for an event is good, and admittedly one that I haven’t thought out to the level that you’re positing. Instead, I’d say that any measures or course of action that you might choose would need to be cost-effective and feasible, understanding that will mean different things depending on the individual and the scenario. I may write an effortpost about how to do a threat assessment and try to account for that.
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Oct 19, 2020 04:49
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We’ve got an election next week. Anyone do anything to prepare for it? I checked my shelf-stable food’s expiration dates, restocked my FAKs and went on a run to Trader Joe’s for comfort food. I’m feeling pretty confident that my wife, dog and I are about as squared away as we can get for our area; here’s to hoping that we won’t have to endure another shelter in place/curfew type of situation like we did earlier this year.
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Oct 31, 2020 00:22
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So we got through the election (for the most part lol?), and now COVID is gearing up to gently caress the country hard and dry in the coming weeks. Anyone doing anything in preparation? I’m doing an inventory of my food tomorrow and will try to plug any gaps on Tuesday. Not to be morbid, but I’m curious if anyone has done a living will recently. I’ve never set one up, and figure it’d be a good idea to have one, even outside the context of COVID and the general context of 2020 in the Hellfucker dimension.
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Nov 16, 2020 06:45
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https://www.narescue.com/adventure Now that I’ve placed my order, I am pleased to announce that NAR is having a 25% off sale on its outdoor adventure products, which still includes CATs and other TCCC/TECC equipment.
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Nov 17, 2020 16:49
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What’s your application? Home FAK, car kit, everyday carry, etc? In general, I would say something like this https://www.narescue.com/out-pak-kit-coy.html As it has stuff for major injuries (the CAT, namely) and also minor injuries like small cuts and abrasions, and has a small form factor that would allow you to carry it easily.
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Nov 17, 2020 18:14
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This is too big of a post for me to quote from my phone, but this is an older post from a spring USPOL thread that recently got linked to in the COVID thread. It’s got some really good tips about staying mentally healthy during lockdown and seems pretty relevant given that it looks like we’ll soon be seeing another round of them nationwide. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3919514&perpage=40&noseen=1&pagenumber=173#post504247938
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Nov 19, 2020 16:20
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Yeah, there is, it’s been linked here several times and I’m pretty sure GBGB is in their OP as well.
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Nov 22, 2020 17:43
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I’ve been trying to build on some of my skills lately. I’ve been reviewing my TCCC/TECC and WFA curriculum content, working on a vehicle emergency bag and trying to teach myself how to tie more knots, and tonight, I started a fire (in my fireplace so obviously under optimal conditions) with a firesteel and dryer lint. My little tinder bundle went up on my second shower of sparks and I had a roaring fire seconds later. Big takeaway here is holy poo poo clean out your dryer filters regularly, and also, what are you all using as fire starters? Heretofore I’ve used cotton balls/pads soaked in petroleum jelly (messy but effective) or petrolatum infused gauze pulled through a small hole cut into the wrapper like a candle wick. Also, in one of the OPs we talked about the importance of community in emergency planning. Have any of you brought in friends as a part of your planning, and how?
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Dec 2, 2020 04:21
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There’s always using crushed Doritos as well, but I think most goons would rather freeze to death in the dark than give up such a time-honored snack. Lit another fire last night with my steel; next step will be to refine my technique even further so I can ignite my bundle in three strikes or less, then practice doing this outside with tinder that I find myself.
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Dec 4, 2020 14:32
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Just ordered a bunch of Girl Scout cookies and bought another 5th of bourbon so if the chuds come for me they’ll find me drunk as poo poo with a raging sugar high burning through as much of my stash of 9mm as possible before they overrun me.
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Jan 13, 2021 01:39
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The other day, some good friends of mine had a significant scare with carbon monoxide in their home. To make a long story short, their neighbor’s unoccupied home (here in DC, a lot of homes are row houses that share one or more walls) was leaking carbon monoxide into their home at levels that could have eventually killed my friends within a few hours had they not heeded their carbon monoxide detectors. You can get a decent carbon monoxide detector that plugs into a wall outlet and has a redundant battery back up for like $30 at your local hardware store. Consider this and other stuff like fire/smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, a crowbar and an escape ladder to be essential equipment- you can mitigate like 95% of the most common threats in your home with $150 and 15 minutes in a hardware store.
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Feb 3, 2021 01:57
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I’ve been thinking about how I’d prepare for something like this. The DC area is better equipped to deal with super cold weather than Texas by way of our better insulated homes, so I’d be less worried about some of the more extreme things like icicles coming out of my light fixtures. That said, if it were really bad, I’d probably tarp over my downstairs windows to act as something of a vapor barrier, keep a fire going in my wood-burning fireplace (which I had serviced recently so I know my flue is clear of buildup and good to go), and set up a tent in the living room for my wife, dog and I to sleep in with all of our blankets. I’d probably store some of our water in there to keep it from freezing solid. A lot of our stored food is like Thai or Indian food packets so I wouldn’t need to really heat them before eating. For sanitation- well, guess it’s going to be a bucket with kitty litter and bleach for us, and hoping that the toilets didn’t crack when the water froze.
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Feb 17, 2021 20:52
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I have a ton of iodine tablets that I’ve never used from all my trips to Africa. I’d get issued them by my agency’s health division, get to my mission site, and find bottled water was plentiful and cheap. So now I have iodine tablets in my home, in my go-bag and in my car bag, and I’m still finding bottles of them randomly. I prefer using my Sawyer Squeeze as my primary purification method. Compact and reliable, plus you can keep untreated water in the bag in reserve after you’ve topped off your bottles. I have two of the Minis, one’s in my car kit and the other is in reserve for hiking/backpacking/bikepacking. It was great when my wife and I went hiking in George Washington National Forest and could just top off our water every time we passed a creek. Question: how concerned should I be about trying to filter water that would have agricultural runoff in it? In my area, the areas where I’d want to evacuate to are in proximity to exurban farms. I know my filters and alternate methods can handle bacteria just fine, but what about pesticides and fertilizers? I’ve read that the Sawyer S3 can filter those and viruses out, but I’m not sure if I’d need something like that.
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Feb 23, 2021 06:39
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Discussion Quorum posted:I was concerned about this, and heavy metals. Not only because I live in a big city, but even in the "country" every supply of water is likely to have agricultural and industrial runoff in it. No clear running mountain streams within few hundred miles. Thanks, I’ll have to check that out. I’ll do some research on this myself and come back to the thread if I find some other options as well. ASAPI posted:From what I have seen in my area, lots of people were having success with solar panel and battery combos. The only issue with those are that they are super expensive. The wife and I have changed priorities and are now saving for a healthy solar system. For a cheaper, interim option, manufacturers like Goal Zero sell solar powered battery banks and generators like this one that can be used to power at least a few devices, although I’d think powering a space heater would drain it super fast. My agency bought a few of these and sent them to some overseas locations where reliable power is an issue, solely for the purpose of allowing critical staff to always keep laptops, sat phones and radios powered.
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Feb 24, 2021 15:30
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Pottery Barn is selling the Prepster three-day emergency kit. Let’s check it out:quote:The Prepster Luxe 3-Day Emergency Bag helps you prepare for unexpected events with its thoughtfully-planned and generously-stocked kit of survival supplies. First, those Datrex emergency water rations are a great start but there’s no way that’s going to last two people three days, especially if you have to cut into it in order to apply a peppermint shampoo and Cilantro conditioner. The FAK isn’t terrible, but it seems more like a run of the mill household FAK that couldn’t really handle a major emergency; I also didn’t see any necessary meds like NSAIDs, anti-diarrheal, antihistamines, etc. in there. Also for that price I’d want to see something high-proof that I could put in that flask. This strikes me as a day and a half kit rather than a 72-hour one. I see the primary utility of this kit as demonstrating its shortcomings and providing the end user with a foundation upon which to build. There are some good items in this kit, but it needs a lot of work. I get the feeling most people would buy one of these and toss it in a closet and think they’re good to go. Also, lol that Pottery Barn is selling prepper stuff
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Mar 9, 2021 22:01
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Now that Ida is bearing down on NOLA, think about how you’d prepare for a similar storm were it to hit your area. If you live inland, suspend disbelief or think of some similarly catastrophic event. What would you be doing: One week out? 72 hours out? 24 hours out? The day of? The day after? I’ll post my own answers later tonight.
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Aug 30, 2021 01:03
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The Mid-Atlantic has been experiencing a couple of things that have given a lot of people a minor taste of what the early phase of recovery from a bigger disaster could look like. First, the DC area got several inches of wet snow that brought down trees and power lines and led to a 24 hour traffic jam on I-95 (that Tim Kaine got stuck in). Local hospitals are stressed due to this being our turn to be the nation’s COVID hotspot and the virus infecting a lot of health care workers, which has resulted in 12+ hour wait times at some ERs for even non-COVID illnesses/injuries. Plus, the other day, PA shut down its interstates due to another snowstorm, which has resulted in bare shelves at a lot of local grocery stores. Although these haven’t all stemmed from one event and were staggered over the course of a week, the power outages, significantly disrupted arterial roads, constrained medical care and goods shortages strike me as what we could expect life to look like if another derecho or hurricane hits. And my response to all of this was…. Pretty much nothing. I had enough shelf-stable food to sustain my wife, dogs and I for a few weeks and meds and supplies to treat the kinds of illnesses or injuries that wouldn’t require a trip to Urgent Care or the ER. I’m not a car commuter anymore, but the 95 traffic jam got me to order a woobie and another single-walled Klean Kanteen bottle for my car and has me hunting for Coast Guard emergency rations. I guess my next project is going to be taking another look at my go-bag. I’m sure there’s some stuff I could take out or replace with other components, and also, I need to figure out whether to build my bag with the “we have to evacuate and move to a shelter” purpose in mind, or “we have to leave now and maybe spend a night or two outside before it’s safe to go home/to a shelter.”
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Jan 11, 2022 06:23
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Bored As gently caress posted:City Prepping put out another great video. Similar vein: Uncensored Tactical (kind of a goofy title but the podcast does cover some Interesting topics from time to time) did a show on on prepping for city/apartment dwellers just before the pandemic hit. Also, this trucker protest bullshit in Canada is something I’m watching with a very close eye. They’re demonstrating how easy it is to besiege a major city and how vulnerable our supply chains are, and I guarantee you worse people are watching and learning for when it’s their turn.
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Feb 17, 2022 05:49
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ASAPI posted:Also, as mentioned, a nuke implies a level of escalation which would likely include cyber and/or infrastructure attacks. I live in NW DC roughly equidistant from the White House and USNO so my plan for a nuclear war is “die before everyone else.” What I’m more concerned about is a cyberattack on American financial institutions- imagine waking up and discovering your checking account balance is $0. I’m saving all of my most recent bank statements and plan on taking out some cash to put in my safe (and asking my wife to do the same) but at that point I’m going to bet we’ll be on a path to another world war, and in that case… see my first point.
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Feb 28, 2022 05:46
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CopperHound posted:Maybe, but I'm thinking the most important stuff I'd want to be looking up is "Will eating/drinking this make me poo poo myself to death?" And "How do I stop making GBS threads myself to death?" There’s this- “Where There Is No Doctor” which is a health care resource meant for non-medical professionals. It’s like 500 pages but you could print four pages to one to cut down the amount of paper and ink it would use. I think there are also some green anarchism/rewilding texts on foraging and edible plants that would also be useful. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9yWkLloNwvIM3RuNDdWVlNWd3c/view?resourcekey=0-408-SHsRrTdc8-bhnQ3-aw
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May 8, 2022 18:43
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hypnophant posted:Tourniquets make sense for a range bag or FAK for a workshop or anywhere power tools are being used. I don’t think they make much sense in a bug out bag or wilderness FAK, but you should know how to improvise one, if you’re thinking of carrying one. Cravats and tongue depressors can be used to make an effective improved tourniquet, are lighter and take up less space than a manufactured tourniquet, and have lots of other uses besides. Cravats in particular are a must for splints. Hemostatics are almost certain to sit in your bag until they expire. Chest seals will definitely sit in your bag until they expire. https://www.bikemag.com/videos/video-cedric-gracias-brush-with-death/ This is the reason why I carry a purpose-built tourniquet when I go riding, either mountain biking or urban. If one of my buddies went down and I saw a fuckton of blood from an extremity bleed, I’m going directly to TQ, especially if their time to definitive care was relatively quick- I’d rather err on the side of letting the doctors handle tourniquet release. Also, there was an incident in DC a few months ago where a cyclist got doored and ended up with a severed femoral artery and someone fortunately had a TQ to apply. Improvised TQs have a high failure rate, and also a wooden tongue depressor is going to be a horrible windlass as those things break so easy. In a true bug out situation, I’d still keep a TQ in my first-line gear and more in my pack because I’d be operating under the assumption that whatever I’m fleeing is localized, and that medical care is adequate wherever I’m bugging out to. If we’re about to live through Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” then I hope my patient can come to peace with their new nickname of “Peg” in commemoration of their new hastily built prosthesis, at least assuming they survive a gunshot and amputation without antibiotics. I
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May 23, 2022 05:44
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hypnophant posted:because traumatic exsanguination from an extremity is extraordinarily rare in civilian contexts. it’s only become a common cause of death in the military since the widespread introduction of body armor, and even there it was like single-digit percentages before the CAT was introduced. it’s much much rarer in the civilian world. i was an emt full time in a busy city for five years and i can count on one hand the number of times i used a tourniquet; we didn’t carry a rapid tourniquet on the ambulance and i never particularly felt like that was a priority to fix even though i had plenty of complaints about our gear While I get what you're saying and can't question your years of experience in EMS, CH's original premise was CopperHound posted:I'm thinking about stashing some major trauma (as in this person might bleed to death in the 5 minutes it takes an ambulance to get here) first aid kits in all sorts of places for quick access. What kind of stuff would you include that is helpful but won't cause more problems if it was used by a panicked incompetent person? and in the context of this thread, I think it's entirely appropriate to have a kit whose contents are geared toward the hasty yet temporary resolution of a life-threatening bleed while pursuing evacuation out of the "hot zone" and towards definitive care, in which case the ubiquitous IFAK and its contents are well suited to the task at hand. Beyond what you mentioned about cravats, what would your kit look like? The Voice of Labor posted:speaking of first aid/hygiene what are y'all planning to use for prophylactics after society collapses? it take's a grip of infrastructure to manufacture latex condoms and their shelf life is pretty short Preferably a vasectomy done 2-3 years ahead of the collapse of society and the hope that the HIV hasn't spread through my army of concubines?
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May 24, 2022 05:08
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I don’t mean to sound like a doomer because one of the reasons why BAF and I started this thread was to dispel doomerism but potassium iodide pills are going to be pretty much useless in the event of a major nuclear incident (ie an exchange at the strategic level.) KI is effective against a certain type of radiation that affects the thyroid and can lessen the likelihood of thyroid cancer, but it’s not going to do anything for acute radiation sickness. The best way to protect yourself against radiation is to be directly under the blast, preferably after you’ve taken a long pull off that really good bottle of bourbon you’ve been saving. Failing that, it’s to put as much distance between yourself and the radiation, which means a lot of soil and good ventilation. I thought about doing an effortpost about radiation stuff but considering how I live like 1.5 miles from the White House my plan in the event of a nuclear exchange is to say “oh hey what’s that?” and then disappear so I leave it in more capable hands.
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Oct 12, 2022 01:36
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my morning jackass posted:To anyone here who works in EM: I recently started (day 58 baby!) a new position in a role that isn’t 100% emergency management, but it’s adjacent and I work very closely with the EM team. For me, my strategy was doing a hasty assessment of my new institution’s activities, finding the biggest gaps, and working to fill them. This ranged from inadequate incident response procedures to unclear coverage in our international insurance. Having an idea of how you’d fix problems from a policy and procedural standpoint is great.
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Nov 9, 2022 05:49
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ihrGNGesfI If you’re not familiar with Deviant Ollam, he’s a legend in the physical security/penetration testing/lockpicking spheres. This is his latest talk about how if that if you don’t already have a lawyer, locksmith, passport or gun well in advance, they’ll be next to impossible to source when you actually need them. The legal preparedness stuff is a particularly  in terms of just how frightening a trip through the legal system can be, and if firearms aren’t your thing, he also talks about the necessity of recognizing physical threats and being prepared to prevent or mitigate them. That said, he does promote Tacticool Girlfriend and Yellow Peril Tactical in this video, so he is definitely approaching this from a non-authoritarian and inclusive standpoint. I can’t stand most youtube videos longer than five minutes but I assure you this is well worth an hour and twenty minutes of your time. It really is a foundational lecture on what it means to be “prepared” vs a “prepper.”
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Nov 11, 2022 22:18
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Lot of good advice so far so the only thing I can offer is this: redundancy. Think second and third order effects of Russia’s attacks on infrastructure- for water, get purification tablets in case the filters are no longer viable. For fire, send them a ton of Bic lighters (they’ll be viable well past the point of freezing) and some fire starters; if they can take the time to learn how to use a ferro rod that can also be good if not a good way to pass the time and a teaching point in case they ever have to make a fire with more primitive means. Goal Zero makes a bunch of solar powered battery packs and small generators that can at least power a laptop and several phones; that could be a good starting point as well. The documentation thing would be a significant priority- scan or take pictures of all family member’s personal docs (birth certificates, passport data, bank statements, paystubs, house deeds, etc.) and store in a cloud storage folder. Also a password manager like LastPass. This could be invaluable if they ever become IDPs or hopefully not refugees.
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Dec 9, 2022 08:43
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The Sawyer S3 will filter out viruses and other nasty stuff, but Nitrousoxide is right in that in North America, you generally only need something that filters out bacteria (such as the Sawyer Squeeze or Mini Squeeze.) I bought a three-pack of those a while ago and one lives in my go-bag- another in my car and the third is in reserve for camping use.
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Dec 16, 2022 21:56
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So there's a cloud of industrial chemicals over a good little chunk of Ohio right now. Has anyone here considered a large-scale industrial accident resulting in a chemical release in their risk assessments, and if so, what have you done? Also, been hearing that Mira- which seemingly was the go-to gas mask a few years ago- isn't all that great. Any insights as to why, and what a better alternative would be?
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Feb 17, 2023 05:57
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I'm gonna quote this from my own OP pantslesswithwolves posted:Threat Assessments A radiological event of any type would be an event of extreme severity but of very low likelihood, and the size of the affected area could range from blocks (due to a "dirty bomb", which were the threat du jour back in like 2003) to regions (accident at a nuclear power plant) or global if we're talking a nuclear war. If we're talking about the former two, honestly assess how close you are to likely TERRIST TARGETS and also to the closest nuclear plant. I live in Washington, DC, used to work within two blocks of the White House and the thought of a dirty bomb never crossed my mind. Why? Because I knew that if someone blew one up right outside of Lafayette Square, there would likely be little to no risk to me because tests have shown that dirty bombs aren't really that effective at spreading radiation. If you live near a plant, then you'd best be subscribed to your local emergency management agency's alerts, keep your vehicle well-maintained and gassed up and be ready to leave at a moment's notice with your important documents and supplies to sustain you when you reach a safe distance- all stuff that you should be doing anyhow as a general preparedness measure. If there's a true international exchange of nuclear weapons, there won't just be one bomb. And even if you live in the middle of nowhere, it's likely you'll catch a nuke as well because that's where people- including important ones, or the military- will flee in an attempt to reconstitute itself. In that case, your best bet is to be piss drunk and right underneath it. There's also tons of other nasty types of radiation that are released when a bomb goes off, and KI and Prussian Blue are only effective at mitigating some of it. If you feel like having anti-radiation meds on hand will give you peace of mind, then by all means go for it. But they should be pretty far down on the list of things you'd want to have on hand. Checked your smoke alarms and fire extinguishers lately?
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Mar 2, 2023 05:00
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ASAPI posted:This thread was grounded in reality for a good while, not so much any more. Yeah, nuclear/radiation stuff has been discussed too much as it is. It's getting into zombie apocalypse territory at this point. Fourier Series, if you return to this thread when you're off probation, please drop this topic.
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Mar 3, 2023 23:09
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OK, to get back on track- In the first page of this thread, we talked about the importance of taking a Stop the Bleed course. But the gold standard for tourniquets- North American Rescue's Combat Application Tourniquet- is large and a bit bulky for everyday carry in a pocket or on your body somewhere. There's a company called Snakestaff Systems that recently came out with what they call their Everyday Carry Tourniquet, which is 65% smaller than a CAT and designed to improve portability. They defend the smaller size by noting that their band is the same size as the actual constricting nylon strap in the CAT, and also offer a 1.5" wide version as well. Some people are concerned with it not being CoTCCC-recommended, although the manufacturers have reportedly submitted it for testing. I ordered a few and used one for testing purposes and found application to be about as quick and easy as applying a CAT, although I find the glow light to be a little gimmicky. I've been carrying one around, and I have to say I appreciate the smaller form factor. I have CATs in all of the packs I use on a daily basis/hiking/mountain biking, but I think I'll definitely keep carrying this. Also, Guerrilla Tactical also has their KIS med pouch, which is meant to be worn IWB and contains gloves, Z-folded gauze and a set of Hy-Fin compact chest seals. I haven't checked that out, but it looks like it conceals well and the user can quickly deploy the contents. Between these two things, you could have a pretty good blowout kit option concealed on your body, and it wouldn't print nearly as much as an ankle IFAK.
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Mar 3, 2023 23:26
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In my civilian, non-EMS background, I carry TQs during most of my outdoor activities and when I’m driving because at any given moment I’m at most three hours away from definitive care, and then it’s the ER’s problem. In most circumstances I would first try to control bleeding with direct pressure but I wouldn’t hesitate to apply a TQ if I couldn’t stop the bleeding, there were multiple patients, or it was some kind of situation where I didn’t have time to stop the bleed with less extreme measures. Of course, if we’re talking about a situation where medical care is hours or days away, that changes things significantly. I can’t fit a trauma surgeon in my backpack.
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Mar 29, 2023 02:10
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The fires that destroyed Lahaina, Maui have got me thinking about revisiting my “go bag” in a serious way. I’m specifically thinking about my two dogs and how I would evacuate them in case of a sudden, fast moving disaster like a fire- considering picking up some extra leashes, harnesses and muzzles (in case we end up in a shelter and they’re spooked having to deal with unfamiliar people) and another “rescue harness” that would allow me to carry one dog on my back while I climbed down the fire ladder we store in our bedroom. I would also pack like a week’s worth of food for them and have some toys and treats to bring along. Have any of you made special considerations for your pets, and if so, what have you done? Also potassium iodine pills in case the fire was caused by a nuclear weapon 
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Aug 10, 2023 23:39
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In any event, we’re in an El Niño right now, and it seems like a good chunk of the eastern US could be in for the first snowy winter we’ve had in almost a decade, which means supply chain disruptions along the I-95 corridor that could compound and turn into lengthy delays/shortages for staples. Have any of you been involved with Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT?) Anecdotal reviews of people’s experiences with them make it seem like it’s retirees with nothing to do or people who couldn’t get into either a fire or police academy. I’m not too keen on hanging out with either type but I am looking to get more involved with my community on a local basis. My local mutual aid group seems more interested in housing issues, which is all laudable and good, but doesn’t seem to be focused on community resilience or recovery.
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Sep 12, 2023 05:11
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