Poor Richard's and Mama Donna's Prepping for Plain Folks

  My cousin recently went through a major change in her life and as she is resettling into her new lifestyle, she is more able for a number of reasons to prep. Up to now she has followed my guidance and added flashlights, water, food and a first aid kit. But because other events were happening in her life, she did not have the situation to enable her to prep in a more orderly fashion. I advised her to begin by assessing and NOT obsessing over the possible threats and assigning them importance based on the highest probable and the most damaging. I pointed out the short term but annoying ones, such as power failures brought on by weather (ice storms, tree limbs across lines) or water main breaks. ( I have a general chart for this everyone can use.) I then went to the main threat to her, namely flood. While her new apartment is above the ground level, she could be cut off by flood waters, and the building could catch fire and burn down. We’ve seen this happen before in floods in...

                Due to the virus and the political situation we suggest you should be prepping, but at the same time do it very quietly. The last thing you want is to be labeled as some kind of extremist of any side or ilk.             This is where our “Toucan Bill” system comes into play. When you go to the store, put “Two-cans on the Bill”. In this way you draw no attention, especially from some whack job who wants to start screaming that you are a hoarder. If you can get to a “case lots” type store, buy a case, not twelve.             It’s great to live in an area like mine when gun ownership, camping, hunting and fishing are part of what we do, and prepping is no problem.   But not all of us live in areas or situations where prepping is looked upon favorably so it helps to avoid hassles by “stealth ...

              Nothing like starting the year off with a “plain folks prepping event”, in this case, a water line break. This is the type of event that has good odds of happening to all us plain folk sooner or later. It’s also what we call a “bolt out of the blue” as there was no warning.             At about ten AM, yesterday we found out we had no water. We had a plan and supplies for such an event but first we needed to know as much as we could about why we had no water. A leak in the house is a different emergency than a water main break down the street.             We use a DAN (Deploy As Necessary) guideline for what step to take and what supplies and gear to bring out.   A check with the water company told us a main had broken affecting our area and that the crews would be working on in. The expected re...

  HAPPY NEW YEAR… YOU HAVE NO WATER…LOL             About an hour ago we found out that we had no water coming from the taps. A call to the water company told us they just got the report of a water main break in our area.             So now what happens to us?   Not a whole lot.             There is a five gallon jug on the cooler in the kitchen and at least another 5 gallons of various sized bottles in the refrigerator. That’s before we even go to the pantry and break out any bottles there.             The slight pain in the butt is that I will have to go out to our storage and bring in a 28 gal bucket of stored water and transfer it into the toilet tank to flush it. At a bucket a day, we can last weeks. Our friend posted the other day of her power g...