Episode 160: Personal SHTF Preparedness

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Hello, everybody. Hello,

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everybody. And welcome to the show The Big Show, the most important and critically acclaimed podcast that is recorded in our car. And we're on the road today in the Red Studio. Beautiful day, Blue Skies We're on our way and we were in Iowa today, driving across southern Iowa. Beautiful place, the ladder's could be. It's where the tall corn grows, but not this time of the year. Welcome to the show here today to talk about being ready or disaster. That's right. It's a prepping episode. Surprisingly enough, prepping a couple

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website proper website

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a prepper, not the proper one sign, which is a very good website, by the way, is a prepper website that calm I recommended. Check it out every day. You should, um, we're talking about prettiness, but we're not talking about t odd. Walk a the end of the world as we know it. We're talking about you had coffee? No, Um,

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it's called the availability heuristic availability. That's the mental bias. People have paying attention to things that are dramatic and draw your attention and you hear about a lot which are not necessarily the most important things to be thinking about because mundane one to the customer emergencies happen all the time, and they're almost certain to happen to you at some point in your life.

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That's right, and they happen regularly. And they were one to a customer. And, frankly, that can come at any

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without any warning

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without any warning. The blush of the atomic bomb

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Coming We're both thinking in the morning preparedness video for atomic blasts. We saw that was building fifties

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ever. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about things like the fact the reason she's driving today, even though she doesn't like to drive. And I love to drive. She's driving because I have a broken leg, broken ankle, technically, a broken fibula. And so I'm not driving because I had a stuff hits the fan. It's the October 14th and I'm still not recovered. Room

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single, serving size,

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single serving size. But you know what? I was prepped now when when I had my accident came as a complete shock. I walked out the front door to hit the top step. There was ice on it on October 14th in Missouri, which is ridiculous, but there was and I went down a full flight of stairs and scraping myself up as I went and then landed on concrete, escaping myself up a lot more. I was working around. It was cold enough. Probably sleep for there to be ice. I didn't have a coat on because I was just running over the work. No big deal and build my my life changed. Raked in there. Fortunately, my cell phone did not fly. I had it tucked away in my pocket. I was able to reach it. I was able to call for help. Now, if we were in a stuff hits the van scenario where it's a global stop. That's fan scenario. I wouldn't have been able to call somebody my cell phone or might not have been able to, so I might not be able to get, um, good medical help easily. So what do I do? Well, we have plans. Yeah, this big, long drawn out, unable to reach medical help scenario. But importantly, we also have plans for What do I do if I get hurt on an everyday basis? Okay. We don't need to go digging through our medical surprise and going over and talking the friend of our two's a, uh, nurse practitioner into working on me and blah, blah, blah because I could just go to the hospital. Right? But we have plans. We have these plans in place for all conceivable that we've conceived so far. Sometimes you find things you don't have

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ill conceived.

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Yes, all these things we have conceived us. Sometimes you find things you don't have. You never figured out you never contemplated and rebuild these in as our primary preps. These are the things that we are most concerned about prepping

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because we're pretty much guaranteed to need them. At some point,

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these kinds of emergencies can happen. And make no doubt about it, these could be emergencies.

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For example, when I'm out of place, say I'm cutting some wood to improve the quality of the would stand there and put a little fire would buy in the woodpile common sort of thing. But I'm often out there by myself. And the place where I cut the wood is about a little more than half a mile of fairly rough ground from where I can leave the car. So whenever I go back there, Bye, take a bag and toss in the little trauma kit that's got the Israeli bandages in it. And I have my little hiker kit. Actually, Just take my hiking kid cause it's got both. It's got an Israeli bandage in it for emergency bleeding, and it's got a Sam splint and Ace wrapping it because I've been back there walking over the this uneven, broken ground. All these all this down Would stuff like that steep hillsides slickly using going. Okay, So what happens if I slip here and ah, wreck my ankle? I'm gonna have to know if I don't have anything to support myself. I'm gonna have to crawl on hands and knees for half a mile

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right now. Let's just be clear. You may or may not get cell phone coverage there. It's out in the boonies.

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Yeah, most days I do boast some days I don't

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in fact, one of the reasons we switched her over from Verizon to us Cellular. And we'll just go in the Indian the names because U. S cellular has a lot better coverage in this area. Not, you know, they're a small company, comparatively, and they're not particularly a good company. But they had cut better coverage of the place. Horizon was almost useless out of the place, even though they claimed to cover it. This is a thing that we pay attention to it. We don't care about the everyday Use it. We care that the cell phone is available for an emergency. More available?

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Yeah, if it was just me. Do I want to carry a cell phone with me when I'm out of place? No, I have no use for one out there. I my plan audiobook on it, But I'm not playing around on my cell phone when I'm out there, I'm enjoying the place. But I always carry it when I'm out there because it's my first and easiest way to get assistance. If I need it, I'm a long way from other assistance.

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Now let's talk about cell phones for a minute. We both hate cell phones. Spice. I absolutely hate cell phones. We really d'oh! We're anti salvo but

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anti overuse of cellphone.

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Having said that, we both carry cell phones. I have to carry one for work during work hours. It's not I mean, it's company supplied because I flat told him I would If it was up to me, I would not carry one. They want me to have one and beyond called. They have to pay for it, period, because that's the only way I'm doing it. I am not paying for a cell phone to do that. I don't like him, but we didn't carry them in our cars because we drive long distances and you know you could break down. That's a pledge to me. That's a legitimate use for us all in my life. You know, whatever you want. I don't care what you do with yours, but, um, one of the problems that cell phones ham, but I think it's one of the big problems is that they are way, way. They create way too much dependency on them who have your cell isn't working.

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There's the assumption that everything can be fixed by just calling somebody. That's right. If you run into trouble

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and if there's it's not always available.

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We've run into health emergencies on bike trails, not ours. Fortunately, but health emergencies nevertheless, and there's just no cell phone coverage. So you're on your own

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and some piano, and we're gonna come back to bike bike trails and buy coverage because we're very careful about that, too. Um, but we'll come back to that cell phones. They're great for what they're there. Having said that, how can you depend on them? A normal everyday. They're fine, they're wonderful. But if the stuff it's the fan or if you are in a rural area, you can't depend on him.

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Oh, any time there's a big emergency. So basically, the story is that if it's really important that you be able to handle a situation, you need a good first plane and then you need a good backup plan,

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right? And keep in mind that the fire out in California the campfire is a perfect example. Keep in mind that being in communication and being able to call for help sometimes is not in any way useful. That fire got into some of those communities so fast that the problem wasn't them, you know, not being able to communicate with the authorities. The problem was they had to get out. Bad boogie. It wasn't a communication issue if they hadn't did not have a plan for getting out of this town like now it costs some people their lives. There were a bunch of people who got caught by that fire early on because they didn't have a plan. They didn't have a way or they were just unlucky. Unfortunately, just happens

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If I get a serious bleeding emergency at the place and I call 911 12 seconds later, I've got a 25 minute wait for help. Arrives,

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at least so you know, that's the way it is. Um, So you got a self plan calling for help Isn't always gonna work. If you're a bad situation, you can go Police. But that doesn't mean they show up two minutes later. You gotta have a plan.

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It's like our old plan for dead batteries were jumper cables. But now that they have jumped packs, we take those instead. Because

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we take those. Additionally

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because they don't require another car.

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Yeah, we could keep tools in every car. We, um you know, sometimes even then we get there, we find out, huh? Well, shoot like this car we're driving in. It has. Ah, those funky don't steal me wheel nuts on them. Um, we had the ratchet, not the rat ship with Thea the socket special socket. We have the special socket in the trunk. We didn't have a ratchet that you would put the arm the socket. It

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was not a great idea.

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Yeah, now we do. Now we d'oh ondas! Sometimes we like once we had to call chip layout of the place because we didn't get the stuff transferred over from one vehicle to a new vehicle and the battery ran down.

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To me, it's largely a matter of thinking through what things could happen and exactly how you're going to deal with them if they do, which, by the way, greatly speeds your reaction time. It's been shown. But if you've planned through those sorts of things, while a lot of people are still frozen in the normalcy, bias of this can't be happening. I don't know what to do, so I'm just going to sit here. If you already have a plan in mind, you'll start executing that plan. Even though you two are shocked and amazed by whatever is going on.

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If we have to go for some reason, there's a reason we have to get out of town. We have enough supplies in each of our vehicles, so that we won't immediately die, okay? And the vehicle or the supplies are season appropriate. We have clothing in each vehicle. Have an extra coat. Have you got in the vehicle? And we also have our go stuff in the house so that we we can grab our one little case that we keep ready to go grab their wallets, grab our keys, and we're gone.

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And if necessary, the firebox that's got our emergency papers and spare keys.

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And we leave our vehicles with plenty of gas, and we don't leave him sitting there on empty. Are you listening to me, sister? You know, if you have a vehicle sitting there and you've got to go to the gas station, go to the gas station, then go. Don't be that person who has to get out of Dodge. And that has to wait in a gas line. Keep it. When you get to 1/2 tank, you're empty. All right. Personal advice. You do what you want, but personal advice. Besides, it's better for your car in the winter of view of the north. Keep it fall. Less chance of

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condensation of water

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in the gas. The gas tank So, Anyhoo, what else you got?

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Uh, prescription meds with you all the time. If you can't get home for 23 days, you're good to go. That's an important one, I think. And one that saved our tails. Couple times

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we've got some against them in my bag in the car

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there. I'm not saying it happened, but there might have been a time in the past when spice packed for a vacation and forgot to bring the usual prescription meds. But we had a three day backup supply, and that was enough to be able to call home and have them call local pharmacies and get us set up. You didn't have to do with it. Decide about

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doing well, theoretically, reminding Florida at the time theoretically,

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could have been Florida over a vacation when it's usually difficult to get medications

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over Christmas for Christmas Day.

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Hey, but by golly, when the neural virus hit on Christmas Day, I had the meds to take care of you, and that was a big deal. That particular Oh

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my Lord, have mercy. That was the worst Christmas day. I got the Noro virus and we were sitting there. We were in a ground floor. Place on the beach was a diving vacation, too. I wasjust I couldn't get out of bed. I was the sickest I've been in long. Oh, my gosh, that was Mitral. Thank you for writing you that. I think

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this is better. You have a broken wing, but this is better. You have the

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norovirus first you gave it to me.

spk_1:   16:51
No. Nope. I got it on the way home.

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Well, welcome to it.

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Yell can draw your own conclusions as to where I acquired your fires.

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Well, hey, hot traps. Can you hear the love? Can you hear the love anyway? Is that going to do it for us?

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Yeah, that's gonna do. Floors

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were talk to you next time. Bye bye.