Third world behavior
An overview of how our family is prepared
31–40 of 75 posts
Re: An overview of how our family is prepared
#32How do you keep the drinking water actually drinkable over any time period? Anything stored gets nasty.
Many houses have hot water heaters, which IMO is plenty for most people and the water naturally gets replaced through normal use.
Hot water heaters don’t heat water enough to kill bacteria and also they’re absolutely disgusting inside unless you’re one of the rare 0.1% of people who drain it annually and replace the sacrificial anode when it needs replacing.
Don’t drink from the hot water tap.
Re: An overview of how our family is prepared
#33How do you keep the drinking water actually drinkable over any time period? Anything stored gets nasty.
At the condo, I just rotate pet bottles. They are quite fimr for like a month, outside of direct sunlight.
And water can be always treated to make it drinkable again.
Re: An overview of how our family is prepared
#34> We have a strong preference for sheltering in place, so we do not have a go bag or anything like that. We'd shelter in place because that's where all our preps are! I don't totally understand this because quite a lot of disasters or threats will mean you can't shelter in place? Even if it's not your main thing to plan for how can a threat model just rule out wildfires, massive flooding, a hurricane or so on.
Prepping should be local. Here in Scotland the things I would prioritize are snowstorms (once had food delivery to supermarkets delayed for several days) and high winds (friend was without power for six days). Here we don't get true hurricanes or tornadoes, and the high winds events have been shelter in place events.
Some places in the UK might have to start worrying more about wildfires. Flooding is definitely on the rise.
(UK flooding is nearly always "you can save a lot of expensive damage with careful sandbagging" rather than "entire building swept away", though)
Re: An overview of how our family is prepared
#35A major hurricane hit my community in the US not too long ago, hundreds dead, a tremendous amount of the community destroyed. We had no water, power, or telecommunications for several days, no way to reach the outside world until the nearby cell towers came back online unless you had Starlink. In those early days post storm, I had neighbors regularly knocking on my door to make sure I was OK and I had enough food and…
> We had no water, power, or telecommunications for several days, no way to reach the outside world until the nearby cell towers came back online unless you had Starlink.
Amateur ("ham") radio can be handy. If you don't want to go to the effort to get a radio, a receive-only AM/FM crank/solar radio can be handy to get news.
Re: An overview of how our family is prepared
#36I barely am able to plan groceries for a few days to a week ahead, especially with two middle schoolers eating everything in sight. While I would agree with the sentiment (definitely something will disrupt heat/water/food access), I struggle with actually executing on doing anything other than having some real basics around. 30 days of spare food feels like such an enormous amount of space and material.
Mine is just a shelf of Chef Boyardee and Campbell's. I eat one or two a week as regular lunches, to rotate stock. When there's some room at the empty end of the shelf, I shove everything down, and buy some new cans to stuff in at the intake end. It takes no more time than going to the pantry for a can of soup regularly would. And saves time, because I'm _never_ out and scrambling to find another option. Whether I'm…
This is the way. And I have no shame when I warm up a can of ravioli in the microwave at coworking.
Even though the campbell's exec declared it "poor food" the jazzy jambalaya has replaced our instant pot recipe. We buy two cans of it, add a package of microwaveable ready rice and have decent (although very carb and sodium heavy) dinner in ~3 minutes.
It also cooks up great in a small pot on a pocket rocket and tastes great right of the can as far as it being suitable for emergency food.
Re: An overview of how our family is prepared
#37After having lived through a couple of natural disasters, I think the most important preparation you can make is to get to know your neighbors. Exchange phone numbers, give them a key. Help them out, ask for favors. (Asking for small favors is a good trick to establish trust: ask for the proverbial cup of sugar to make them feel comfortable asking you for favors. And then when they ask, be reliable).
The other is to make sure you have a good insurance company. Go to a neighborhood that has experienced a tornado or similar. Ask around -- people will know which insurance companies were helpful and which were penny pinching obstructionists.
Re: An overview of how our family is prepared
#38Holding 35L of water for 2 weeks drinking and 25L for 3 days flushing seems a bit out of whack
Why? Water for flushing is nice for hygiene in the most common case of short outages. And there's very little storage annoyance - heck if you need a bucket for a project, you dump it out and fill it back up from the hose when done.
Drinking water requires more expensive containers, and some thinking around keeping it fresh (rotation & potentially some chemical additives like bleach).
Re: An overview of how our family is prepared
#39Holding 35L of water for 2 weeks drinking and 25L for 3 days flushing seems a bit out of whack
Not really. Not being able to flush is annoying, but you can do that outside. There are some health risks but they are manageable (human waste carries pathogens). 3 days is a very long disaster: if things are that bad you need to start activating other plans anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if where he lives he can just go to a nearby stream and refill his flush water anytime he wants.
Water is critical to life and so you want to be sure civilization won't return before you risk drinking random water. That said, I'd keep a camping water treatment instead (there are lots of options) since they take up less space.
Re: An overview of how our family is prepared
#40So like a month of food and water? If the big electrical grid pop happens https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/magazine/national-blackou... >, we're looking at years, which no storage solution can accommodate. So while this is sensible for most outages, doesn't do much for this event, which becomes quite possible if (1) China moves on Taiwan and (2) USA intervenes on behalf of Taiwan. I would expect that China would ac…
> I would expect that China would activate their dormant ICS and telco access in such a circumstance to knock the US out of the conflict basically immediately
If they could do this, wouldn't they already have moved on Taiwan?