Nope... It Can't Happen To Me!!

I think that Chris Walder guy in the article should be the poster child for prepping. He had to wear six layers to feel warm? Really? I was a teen in Newfoundland during the big ice storm, 94 I think it was. No power for days, and I don't recall needing squat in the way of special clothing. I'm not gonna begrudge the guy trying to be comfortable, but if he's the norm for this generation we're gonna run into trouble.

Then there's the fact that they only stayed with their "friends" for a few days. If people don't like roughing it in the same house for longer than that (at Christmas no less), it's hard to imagine a real disaster.

I think I would run out of wood within a week and have to either bring wood from the BOL or buy some. Probably be firing up the genny after a few days though and wiring up the furnace with a plug.

Hey Perfesser.

Learn from my mistake during the 2003 Ontario outage. Have actual cash on hand to buy the extra wood, instead of the credit card:). If you'd go to a BOL for wood, stay there. After the second day of outage, I'd be heading for the BOL, before someone siphons my gas tank. You're not going to work any time soon, and it'd be a good dry run for a real SHTF situation. Lots of lessons to be learned from a dry run.

Just my opinionated rant.

When I lived in the Florida Keys I got to see some interesting Prepping techniques. Any time there was a hurricane headed our way, people would wait until the last day to run down to Home Depot, Pro Hardware etc to get wood for their windows, Winn Dixie for bread (I know I know bread?), water and anything that might now be bolted. Corned hash seemed to have little or no value, since we saw a lot of cans rolling around on the floor. Everyone would scramble to put the boards on their windows, then wait for the evacuation alert. If memory serves me correctly, the tourists were the first to be 'encouraged' to leave, followed by the lower keys, middle keys and then the upper keys. At least that was the order when the hurricanes were coming, for us. Everyone with a residence in the keys, had a colored sticker on their windshields to indicate where they were. When the coast was clear (pun intended) you were allowed back based on your location. What baffled me was, we would go through this, come back, and then harvest the scrap wood people would throw out the next day after the hurricane was gone. A month later, they would be doing the same thing all over again. I know people who rebuilt parts of their houses, docks, decks etc with the scrap wood others would throw out. Why they didn't keep it is beyond me.

General consensus seemed to be the same. You stay put until you can't stay put. There was a real fear of looters even when the National Guard was cruising around. At some point, even they would have to get out of town, for fear of being cut off by the storm surge. These were eye opening events for my wife and I. I think some of our neighbours spent more time loading magazines and guns than actual prepping. A friend had a valid philosophy regarding this. 'Once the bulk of the people leave, it will occur to some idiots, that the houses were there for the picking, especially when the power goes out, and alarms are rendered useless.'

When we came back to Canada, we were just in time for a week of power outages, in January. I took my mother, then in her 70s to my sister's house, where the electricity was still on, and then went back to guard her home. Unlike my southern neighbours hiding in the dark waiting for looters, I made my presence at the house well known. I don't know how cold you have to be to wear 6 layers of clothes, but it was no where near that extreme, in this case.

Cash on hand works great if you need to deal with individuals or a mom/pop store, even when the power goes out. Forget about trying to get anything where you have to deal with a minimum wage kid who can't do math, nor has the authority to sell anything without issuing a receipt, at some big box store. If there is a complete melt down in, lets say a economic collapse, I think money will lose its worth when people find they are hungry and can't eat it.