Long Term Survival Plan
More Articles Related to PreparednessWhen planning to survive a disaster or other emergency you should attempt to estimate how long the situation may last. Then double it. This is your long term survival plan.
In general the time between the event and a return to normalcy (or at least outside rescue response):
- Storms, fires, earthquakes and tsunamis may take several days to a week before outside rescue response occurs.
- Strikes, pandemics, and major disasters may take months to resolve.
- Dictatorships, foreign invasion, and persecution could last for years.
When considering what you will need to ride out the various survival scenarios think about
- Food in terms of calories per day, nutrition, and ability to store and transport.
- Water in gallons per day for cooking, cleaning, and drinking. The large amount of water you need means a portable method of making water safe to drink is mandatory.
- Protection as in firearms and ammunition.
- Shelter and what you can do if your home is damaged, destroyed, or unavailable
- Medical supplies including prescriptions and eye wear.
- Proper clothing for the environment you are in.
- Personal care items such as soaps, toilet paper, insect repellents, and feminine hygiene.
Present conditions lull most people into a false sense of security so that they make no preparedness attempts at all. Survival situations often develop rapidly and without warning. When a sudden even occurs, like a terrorist attack or weather emergency, the crowds will often make a mad rush to the nearest stores and wildly stock up on food, water, fuel, batteries, etc.
In their desperation to provide enough emergency supplies for themselves and families they often wastefully empty available stocks in short order. This sometimes leads to looting and rioting as those who are unprepared begin to panic.
In long term preparedness your goal is to acquire enough supplies to be independent of any outside relief for as long as the scenario is likely to last. Because goods and services may very well be unavailable for a considerable period of time, you need to be aware of needs that under normal circumstances you take for granted. For example, the proper disposal of human wastes and garbage become very important from a health standpoint.
The Mormons have an excellent take on preparedness. They advise that every family have a full years worth of supplies on hand. When you consider these survival supplies can be stretched by the further acquisition of items during the disaster scenario, the Mormons are well positioned to ride out come what may.
During a long term survival scenario the psychological and emotional needs of your group become very important. Change in living conditions and loss of contact with loved ones and social networks can wreck havoc. Your worst enemy will often be dejection and despair. For these reasons every member of your group must be given a duty to perform that will keep them occupied and their minds busy. There are a myriad of duties that can be assigned including food acquisition and preparation, security, home schooling, survival instruction, sanitation, construction, etc. Leaders of the group should hold frequent meetings to keep members up to date with the latest information.
Don’t be caught empty handed when the unexpected suddenly occurs. With long term planning and procurement of the necessary supplies for survival, your group will be well positioned to ride out any disaster emergency.
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Houston
A hurricane blew through my town once and knocked out all the power for a week. Luckily, my family is always prepared. We have a large freezer in the garage, the bottom half of which is filled with frozen sterilized water in milk jugs, and periodically we replace them. When the power went out, we moved a good chunk of the food from our regular fridge into the freezer, where it could be kept cold for days. The plumbing and gas didn't go out, but if they had we could have drunken the frozen water, too. We also have a hand crank radio, and used it to learn information about what was going on elsewhere, like where FEMA was setting up to hand out MREs. It took a couple days for them to set up, but we had plenty of canned food along with the stuff in the freezer and several loaves of bread, so we were fine. The power was working again after about a week and then the supermarkets opened back up. Perhaps not the longest of long term survival plans, but we sure were glad we though ahead. Most people ran out of food almost immediately when the stuff in their fridge's went bad.