September is National Preparedness Month! We will be releasing a few short blogs and links to resources to help you prepare. To begin, you should put together a plan. Each plan will need to be specific to your group, but below is a basic framework to follow.
First, you need to determine communications. If you are all together that’s easy, but what happens if some of you are at home, some are at school, and others working? It’s easy to say, “everyone has cell phones”, but as we’ve seen in times of national emergencies the cell towers can’t be the only means of communicating. They get flooded with traffic, or the towers themselves can be damaged.
Second, know if you are going to shelter in place, or bug-out! What are the reasons you would secure your home and bunker down, vs. when is it smarter to move to a secondary location? One easy one is when there is a Shelter in Place order, makes the choice obvious. But how will you secure your home? Do you have the materials on hand to do so? If it’s a hurricane coming, bugging out to a secondary location inland, or maybe even a tertiary location inland and on higher ground, may be the best option. When you think about these, remember communication. If cell towers are down, how will you communicate with those outside of the house that you made the choice to bug-out and to which location?
Lastly, you need supplies. If you are going to shelter in place you need to be prepared to securely and safely stay in that location for however long you see fit. As we have seen with the power outages in New England recently, many went 2 weeks without power. So, loading up your deep freeze may not be the best option if you don’t have secondary power and fuel to feed it. If you are bugging out, you need the supplies to get you to a secondary location and possibly back home. If you can’t go back home, do you have enough supplies stored at another location to survive?
There are a ton of resources including free ones from ready.gov and tons more if you just google it. If you want the Cadillac of preparedness documents that will give you the best start, check-out ICERS from Superesse Straps. They have a big library of documents (linked here) worth checking out. Everything from ICERS, bug-out bags, and target hardening. I have no affiliation with them and get no kickbacks, I paid for most of their library personally and I am telling you from my experience, it’s worth it!
In the next couple weeks I will also post blogs about building your bug-out bag, deciding to shelter vs bug-out, and more.
