I promised we would chronicle our family's experience in 72 hour preparedness. This week's challenge was to put together a 3 day transportable food/water supply. I want to say at the get-go that we are not doing our 72 hour food right now as a "pack it up into the mountains on our backs". I mentioned before that I am going for likely scenarios and assume I will have a car to transport myself and family. When we get to our ER pack with all the survival gear, I will look into MREs and other easy to haul items. Again, my goal is to have something and that something is better than nothing and I can improve my preparedness every 6 months when I rotate if I find better products.
We started our week by sharing a really cute message found at: http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=08855930f289b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=024644f8f206c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD or look at lds.org in the search area for "Emergency" written by Lynn Tilton in March 1977. It's amazing how something good never grows old! This story is delightful and makes a really funny family home evening and the list provided in the body of the article makes for a good spark to the ideas that you might need to prepare your own family.
After discussing the story and how we all need to be personally prepared we began a very simple week of finding the right foods for our family. We decided that we should consider this an extended "trunk picnic", the kind we use when we travel or when we eat on Sundays out of town. We buy shelf stable foods that people like and that is what we did for this supply. Ours is near done and it took us a trip to a couple of stores and that was it. A "trunk picnic" looks like this (for us) as an example: small boxes of cereal, canned milk, nuts, canned fruit (mini ones with pop lids), tuna packs with crackers, individual packs of cookies, jerky, sandwich spread, crackers, little boxes of raisins, granola bars, Vienna sausages, protein bars, tomato juice in the small cans, candies like tootsie rolls, etc. While I realize this is not gourmet eating 101, it is a very do-able and eat-able survival pack. We are shooting for 1800 calories per day. We are going to gather what we need and then determine if it will fit in our extra $10 suitcase we have or if we need to put it in one of our travel duffle bags or box. This supply needs to be kept inside I think. I don't like the thought of 120* garages and food supplies. As we store our ER supplies, we have determined that we will have an ER clipboard hung in our laundry room. On it will be evacuation plans based on time. If we have less than 1 minute, we just get ourselves and others out. If we have 5 minutes, we will put a list of must haves in order and where they are. If we have 30 minutes, we will have another comprehensive list. That way people know what to get, where it is and don't have to think. On our clipboard will be some emergency procedures including how to turn off the water supply to the home, basic CPR, etc. I know from experience that in crisis your brain can go on freeze and it is really good to have a list to simply check off and not have to think so much.
Our 72 supply will probably need a paper sized box to hold it for the 6 of us. Again, I assume I have a car and trunk. I have flats of water for us as well. On the car issue, we feel it is really important to always have a full tank of gas in each vehicle. We look at it as quality marriage time as we will ride together and talk while we do this job. I have read that a full tank of gas helps the engine pumps work better and so it is a good double duty habit to form.
We will put our paper box of shelf stable foods that don't need any cooking in our front closet with the water. If we need to leave, we grab it and go. We will be OK for 3 days. If I have more time and room, I will also grab an ARK (sealed white pail full of food bought at any ER retailer--normally 60 basic meals--really basic like re-hydrated noodle soups). Since these have a 22 year shelf life, I leave them in our long term storage. I would assess any ER situation and see if I felt the 3 day supply were adequate and determine if more is indicated. The great thing about our food box is that in 6 months, we can have our trunk picnic and it's already paid for! We will re-buy the items and we will take a weekend get away and enjoy nature and munch on our food, thus testing to see if it would suffice.
My gut feeling here is to not make this harder than it needs to be. Buy what you can reasonably rotate back out into your food supply and again, if we have to "take to the hills" or something, I will consider other food rations to place in a survival pack. This pack I am making is for the most likely: power outages, drive trips for medical, short term evacuations, etc. Keep saying it, "Something is better than nothing!" Start a box and put what you love in there! Happy picnicking in 6 months or thankful preparedness in the meantime!
PS-Don't forget "mini-supplies". We realized that two of our family members are on the road working or commuting to school and they need things in case they have a problem. We have recommended our working individual have food, water and basics in case of ER in the car and our student to have water, food and basics where they spend most of the day at school (the student happens to work on campus and the supplies can go there at the work place). Also, a couple of protein bars in the backpacks at school for all kids would be a good idea. Again, keep it simple, but make sure to do something!
DJW
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