We had another snow storm here in Virginia last weekend. I lived in Utah during my high school years, and while it snows much much less in Virginia, Utah was well-equipped to handle routine and heavy deathflakes. Virginia, especially where I live, doesn’t get enough snow to really justify a fleet of trucks and stockpiles of de-icing goodies like sand and salt.

As such, people start to get nervous whenever the forecast calls for snow. This is our second “heavy” snowfall this year, and normally we escape the winter months without so much as a flake. We got about nine or ten inches of snow at the house, and some of my friends got as much as thirteen inches. The storm took place over an eighteen hour period, and my buddy Stilts was visiting for the weekend.

We wound up staying inside the house for three days, and local roads are still iced over quite a bit. Here’s what we did, and what I might change before the next snow or ice storm.
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One of the reasons I like zombie movies is that they are conversation starters for disaster preparedness. “What would you do if there was a zombie apocalypse” is a nice science-fiction way of saying, “what would you do if the world went crazy for awhile?” I credit Romero’s Night of the Living Dead for starting my interest in disaster preparedness and how to comfortably survive a disruption of service.

Out here in Virginia, the only things we have to worry about are ice storms, hurricanes, and maybe an odd flood or two. There are “bug out bags” in the house, but the central strategy here is to wait out a disruption of services of up to two weeks. During the first time I lived in Virginia, one of my co-workers went two weeks without power. Her family wound up staying in a hotel, but it was not uncommon for folks to be out of juice for multiple days. When you live in a house powered by all electric appliances, that is a big deal.

So it was with anticipation that I started reading “Apocalypse Chow: How to Eat Well When the Power Goes Out,” by Jon and Robin Robertson. I had hoped that it was the cookbook equivalent of Night of the Living Dead, and that the book would help me evaluate my current food stores and how I prepare them.

Unfortunately, the recipes are too complex and are made up of things an average American house probably doesn’t have. The book violates a few rules of thumb in the preparedness community, and as such Apocalypse Chow has limited usefulness in your preparedness library.
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I recently built two “bug-out” bags (BoB), and did some of my shopping at Wal-Mart. I had plenty of supplies here at the house, but I needed a few odds and ends. I happened to see a three-pack of dry sacks by Outdoor Products. They might come in handy, especially for things I really really didn’t want to get wet.

At $9.99 I was skeptical that the bags could keep anything dry in crappy conditions, but I figured at least it would make a good Gibberish entry. I put the trio of bags in my cart and started thinking about how to test the dry sacks.
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Let’s face it. Motorcycling is a dangerous activity. If you have training, gear, and experience motorcycling might be less dangerous than if you have none of these, but the fact of the matter is you never know when something unexpected is going to happen. A truck could run a red light and smash you to bits. That lady eating with both hands and steering with her knees might drift into your lane too fast. Hell, you might even get hit in the face by a bird and go down on an isolated stretch of highway. And let’s not even get started on forest rats — I mean — deer.

You can do one of two things: continue riding as if nothing can touch you and forgive any preparations, or do the most you can to mitigate your risks and prepare your a potentially serious or fatal accident.

I’m a “preps” kind of guy. I try to find a balance between doing the things I want to do and being as ready as possible for unfortunate circumstances. On one hand, you can’t be crippled by fear and not do the things you want, but on the other hand you have to a plan.

Here are some of things I do to prepare for the worst.
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Okay, here’s a fun game I played with my friends and family this holiday.

You’re in the middle of a major world crisis. Zombie apocalypse. World War Three. Super deadly strain of Hamthrax breaks out. Hockey gets canceled. Whatever the reason, you’ve got to leave wherever you are, and get to some place “safe.” The “safe place” isn’t important; what’s important is that you only have time to take one of each of these things with you when you bug out.

You have to have the item in your possession, either in your domicile or in storage less than 15 minutes away by vehicle.

You can only take one item from each category. Not two. Just one.
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Longtime Gibberish readers may have noticed how much I like zombies. Zombie fiction is an easy way for audiences to address otherwise unwieldy topics like disaster preparedness and materialism. It is also an easy way to convey the concept that sometimes the real monsters are people, and that human nature may be to step on any number of other people to look out for yourself. While often light-hearted, the recent Zombieland film covers all of those bases and pushes all the right buttons.
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The H1N1 pig flu got a lot of attention in the media and at the office water cooler. Whether you believe it’s a big deal or not, situations like this are helpful for reflecting on your level of preparedness. It’s like a zombie movie: the chances of facing an undead horde are small, but it triggers the preparedness thought process just the same.

Some cities put up a quarantine to deal with the spread of H1N1. If you were in a disaster area or in a quarantined city, how long could you comfortably stay in your home? To make it easier, let’s assume you have your normal utilities (power, water, etc).
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My home lost power last Saturday in the middle of the night. It was unusually cold for this part of Virginia, and I think the cold plus everyone cranking their heat crushed the power network. I woke up to my home network’s uninterruptible power supply screeching at 2AM. I shut the computers down and went back to bed. I was confident my mutant ability to resist cold and my three dogs would keep me warm. The power came on and went off again twice more, finally taking a long nap at about 3:30AM.

By the time I woke up the house was about 52°F downstairs. My friend Stilts was visiting, and we were both hungry. I used my mobile phone to call our favorite breakfast place, and they had power. Stilts headed home after breakfast, and I settled in to play a little game. That little game was “how well could I handle a minor power outage in the winter?”
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I don’t smoke, and I never have. However, I carried a chrome Zippo lighter in my pocket for most of high school, college, and a year or two after. My father told me at an early age that every man should have the ability to cut something and to make fire at all times. The problem was that I didn’t use the Zippo enough, and either the wick dried out or all of the fuel would evaporate. I think the lighter made it through a few moves, and then I ditched it somewhere.

Now, I have a few ways of making fire in my personal emergency bag, including some disposable plastic lighters. I was reading about inexpensive holiday gifts for smokers, and found reference to the Ronson Jet Lite butane lighter.

The best part is that I expected it to be about $6 at Wal*Mart … it turns out it was $2.99 at Wal*Mart! I wound up getting one as a gift and one for myself. Here are my thoughts:
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One of the benefits to running WordPress is that I can easily see what other sites link to Gibberish articles. Usually incoming links are related to articles I’ve posted recently. However, sometimes folks stumble upon an older link, such as my article on “burn-o-balls,” the cotton balls I made that were dipped in petroleum jelly.

Are You Prepared? is an excellent post found on Gail Rhea’s Sound Off! blog. If you wanted a thorough, one-post rundown on common preparedness strategies and necessities, there it is. After a short introduction on historical disruption of service events, like Hurricane Katrina and the Pineapple Express, Gail covers the preparedness bases for home, car, pets, and personal hygiene. We differ on the importance of biological, chemical, and nuclear preparedness. The now-defunct Geeks In Moderate Preparedness (GIMPs) was an effort to get people to prepare for a two week service outage for “common” disasters. I believed that suggesting that others (understandably) make preparations for other emergencies they would throw up their hands and not do anything.

That is not to say that Gail is wrong — I am just warning folks not to get scared off when you compile the laundry list of things covered in her very well thought out post. Read her post, come back to Gibberish for my take on things and reviews, and then do your best. Even having in case of emergency (ICE) contacts in your mobile phone and a 72-hour kit is better than nothing at all.