Avoid being a post-disaster casualty by being a little
prepared and having some common sense.
I follow a practical blog called The 72 Hour Kit, which
was created under the concept that in the case of a natural disaster and the
like, that it would take about 72 hours for emergency help to arrive and that
you must be self-sufficient for that time.
He went further to create not only home kits, but car kits and personal
walk-around kits for urban travel, hiking and the like. It’s all very practical and
levelheaded. Most of these kit contents
are common items available everywhere and might be necessary for immediate
survival up to 72 hours. This isn’t
hard-core survivalist junk, it’s just common sense.UPDATE August 2014 -- The blog I mentioned above, The 72 Hour Kit, hasn't posted in two years, so it's a bad sign that the zombies got him after all. But take cheer, there are many more practical preparedness sites out there.
Along that line and with all the babbling about imminent
zombie apocalypse, Mayan apocalypse, nature rebelling, tidal waves, Planet X
striking our Earth, and the like has gotten me thinking a bit. Mind you, I survived Hurricane Camille,
Hurricane Katrina along with a number of smaller hurricanes over the years. I have also gotten to enjoy a wild fire, sand
storms, earth quakes and 20 years in the military as well as a few urban riots and the like, but at least learned a bit along the way.
Needless to say, I do have stuff set aside for expected emergencies such as
hurricanes, extended power outages, Cthulhu rising from the sea, and that sort of stuff. Anybody living along the Gulf Coast with any
sense has evacuation routs set up, extra food and water during hurricane season
as well as tools and repair materials for a month or two of living in difficult
situations. Been there done that.
Now on to fun-filled fantasy. Back in the mid 1970s we did a lot of role playing games and set
up some that were vaguely reality based.
For example we started a campaign with only the items that you personally
own. Let’s say a crank professor friend
from the university of ours has a time travel machine and wants us to go back
for a few minutes into the past. Well
you take a few goodies for maybe a day’s lark back into time and guess what …
you don’t get picked up. Uh, oh, and
all you have is the junk in your back pack.
Honesty here is important for game play to make sure that the players
would actually have all the stuff that they would put in their back pack, which
would be their emergency kit. Hey, all you
brought was a case of Twinkies and a stuffed bear?
Along with that scenario was a zombie scenario based in our
own town. To narrow it down, everybody
made it to the closed mall and hope they locked out all the zombies,
maybe. In any case, we used the local
mall, which we were all familiar with as the source of what might be
found. The fun part was that everybody
knew exactly what was in the food court, in the Sears hardware department and
the like, so there was no need to dig up a supplement. We had lots of fun potting zombies there in
the mall in the 1970s. It was a simple
game to set up and the context was one that everybody got. You guessed it, we
used the paradigm of Dawn of the Dead (1978) as out lead-in. We got started in no time and had a great
few evenings role playing, while using local terrain and the local mall for a
background. Next time you need a cheap,
fast, and easy scenario, just pull that one out folks! You could narrow the scope down a bit and
just do a single house in Night of the Living Dead (1968) style, but if you are
going to have a zombie apocalypse, have a big one! 
Anyway, seriously folks, catastrophe can happen in an
instant from a 30 car pile up, to a toxic spill from a truck or train, to a
power plant going up, not to mention tsunami, ice storms, hurricanes and the
like. Try to have your self together a
little at least. In all the cases where
I was in a major hurricane or earthquake, etc, everybody pulled together and
strangers helped strangers. But you
just can’t sit back and expect everybody else to help you, try to do a little
yourself.
For those of you interested in zombies, can view my earlier
blog entry called The Logical Zombie.
CoastConFan
Additional useful links:
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UPDATE 14 DECEMBER 2012 -- Today NASA was so sure that the world wouldn't end that they released a new video on YouTube today (seven days before) called "Sciencecasts, Why the World Didn't End Yesterday", scheduled the day after the so called "Mayan Apocalypse". NASA didn't explain why there was an early release, maybe they wanted to put in their two cents before it all ended. Anyway, click on the link to see a rather limp video with mediocre computer generated narration voice (so bad it had to have subtitles) -- give me H.A.L. anytime.
Just put on your tinfoil hat and hope for the best.
CoastConFan
CoastConFan
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