Since we have all been reminded of the principle the “two is one and one is none”, it brings me to the conclusion that being prepared is really about “having a backup for your backup”. So if “two is one”, then “three must be two”. That has led me on a quest to discover at a minimum, three different ways to approach the problems we’ll face in a disaster situation. If you are new to prepping or just want a different perspective of looking at things, maybe this will help. To get us started, the first thing you should be thinking about is the three most likely events or disasters you are likely to face in your area or region. It wouldn’t make much sense for you to study up on and prepare for a tsunami when you live in the Oklahoma. Just like winter storms may not mean much where you live but hurricanes may be the norm. I have tried to break everything down in digestible categories. Make a list of the sections below as well as any that I may have left off and list as many ways of replacing how it is done in your home right now. If you can’t think of at least three ways, mark that area as needing more work.
Knowledge:
After you identify those events that are most likely to put you in a tailspin, we need to look for resources to educate us on how to prepare for those specific life-changing events. As someone that loves to read and likes having the material around later for reference, I started reading all I could find on the subject. You should have a lot more than three books, you could have three books just on first aid and not cover everything. One thing that I have done was to search out what I think are three of the best non-fiction books on preparedness, because most of ideas and skills will be learned from them. The list could go one for pages as to which books are best, but the ones I think will serve you for the longer term are When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need To Survive When Disaster Strikes
Add to those three books, the best three fiction books on preparedness. For this list I feel like the best book on the market with a financial collapse as the setting is Patriots by James Wesley, Rawles. For those of us that are concerned with a total grid down scenario that could be caused by an EMP, then there is One Second After by William R. Forstchen. If you would like to read about life after a nuclear exchange, Alas, Babylon
Food and Water:
Many arguments have been made as to what comes first, food or shelter. That is not an issue I’d like to debate in this article. Hopefully as you prepare, you can cover several areas at the same time in different degrees. Both FEMA and the Red Cross recommend having a three day supply of water on hand for emergencies. The more you store the better off you’ll be should an event last longer than three days or visitors show up needing help. You should also be able to immediately identify where you can find at least three different sources of water once what you have is depleted. In addition to locating various sources of water, you need to know at least three different methods of treating water to make it potable. Some methods are easier than others and some require that you purchase additional equipment. You’ll pick up ideas from the books listed above on where to find water and the SAS Survival Manual as well as When All Hell Breaks Loose both has excellent chapters on how to treat it. Choose what works best for you but don’t limit yourself to just three methods. Remember, with three we are just covering the basics.
For life sustaining food, we need to learn at least three ways to obtain food outside of our pantry. For most that means fishing, hunting, trapping, gardening, bartering, scavenging, etc. Mastering those skills takes lots of time but if you don’t start today, you’ll find yourself out of time to learn and very hungry. To take the pressure off of you, make sure you start building a deep pantry. For beginners, let’s start with 3 days, working our way to 3 weeks and then 3 months worth of food storage. You should start working on this today as this could be a critical deficiently in your plans. Just think, with very little money and one trip to the store you could have 3 days covered pretty quickly. The goal should be one year’s worth of food with lots of heirloom seeds for resupply, but for now we are just trying to get you started. Now that we have food, we should focus on the three best methods of preparing it and preserving your food. I would start with the basics though and go from there. For cooking, think about cooking with grid power, barbeque grill, camp stove, and an open fire. Charcoal stores well if kept dry. While it would be difficult to convert a charcoal grill to propane would take nothing much to burn charcoal in the propane grill once the propane is all gone. It takes some practice to get good at cooking with a solar oven or Dutch oven. Don’t count them out, but look for the most logical way to cook right now and learn to cook with those methods once you have the faster or easier alternatives covered. They definitely have their place, but take care of the basics first and work your way up to these. For preserving food, learn canning and dehydrating now while your life doesn’t depend on it. Don’t forget about smoking or curing your meats as well.
This brings us to point or skill that we must master. For lack of a better place to include it, I’ll cover it in this section. We have to learn how to make fire. This is an area that I think instead of learning three ways to make fire, you should learn maybe six ways. Look for the easiest ways to accomplish this with lighters, matches, and a fire-steel. But don’t stop there. We have all seen the lone survivor on television trying to make fire by rubbing two sticks together…let this be your last resort because you know so many more ways to make it happen. For probably less than $10, you can scratch this category off the list. Check out Firesteel.com. They have great prices on firesteel and you can get just about any size you’d want.
Shelter:
Without shelter, being exposed to the elements can get you killed no matter how well rested, feed, or watered you are. Learn at least three ways to provide shelter for you and your family. It can be as simple as a tent, or living out of your vehicle, but explore as many ways as possible to put a shelter over your head. Now try to think of ways to do it with the least amount of resources possible. When you think about shelter, don’t forget about how you would keep it heated or cooled. The book When All Hell Breaks Loose has a great section on creating micro-climates within structures to do this very thing as well as a poor man’s sleeping bag made out of newspapers and trash bags.
Another area that doesn’t get covered as much as some ideas in the blogs is where you’ll be staying. We cover retreats in great detail, but what about those of us that don’t have that as a luxury? It should be the ultimate goal, but what about the time between now and then? Well a simple solution would be to have at least three alternate places to “stay” or “rest up” while you recover from whatever drove you from your home. This location could be shared with you by any number of friends, family, or neighbors. Be willing to offer the same accommodations to them as well. Letting someone stay at your house while repairs are being done on theirs will pay dividends in the long run. The number one goal for my family is to not have to show up at a FEMA center or shelter. Let’s learn to ride out the storm with our own resources. From what I have read, I promise you the experience of being stuck with hundreds if not thousands of refugees is not going to be pleasant.
Survival Kits, Bug-Out Bags, Etc.:
So much has been written on this particular area, I will not try to add anything to it except to say that you should have at least three kits or BOBs. Some refer to a Level I, II, III or Tier I, II, III, etc. My thoughts on this area is maybe a “Get Home Bag” for getting to the very place where maybe all your supplies are, a “Vehicle Kit” for each car, and maybe a “Get Out of Dodge Bag” for the time that you may have to leave immediately with only what you can carry in your arms or on your back. I always enjoy reading articles about this topic as well as viewing the videos on Youtube.com. There is always something to take away from seeing what someone else is doing.
Don’t let the kit get so big and heavy that you never have it with you. What good is all that stuff 10 miles from where you need it. Think of all of those displaced people in Japan that would love to have what they could carry on their backs as extra provisions. If you hunt a lot, then maybe a small survival tin should be in your hunting coat at all times. A great little kit for that is the Altoids Survival Tin. Google it and you’ll find all kinds of neat things to stuff inside of it. As you read the fiction books and watch television, make mental notes of what would have been helpful to have for certain situations. Look for items that can serve a multi-purpose. Tin foil and Duct-tape pop in my mind here. There are some great videos on Youtube.com that cover every known kit you can imagine. Lots of great articles have been written in the blogs as well. You can’t use what you don’t have, so always be thinking about this. Bug-Out Bags are in a constant state of evolution and are updated as other situations come to mind.
Lights and Power:
Try thinking of three ways to provide lighting. There are Kerosene lanterns, battery powered lanterns, candles, flashlights, headlamps, etc. Each one has its place during a crisis. Try working on your car in the dark while holding a flashlight in your mouth. A headlamp would be great for this. A lantern works best when trying to provide light for a larger area but requires a larger supply of wicks, oil, or batteries. It doesn’t matter what the disaster is, life doesn’t stop when the lights go out. For some, that is when things really get scary. Nothing adds moral like being able to see when it is dark.
Well where there is light, there must be a source of renewable energy. Even candles require wax. When it comes to items that are battery powered, rechargeable batteries are the way to go, but they must be recharged. Enter the power source. Think of three ways to generate power. This could be a small setup for solar power to recharge small batteries and maybe even a deep cycle battery or two…or three. Keep three sets rechargeable batteries on hand for each device that you’ll be using. One in the device, one ready to use and you’ll have one charging when the time comes. The most obvious source of power would be a portable generator. Keep in mind that fuel will be in very limited supply and you’ll want to stretch it out as long as you can. There have been many great articles on solar power and generators, but think outside the box. In January there was a great SurvivalBlog post that described converting a gasoline generator to a tri-fuel generator for less than $200 and just about anyone can install the parts. Don’t forget about wind power as well. Often this is a little harder to wrap our minds around but at least consider printing off some plans and maybe purchasing the key components now while they are available.
Communication:
If you have taken any leadership classes you’ll remember that more and more people complain about the lack of communication they receive from their higher-ups, even in the digital age we live in. In an emergency situation, communication is critical but is also the last thing considered in the immediate area affected. This is definitely not a situation where “No news is good news”. It should also be noted that communication is just as much about listening than talking. Just ask those we live and work with about it. For this, let’s think about three different ways to both get and give out information. What comes to mind are scanners, shortwave radios, handheld two-way radios, CB radio, etc. As you think more about this, more ideas will pop into mind. Think about your emergency contacts for instance. We all should have a local emergency contact person(s), someone that is regional, and someone that is national. During Katrina, local calls where impossible but if you were lucky you could make a long-distance call to relatives or friends.
Travel:
Always have three different routes to get home from work or school. It is not likely that a disaster will be severe enough to affect all three routes at the same time. Have three modes of transportation as well (think vehicle, bicycle, walking). Most of us wake up every morning with one mode already attached and ready to go, our feet. Take care to put good boots or shoes on them, they may be your only way out.
Firearms, Security, and OPSEC:
As with all other areas, we’ll leave the detail to the experts and further reading on your part to determine what options are best. The objective here is to get you to think about all three areas in units of three. For firearms, three separate calibers of firearms are the basic level. After reading many posts here and elsewhere it seems to come down to the .22 rifle, a shotgun, and a center-fire rifle of some type. Owning these three and being able to safely use them will put you ahead of most people. There are many out there that claim they’ll just take what they need, but you never hear about them practicing with their firearms. They may be the ones getting the surprise.
When we think of security we should think in terms of layers. There hasn’t been a fortress built yet that can’t be penetrated, given enough time. What we are looking for is an immediate deterrent and setup for alerting us when there is a problem. For your home or retreat, what three things can provide the best security for the time and money that we have to dedicate to this area? It might include fencing, bars over windows, thorn bushes, lighting, dogs, etc. With three layers out there, it would be difficult for someone to get through all three quickly without tipping you off.
For force multipliers we can also apply the rule of three. Think of the three most affordable things you can use as a force multiplier. Perhaps the best force multiplier is not letting anyone know you are there and what you have. Camouflage, Binoculars, scoped rifles, high capacity magazines, communications, etc. increase your chance of surviving in case you get pushed into a corner.
Miscellaneous Items:
What would be the best three barter goods?
Create at least three caches of goods.
Think about the three most useful skills to attain?
In closing, I hope that this has given you more to think about and do. Preparing yourself and your family is more about knowing and doing and less about spending and having. Search the blogs for the details and realize that more can be done with a mind that thinks outside of the box than someone with a truckload of equipment but doesn’t know how to use it. Lastly, always be on the lookout for three families to prep with. Surviving any type of disaster is much more bearable with a core group of people with a good mix skills. Just think about all the resources that six adults with the right attitude could provide. It is true that there would be more mouths to feed but also more help for every area. If you had two other families that you were close to and felt like you knew each other pretty well and had to provide practically everything else as far as provisions go, you’d be better off mentally than trying to go it all alone in a rabbit hole somewhere. Once you identify those that your family would be most compatible with, ease them into the mindset of prepping so that you don’t have the burden of prepping for families outside your own. Now that we having you thinking about doing everything in units of three, think of how far ahead you’d be if we had five different alternatives for solving problems that will arise right after a critical event.