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How to Prepare Better: Five Pieces of Preparedness Advice from Disaster Survivors

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When preparing for a future event—whether it’s retirement, a trip to Disneyland, or a disaster situation—it helps to get advice from people who have already been there, done that. Specifically, it’s nice to know what those people wish they knew before they went through the situation and what they would do differently if they went through it again.

With this in mind, a few months ago, I began to keep track of advice in blogs, news articles, and discussion boards from people who had lived through Hurricane Sandy and other natural disasters. Slowly, I made a list of lessons these survivors learned from their experiences and advice they would give to others preparing for a crisis. Interestingly, most of the advice falls under a handful of basic principles. Here you will find these principles and a few singularly helpful ideas related to each. If you think of any you’d like to add as you are reading through, share them with us in the comments box below.

 

1. Some disaster supplies never outlive their usefulness. In other words, you’ll never have too much. A few commonly mentioned items are water, food, batteries, matches, and wet wipes.

WATER: In many types of natural disasters, water lines can become contaminated and access to water can be shut off altogether. This is why it’s so important to to have water and emergency water supplies stored (think water purifiers and containers to hold water). But how much water? The best answer, according to disaster survivors, is as much as you can fathom storing in your home. It’s impossible to store too much water because you will use it for everything: drinking, cooking with, washing dishes, flushing the toilet, washing hands, bathing, and showering.

FOOD: Just as with water, you will never think to yourself that you have overdone it on the food storage. In times of high stress or absolute boredom (survival situations usually alternate between these two extremes), we tend to eat more than usual. If you have kids, this will be especially true. Just think of how much food you go through when your kids are on a vacation from school. The bottom line is to store more food than you think you need.

MATCHES AND BATTERIES: People who have survived emergency situations often express surprise at how quickly their supply of batteries and matches ran out. Matches are useful for everything from lighting candles and starting fires to igniting cooking stoves. Similarly, you’ll quickly realize how many of your survival supplies require batteries. Just like with food and water, store more batteries and matches than you can imagine ever using. Alternately, invest in rechargeable batteries with solar chargers.

WET WIPES: If you have ever had a child, you know the miracle that is baby wipes. Baby wipes are excellent in an emergency for washing hands, refreshing worn-out faces, and cleaning up messes. Basically, wet wipes help you function without using so much of your precious water resources. Again, it’s hard to have too many of this item stored for an emergency.

2. If you haven’t thought about getting a generator, you probably should.  Power is precious, and most natural disaster situations involve the power going out at some point. Generators allow you to rely on yourself for power while you are waiting for the government to step in and repair things. People who have survived natural disasters (especially Hurricane Sandy) have a lot to say about generators. Here are a few good tips:

  • Some household appliances are power hogs, and if you are using a generator, you will want to be wise about your use of these items: microwaves, toasters, freezers, refrigerators, and hot plates.
  • Generators require a lot of fuel to operate. Read your owner’s manual to find out what kind and how much fuel your generator needs, then store accordingly. Also find out how often your generator requires a filter change.
  • To save fuel, turn your generator off every night and back on in the morning.
  • IMPORTANT: Store a carbon monoxide detector to use with your generator. Did you know that there were nine reported deaths during Hurricane Sandy just from carbon monoxide poisoning from improper generator use? Use your generator safely.

3. Don’t neglect to stock up on treats. What does a treat mean for you? For me, it’s dark chocolate after dinner or a bowl of buttery popcorn while watching a movie with my best friend. But it can also be listening to Iron and Wine tunes after a long day or lying on the couch and reading a book. Many people who have survived disaster situations say that having treats around was sanity-saving.

The term “treat” is misleading because it implies that these things are bonuses and not necessary for long-term survival. In fact, this is not the case. Treats are crucial for their morale-boosting power. Human beings are not machines, and we cannot flourish in any kind of extended survival situation without comfort items. Comfort items help us feel calm and semi-normal in very abnormal circumstances.

As you gather your food storage and emergency supplies, don’t forget about comfort items. Whether it’s coffee, a favorite cereal, art supplies, or games, make sure you have a way to wind down and maintain normalcy.

4. Be a team player. One of the pieces of advice that surprised me by its frequency in different discussion boards is to make sure you work together with your neighbors. Sometimes in emergency preparedness, we are very self-focused as we work toward becoming self-reliant and being able to support our families without needing anyone else. At some point in a disaster situation, you have to be able to make a shift and look at how you can work with the larger community to restore order. Everyone will have different skills and knowledge to offer the situation, and working together means more gets done. A few great ideas were having a neighborhood potluck to use up food that was near its expiration date, making trades with others for labor or supplies, and getting together as a community to play music, watch movies, or tell stories.

5. Sharpen your survival skills. Plenty of people who have survived extended natural disaster situations say that the person who knows how to make a delicious meal with a camp stove and food storage supplies or who knows how to wire a generator quickly becomes a huge asset when disaster strikes. If you don’t have very many survival skills, get educated. Learn how to build better fires, purify water in any situation, or use solar cooking. Anything you learn now will save you later.

The Magic Amount: How Much Food You Should Store

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Have you ever kept a list of all the food you eat in a day? I once did this as a little experiment to see if what I thought I ate was similar to what I actually ate. When I looked at my list at the end of the day, I was surprised to see that I had eaten much more than I remembered. It reminded me a little of those diagrams of food that show how much the average person eats in a year with astronomical numbers like 30 pounds of cheese. The overwhelming amount of food a person consumes is precisely why it can be daunting to think of supplying a whole family with enough emergency food to last them for an extended period of time.

One of the most common questions people have when preparing for emergencies is how much food they need to have stored. If you are one of the many wondering how much food to stock away, here are some helpful tips.

Store something!

First and foremost, remember this: Storing something is always better than storing nothing. Often people are so intimidated by the enormity of the task of getting food storage for their family that they put it off and end up doing nothing at all. If you only gather enough food initially to feed your family for three days, that’s three days you wouldn’t have been able to feed them for previously. It’s okay to start small and add more food storage when you can. The important thing is that you start now, doing whatever you can afford and then adding more as you have more time and money.

Once you have three days’ worth, start to store up a month’s worth for each person, then three months, then six months, and so on. One year’s worth of emergency food for every person in your family should be your ultimate goal (or even more if you have the means). It might sound unreachable right now, but storing a year’s worth of food is entirely possible if you tackle it by small steps.

Figure out How Many Servings You Need

As you seek out emergency food, you will find that most food storage suppliers will quantify their food by the number of servings it provides. For example, you might see an offer along the lines of, “You pay x for y amount of servings.” One good place to start when deciding how much food to store is to use our long-term food storage calculator, which you can access here. This chart is pretty straightforward and will help you figure out how many servings you need to collect to feed your family for a specific amount of time.

To use our chart, first decide how many months you would like to get supplied for, then go down the chart to find the number of people in your family. For example, if you would like to start out by getting supplied for one month and you have four people in your family, find both of those numbers on the chart and then locate their intersection. For four people for one month, you’re looking at 360 servings. (This is assuming each person will eat three servings a day.) You can then go out and collect 360 servings’ worth of emergency food.

Caveat about Serving Size

There is one important principle to remember when you use this method to figure out how much food to store. It is this: All food storage companies have different definitions for the term “serving.” For one company, a measly 150 or 200 calories might constitute a serving. For another, a serving might have a more reasonable 400 or 500 calories. Be aware that three servings a day of only 200 calories each is only going to give you 600 calories for a day, not enough to sustain a child-sized body, let alone an average adult one. Most adults need somewhere between 1500-3000 calories to maintain their current state, so buying these “handy” food storage kits could leave you starving.

To avoid finding yourself with too little food, before you buy pre-packaged servings, find out how many calories are in each serving. Look for emergency food that has between 300 and 500 calories per serving. Otherwise your food storage kit that was advertised as being all-in-one and super convenient will not truly feed you for the time it claims. Legacy Premium serving sizes are always large (Most are around 325-400 calories), and they also offer plenty of nutritious, calorie-dense sides to help you fill in extra calories if you choose.

Store More Food Than You Think You Need

Ask anyone who has been in a situation in which they had to rely on their food storage and they’ll tell you the same thing. There is no such thing as too much emergency food. In emergency situations more than any other time, we need sufficient nourishment to keep us alert, positive, strong, and healthy. In addition, emergency situations often involve a lot of waiting around and worrying—waiting for news on the state of the disaster, worrying about loved ones not with us, or waiting around for power to come back on. In any kind of stressful or tedious atmosphere, most people tend to eat more than they normally would. Food is important in keeping the situation calm and positive. You will never regret that you had more food stored than you actually needed (if this is even possible).

As you can see, the title of this post is a bit misleading; there is no magic amount when it comes to storing emergency food. Start right now with storing whatever you can, and work up to storing at least a year’s worth. Use our food storage calculator to figure out how many servings you need to feed your family for your desired length of time, but also keep an eye on serving size and calories as you do this to make sure you are getting a sufficient amount. Most importantly, remember that you can never store too much emergency food.

 

Photo credit: Diliff / Foter / CC BY-SA

Happy Customers, Prepared for Life

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It’s always exciting to receive customer feedback, especially when it’s customer feedback that confirms everything we’ve been saying about PrepareWise’s superiority to other emergency food for so long. Admittedly, we are a little biased. But you, as people simply trying to find the best quality and value in emergency food, are pretty fair-minded. So when you tell us our product is good, it has to be true.

Here is some feedback we received recently from Mark, an experienced prepper and happy buyer of PrepareWise emergency foods:

 

We received our PrepareWise food order on Monday morning. The shipping was free and the delivery time faster than several other vendors we have used in the past. We decided to try it right away for lunch because our morning was full of work.

As we began to prepare lunch, we looked at the buckets and realized several very innovative features: the bucket tops are designed to mate with the bottom of other buckets, creating a more stable stack, and the lids do not come off all the way, creating a better seal and no chance for damaging or misplacing the lid. All the foods are immaculately packaged in thick mylar, contain oxygen absorbers, and are vacuum-sealed.

The ingredients are clearly listed on each package, and to our amazement we can pronounce the names of all the ingredients. We have yet to find a label with an artificial or unhealthy ingredient.

Preparation was easy: Bring water to a boil, pour in food, and cook for 15-18 minutes, stirring occasionally.

We tried the fettuccini alfredo. I can tell you that I have had several other competing brands’ fettuccini alfredo and was sorely disappointed. Frankly, yours was delicious. We are now trying to unload some of the other companies’ food so we can buy more PrepareWise. My children, mother-in-law, and wife all commented on the deep flavor and great seasoning. We tried it plain without the addition of any seasoning or meat and it was great. My eight-year-old son suggested that we add chicken so we opened a can of white chicken meat, and it was filling and delicious. It was one of the quietest lunches we have ever had. The kids were too busy eating to talk. We liked it so much we had dinner last night and breakfast this morning from our PrepareWise foods inventory. We want to eat the food now so when we have no choice later it is familiar and expected.

Thanks for developing a relationship with Legacy Foods. We have already told several friends about the food and will be purchasing more next month. Not only is the food delicious, but PrepareWise is the best value for the dollar I have found the past five years of prepping.

Thanks,

Mark and the LoneStar Posse

Thank you, Mark, for the thumbs-up. We work hard to offer the highest quality ingredients and create the best-tasting emergency food available. We also think it’s vital that food storage be easy to prepare and convenient to store. It validates everything we do here when we hear from customers that we are fulfilling our mission and helping you in your efforts to provide well for your family.

We can talk forever about PrepareWise food storage and tout its superiority, but it’s never going to mean the same thing to you as when you hear it from a fellow customer.  Trust Mark—Once you try it, you’re going to have a hard time saving it for later.

Legacy Premium Announces an Exciting Change

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Our partner, Legacy Premium has just announced improvements to the way their freeze-dried emergency meals are packaged. As you know, Legacy Premium food is already protected from light, oxygen, and moisture through a sophisticated manufacturing and packaging process using freeze drying, dehydration and nitrogen flushed mylar pouches. Because oxygen removal is so vitally important to ensuring the extended shelf life of freeze-dried and dehydrated food, Legacy Premium has decided to add oxygen absorbers to each pouch of food, further reducing residual oxygen levels and adding another layer of security for consumers.

Legacy Premium is proud to be the first to incorporate oxygen absorbers in the packaging of pre-made emergency meal pouches, and with this development have achieved the lowest oxygen content on the market! Test results from the University of Minnesota confirm the effectiveness of this packaging change, reporting average oxygen content at a very low .47%. This is important because over time, excess residual oxygen can decrease the nutritional value of food and increase the potential for spoilage.

Legacy Premium founder Phillip Cox believes the change will set a new standard for the industry. He said, “We want to give our customers the best value and nutrition possible, and so for this reason, we have invested our efforts into creating this new packaging method for every single pouch of food. We are proud to be at the forefront of this new packaging standard.”

As always, Legacy Premium will continue to provide you with the best taste, best value, and highest quality nutrition in the freeze-dried food industry.  And now you can brag to your friends about its low residual oxygen content too!

Prepare Wise with our partner, Legacy Premium, is committed to quality. We understand that when a customer buys our food they are entrusting us with the health and perhaps survival of their family. We take this responsibility seriously. Legacy Premium was developed by experts with over 20 years of experience in the freeze-dried food industry. This experience paired with innovative and proven processing procedures, combine to give you gourmet food storage that not only beats the competition in taste, nutrition, and value, but stands the test of time. Prepare Wise is proud to offer our customers the best of the best in emergency food storage from Legacy Premium!

Read the press release here.

Doomsday Preppers: Over the top or on top of it?

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“I’m preparing for a coronal mass ejection in 2012”

“I’ve spent the better part of my life preparing for a nuclear holocaust”

“I’m preparing for a world-wide economic breakdown”

If you’ve seen an episode of Doomsday Preppers you know just how seriously these preppers take their doomsday predictions. Stockpiles of guns and ammo, gas masks, radiation suits, underground bunkers, and wood-fueled pickup trucks are just a few of the extreme measures they’ve taken in order to prepare themselves for a day they’re sure will come-the day that will change life as we know it, leaving us all in a battle for survival.

It’s clear the show is meant to be a sensational look at these extreme characters. We’re meant to gawk, gasp and shake our heads in wide-eyed amazement at the repeated image of a 3 year old running drills to shave seconds off the time it takes to don full radiation gear, or the family gathered around the dinner table anxious to enjoy their evening meal- a giant pot of crickets. It makes for great television! I’ll admit, I get a real kick out of seeing these intense people detailing their elaborate plans (and equally elaborate backup plans…. not to mention their complex tertiary plans) with such pride and confidence, it’s truly astonishing! However, only part of me is laughing at the absurdity. Another (rather large) part of me is struck with admiration. I find myself taking mental note of ideas I want to implement into my own emergency preparedness plan.

That guy has seven years worth of food stored?!! I have roughly one year of food storage…… Wouldn’t hurt to make it two….

Bug out plans, eh? Yeah, we could definitely use a bug out plan….

 A completely self-sustaining food supply…impressive! I’m not about to start my own fish farm-tilapia EVERY night seems a bit much-but I really should store some seeds, at the very least…

So, while I may turn it on for the pure entertainment of it all, I always walk away with a quiet determination to do a little more prepping myself.

As with anything in life, balance is the key. The way I see it, most of the catastrophic events these preppers describe leave little chance for even the most thoroughly devised plans to be successful. What are the chances you will actually survive the initial unexpected blow? If you do, will your provisions be so lucky? Will roads exist to get you from point A to point B. And if you do find your safe haven, can you really expect to defend your preparations against desperate and deadly looters? I have to wonder if even the most expert planning could leave you little better off than anyone else in the face of an all-encompassing global catastrophe like those described on the show.

So, is there a point leading up to which, prepping is prudent, but after which, prepping is play? There are many, many smaller scale emergencies with much higher likelihood that everyone would be wise to plan for. I suspect the individuals profiled on the show started with this in mind and simply developed a passion for prepping.

Many hobbies- golf, gaming, Civil War reenactment, Iron Man competition, to name a few- have a way of shaping a person’s lifestyle, dominating their thoughts, time and resources. An avid hobbyist delights in gathering every available nugget of information out there and enjoys even the toil involved as they become fully immersed in their passion. No doubt these preppers are genuinely convinced of the necessity of their extreme preparations, but underneath it all, I think they just really like this stuff. They like playing nature survivalist, medic, soldier, farmer, and so on. I don’t judge the person who eats, drinks, and sleeps football, so to the Doomsday Preppers, I say prep on!

As for me, I take seriously the task of preparing my family for the unknown, keeping water, food, and medical supplies to the tune of six months to a year stored for a rainy day. There’s definitely more I can do and learn without danger of going overboard and I thank these extreme preppers for providing motivation to do so sooner than later! That said, I don’t plan on living a post-apocalyptic lifestyle until I live in a post-apocalyptic world. I am determined to enjoy the world I currently live in while I still can! It is for each of us to determine the right balance between preparing for the worst that is to come and embracing with gratitude the fortunate circumstances we enjoy today.

The Time for Emergency Food is Now

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Do you ever feel like your to-do list will never end? That’s because it won’t. Every day there is more that needs to be done, and sometimes it seems impossible to keep up. It is easy to bump emergency food to the bottom of the list until the day we need it. The problem is that we never know when that will be. Waiting to purchase emergency food until we need it doesn’t work, for obvious reasons. Preparing now is important.

At times we receive a warning or a simple reminder that trouble can come at any time.  For example, when a hurricane is on the horizon, we are given a few days warning time to prepare. Gentle reminders also come in the form of natural disasters or problems that arise in other nations, such a Japan’s earthquake last March.  But those who wait for disaster to strike or warning signs to begin their emergency preparation may find that the store shelves are empty and the gas stations are closed.

Even with all of the things on our lists, we must somehow make emergency food storage a priority. In times of crisis, it all comes down to loved ones, food, water, and shelter, everything else is secondary. Can you imagine trying to find these basic necessities if disaster came?  What would you do?  Would you be able to face your children and loved ones and explain that you have nothing to give them?

So let’s move something off of our lists this week to make room for emergency preparation. Basic emergency preparation can be done anytime you are buying groceries for your family.  Pick up a couple extra cans of soup or vegetables or a small first aid kit.  Buy some extra batteries for your flashlights and portable radios.  Most importantly, do something. By doing something, we will create peace of mind for ourselves and our loved ones.

Legacy Premium and a Happy New Year!

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As we embark into 2012, PrepareWise would like to announce its newest partner and explain why we have switched to the Legacy Premium line of emergency food storage products.

First off, Legacy Premium Food Storage was created by the same good people who started the “Bear Creek” brand of soup and chili mixes, as well as “Sawyer’s Premium”.  With over 20 years of gourmet food-making experience, Legacy Premium’s line of long-lasting emergency food is the new industry standard in taste and value.

With a greater variety of entrees and breakfasts than the competition, Legacy makes sure that you have a wide range of flavors to choose from.  In addition to entrees, Legacy has delicious side dishes and refreshing drink mixes to add more variety to your emergency meals.  The ultimate complement is the Freeze-Dried Meat pouches, which allow you to add real meat to your entrees for additional protein and calories. In addition to the large variety of meals, Legacy Premium is proud to provide gluten-free meals!  We are happy to finally be able to provide 10 different gluten-free meal options for those with special dietary needs.

Every Legacy meal is packaged in a sealed Mylar pouch that is flushed with nitrogen to ensure a long-lasting product.  When stored correctly, this allows the food to last for up to 25 years!  To protect the Mylar pouches, 15-20 pouches are placed in stackable plastic buckets ranging in size from two gallons all the way up to eight gallons.  The six serving Mylar pouches allow you to eat a small portion of your food storage without compromising the rest.  In comparison, the traditional #10 tin can food storage has to be eaten soon after opening, often meaning a large amount of your emergency food supply will go to waste!  We feel that the six serving Mylar pouch is a much smarter and more convenient way to store your emergency food.

Finally, the biggest benefit we found with Legacy is the price!  While many companies focus on cost per serving, they ignore the fact that serving sizes often differ.  By comparing the cost per calorie you can more accurately compare what you are actually paying for.  Legacy once again shined by having the lowest cost per calorie in the industry, meaning you get the most food storage possible for your hard earned dollar!

With greater variety, better packaging, and the best value in the industry, we are excited to offer Legacy Premium food storage. To wish you a Happy New Year we’re offering a 10% discount on the already discounted prices on our website.  Enter the promo code “Friend10” by January 25th, 2012 to receive your discount!

Thanks again for being a big part of the PrepareWise community; we truly appreciate all of your support.

My Emergency and What I Learned

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I could have sworn that my windows and walls were going to rip down and fly away. Looking out my windows I saw shingles, Christmas ornaments, and everything else that wasn’t tied to the ground was flying through the air. I watched a small tree fly through my neighbor’s 2nd story window and into his home.  The news said that the wind speeds were “only” between 80 and 103 miles per hour, which just happens to be considered a class 2 hurricane. The wind felt and sounded like it was moving much faster than that, though. My daughters were upset and scared, and one even fell down and split here head open after something banged against our house. Power was gone. The wind coming down off the mountain was bitter cold, colder than anything I have ever been in. If my windows blew out I was in big trouble…

This was my situation a week ago. The winds lasted about an entire day, with another decent storm a couple days later. Power was out in some neighborhoods for 48 hours or more. Thousands of trees were knocked down.  I was amazed that wind could rip sixty foot tall pine trees out, roots and all.  Other trees were snapped in half, literally broken in the middle of the trunk.   Windows were broken. Almost every home for several miles was missing shingle, and several roofs were ripped from the home itself. Grocery stores, convenience stores, and restaurants were shut down. People couldn’t gas up. Everything was shut down for several days.

My emergency taught me a few good lessons. It caught me off guard and made me think more about preparing for a major emergencies and disasters.

I first awoke in the middle of the night to my house shaking from the wind and realized that my power was off. Our home was very cold, so I ran to check on my little girls and make sure that they were still sleeping and not scared. I then tried to find lights and much to my dismay, I discovered that my kids had used the flashlights in their playing and had drained the batteries. I finally found a couple battery operated lanterns in the garage. Once I had light, my focus shifted to addressing the cold and ensuring that everyone was going to stay warm. I fortunately kept a heater that could be used in my home in the garage. It was a small heater so it only warmed a single room up, but at least we had something. I stumbled around the rest of the day waiting out the storm and praying that my home wouldn’t blow over. We had plenty of food in the fridge, and luckily we didn’t need to tap into our emergency food reserves.  Through the whole experience, I felt helpless and was scared for the safety of my wife and 3 little girls.

From this experience, I have created a list of what I plan to do differently in the future and have started to ensure that I have everything ready:

  1. Make sure that I have plenty of extra batteries for flashlights.  Also, I found a wind up flashlight that has a small hand crank to ensure that there is always going to be light in my home.
  2. Keep a generator that can power some of basic utilities and make sure that I have adequate fuel on hand.
  3. Purchase a large heater or more small heaters should power go out. One of my neighbors had a really nice kerosene heater that can heat up 3000 square feet.  There are several nice options out there, do a little research to find what works best for you.
  4. Make sure my cars are full of gas before anticipated storms or during times of likely issues, or have a few gallons on hand just in case.
  5. Be prepared to evacuate if necessary by keeping emergency bags with clothing and other items available. We have some small 72 hour kits that have blankets, food, and medical kits.
  6. Buy a large tent and other camping items so that I have shelter. We have sleeping bags already, which came in handy keeping everyone warm during the storm.
  7. Try and have a few weeks worth of medications on hand.
  8. Keep some water available for immediate use, keep water filters available for additional water needs, and have adequate food storage around for at least three months should things be bad enough that it is necessary.
  9. Have some cash stored away for an emergency, even if it is just a couple hundred dollars.

I never want to worry like that again. I, like most of us, will need to prepare one item at a time. But that’s what I’ll do. I suggest we all be prepared for whatever might come. In the case of an emergency, we don’t want to be reliant upon the government, neighbors, family, or friends to help us. We should be in a position to help others.

Have a wonderful Holiday Season!