Emergency Preparedness

They go by many names–U Lock It, U Store It, We How Sit, etc. Most self-storage facilities are relatively inexpensive. They can provide a prepper with a great place to cache some supplies, or even a vehicle, with a bit of planning and forethought.

While these facilities are popular in cities, you can find them in relatively rural or semi-rural areas as well. The ones out on the outskirts of town or even further out are the ones to consider. The idea is to provide you with a place to store some goodies that is on your route to your retreat area.

Even the smallest units have ample storage for cases of supplies, bug out bags, weapons, food, water, even a bicycle or two. Most are climate controlled so you won’t have to worry about your stuff freezing up or rusting until you need it. Self-storage places likely won’t be initial targets for raiders or looters either. Even so, take the precaution of boxing up your supplies and labeling them as old clothes or something else innocuous.

Just make sure you keep on top of the rental payments. You don’t want your cached supplies ending up on an auction block at some point.

Dehydrated foods have several good qualities. They are easy to store, just keep ‘em dry for the most part. Most varieties rehydrate well. Usually, there is very little nutritional loss during the dehydration process. Some kinds can be eaten without rehydration, such as dried fruits. They are also light and easy to toss into a bug out bag.

However, as with anything else, you gotta take the good with the bad. Most kinds of dehydrated foods require water to prepare. Clean, potable water might very well be in short supply when you end up needing your dehydrated foods the most. Crunchy lasagna noodles with powdered sauce mix doesn’t taste all that great without the added water.

Many of the entree varieties need not only water but it must be hot. So not only do you need to have a supply of potable water but you’ll need a way to heat it for a length of time. Again, might not be all that feasible during the greatest need for the food.

They are relatively expensive. You could easily spend $50-100 on a case or two of meals, receiving enough food for a family of four to last a couple days. For that same price, I could buy enough fresh food to last a couple weeks or more and can or preserve it myself.

While many varieties taste pretty good, sometimes the texture is a bit off. This isn’t a big deal as, if you’re hungry enough you’ll eat it. But, it is something to keep in mind. If you are going to store dehydrated food, I highly recommend you try them out first and be sure you like them.

Suffice to say, before you drop a few hundred bucks or more on some cases of dehydrated food, do your homework first. I’m not saying they are a bad thing. I have several packages myself. But, know ahead of time what is required to prepare them and be sure you will want to eat the ones you buy.

Guest Article – by Don Hebert

This article will show you how to take a length of cord and weave it into a much shorter length. In this example, I started with 8 feet of mini-blind cord (available on Amazon.com and other places) and the finished lanyard is 7 inches long. You can attach the lanyard to whatever you like using S-Biners or any clips, or even just by tying the ends of the cord to the item. If you need a length of cord for whatever reason, all you have to do is pull out the end of the cord from the lanyard and it will unravel as far as you need.

Step one: Screw 3 screws into an old wooden spool. The spool needs to have a hole large enough for the lanyard to pass through. I drilled out the center hole of this spool to 3/8”.

Step two: Tie a knot in the cord and place the cord over one of the screws and wrap the cord around the screws from the inside out.

Step three: Go around the screws a 2nd time in the same inside out manner.

Step four: Using a piece of wire, nail, hook, etc. (I used a yarn loom hook I bought at Wal-Mart for under a dollar) and take the bottom loop over the top loop and off of the screw, leaving the top loop on the screw. Do this for all 3 screws. Continue looping and hooking until either the lanyard is as long as you want or you run out of cord.

As you work, the lanyard will start coming out of the hole in the spool.

When you have either run out of cord or the lanyard is as long as you want it, take the cord loops off of the spool.

Take care at this point as if you pull the loose end from the top, it’ll unravel. Pass the S-Biner through all 3 of the loops and then take the loose end and weave it down inside the lanyard tucking the end inside. Do the same for the other loose end.

The finished lanyard, attached to my new Gerber Trendy knife.

Setting aside enough food for a family of four to last just a few weeks takes up a fair amount of space, let alone planning for several months. Not everyone has a huge walk-in pantry to use either.

Basements are usually good places to start, as long as they are dry. Use a dehumidifier if need be to keep moisture out of the area. Build simple shelves from 2x4s to keep things off the floor and organized. Do NOT use the cheap pressed board bookcases you find at discount stores. The shelves will warp rather quickly under the weight of canned goods.

If you have staircases in your home, do you have access underneath them? There are many different plans available online for building various types of shelving to take advantage of this often unused space.

I’ve heard of some folks who built shelves inside their walls, using the space between the studs. This isn’t a bad idea, as long as you can easily access the food stored there so you can rotate it regularly.

Most beds have a fair amount of space under them, enough room for at least a few cases of canned goods.

Check your closets and see if there is enough space along the back of them to install some shallow shelves. For canned goods, they only need to be 5″-6″ deep.

For apartment dwellers, you probably have a small storage unit of some sort in the basement. You could box up your food storage items and label the boxes “Old Clothes” or something else innocuous. Go a step further and put a couple old shirts over the top of the food in the boxes.

Remember, store what you eat and eat what you store. Rotate, rotate, rotate. The food won’t do you much good if it goes rancid or is otherwise unfit for consumption when you most need it.

There are a few distinct advantages to using a bicycle as a bug out vehicle.

They are infinitely more portable and lightweight than a car or truck. Thus, you can store them in a basement or storage locker without much effort.

You can find them very cheap, even free, if you look around. Rummage sales, Craigslist, Freecycle, even friends or neighbors are great sources for cheap or free bikes. Many police departments sell off bikes they recover but go unclaimed. You can easily get enough bikes for a family of five for less than say thirty bucks. Clean them up, spend a few bucks on new tubes, and you’re good to go.

A bike is much more maneuverable than a car or truck, able to fit through the smallest gaps on the roads as well as going down trails barely wide enough to walk on.

Bikes are free to operate, requiring no gas, electrics, or oil (beyond lubing the chain and such periodically). Thus, the bike is pretty much EMP proof.

However, this brings us to one of the big downsides–YOU are the engine. While most of us learned to ride a bike when we were young, if you’ve not been on one in many years, be prepared for a rude awakening. It takes some time to get conditioned to riding a bike again. Just like any other form of exercise, you need to condition yourself.

Bikes can carry a surprising amount of “stuff” in bags of various configurations. But, since you’ll be the one moving all that stuff using pedal power, every ounce is felt.

You might consider as well using a bike just as a means of transporting your gear–loading it up and pushing it instead of riding it. You can carry a lot more weight that way, but obviously you’ll be walking instead of riding, thus moving slower.

Give some thought to picking up a cheap bike as transportation insurance against EMP if nothing else. Don’t worry, you’ll quickly remember how to ride it. After all, it is like riding a bike, right?