Emergency Preparedness

What with almost all of Boston being placed on lockdown as authorities hunt for the second bomber, as well as countless lockdown situations occurring recently from coast to coast, I thought it might be a good idea to review preps you want in place in case you find yourself in a similar situation.

There are several types of incidents that can cause a lockdown. Most commonly though, it is due to some sort of manhunt. Could be someone with a possible firearm was seen walking near a school, for example, which has happened at least a couple times locally. (Turned out, in one case it was a pellet gun and in the other it was an Airsoft pistol, with neither incident involving any sort of malicious intent.) Often, these lockdowns last maybe an hour or two, but obviously there is no way to reliably predict how long it could go on. Therefore, it is a great idea to prepare ahead of time. After all, if I were a betting man, I’d lay pretty good money that as we go forward, we’re going to see more rather than less lockdowns.

There are only a few real priorities you should keep in mind when prepping for a lockdown.

Food and water top the list. While you probably won’t be hunkered down for a day or two, it could be that it happens just as you were planning to go out for lunch, you missed breakfast, and the vending machines at work are too far away to get to easily. Keep a bottle or two of water in your cubicle or workspace, as well as a couple granola bars or something similar. If you feel particularly generous, keep enough on hand to feed your co-workers as well.

Another priority is a way to communicate, or at least get information. For most people, they count on their cell phones more than they probably should. As we saw in the aftermath of the bombings in Boston, as well as in previous disasters, cell towers get overwhelmed and the service becomes unreliable at best. A simple battery operated radio will help you keep abreast of developments in the area.

A lockdown kit is something I also suggest parents put together to send with their kids to school. Just some snacks and a couple bottles of water in a plastic bag will suffice. The child should keep this in their desk or locker. While many elementary school teachers often try to keep a stash of snacks, Murphy’s Law says the day they forgot to stock up will be the day they need them the most.

Lockdowns can be very stressful but by planning ahead you can mitigate the anxiety at least a little.

Something to consider in your plans for a post-collapse situation is what to do with garbage. For most of us today, we just set it out at the curb for collection or take it to a dump ourselves. But services like trash collection will probably be one of the first to cease after a major crisis, at least for a while. For our purposes in this discussion, we’ll include recyclables in the trash category since that gets picked up by garbage collectors too.

I am sometimes truly amazed at how much trash a single family can generate in a week. I think my family does fairly well, all things considered, in that we barely fill one garbage can in a week’s time. Quite often, there are only two bags of trash in it. The recycling bin is usually pretty full though. Either way, not too bad for a family of five. I know other families with less people living in the house who generate twice or more the amount of trash in the same time frame.

Whether it is one bag a week or five, you need to plan ahead for what you’re going to do with it when it won’t just disappear each week.

Organic matter — compost, as long as it isn’t animal products like bones and meat scraps. For that stuff, bury it fairly deep to keep animals from digging it up.

Combustibles — cardboard, paper, etc. can all be burned either in the wood stove or a fire pit.

Plastics and metal — if possible, try to repurpose these. If you can’t figure out a way to reuse them, rinse them out and crush them flat. This will help to conserve space. If need be, you could bury it. If you go that route, do so well away from any water sources in case any of the chemicals in the plastics and such leak out into the soil.

A critical element here is to keep food-related trash in a pest-proof container until it can be disposed of properly. The last thing you want or need is a mouse or rat problem on top of everything else.

If you have a trash dump nearby, and the crisis goes on for a considerable length of time, you may be able to make arrangements with neighbors to haul trash on a rotating basis.

An item that is often overlooked in long-term prepping is supplements like multivitamins. For short-term emergencies, such as a blizzard trapping you at home for a few days, proper nutrition is generally not a huge concern. In fact, I often suggest that having comfort food like chips and other junk can help keep family members from going crazy. Forgetting the diet for a couple days can make a stressful situation a little easier to handle.

But when we look at long-term situations, such as epidemics or major natural disasters that result in substantial YO-YO time, we need to plan ahead for nutritional needs. This is particularly important to prevent illnesses like scurvy, which is indeed a real thing and not just something pirates talk about in the movies. Scurvy results from a deficiency in vitamin C and symptoms include lethargy, depression, spongy gums, and even bleeding from mucous membranes. The reason it became so associated with pirates is during long voyages at sea back in those days, sources of vitamin C were few.

I would encourage you to shop around and stock up on vitamins and supplements to help offset any nutritional deficiencies during long-term disasters. Depending on the nature of the emergency, you may not have unlimited resources for food. While it is important to keep bellies full of calories, you’ll need proper nutrition to keep your body running.