Smalltime Survivalism

A recent thread at Kim du Toit's place on disaster preparedness has me looking forward to when Amy and I have a house. Kim and his wife have a good series of posts on this subject including:

• A list of their emergency firearms
• A list of general emergency supplies in case they have to leave home in a hurry.
• Household preparations to maintain emergency supplies of food and water.

Why am waiting until we have a house? In a word, space. Right now, Amy and I have a healthy amount of emergency supplies around the apartment. I have my guns (but oddly enough I may not have enough holsters). I buy ammo in bulk to save money so I generally have plenty of it. We have portable radios (AM/FM and shortwave), a compass, flashlights, maps, tools, duct-tape, toilet paper, etc. We even have a decent stock of first aid supplies. Both Amy and I have basic first aid training.

But while we live close to enough running water to keep us happy, we don't have any way to make it potable should the faucets stop working. We don't have room to store more than a few days of food. Other than our fireplace, we don't have a place to cook food in the case of a power outage. And there aren't good solutions to the last two problems given the size of our apartment and the restrictions our complex's fire code puts on us.

But a house should give us the needed space to fix these problems pretty easily. A pantry full of canned goods will give you enough food for a while. A gas or charcoal grill will let you cook it. I might even look into a generator that could keep the fridge/freezer running for a few days if we didn't have power.

But then again we do live in Delaware. We don't have major natural disasters like hurricaines or earthquakes and even tornadoes are rare. A heavy snow or ice storm will only shut down the state for a few days at best. Even then we live within easy walking distance of our local grocery store. We live high enough above our nearby creek that I doubt we'll get flooded. Which basically leaves a riot or other breakdown in polite social order and I don't see that happening in Newark. So I'm not too worried.

UPDATE: Kim has a good list of solid survival supplies.