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<p>Food storage, emergency preparedness, zombie slaying skills... whatever.</p>
  1. What's new in this club
  2. Even though I do agree that the timing FEELS weird, EMAs are always creating new content/materials for the public. NYC’s Emergency Management has lots of YouTube videos posted about disasters and planning. Usually,they go ignored. At least, it sure seems like it when MY local EMA posts new stuff!
  3. The media here is reporting this https://www.9news.com.au/world/what-to-do-in-a-nuclear-attack-new-york-emergency-management-video-explainer/a2d47928-840f-41fa-ae4a-56f69db0438d apparently advice put out by New York City's department of emergency management does anyone know if there is a reason like a feeling of impending threat. really not helping with jitters
  4. We lost a freezer full of beef once, the freezer quit working but we didn't know it. Finally when one of the kids brought in partially thawed hamburger I went to check. Ugh, it was heart breaking. I am so glad that you lost very little! I am still in the beginning stages of pressure canning, so still very reliant on our freezers. At the start of the pandemic, I convinced dh to buy a small gas powered generator that we could use to keep freezers cold by running for like 1 hour every four. We did end up using it after an ice storm this past winter knocked our power out for 3 days. It worked really well, of course it was also cold outside.
  5. I do, too. What I’ve come to accept is that I’ll always feel that way, because I can ALWAYS come up with more what-ifs. I know that I could easily convince myself that it’d be nice to decide I simply don’t want to see another human for the next decade, lol. But it would push me to make choices that don’t really jive with my intentions. So I just keep going at a comfy-to-me pace.
  6. thank you very helpful I also have adult children that most probably be drawing from our stored food. Just today we dropped 2 boxes of food off on front step of ds23 as both him and his girlfriend have come down with COVID. I think we are aiming for around 6 to 12 months . I have 12 months of rice, olive oil, pasta and lentils. 6 months of flour, chocolate and coffee . as for garden produce I have just finished bottling 12 months of tomatoes, and tomato products, numerous preserved other fruits etc. We grow veggies year round, the varieties change with the season. We have enough garden produce that we regularly give away to neighbours, and have the capacity to quickly increase the size if needed. I just seem to have a panicky feeling that we don't have enough
  7. I don’t actually have a calculation or a specific goal. I can tell you that I would have a 100% normal-to-me meal plan for probably 2 weeks, except for truly fresh produce (which would be replaced with frozen or canned unless/until my container garden produces) without stepping foot out of the house. Milk, eggs, store bread, my favorite coffee creamer, etc. After that, I’d be supplementing with more shelf-stable stuff. ”Survivability” wise, I estimate…. “Lots”. Not enjoyable normalcy stuff, but relatively inexpensive, long-term-storable, plenty to share with friends stuff. And then there’s the in between. I buy what I can fit into a reasonable budget and in the space I have. I stick to things we use and rotate first in, first out. I try not to store more than we can use before a “best by” date and donate if I realize I’m not going to come close to that timeframe. And I try to spread it across products evenly instead of large numbers of one or two things at a time. It continues to grow. One of the reasons I don’t have a target timeframe is because I have grown children out of the house who might or might not want to (or be able to) be here in tough times. That makes a difference! And then the whole neighbors in need concept. So I prefer to just chug along as I’m able.
  8. just curious How many months of food are you storing? what made you pick that length of time?
  9. Lol. Yeah, that would be bad! My frost dates zone spans 7.5 months. I haven’t noticed any real change in that, but our hard freezes are shorter and/or less frequent than in the past.
  10. it would never be cold enough for that here. winter coldest days are round 10 oC and that is only for a week. mostly it is between 12 and 15 for the coldest month of July. We have an average of around 10 frosts a year.
  11. Yeah, most people around here who have solar are grid-tied. It’s by far the most affordable way to go! But, yes, a good freezer can keep cold for quite some time, thank goodness! In the winter, our “refrigerator back up” was always coolers out on the deck. This past winter and even the one before it were not consistently cold enough for that to be safe. That freaked me out quite a bit!
  12. No other damage. We have East Coast Lows on an average of 7 times a year. It is where the majority of our rain comes from. mostly the power is only off for a couple of hours. they differ in intensity - this one was between moderate and large I was just a bit shocked by my oversight- storing soo much food to potentially loose it all . I do bottle (can ) and dry food as well. but find some things like green beans, capsicum and celery are way nicer frozen. Plus I just finished making heaps of different fruit pies, enough for one or two per week for 6 months. crazily we have solar. our whole house is powered by solar, but we are connected to the grid and sell our surplus electricity. which means when the grid goes down it automatically shuts off the solar as a safety feature.
  13. Ugh! I’m so glad it’s mostly fine! We’ve lost freezer food twice. Once we added it to our insurance claim, since we had already hit the deductible with other damage. Another time we just ate it. The cost, not the food, lol. It was very upsetting! These days, we’re fairly diversified in food storage methods, but I definitely like freezing best. I’m super grateful that we were able to upgrade to solar that can power freezers, but I still worry. Just a few weeks ago, dh asked out of nowhere… “Is this freezer connected to this light switch?!?” My heart completely dropped. It wasn’t, so yay! But I did have a moment of fearing that we’d been cyclically thawing and freezing a bunch of stuff… for, like, 2 years! I hope you didn’t have other damage from the storm.
  14. I was patting myself on the back, I had stored 6 months of food, some items, like frozen capsicum, 12 months worth. 2 completely chockers chest freezers. then we had an East Coast Low with close to 200 mil of rain and were flooded in. storm force winds that knocked down multiple trees and power out for 2 full days. We covered the freezers with every spare blanket and sleeping bag that we have. Dh frantically tried to get an old generator that we were given working. He pulled and pulled on the pull start for hours. tried different motor parts etc. The power came on again just now. the freezer was still frozen. LUCKY. but boy gave us a bit of a turn thinking of all the summer harvest was about to go to waste. the only food I had to chuck out were the cabbages I had stored in the fridge, a packet of fish and some milk. I will keep the cheese and watch it closely. the fridge was getting warm but I know that cheese is cultured at just below 20oC so should be OK. Apparently a fully frozen freezer is good for 48 hours
  15. Definitely not the worst thing you could do with that energy! I’ve been cutting back on the news by quite a bit. I’m not comfortable going *too long without checking in, just because I feel like missing stuff means later stuff has less context. I have caught up on some mindless TV! I did start some seeds. It’s hard because I know I’ll probably kill most plants trying to move them in a few months, but it’s worth a shot and it’s something to do! I can’t put anything outside yet, now that we’re having a super weird streak of long, freezing temps. 😞
  16. Apparently the EU is encouraging people in the whole of Europe to pick up their iodine pills. And suggesting they try source radiation suits. Awful awful. I think I need to set a limit of 10 minutes a day on news, and not look at any news 4 hours before going to bed.
  17. We didn't do the desk drills but I did grow up when that was a real worry. The thought was that we were third on the desirable targets in the US, not because we were so special, but because a circle centered on us got lots of good stuff. So the idea was, "Well, we'll be dead before we know what has happened. So we won't worry." I did genuinely think it had happened once. They were doing a test on the alarm and I was sleeping in on a weekend. It was after we thought we were past that, but not so far past it that I was shocked. I remember waking up and thinking, "I thought we were past that? I guess I was wrong." I thought what should I do? Could think of nothing, so I went back to sleep. Even before that, a central tenet of my life is not leave the important stuff undone. I was genuinely shocked (pleasantly) to wake up to a peaceful world. The thing that wasn't thought of back then was the EMP effect. Don't know what to do about that. We are fortunate that none of us are on essential drugs like insulin.
  18. I think that is an awesome way to use up anxious energy! I wish extra nervous energy was what my body is doing. My body just wants to sleep and eat the world away.
  19. I am noticing that I am getting more and more stressed about the current world situation and every day that results in me planting more and more veggie seeds. There is no way we are going to be able to eat all those plants I am growing. Seems like I am tapping my toes waiting for the twins to finish their schoolwork so I can run out to the polytunnel and plant another punnet of cabbage and bok choy.
  20. My DH and I are the exact same age, and he never had them either. (We grew up in different places.) I distinctly remember our teacher telling us about the "red button," and we had 3 different types of drills that we regularly practiced - tornado drills, fire drills, and red button drills. Our elementary school class watched the Challenger launch on TV, and I remember being confused when it happened because we children (who did not understand what had just happened but DID respond to our teachers' consternation and grief) thought the space shuttle had something to do with the red button. 😞
  21. I see other people my age talking about desk drills, but I have absolutely no recollection of them. I swear my school didn’t have them! Or my brain is super good at locking things away. That said, II *believe they were meant for protecting against the damages of a sonic boom, even though we all talk about radiation. I could be wrong about that, though.
  22. All out war between all NATO Countries and Russia. No nuclear bomb in Southern Hemisphere. It was pretty bad for the northern hemisphere 😢
  23. I was SO GOOD at these drills when we were kids! When I taught school near a nuclear power plant, this is what we handed out to our students in evacuation drills. (We used Smarties candies during the drills.) We would triple-load the buses and drive to a state park far in the opposite direction.
  24. So, I think it is potassium iodide pills that are recommended. They are commonly recommended in some European countries.
  25. What scenario is that based on? Like a single strategic nuclear explosion in Ukraine, or something else? I don't think I want to go delving into the details myself, because it's all too depressing, but I'm curious your scenario you modeled. I figure if that's your result for something that happens in the Northern Hemisphere, that's enough for me to know that it would be even worse here.
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