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howdy wrote:I have 3 adult married children with grand kids. They are all local... I live 2 miles from I-10...

No hope. Though maybe you really like your family, in which case you'd want to be with them anyway.

They won't prep like you--maybe you can help by giving the grandkids guns for b-days and xmas and teaching them how to shoot. Then at least you'll have help when the masses exiting that parking lot on I-10 (after the EMP) come to take all you have...

Regarding Calcium Hypochlorite I tried to determine whether "pool shock" had/has additional chemicals and didn't get very far (downloaded a PPG Material Safety Data Sheet and found it mostly incomprehensible--chemistry is not my strong suit!). We've owned spas in the past, and now have a swimming pool. The Tri-Chlor used in swimming pools contains not only chlorine but also other things to stabilize it that I've understood to be carcinogenic.

Only bringing this up so that people try to make sure that whatever they might buy for this purpose is "pure" and suitable for potable water. And to handle it carefully--is powerful stuff.

Apart from that, I suppose getting cancer from drinking our pool water after TEOTWAWKI would be the very least of our worries.

Beiruty wrote:Any serious preper has to have...

But the OP stated up-front that he was not one of these.

We are not there (yet) either, but it seems to us that there are a lot of common-sense things you can do to be ready for e.g. a serious power failure of a week, a month (!), or longer (!!!) and we're at least trying to plan for a month to start.

BTW one thing I read somewhere that made way too much sense was to actually test yourselves, i.e. throw the main breaker for a week and see how you fare (obviously you need to be retired or use a week's "vacation"). Would reveal a lot, and we're thinking about it, though of course we would not "throw the main breaker" but rather power-down everything but our refrigerators and our freezer (so's not to spoil food), then place them off-limits for the duration. Still not a true test of an actual grid-down event, since THE FIRST THINGS you'd make sure to use would be the freezer/fridge items, but still it would be interesting would it not...

Abraham wrote:I hadn't considered the food aroma drawing unwanted attention. This could easily be prevented by eating the canned food cold. That may sound dreadful, but I had to do it as a kid and could adapt to it again. It's really not that bad. Better than going hungry.

Everybody has different ideas about this, and IMO the best "starter strategy" is to list those things you like to eat on a regular basis, see which of those has what kind of shelf life, and then simply start over-stocking on those items. So that you continue to work-thru your supply of stuff, and enjoy what you eat along-the-way.

Among our favorite things for example is the Cookwell line of products (from Austin, at HEB and online) especially the "two-step" soup mixings which last the two of us for several days. It's easy to put extras of the various varieties in our pantry.

I'm sure that if the S does hit the F and things get bad, that you will put your flour and lard and rice and beans and canned meat yuck into play but it will make the adjustment that much unhappier.

BTW do keep lots of chlorox bleach around for purifying water--we collect rainwater and will NOT have a water problem. And I keep several cases of bleach on hand at all times.