60 Ways to Procure Food on the Cheap

Have you noticed how the price of food skyrocketing these days?  While we were traveling for a year we were blissfully unaware of the cost of food as we usually ate out or ate with friends as we traveled.  Occasionally we would shop for a meal and cook but now that we are cooking nearly 100% of the time--and buying groceries to create these meals--I find the cost of food quite shocking (don't worry, I'll get to gas prices in a few days).  Here's 60 ways to feed yourself on the cheap:

1. Skip restaurants. The $50 you pay for one meal at a restaurant could pay for a week's worth of food to eat at home.
2. Dumpster dive. The bigger the city, apparently the better the pickings. There seems to be an art--and a science--to doing this so do a bit of research online (Google 'dumpster diving') before you head out.
3. Sign up for food stamps if you qualify.  Many people qualify these days and don't even know it so Google your state's food stamp program and find out.
4. Hit up your local food pantry for food you can take home and cook.
5. Visit your local Salvation Army; they often provide free meals as well as food stuff to take home with you.
6. Get a list of the free meal sites in your area and go. These are usually sponsored by churches and other social service organizations; all you have to do is show up and eat.
7. Visit local churches, sometimes they can give you food or food vouchers.
8. Forage for your own food. Depending on the season you can find nuts and berries, tree fruit, and mushrooms growing wild.
9. Go fishing.
10. Go hunting.
11. What other foods are readily available for the taking in your area?  When I used to live near Seattle, we had beaches and beaches full of clams, oysters, crabs, even the super expensive goeducks--all which could be harvested for the cost of a permit and some home-made traps.
12. Check out the loss leaders for your local grocery stores. Many people base their entire meals on these highly discounted food items which are meant to lure into the store so you will buy other stuff. Just buy the cheap loss leaders and skip everything else.
13. Shop in ethnic stores. Many ethnic grocery stores have super cheap prices on stapes, fruit, vegetables, and fish.
14. Shop the day-old bakery rack in your grocery store and the nearly out of date discounted meat items in the meat department.
15. Check out bakery outlet stores in your area for bargain basement bakery items.
16. Check out how these people were able to feed themselves on a dollar a day: Example #1 Example #2 Example #3
17. Make soup. Soup with whatever you have on hand can make a bigger, heartier meal than just cooking up the few items that you are putting into it. Ditto with stir-frys and casseroles.
18. Call 211. This is a national number you can call and ask for help with any social service need that you have. They can direct you to places to get free food and free meals as well as many other services you may need.
19. If you have an old Costco or Sam's Club card, simply go into the stores and wander around the food aisles picking up food samples. Some days you can get a complete meal this way.
20. Go to the mall or other community gathering place. Sometimes but not always you can score free food samples in the food court, free samples at events, and free items/coupons for new products that are being promoted.
21. Crash events where there will be food: church socials, funerals, community meetings, community events, weddings, parties, etc.
22. Trade work for food. If you walk by a restaurant that has dirty windows, for example, offer to clean the windows in trade for a meal.
23. Check in with reddit.  Both this and this subreddit offer a place to ask for food (and often people respond!)
24. If you live in a farming area, ask the farmer if you can glean his fields after the harvest.
25. Choose a full time or part time job that offers free food as a benefit (many restaurants, coffee shops, and bars give their employees a free meal each day they work).
26. Go an a date! My sister finds all of her dates through online dating sites. They often take her out for dinner and pick up the tab (not sure how well this would work for guys though).
27. Check out Freecycle and the free section of CraigsList, pick up some items for free, then resell them at your own garage sale (people have been known to do this, fix the item up a bit, then relist it for sale on CraigsList too). Use the money earned for food.
28. Shop in the bulk bin section of the grocery store. Here you can pick up a pound of rice and a pound of beans for a dollar and have food for a week!
29. Cook from scratch. Skip the expensive processed foods and make your own breads, soups, casseroles, etc. It is generally much cheaper to make things from scratch than to buy pre-made items.
30. Have people you can fall back on for food. When I was a starving college student, I knew that every time I went to grandma's house she would have a hot meal waiting for me (of course I would have visited her meal or no but this was definitely a bonus!).
31. Panhandle on a street corner. Most people would say "no way" to this but if you and your kids are actually starving, this may be the most expedient way to get some cash together to buy food.
32. If you have ever served in the military, check out your local military service center, DAV, or VFW hall and see what resources are available to you.
33. If you are a senior citizen, see what services you qualify for (there are many senior-only meal sites in our area as well as a free meal delivery program specifically for seniors).
34. If you are a tribal member, check with your tribe's social service office to see what services (food as well as others) that you qualify for.
35. Shop at the Dollar Store. You need to know your prices, of course, as some items can be had for less than a dollar at other stores, however Dollar Stores can have some great prices on food.
36. Sign your kids up for the free meal program at school if you qualify. This will reduce the amount of food you will need at home to feed them. Note that schools often have free meal programs during the summer as well when school isn't in session to ensure that kids get a good meal or two each day (breakfast and lunch).
37. Google for ideas. People are always coming up with new and interesting ways to save money on food costs. By Googling the topic, you will find many ways to cut food costs (try terms such as 'save money on food', 'cut food costs', 'eating for cheap or free', 'cheap meals', etc).
38. Pay attention to unit prices. When you are spending your hard-earned money on food, you want to make sure you are getting the best deal possible. Compare prices by unit (cost of ounce by ounce or pound by pound which is usually located on the shelf tag) to get the best deal possible.
39. Use coupons. You can find coupons in newspaper ad sections, online, in the mail, and even at the grocery store itself. It takes a while to create a coupon "system" but you could end up spending a lot less on food.
40. Be sure to use store loyalty cards as well to get sale prices on the food you buy.
41. Buy in bulk. With some items, you can pay much less by buying in bulk. My favorite item to buy in bulk is a giant box of oatmeal for around $7 at Costco.
42. Make a price book. It takes a bit of work to put together a food price book but some people swear by this method of keeping track of prices on the food their family most commonly uses. This way you will be able to know for sure what a "good price" is on the food items you buy.
43. Grow your own food. Obviously this isn't a quick fix to your hunger problems but if you have a patch of land and a bit of know how, the cost of buying a packet of seeds (around $1 on sale) can pay off handsomely at the end of the growing season.
44. Use food up instead of letting it go bad (make pie out of squishy apples, bake banana bread out of over ripe bananas, chop the rotten spots off of vegetables and add them to stews, etc).  This keeps you from literally throwing away money.
45. Write to food manufacturers. When I find a product I like, I have, in the past, written to the food company to rave about their product. Often they send me coupons, product samples, and the like just because I took the time to shot them off a quick letter or email.
46. On the other hand, be sure to rant about a food product if you have just cause (this works when corresponding with food companies as well as at restaurants). Usually the company wants to make it right and will reward your efforts with free products, coupons, etc.
47. Know where you can get the most "bang for your buck" in the food aisle. Eggs, rice, beans, peanut butter, bananas...you want to spend your limited supply of cash on items that are reasonably healthy, reasonably cheap, and reasonably filling.
48. Buy generic or store brands. Many people who have been used to just tossing (highly advertised) food in their cart may feel like generics and store brands are some how beneath them. Not true. Most items are exactly like the highly advertised products, only much cheaper (note, make sure store and generic brands are, in fact, cheaper than a name brand product which is on sale...sometimes the name brand product can actually be cheaper).
49. Shop local. Try Farmer's Markets, especially at the end of the day, to get great prices on nutritious food.
50. Take advantage of freebies. This site lists every restaurant that will give you a free meal/menu item on your birthday. Other places give out freebies on certain days (ie: Ben and Jerry's has a "free cone" day).
51. Go to a fast food place and hit up their Dollar menu.  Obviously you don't want to do this all the time because, well, it isn't healthy, but it can be filling in a pinch.
52. Keep a written list of the restaurant specials in your area.  I learned this from a homeless lady when I asked her where she eats each day.  On Mondays it's a local burger place with 79 cent burgers, on Tuesdays it's Popeye's two pieces of chicken for a dollar deal, on Wednesday's it's Del Taco for three tacos for $1.08, etc.
53. "Potluck" with others. If each person brings one dish, you will all eat like kings.
54. Scour the internet or library for ethnic food recipes (Asian, Indian, Mexican, etc). In most countries they don't eat like we do in America (ie: the notion that you need a slab of meat on your plate at every meal and a big hunk of carbs). Ethnic cooking tends to focus on meals you can feed a large family for cheap (ie: rice, beans, soups, etc).
55. Take a multi-vitamin. A bottle of vitamins will cost around $10 for a month. This will help make up for any nutritional deficiencies you may have when eating so cheaply.
56. Think attitude and presentation. My Depression-era grandmother could feed the family a simple plate of beans and rice and we would think we were feasting. Mostly it was her positive attitude ("look at the wonderful meal I cooked just for you") and the presentation (beautiful plates, multiple "courses" like we were eating in a fancy restaurant when we were actually eating bean soup, beans and tortillas, beans and hocks, etc).
57. Look for cheaper alternatives. If you were used to eating T Bones steaks, find a much cheaper cut of beef and roast it for hours until it is tender. If you were used to getting skinless, boneless chicken breasts for dinner, buy a whole chicken on sale and use every part of it.
58. Learn to barter. You can trade just about anything (ie: friend shoots a deer, you offer to butcher it for him and keep part of the animal) and with enough practice as well as contacts with other barterers, you could very well end up with much more than you started with.
59. Learn to preserve food.  Freezing is a simple way to preserve food when you end up with an overabundance of something.  Canning, smoking, dehydrating, making jam, etc are other ways to preserve the harvest and have super cheap food for the future.
60. Don't be afraid to try new things--whether it is approaching a free meal site, trying a super cheap (and unidentifiable) food at the Asian grocery store, or literally asking for help because you seriously need it--be brave and try something new.  You may end up richly rewarded.

Random Thoughts on Today's School Shooting

In case you haven't been around the news today, there was another school shooting in Ohio today in which one student was killed and four students were injured.  Here's some thoughts:

• Should teachers be armed? Yes.  Any adult who is properly trained and chooses to be armed can make a big difference in the outcome of such an event as today's shooting.
• It was reported that a teacher chased the shooter out of the school.  Makes me wonder about the why's and how's of such action.  Was the shooter out of ammo? Otherwise I am guessing he would have put a definitive end to the chase.
• The shooter apparently posted a crazy rant on FaceBook as many kids are prone to do.  Of course the difficulty is in determining the difference between random teenage rantings and a rant which is the precursor to actually shooting up a school.
• It appeared that the school had been proactive in holding lock down and active shooter drills.  A very good mark in their favor.
• From the article it appears the shooter turned himself in to someone after the shooting so the police response to an active shooter situation is undetermined.
• How do you protect your kids from such a situation?  Obviously there is no good answer.  It is a terrible thing to have small town schools look like fortresses complete with metal detectors and armed guards but the flip side is to have a school with no security in which any psycho with a firearm can come in and shoot up the place.  Neither option sounds good.
• My prayers go out to the family of the student who died in the shooting.

100 Items for Your First Aid Kit

While the basic first aid kit I always carry with me consists of not much more than aspirin, a couple of bandaids, and an alcohol wipe (which, BTW makes an excellent fire starter), the first aid kit I keep at home is far more extensive.  Here are the 100 items you should put in your first aid kit:

1. A bottle of rubbing alcohol
2. A bottle of hydrogen peroxide
3. A box of bandaids (assorted sizes)
4. A thermometer
5. A bottle of Tylenol
6. A bottle of baby aspirin
7. A bottle of motrin
8. Sudafed tablets
9. Antiseptic wipes
10. Antibiotic ointment
11. Antibiotic powder
12. Needles
13. Thread
14. Safety pins
15. Tweezers
16. Non-latex gloves
17. A blood pressure cuff
18. A stethoscope
19. Scissors
20. Sterile gauze pads (assorted sizes)
21. Sterile rolled gauze
22. Sterile wound dressing tape
23. Hydrocortizone cream
24. Benadryl tablets
25. Acidophilous
26. Instant cold packs
27. Instant heat packs
28. A small flashlight
29. Space blankets
30. Ace bandages (the elastic-roll type for setting sprains)
31. Cotton balls
32. Cotton swabs
33. Instant hand sanitizer
34. Suction bulb (the kind for babies noses)
35. First aid manual
36. Eye goggles
37. Face masks
38. Duct tape
39. Sterile eye wash
40. Triangular bandages
41. Butterfly bandages
42. Soap
43. Sterile towels
44. Ziploc bags
45. Large, heavy duty plastic trash bags
46. Burn cream
47. Activated charcoal
48. Imodium
49. Vitamin C
50. First aid manual
51. Extra supply of prescription meds
52. Epi-pen
53. Nitroglycerin tablets
54. Prescription pain killer tablets
55. Prescription antibiotic tablets
56. Blood sugar test kit
57. A check off sheet of the contents of your first aid kit (review at least every six months)
58. Sugar pills or paste
59. Oral rehydration salts
60. Amonia inhalent
61. Antacid tablets
62. Splints (assorted sizes)
63. C-collar
64. AED (if someone in the household has a history of heart problems)
65. Adult diapers
66. Suction syringe
67. Super glue
68. Moleskin
69. Forceps
70. Scalpel/extra blades
71. Petroleum jelly
72. Iodine (liquid)
73. Iodine pills (for disinfecting water)
74. Calamine lotion
75. Aloe vera gel
76. Eye drops
77. Mineral oil
78. Snake bite kit
79. Oil of clove/dental kit
80. Pregnancy test kit
81. Yeast infection medication
82. Tampons/feminine pads
83. Tourniquet
84. Advanced first aid equipment that you have been trained to use (ET kit, bone gun, quick clot, injectible medicines, needles and syringes, IV bags, etc)
85. Pen and paper
86. Urine test strips
87. Magnifying glass
88. Tea tree oil
89. Herbs that you have been trained to use (chamomile, lavender, fox glove, etc)
90. Plastic food wrap
91. Sun block cream
92. DEET bug repellent
93. Standard disposable razor
94. Large bandanna (for making a sling)
95. Sterile water pouches
96. Matches/lighter
97. Small dental mirror
98. Dental probe
99. Teething gel
100. A comprehensive first aid class (obviously this doesn't go in the kit but the materials from the class can)

Well that about covers every conceivable medical supply you could use in the field.  While it is a good idea to have as many of these items in your first aid kit as possible, the most important thing you can do in regards to medical emergencies is to take a hands-on first aid class.  Also, practice using these items.  Finally, just because an item is on this list, doesn't mean you should use it unless you know exactly when/where/how to use the item.  For example, and EpiPen can literally be a lifesaver but if it is not used properly, it can have the opposite affect.  Ditto for pescription medications and advanced life support items.

10 Knives Every Prepper Needs to Own

I like knives.  I like tools. And for me, a knife isn't so much a "weapon" but a very useful tool.  It makes sense to own an assortment of knives so that you will have the proper tool for whatever situation arises.  Here are the knives I find most useful:

1. A pocketknife.  I carry my basic pocketknife with me everywhere I go and it comes in handy about once a week for everything from opening boxes to cutting up an apple.
2. A folding buck knife.  I carry this in the dash compartment of my vehicle.  It is more substantial than a pocketknife, with a locking blade for tougher cutting jobs (or in a pinch, personal defense).
3. A fixed-blade knife.  Excellent for hunting.  Ditto for personal defense.
4. A heavy, very sharp, meat cleaver.  Here we are moving into kitchen tools.  I use this knife a lot in the kitchen, especially when chopping a slab of meat down to size.
5. A paring knife.  Another extremely useful kitchen tool for small cutting jobs.
6. An all around kitchen knife.  This is the third of three knives I keep in my kitchen arsenal.  While the spouse seems to like a dozen or more knives for kitchen use, with the three listed above, I am all set for any kind of kitchen duty.
7. A machete or "bolo" knife.  While I have never used this giant-sized knife for defense, plenty of people have.  I use my machete for cleaning up brush outside on occasion.
8. A utility knife.  This type of knife, which uses disposable razor blades for its cutting edge, is super useful for all shop-related cutting purposes.  I keep one on my work bench, one in my tool bag, and one in the kitchen junk drawer.
9. A multi-tool.  This item has a half dozen knife-like implements as well as a bunch of other tools attached to it.  I don't carry this with me as my pocketknife works perfectly well for me but I do keep my Leatherman in by BOB.
10. A very long, very thin Japanese sword.  I keep this, found in my travels abroad, for decoration.  Obviously I could use it for defense if necessary but having exactly no skill at sword fighting, the outcome would be iffy at best.  It does make a nice conversation piece, however.

And three knife rules: keep it cleaned, keep it sharpened, and you get what you pay for in most cases (so don't even think of picking up a knife at the Dollar Store!).

What if You Died Tomorrow?

I have to admit that while I was in the hospital, I had a number of concerns not only about my health but also about what would happen if I got bad news from the test results (when you are staring at four empty walls for hours on end your mind has plenty of time to think about all kinds of distressing things such as needing heart or brain surgery and the unfortunate outcome which could be death or something like it...).  This got me to thinking about what would happen to the spouse if I were to die.  I pride myself on being prepared for everything but still there were concerns because while my information is fairly well organized, I am still the person who takes care of nearly everything in the home when it comes to life business (ie: banking, investments, fixing random home problems and computer problems, taking care of everything from insurance to registering the car, etc).  Here are the things I was thinking about that I will remedy ASAP so that if the worst does happen, at least the spouse will have fewer things to worry about:

• Will, Living Will, Power of Attorney, Medical Power of Attorney.  Everyone should have these documents.  The problem I had with these papers is that they haven't been updated in over a year and thus don't cover our current situation (ie: assets that were named in the Will we no longer have, etc).  Also, these documents are in storage so it would have been difficult for the spouse to grab them at a moment's notice and take them to the hospital if they would have been needed.
• A very specific "If I Die" document.  I was thinking about all of the things that, should I have died, I would have wanted the spouse to know.  So I will write a document that covers everything I can think of.  Some examples: I want to be cremated (the spouse is staunchly Catholic and feels that a proper burial is, well, only proper, whereas I feel the land should be for the living not used by the dead who don't need it any more).  If I am on life support with no hope of recovery I want the spouse to pull the plug (again, we have talked about this but I am afraid the spouse wouldn't do this so I may need to make my wishes known more clearly in my Living Will and with the spouse's sister who I am sure would be on hand in such a situation).  A specific list of websites/blogs/other social media accounts with instructions for how to make a final posting on these sites (the spouse isn't particularly computer savvy so the instructions would have to be pretty well laid out).  Et al.
• I am also thinking of writing up a step by step document, kind of like a check list, of things that would need to be done after I die.  Since I have often worked with people who have had a spouse or child die unexpectedly I know first hand that the last thing they are thinking about is what needs to be done on their or their loved one's behalf because they are too busy grieving.  The checklist would probably be fairly exhaustive and include such things as outlined on this list.
• Then I got to thinking about what things may come up that should probably go to the grave with me.  While the spouse and I have few (that I know of) secrets from each other, there are some things in my past that should probably stay there.  This means that if you have secrets you want kept, they probably shouldn't be delineated on your computer where eventually someone will find them.  Ditto for any written things that shouldn't be found.  Ditto for secret accounts that shouldn't find their way in some form back to you.  In other words, if you have secrets, make sure that they can evaporate once you die and in no way can be traced back to you.
• And finally, a last letter to the spouse saying whatever it is that I want to say.  I am pretty sure that the spouse knows how I feel about, well, most everything, but a final letter seems like a nice thing to do to tie up any loose ends.

Overall, this is a pretty morbid topic but on any given day, you will read in the paper about people who have died unexpectedly (car wreck, shooting, whatever), who probably will have left a loved one behind who will then need to sort out everything at the worst possible time.  It just seems useful that, while we prepare for any other eventuality, we also give some forethought to what would happen if we are no longer here tomorrow.

10 Things I Learned from a Couple of Days in the ER

The last few days were interesting to say the least.  I ended up in the emergency room of my local hospital for a couple of days.  Fortunately everything worked out fine, but I noted quite a few things about said experience that doesn't bode well for TEOTWAWKI--let alone a simple disaster--especially for us prepper types...

1. You read that right, I was in the ER for a couple of DAYS because the hospital didn't have a single room available for admitted patients which left everyone who came through the ER and was admitted to languish in the ER.  Note that most hospitals are overcrowded.
2. This typical ER, on a typical day, in a good sized city was PACKED.  There were patients stacked up everywhere...in rooms, in treatment bays, in hallways, in the ambulance bay.  Over the course of a couple of days I noted that mornings were OK but by mid afternoon, there was a maze of people that health care providers had to traverse just to get form point A to point B.  (So guess what a typical ER will look like after a major disaster...).
3. The food was...barely this side of atrocious.  Food is critical to healing so it kind of shocked me that the food would be so lousy.
4. The patients in this ER were also unpleasant, for lack of a better term.  There were plenty of "normal" people but there were also plenty who were: whacked out on drugs, obviously mentally ill, had their own police escort/were handcuffed to their bed/had a police guard, sounded (and looked!) contagious, had illnesses of indeterminate nature, had a range of illnesses and injuries...it was basically a petri dish of social and medical issues that one probably wouldn't want to be around if one had a choice.
5. Medical care doesn't come quickly.  Because there were so many people and a limited amount of staff and diagnostic tools, everyone had to wait in line for everything--to be admitted, to get a room, to see a doctor, to have blood work done, to have an MRI or CAT scan, etc.
6. Medical care doesn't come cheaply.  Fortunately I have insurance but I am guessing my little stay there cost upwards of $10,000.  I had five specialists peek in on me and I am sure each one will send my insurance company a hefty bill, and none actually did anything save for ask me repetitive questions...at this point they didn't even have any diagnostic tests to consult!  But they all got their patient visit in for billing purposes.
7. The staff is overworked (12 hour shifts were typical...who wants to have a nurse on hour 11?) and the hospital appeared to be short staffed.  I am not sure if this is due to budgetary reasons or due to lack of staff available to be hired but it impacts patient care and it impacts the quality of the environment (ie: the few restrooms for patients in the ER were rarely cleaned...the perfect place to spread germs in an environment where you really don't want that to happen).
8. Emergency room care is good for specific medical emergencies like trauma.  When you are an ER doctor, everything looks like a heart attack or stroke.  They ruled out these two options for me so I ended up leaving with the same symptoms I arrived with.  ER care is very good for trauma injuries--the docs are great at seeing body parts that are out of place and putting them back  in place--but not so much for non-specific medical problems.
9. You are pretty much on your own so prepare accordingly.  The BOB came in handy when I ended up staying overnight for what I thought would be a brief visit.  If I needed something I went in search of it myself since the staff was so busy (note that people who aren't so ambulatory should bring someone with them to the ER to help them out). You may get lost in the shuffle so speak up if necessary (the nurse said I was "up next" for a MRI and six hours later she was surprised I hadn't been called yet; when it was time to be discharged I stuck to the nurse like glue so I could sign out quicker instead of waiting hidden--and forgotten--in my room).
10. If you have a medical issue, do seek medical treatment quickly.  With somewhat of a medical background and some research online I was fairly certain what my problem was (actually a problem shared by hundreds online yet without a definitive diagnosis) so I went in kind of already knowing what the outcome would be BUT with high-tech diagnostic equipment available, it would have been stupid of me to eschew such medical care just because I had used Google and came to a conclusion about my problem.  Of course the problem could have been something serious so if you have a problem it behooves you to seek competent medical advice and testing no matter what Google says.

Overall, this was an eye-opening experience since I have actually never been sick, other than a self-treated cold or flu, in my entire life.  Never a broken bone, stitches, any sort of medical tests, etc. so I will chalk this up as a learning experience (and a reminder that during a disaster, medical care may end up being a do-it-yourself sort of thing for all but the most major problems).

Should You Relocate?

I got an email today from a reader who was just checking in to see where we were these days and as I emailed a response back to him, it got me to thinking about our relocation plan.
Actually, when we sold the house a little over a year ago, there wasn't so much a 'relocation' plan but a 'let's try a different lifestyle' plan.  I was done with the 40+ hour work weeks, the big house and yard that needed maintaining, the lousy winter weather in Seattle, and the everyday bills that came along with just living.  We hit the road and there were a lot of benefits (like free room and board from friends and relatives for nearly a year, reducing our income by about 75%, reducing our monthly bills by nearly 90%, getting the opportunity to live for a little while in places we could have considered relocating to, a massive reduction in stress both work and people related, the opportunity to travel, and the opportunity to have loads of free time). 
There were also some draw-backs (like living out of a suitcase, not being able to "connect" to the community because we were in each location for very short periods of time, and not having a "home" to come home to).
Fast forward to today where we have pretty much determined that our home base will be Las Vegas.  There are definitely some drawback to living here (it's mostly just city with a lot of city problems, the summer weather is, well, HOT, there are very few natural resources, I like greenery and mountains and rivers and fishing and hunting and things like that, and in a major disaster you have a city that can barely support itself with things such as water and electricity, not to mention the hordes of tourists that tend to descend on the city year-round).
But there are many positive things about living here too: buying a house here is CHEAP (about 1/4 the cost of a similar house in Seattle), there is close proximity to an international airport as we tend to travel a lot, I will definitely be looking into using solar energy in my house (not possible in Seattle), since most of the people we visit live in northern climes, that will give us a good excuse to head north in the summer, the cost of living is cheaper here (everything from gas prices to food prices to entertainment, etc), I will get the opportunity to explore the desert--a very different environment than I am used to, we don't need to work here as we have sufficient retirement and investment income (Las Vegas is a lousy place to move to if you need a good paying job), the state has very liberal gun laws which is a good thing (and Front Sight is just down the road!), and I will get to "start over" so to speak with my community involvement (which was fairly overwhelming in Seattle as I belonged to more than a dozen organizations).
So the bottom line in regards to "should you relocate" is, it depends.  Relocating can be a boon to some people (better weather, possibly better jobs, and either further or nearer to family...depending on which you prefer) but it can also be challenging (pulling up stakes can be difficult and complicated, resettling can be the same, getting your bearings in a new place takes time...).  It pays to take ALL factors into consideration too; I wouldn't pick a place solely on the basis of planning for TEOTWAWKI (or solely on the basis of any other single factor for that matter).   Obviously I have some concerns about living in a place such as Las Vegas should TSHTF, but of course there are always ways to mitigate this problem which I shall explore as we go along.