Sunday, March 29, 2020

How is Life Going So Far?

For us, so far, the coronavirus, has been kind of a non-issue.  Of course it has interrupted our usual daily activities such as going to a casino, playing in poker games, hitting up the occasional restaurant for a meal, or dropping into a store and shopping, but for many preppers, as outlined in this article, being prepared means there is no reason to panic and freak out, even when there is a world-wide pandemic going on.

Having a good stockpile of food, water, and consumables means that when people are panic shopping, you can sit back and watch and be thankful you aren't one of them.  Being debt free and having multiple sources of income means that when people are worrying about how they are going to pay their rent next week, you aren't worried.  Of course, ideally, I would like to be living 100% off the grid and fully self sufficient right now which would put us in an even better position, but over all, the years of prepping have served us pretty well.

Right now our best course of action is to stay home, lay low, and let the disaster blow over at some future date.  We don't want to add to the chaos at grocery stores, we (hopefully) don't want to be taking up space in a hospital and on a ventilator, and we don't want to be a financial/emotional burden on our children, friends, or relatives.  Of course we are doing what we can, from a distance, to help out others whether that means calling elderly shut-in relatives and friends to check on them and cheer them up or providing a little financial help to some of the kids who needed it, but being prepared means that you are both not a burden to yourself in a disaster situation (I swear some people are going to die of stress before the coroanvirus even gets to them) and you are not a burden to others and "the system".

Hopefully your years of prepping have had a similar outcome and you are sitting much more comfortably in the midst of disaster than people who didn't prepare.  But of course there are many lessons learned here, even for hard-core preppers, which will be enumerated in future posts.

2 comments:

  1. Glad to hear you're doing well, this blog has been a valuable source of advice over the years.

    I'll be interested to read the follow-up posts regarding lessons to be learnt. For me it's probably to keep a larger supply of food and water - a month's supply seemed reasonable before, but in a situation like this where the timeframe is uncertain, it's a balance between eating into supplies and grocery shopping. As a younger, healthy person the risk should be relatively low for me this time (touch wood!), but it's not hard to imagine a similar scenario where that's not the case.

    Other than that though it's been comfortable so far, and having preparations tested in this way is a valuable experience. And I know family and friends have also benefited from my preparedness, so once again thanks for all the advice you have provided.

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    1. Thanks! I think most people have been prepping for a limited scale disaster like a Hurricane Katrina event where there was always an option to leave the area completely and/or hunker down for a limited time. The speed with which this pandemic came on along with no viable option to bug out to a safer place since there really is no "better place" will definitely inform my prepping in the future.

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