Travel Thoughts

Yesterday was the first time I had traveled on an airplane since the Christmas Day scare where a guy tried to blow up a plane with chemicals he had in his underwear (wonder who thought up that idea...). Anyway, here's some thoughts

• The security lines were LONG. Much longer than a couple months previous so be ready to stand in line for quite a while. The lines did move along fairly rapidly but it took about 25 minutes to clear the security checkpoint and be on our way to the gate.
• Travel with one bag. I make it a point to ALWAYS travel with only one carry on bag unless I am bringing supplies and need the extra 50 or 100 pounds that checked luggage allows. It is much easier to travel with only one bag to keep track of and getting into and out of the airport is much easier than schlepping two or three huge bags. If you really need another dress shirt at your destination, you can always buy one there.
• The only down side to airline travel is that I can't bring a firearm or knife with me. Obviously you can check these items if you really need to have them when you land. If I will need a knife, I often buy one in whatever city I land in then leave it as a gift to my host when I leave their city. I will occasionally check a firearm if I will need it at my destination (shooting events). Carrying a concealed firearm in a different city will require a bit of research so you can stay on the right side of the law. Bringing a firearm to a foreign country is much more hassle than it is worth--in these circumstances, I will hire protection before I will carry my own firearm to protect myself.
• Security at the airport, I thought, was less than stellar, especially when I went through the first check where they match your ID against your boarding pass. The lady looked at my ID and boarding pass, stamped it, then passed me along. Meanwhile the spouse was behind me with a boarding pass with my name on it and it took this little incident for the agent to realize that she had looked at my ID and the spouse's boarding pass then let me through. Duh.
• Checking in online is always a good idea. This along with carrying one bag will allow you to bypass the long lines at check in and go straight to the gate.
• Info that is always good to have with you: phone numbers for your destination (taxi company, hotel phone number, contact phone numbers, etc). When traveling overseas, you always want to carry phone numbers to contact companies that you would otherwise reach with a 1-800 number (banks, credit card companies, etc) as 1-800 phone numbers are only usable in the US.
• Check weather.com before you leave for information on your destination. And the corollary, be prepared for anything. We were supposed to have snow at our destination but all we ended up with was bright sunshine.
• Allow plenty of time when you travel. Getting connectingflights too close together, making appointments with clients for the minute you are (theoretically) supposed to land, and otherwise squeezing your schedule as tightly as possible is way too stressful. Leave plenty of time between connections, between appointments, and between events in order to keep the stress level down.

8 Thing I Am Doing This Week (Preparedness Related)

It's been a busy week thus the lack of posts. Here's what I am doing and how these things are related to preparedness...

1. Getting ready to travel across the country to visit my son who will be heading to Afghanistan within the next couple of months. Building family unity is always important as is lending support to all of our men and women in the military.
2. Volunteering with the Homeless Count tomorrow. This is a nationwide activity that surveys the homeless one day each year. I got talked into volunteering with this project last year and it was truly enlightening. Survival skills are what the homeless are all about and I always learn more from these people than what they learn from me.
3. Gearing up for a full-scale exercise in a couple of months. This is a high level disaster preparedness exercise which is always full of lessons learned (but which requires lots and lots of planning and coordination).
4. Am marginally concerned about a news clip this evening about a whole bunch of fertilizer that was stolen today. For those who don't know how fertilizer can be used in the wrong hands, note the destruction that 5000 pounds of fertilizer did in Oklahoma City. Not good, especially considering the winter Olympics are getting ready to start next month just north of here.
5. Exercising. Actually I should be exercising more as I have a marathon in April, a 175 mile bike ride in July, possibly a Canada to Mexico bike ride in August, and a recent invitation from a friend in Japan to do a two month trek around one of the islands there. Exercise is always a good step towards better preparedness. This may be too much of a good thing.
6. Evangelizing the need for everyone to have basic preparedness supplies on hand. The Haiti earthquake provided yet another "teachable moment" which emphasized the need to have even the most basic of emergency supplies on hand because after a disaster it will be too late to acquire these items. By show of hands at a recent meeting (of well educated people on the periphery of disaster planning) less than half of the group had BOBs or emergency supply bags in their home, office, and car. I was thoroughly amazed that these people didn't have BASIC emergency supplies. Ayayay
7. Looking forward to meeting up with friends who have been in Haiti providing disaster response and medical services. The stories from these people, after having responded to disasters around the world, is better than any information you can find in books and how-to disaster manuals.
8. Craigslisting and eBaying stuff. Between me and my goal of downsizing stands a whole lot of stuff taking up space in the garage. One of the best ways to get rid of all of this unneeded stuff and make some money to add to the emergency fund is to sell it. Which is what I am doing.

Hiding Your Stuff

The Haiti earthquake pointed out a number of things that people need to consider during a disaster, everything from the difficulty of procuring fresh water to the need for emergency medical care when there isn't any to be had.

One of the most disturbing news stories about how people react after a disaster was a short blurb in the newspapers about desperate people using force to loot food and water from orphanages in Haiti's capital. Orphanages! People--adults--who are hungry and thirsty were actually taking food and water away from children by force. Hard to believe but then again, when people's world goes to hell in a handbasket, there is no telling what desperate people will do. Which brings us to the point of this blog post...if you want to be able to keep your stuff after a disaster, you are going to need to be able to hide it.

Take this time now, when there is no urgent need, to plan what you could do with your important stuff (food, water, cash, gold, tools, guns, etc) to hide it and protect it from the marauding masses in the event of a disaster. Right now, you probably couldn't even imagine that your friends, neighbors, and even strangers would see that you have something they desperately want (this could be something as simple as water or a can of Spam) and use force to take it from you. But then again, right now, these people are happily complacent with food and water of their own. Should the situation change, all bets are off.

You may think that you will protect yourself, your family, and your stuff with force if necessary. After all, you have a nice stockpile of firearms along with your prudently thought out supply of food and water, but there is only one of you, you will have a limited supply of ammo, and you will need to sleep sometime.

Here are some things to consider:

• Think about how you could make a buried cache. Obviously you will need to remember where you buried your stash of supplies and you will also have to consider its location (ie: you don't want to place it where development could inadvertently dig up your stuff). You need to make sure that the elements (water, vermin, etc) can not get to your stuff, and that it is easy enough to retrieve your stuff when you need to get it.
• How can you spread your stuff out so you don't have one huge stash of stuff that could be easily looted. Stores make great places to loot after a disaster because there are shelves and shelves of goods just sitting there. It would be a very different situation if people had to go from place to place to acquire only a can or two--it may not be worth their effort.
• Look around your house. After a disaster you don't want your place (home or BOL) to look like the Taj Mahal when everyone else has nothing. How can you make you place look, as a friend says, like a Romanian orphanage--very sparse and bleak--when you actually have all of the stuff you need to survive for quite a good long time? If no one has electricity and your house it lit up like a Christmas tree, this will bring people to your door. If people don't have heat and you have a nice bonfire going complete with lots of smoke signaling your location, how will you conceal this? If people break into your garage, will they see walls and walls of food? How about if you have false walls that can conceal your stuff and hidden space in the attic in which to store the stuff you want to keep away from others? The idea is to make your place to look like every other place so you don't draw unnecessary attention to yourself, even though you may have enough stuff to weather a nuclear winter. You want to look like you are in the same situation as everyone else.
• Some of the basics for hiding your stuff: you want hiding places that aren't very obvious. You want an easy way to store your stuff in these hiding places or you may get lazy and not use the places because of the difficulty of access. You want places that won't be inadvertently disturbed (if you hide gold in the lining of an old jacket and the spouse donates it to the Goodwill you're going to have a problem). You want a place where you can un-cache your stuff without bringing much attention to yourself. You want to practice caching and un-cashing your stuff; the more easily and inconspicuously you can do this, the better.
• Keep your caches secret, even from the kids. Hopefully you can trust your spouse and if anything ever happens to you at least the spouse will know where your caches are but your kids are a different story. They often talk with their friends, tell them secrets, and can inadvertently spill the info on your caches which could come back to haunt you. Don't tell your friends or family either. If and when you need to help them, you can, but bragging about your stash of food/firearms/cash will bring you nothing but trouble.
• Get creative. With some caveats. While it would be nice to post a list of locations that would make great places to stash your stuff, once this is done it becomes the looters handbook, which is why you will see articles about caching your stuff, but you won't see much specific info about where you should do this. So it is up to you to get creative and come up with your own cache locations. I would warn against caching your stuff in dangerous locations (ie: anywhere around water, electricity, extreme heights, etc) because while it may deter the looters, it could injure or kill you.

It is hard to think that all of your hard earned preps which you have taken care (and cash) to develop, could be taken away when you most need them. While I am not saying that you shouldn't use force to protect what is yours, using force should be your last resort for a variety of reasons. It is much better to blend in with everyone else, hide what you have, bring out what you need in small quantities so as not to bring attention to yourself, and save yourself the problems associated with defending large supplies of stuff that everyone else wants to get their hands on. After all, if people will take food from starving orphans, they would probably think nothing of doing this to you.

Your 'Go To Hell' Fund

You've heard about the importance of having an emergency fund. Hopefully yours is nicely topped off and is of sufficient amount to cover about six month's worth of living expenses should the need arise.
After you have a fully funded emergency fund, your next pile of savings should be aptly named your "go to hell" fund. What is this fund for? Simply, it gives you the ability to tell your employer/professors/significant other/etc to "to go hell" should the need arise.
While your emergency fund should only come into play during an actual emergency (job loss, emergency car repairs, the fridge dies, etc), your "go to hell" fund can be used in the following situations:

• You hate your job and literally can't survive another day at work. An immediate sabbatical is called for.
• You need a (possibly permanent) break from your significant other and are willing to take the next plane to anywhere to accomplish this.
• You come upon a once in a lifetime opportunity and after careful consideration, determine that it is something that you want to throw your money at (it may be a business opportunity, a classic car, a can't-miss investment, etc).
• You realize you just spent the better part of your undergraduate life (and a huge chunk of your parent's money) to work towards a degree in a field that you recently decided you would never want to work in. You hear the siren call of trade school...

Anyway, you get the idea. To develop this fund, you will first want to determine the amount of money that you want to have in this fund (a range of $5,000 to $50,000 seems like a good amount). Next you want to build this fund as quickly as possible--sell stuff, get an extra job, put all "found" money (birthday checks, rebates, etc) into it. A huge amount of drive and momentum will do wonders to get this account filled up fast so that when the mood strikes, you can simply say "go to hell" and be able to back up such words with cold, hard cash.

10 Things to Do When You Get Laid Off

I was pondering this post earlier today after talking to a woman who will soon be laid off from her job. I was actually surprised to see her at a meeting today because I though her company was doing their layoffs last week. I asked her what her plans were and she had no idea. She asked if I had any ideas so I am working on a plan for her which will better package her skills and generate some income for her.
Then the spouse came home tonight with a layoff notice. Talk about hitting home. Fortunately for us, the spouse only works very part time earning "fun money" and enough to cover the groceries. The impact, however, of being laid off, was not wasted on both of us.
So while we will be reorganizing our budget a bit and working on some projects to keep the spouse busy and possibly replace some of the income that has been lost, I am a whole lot more concerned with the woman I spoke to today along with her co worker who is also slated to be laid off and the loss of their six figure incomes which will no doubt impact them and their families severely.

Here's ten things to do when you get laid off:

1. See being laid off as an opportunity to make some much needed changes in your life. While most people will have a panic attack then a pity party, I have never, in my entire life, been fired or laid off without having an even better opportunity come along. In fact, that's how the spouse broke the news this evening..."you know how you always say that things happen for a reason..." This has always been my motto and painful things usually work out fairly well given time.
2. Apply for unemployment. Pronto. You pay into the unemployment system with every paycheck deduction so you might as well make a withdrawal from the system when you need it.
3. Give yourself a day to digest the situation then call a family meeting. There is no shame in losing your job. It happens to many people and with a current national unemployment rate hovering around 10%, one in ten people is currently experiencing this sort of situation. Announce to the family that you have lost your job then enlist everyone's help in dealing with the situation. The psychological impact of the main family breadwinner losing their job can be fairly substantial, however this is what family is for, to help YOU through a tough time just like you always help them.
4. Next, take a look at the family budget. With everyone's input cut back as much as possible on non essentials and make other reasonable budget cuts. Review every single expense and look at ways to make cuts (can you switch to garbage service every other week instead of weekly? Is it a prudent idea to drop full coverage from you oldest car instead of carrying full coverage on it?) Through this group process, no one in the family will be surprised when eating out is suddenly cut to never and going to the mall doesn't come with a withdrawal from the bank of dad.
5. After you have pared back the budget, it is time to make money to provide the funds to see you through this period of unemployment. Turn over every rock to do this--are you owed vacation pay, sick pay, or a severance package from your former job? Now that you don't have to go to work, scour the house from top to bottom both cleaning the house (a mood lifter) and gather stuff to sell via eBay, Craigslist, or a garage sale. You don't need to get rid of everything but most of us have plenty of junk laying around that we don't want/use/need. Also, pick up side jobs if possible. Check Craigslist for gigs. Pay attention--if a friend complains about their worn carpet and you can resurrect your college job carpet laying skills, offer to put in new carpet for a reasonable fee.
6. Reevaluate your life. This might be tough to do when you have just lost your job and are verging on panic, but take this opportunity to decide what you want to do with your life. Do you want to find a job in the same industry you just go laid off from? Did you secretly hate your job and now have the opportunity to do something totally different? Do you want to try your hand at being self employed?
7. Get active. Now that you have the time, exercise. It is a mood lifter, a definite bonus for your health, and it's free. Put on a pair of tennis shoes and get walking or jogging if you prefer. Pick a different route each day which may open up possibilities (ie: new work ideas or opportunities).
8. Volunteer. As long as you aren't doing anything, you might as well make yourself useful. Find a volunteer gig or two in your community, doing something you enjoy. Many people have picked up additional job skills as well as made valuable contacts in the community by doing this.
9. Make big decisions if needed. You may have to sell your house. You may need to move to another area where there is a market for your skills. You may need to get some scholarships together and go back to college (note I didn't say get into massive student loan debt to go back to college). You may need to cut off your freeloading adult children/various relatives you have been supporting when the money was flowing in.
10. Make a plan. Will it be a full court press to market yourself to find a job similar to what you lost? If so, you need to polish your resume, call every person you have ever met to see if they can help you find a job, polish up your job skills, and start looking everywhere for a job. If you decide to start your own business, you will need a plan in order to launch your new venture. Going back to school? Stop by the college guidance office tomorrow and get an idea of what you need to do to get started.

Now here are five things NOT to do when you lose your job:

1. Don't keep it a secret. People can't help you if they don't know you need help. I have heard of quite a few people who were so ashamed about losing their jobs that they pretend to go to work every morning just so the family and the neighbors wouldn't know what happened. Don't even start with this kind of charade.
2. Don't go on vacation because you need the break. This is also a way that people deal with stressful situations but running away and running up your credit cards when you can least afford to do so is a really bad idea.
3. Don't live on credit cards for months on end in order to keep the same standard of living that you have always had. If you have no income coming in, how will you pay off these credit card debts?? Better to ratchet back your spending to hardly nothing and even go to a food bank if you are hungry rather than going shopping with credit cards until they are maxed out--this will only shove you into a deeper depression when the creditors start calling.
4. Don't give up. After the punch in the gut feeling that comes with being laid off, some people want to stay in bed and watch TV talk shows all day rather than face the world. While this is understandable, it isn't very practical. Get up, get moving, and get creative. The answer to your problems will not land on your door step, you need to go out, hunt it down, kill it, and drag it back home.
5. Don't not accept a job because it is "beneath you." If you don't have a job, you need to get one. They say it is easier to find a job when you are employed so you might as well take any job you can find just to get some cash rolling in as you continue to look for a better job.

Well, that's about all I know about job loss, having been laid off a couple of times and fired more than that (seems I don't play well with others sometimes...). Maybe our readers have some more ideas...?

Haiti Update (News You Can Use)

If you have been listening to the news today, you will know that most of it revolves around the unfolding situation in Haiti. Here's some news you can use:

• People were noted to have been looting toothpaste from the stores. Not to brush their teeth with but to put on their skin under their noses to cover up the stench of rotting bodies.
• The gunfire has started. People were pretty much in shock the first few days but now they are getting desperate. Looters are out in full force, other people seem to be taking on the looters, and some are even using guns. Note that this happens in many disasters and plan accordingly.
• People are now sick with infections. The longer an infection goes, the more likely the person will die. Note the need to have antibiotics in these kinds of situations.
• Relief is slowly trickling into the city but the outlying areas have received no help at all. Plan accordingly.
• Medical care is sparse, even with medical teams on the ground. There are so many sick and injured people that they overwhelm the small number of medical providers. Supplies are taking even longer to get to those in need. There is no equipment to help treat the injured (ie: no x ray machines, using rusty saws to perform amputations, etc).
• Amputation is the order of the day due to lack of medical care, infections, broken and crushed bones, no antibiotics, and few other medical supplies. Imagine, you break your leg today and you go to the hospital today to get your broken limb fixed. Even difficult breaks can be fixed in the OR. In Haiti this isn't happening. Many people have went for days without treatment, there are no Xray machines to identify the exact problem, and parents are deciding if they want their children to be amputees or to die from infection.
• Some people are self-deploying to the country to help. Even though people want to be there to help, it is not a good idea to just send yourself. Organized teams (Red Cross, the military, Medical Teams International, etc) are the way to go as the teams make provisions for your food and water (you don't want to be a burden on an already overburdened system), they will confirm your skills and place you in the area of most need, and they will support your mission whereas just bringing yourself will leave you on your own, unwelcome and unsupported.

There are thousands of lessons to be learned from this disaster. Watch the news, find out what's happening, ask yourself "what if", and plan accordingly.

$10 Earthquake Preps

The coverage of the earthquake in Haiti is continuing. There are numerous lessons to be learned from that disaster, of course, but the main lesson to consider: as of tomorrow, it will be a week since the earthquake struck. Aid is just barely starting to come into the country, most of the people still do not have food, water, or shelter, and the injured are still waiting for care.
After such a complete disaster people feel helpless, both to help the people who were directly affected by the earthquake and to help themselves better prepare for something that looks so utterly catastrophic. Which brings me to the point of this post...
You may not be able to help people who have suffered such a disaster and it is a crap shoot whether #1 an earthquake will strike your area and/or #2 how you will fare physically after such an event, but you can take this opportunity, and the $10 in your pocket, and put together a basic "earthquake kit" from your local Dollar Store. Here's what you need to buy:

• A bottle of bleach. After an earthquake, ALL of the water in the immediate area will be contaminated. The only hope you may have of procuring water to drink is to find a local source of water and using the bleach to decontaminate it yourself.
• A tarp. After an earthquake, it is a pretty good bet that you won't be sleeping in your house for a while, if it isn't totally destroyed, the aftershocks will keep you from staying inside for long. A basic tarp to keep the rain or sun off of you may be your only shelter.
• A flashlight. If you have ever been in a city when ALL of the power went out, you will know that it can become eerily dark where there was before at least street lights or the glow from traffic signals. Whether you need to see at night or you end up searching for loved ones in the rubble, a flashlight is very important.
• Matches or lighters. You may need a source of fire which can be useful for boiling water, cooking what food you can find, sending a signal for help, etc. Without matches or a lighter how will you get the fire started? Don't worry about finding materials to burn, after an earthquake, there will be wood, rubble, and other burnable stuff everywhere.
• Rope. Rope or para cord has dozens of uses. From hanging up clothes you have washed by hand to be bleached and disinfected by the sun, to tying up your tarp, to helping you ford a stream, or escape from a building, a rope can come in pretty handy during a disaster.
• A small radio. A small AM/FM radio may be your only source of outside information. While hardly anyone listens to a regular radio these days because there are so many alternatives (satellite radio, iPods, etc), the only way to access real time info after a disaster is usually via radio broadcast.
• Work gloves. After an earthquake (and most other disasters) one of the first tasks at hand will be to start the clean up and/or search for others who are trapped. Using your bare hands for these tasks can significantly shorten the amount of work you will be able to do. Having a pair of work gloves on hand is always a good idea.
• A breaker bar. If you have done any home rehab work, you know how important a breaker bar can be. During a disaster, they are also quite useful. From giving you some leverage to move heavy rocks to using it to break windows, and dozens of other uses, a breaker bar should make it into your emergency equipment bag.
• Soap or hand sanitizer. One of the reasons that emergency workers are so concerned after a disaster is because of the spread of disease. Disease spreads easily in unsanitary conditions. One of the easiest ways to stop or significantly curtail the spread of disease (besides drinking disinfected water) is to wash your hands frequently. If you have a scrape or cut, clean it with soap and water; after you go to the bathroom, wash your hands with soap or hand sanitizer. These simple things will go a long way towards keeping you disease free.
• Pick one: first aid kit, knife, duct tape, ax, big garage bags... As you are cruising through the Dollar Store, use your last dollar to pick another useful item to add to your supplies.

Here's a couple of caveats. First, I wouldn't recommend buying supplies at the Dollar Store that you are using to save your life. The idea is that even if you are flat broke, you could probably scrape together $10 to spend on emergency supplies and if you have no choice but to shop at the Dollar Store, the small cache of emergency supplies (of questionable quality) is better than not having anything at all. Second, your list of emergency supplies should encompass more than ten items, however, again, if you do not currently have the cash, or ability store more than a few things, it is better to have a handful of useful items than to have nothing at all.

Go out TODAY and get some basic preparedness gear together...you never know when your city will be the lead on the evening news.