dimanche 30 octobre 2011

Am I becoming a Preppie, with my BOB,BOV and BOL ?

I have been reading about BVs, BOBs, BOLs for WTSHTF (when the s... Hits the Fan), i.e. a major disaster resulting in having to leave quickly - to Bug Out. I know where we live we will probably be Bugging In, as we are in a self sufficient (or could be) situation. Ray Mears is my hero, I love his programmes and films for the scenery mainly, but living on few resources and your own skills and knowledge in a crisis situation has always interested me. In the USA it seems to be big business with loads of blogs, mainly by guys, about Bugging Out and survival. I am not knocking these blogs and related sites as there is a wealth of information on them, but the selling side of things I can avoid. A great deal of these sites cater for people bugging out to the Wilderness and surviving on berries, living in home made shelters and fishing with the basic items brought with them in a tobacco sized tin, in an Every Day Carry bag with concealed weapons, but what about the townies, people in big cities or in the suburbs. The Wilderness is not very close to Wimbledon, and in the UK we cannot legally carry guns and machetes! Where would we have bugged out to if we had still been living in the UK? Some of the blogs/sites cater for suburban and city Bugging Out, but not all, remember the chaos after Hurricane Katerina and the length of time it took before some people were rescued. We have already had to survived being cut off several times here by floods and snow. The last time we were cut off for 4 days with no electricity, no phone, no mobile phone and out only way out was by tractor as the snowplough had effectively compounded our situation, had we needed to get out, by ploughing past our exit onto the main road and piling up the snow. We are lucky, we had stores of food and the building is a watermill with a well, and we had prepared when things started to look bad, by filling the bath with water etc, taking a shovel inside, propping the main door shutter open a bit as they open out and snowdrifts could block us. We have a wood burning stove and loads of cut wood which we brought inside before the snow was 2ft high, found the candles, filled up all the oil lamps. In a way we were prepared and survived with a lot of humor. The mayor and a councillor walked the kilometer from the village in a blizzard to see if we were OK on the third day, I was a little concerned about there being no form of external contact whatsoever for so long in case one of us had been ill etc. and it would have been difficult to walk out (add snow racquets to our list for this year). Having a Bug Out bag has always been sensible to me, I have always had a 'Hospital Bag' packed and ready to go, with a list of all my medications, wash stuff, my medical history written in French (husband does not speak much french), some money, etc. The bag is located in view where my husband can find it, this 'HB' came about after I was rushed into hospital in the UK and my husband ran around like a headless chicken, and a day later brought in a large black plastic bin bag stuffed with T shirts and socks some of which were dirty, no wash things. The riots and looting in the UK were terrible this year, but think how they would have been compounded had the reason for them been survival, and not just looting designer jeans and trainers after, for example a 4 day cut off from power, no food deliveries, no fresh water being pumped and no money from cash machines, no petrol in the pumps, many people shop from day to day and have no stores and there would be no fresh water, surviving a major disaster would be much harder in a town. During the Athens earthquake in 1981 my friend and I rushed out of her basement flat terrified, and spent the next two nights under tarpaulins and tents in a nearby park, it was cold even in Athens in February and would have been more bearable if we had had a Bug Out Bag to take with us, we did however, soften the hardship by consuming rather large amounts of Metaxa brandy. I picked up some very useful ideas from these US sites and blogs am now in the process of making up a decent Bug Out Bag and improved first aid kit for the house and both the vehicles. One of the best ideas/necessities I am preparing now is to scan all valuable documents, deeds, ID, driving licence, heath number, family photos, etc. onto a 4Gb USB key to carry with me at all times, together with a list of contact numbers for family and friends. The torrential rain this week set me off on this new obsession........Be Prepared, Dib, Dib, Dib......... www.faliaphotography.com a woman on her own in a van, is the site I stumbled upon while researching camper vans, which started me linking to other survival sites that she lists. http://survivalgoddess.blogspot.com http://youtu.be/DOo9bjLtL3Q this will frighten you, so what is the point of storing stuff