Surviving In Troubled Waters

Today is September 18, 2017 and Hurricane Maria and Tropical Storm Lee are now following a course similar to Hurricane Irma. For those of you who are on the fence when it comes to preparing for disaster, this is your wake up call! The islands have been devastated and are going to be battered again in perhaps a week. What is going on!? Global warming is making the waters better able to create these mega storms and this might very well be what we have to look forward to in the years to come. It is simply good common sense to prepare. Those of you who have listened to my Blog Talk Radio show “Surviving the Days Ahead”, have already heard me assert that our world has been moved out of its normal orbit and our axis is changed some what as well. This is adding to the greenhouse effect and the hole in the ozone, making our planet heat up even faster. This means that we have perhaps 50-100 years before it is too hot to live above ground on this planet. Oceans are already rising as our ice caps melt. This also means that our weather patterns will be unpredictable and probably more violent. As the sun gets closer or we get closer to it, the sunlight will be noticeably brighter and much stronger. This means that we must protect our eyes with sunglasses even in the cooler months. Sunscreen is a must, also, for those who are outside . Even people of color will find it possible to burn more quickly than before. I have not seen the statistics but I suspect that skin cancer rates are on the rise. In fact, add sunscreen and dark glasses to your list of supplies! They are both a very good idea.

Don’t Take Water for Granted

On one of the previous blogs, I spoke of the need for a minimum of 1 gallon of water per day per person. This is not nearly enough for most of us, because we have become accustomed to having all of the water that we want in most areas of the USA. The oceans are rising but soon we will find that waters are lower because the global warming also means a higher rate of evaporation. I have watched lakes and streams become lower now for several years. In drought prone areas, there are lakes that are nearly dry. We have to become aware and accepting of the fact that water is not something to take for granted. In areas of our globe which are arid, such as the Mid-East, it is normal to use brushes to clean themselves instead of soap and water. There simply isn’t enough water to do it any other way. Water is life for everyone. Food and water are the two common denominators of life everywhere.

Water Storage is One of the Most Important Preparations

When amassing your survival stash of supplies, storing water is one of the most important considerations. You can buy expensive drums or fill gallon bottles with tap water, planning to boil and disinfect it with water purification tablets before using it. If you do that, make sure that the bottles are made of food grade plastic. You don’t want plastic esters or other chemicals leaching into your water. One product that I recommended for our supply stash is called the Water BOB. It is a long plastic SINGLE USE bottle or bag, that fills in your entire bath tub. It fills by the bath tub tap, has a pump to pump out water as you need it, and has another port (I think) to empty it. It has a 100 gallon capacity. It cost approximately $25.00. Well, the other day, I tried to purchase one and found that Amazon was out of them and on Ebay, they were selling $60.00 to $260.00 for one! These are thin single use items and I see this as price gouging that is shameful. The 50 gallon blue plastic drums are around $50.00 but two of them makes more sense. After all, they are reusable. It is when times are hard, during approaching storms or other disasters that we should be helping one another, not scalping ! If the company wants that $200.00, they should make them refillable and more durable, so they can be reused. We must help one another as family, not try to make a fast buck on someone else’s misfortune. I suspect that it was not the original company that brought this about, but people who purchased them for their supplies, and then decided to cash in , selling them to people who were panicked and in the path of Irma or Harvey. Karma is a very real thing, and one day price gougers may have the same thing happen to them. That really is how it works.