Cool, chance of rain in the national forecast.
Beautiful day yesterday. Just awesome. Clear, relatively cool, and fairly dry.
I got some stuff done in the driveway before losing the light.
Before that, I was out foraging and getting stuff from my secondary location with my 10 yo. It gave us a lot of time to talk about preps. She’s anxious, and I hoped that by showing her the depth of prepping I’ve done, she’d be reassured. It’s the first time I’ve shared the extent of some of my preps with anyone. My wife doesn’t go anywhere near my secondary location. It made the whole thing very real to be showing someone stuff I hadn’t before, and making her aware of stuff that even my wife doesn’t completely know about.
And while I feel better about our ability to live through a ‘shelter in place’ or lockdown, the vast majority of people will be in real trouble pretty quickly. Unlike a hurricane, there isn’t anyone coming from outside the zone. It’s really a question of shifting from a mindset and expectation of abundance to one of resource constraints. If it all goes to hell, we’re just not getting more stuff for a while.
I know that US citizens and illegals will not calmly undergo the kind of restrictions Chinese are suffering from. The FSA will be out in force by the third day with empty stores. The fires will start soon after that, and it won’t be irregular .gov squads burning plague houses. No one here will be welding shut apartment building doors. We’ve got guns.
My daughter is really struggling with the idea that we probably won’t be helping anyone and that her friends likely aren’t prepping. I keep emphasizing that they’ve had the same opportunities we had, and made different choices. And that every thing we give away decreases our ability to survive. We’ve also talked about when and how we COULD help people and that I have put up stuff specifically for that. She gets it that we can’t help everyone, and that all of our stuff will vanish in minutes if we tried, and then we’d have none and most of the people would STILL not have anything. But she’s really worried about her friends. I am too, but for different reasons. I know she’s mentioned our prepping before. I’m worried they’ll remember. She is under orders not to talk about it anymore, and I think she understands how dire it could get.
It’s a lot for a 10yo to deal with but I need her to both cooperate, and understand why she can’t talk about it.
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There’s always more to do.
-make sure all the propane tanks are full
-get the adapter to refill 1 pound tanks from BBQ tanks– ordered
-barring that, get more 1 pound tanks
-many of my coleman fuel cans were empty when I checked on them. I need to add more cans.
-potting soil for the garden and lime for a slit trench
-all the gennies need attention
-stored gasoline needs to be increased
–which means more sta-bil additive too
-I’ve used the concrete blocks I had for a rocket stove to hold up my rain water barrels, so they need to be replaced.
-I pulled the trigger on an outdoor propane tankless water heater. $109 on amazon. Also another morakniv
Daughter was concerned about hot water if utilities fail. I’ve been looking at the heater for a year, and if everything is normal, it will be welcome at swim team practices in a month or two. Bought.
Think through your day under quarantine and consider your preps. So far in China utilities seem to have stayed up. We should be able to do the same, but if we can’t, it’s better to have a plan.
Keep stacking. We have community transmission in more than one place in the US. Everywhere in the world that they start testing they find cases. Even very casual contact seems to spread this (vis. google employee in Zurich.) If it gets into a group it can spread like wildfire (vis. Korean church group) Our ‘leaders’ seem to be intent on bringing this to all of us. All that combined, and we’re in for a world of hurt.
nick