Preparing Skeptical Loved Ones

How do you help loved ones who won't prepare for themselves?

Prepper Supplies

Try again. After the Coronavirus (COVID) Pandemic, they are more likely to listen to you now. 

In our Post:  Introducing Prepping to Skeptics, we laid out some good ideas that I'd like to expand on here based on recent events.

Check on these skeptical loved ones periodically during a minor crisis. Demonstrate tactfully how preparing has you ahead of the curve, by helping them a little, but don't make their life too easy or let them think they can always depend on you for everything.  Refuse to provide too much.  For example, provide a few rolls of toilet paper along with a few reusable wash rags.  When their toilet paper runs out, they will have to rough it a bit and use the wash rags.

After the crisis is over, send them a few more supplies, that they are more likely to appreciate now, where as before they may have resented it and thought you were an ignorant fool for prepping.  They don't think that now!  After a Pandemic scare for example, give them some Masks, Hand Sanitizer, Disinfectant wipes, and offer some suggestions on a few other inexpensive things they should consider buying and having handy like a gallon of Bleach.  After any event, you can send them a can or pail of dried beans & rice or other long shelf-life foods.

In the spring, give them a few packages of seeds and suggest they buy a good garden hoe and plant a few vegetables in their flower beds.  A Budget Garden is a good investment that can turn $2 worth of seeds into $200 worth of food.

In the fall, or at Christmas, give them a portable gas cook stove, with two propane bottles, and suggest that they buy a few more bottles.

You have their attention; now is your chance to convert them to being a Prepper.  Just don't go too fast, and back off if they push back.  Come bearing gifts, and its hard for them to get mad at you.

When they are ready, introduce them to our Beginner Prepper List post and help them develop a more comprehensive Prepper Plan that will allow them to advance one step at a time.

Good luck!

For more information:

Blog Table of Contents

Introducing Prepping to Skeptics 

Pandemic
Prepper Sanitizer

Top Rated Prepper Handbook Posts of all time 

List of Top 10 Lists 

Top 10 Prepper Websites 

Top 10 Posts
 
Or click on a label below for similar topics.

Scenario 1: Pandemic

Pandemics that kill a million or more people globally, historically have a 1% chance of occurring every year, but with increased globalization and travel, this is increasing sharply.

While 1% might seem to be a low probability, the severity is high and the cost to be prepared is low.  Most police officers never fire their gun in the line of duty, but still choose to wear a bullet proof vest for this very reason.  The chance of having your home burn down is 0.125% (pandemic risk is 8X), but we still pay a lot of money for insurance.  Why not give this some thought and invest a few hundred dollars for our Beginners List to be better prepared?

Through out history, mother nature has used disease to control Over Population of a species.  Don't wait until it is too late.

Questions:

1. How might it happen
2. What would you hope to have to be prepared
3. What steps should you take now
4. What steps should you take if it happened

 

Answers:

How might it happen?
With a majority of US medicines foreign made, it would be easy to introduce a slow acting toxin, or biological weapon grade viral infection in the US, possibly through a mandatory vaccine. which can carry risk. Such a virus would be highly contagious, highly fatal, have a long incubation time and be slow acting so a carrier could infect many others before they even knew they had it.  It might also target a specific ethnic or even political group like elderly conservative voters. The attacking country would likely have a vaccine that would protect their people, unless it accidentally escaped, and possibly sell the vaccine at high prices to the rest of the world.

What would you hope to have to be prepared?

From recent Pandemics, we know:

1. Hand Sanitizer, Chlorine Bleach, Disinfectant wipes, N95 Masks, and yes, even toilet paper were in very short supply, with long lines to get in to stores with empty shelves.
2. The highest population density cities were hit the hardest 

So we need certain supplies and a remote retreat we can stay at for long periods, with security against looters who may seek to steal our supplies in a dark period of history. 


What steps should you take now?

1. Start with our Beginner Prepper List and build from there. It has many links (blue text) to more details.
2. Understand the Rule of 3, and develop a  Step by Step Prepper Plan. to meet your needs.

What steps should you take if it happened?

1. Proactive steps from preparing ahead are always the best; again let the Rule of 3 guide you.
2. Know the RED Flag warnings, that it is time to get to a safe place.
3. Here is our SHTF Day One Plan.
4. If you will be stuck in the City visit these links:

Sustainable City Survival
Modern Home Security
Communications
Neighborhood Watch 

      5. If you will will be in the Country, visit these links:

Bug Out Warning
Country Home Security Plan
Random Security
Neighborhood Watch

     6. Last but not least, study and learn.  Knowledge is FREE, so read up.

The 2020 COVID virus scare was minor compared historical pandemics, yet worse than the Common Flu but as a possible biological weapon from China, the risk was high, and you can see what the results were.  Imagine if millions of Americans died, and critical workers like grocery store, health care and police were dying at alarming rates and then started staying at hope to protect their families.  We would be facing massive Riots and Looting with gangs going door to door robbing the supplies of the weak & unarmed. Only a strong group would have a good chance of withstanding the mass of starving hoards that were scavenging for food.

Don't wait to prepare, Start NOW.

For more information:

Blog Table of Contents
Top Rated Prepper Handbook Posts of all time 

List of Top 10 Lists 

Top 10 Prepper Websites 

Top 10 Posts
Pandemic
Prepper Sanitizer

Or click on a label below for similar topics.

Dual Purpose Items

When selecting what to put in our backpack, we should look for items with more than one use.  For example:

1. A poncho can be used as tent, tarp, solar still, and when worn, keeps you warm, dry and covers your hands so you can be holding a pistol and no one realizes it. The real point here is that a poncho has four (4) uses, for about 2 pounds of weight.  That said, you can only use it for one use at a time.  So lets look at some other items with multiple uses. 
2. A mesh hammock can be slept in, a net for catching food, and a bag for carrying things, or securing them high and away from animals (bear bag).
3. Paracord can be used for building shelter, hanging your hammock or bear bag, setting up your poncho as a tent, it can have the individual filaments used to make a fish net, or as fishing line. It can be used as a bow string, shoe laces, bow drill to start fire, snare traps, and sewing. Paracord can be used for so many end uses that we could never list them all.  Mason line, #18 or #36 tarred, twisted line are good additions and alternatives to paracord. 
4. Military Survival Shovels have multiple uses, axe, saw, entrenching, hoe, etc. depending on the model you choose. 
5. Safety Pins are small, but serve many uses. 
6. A Leatherman Multi-Tool serves many functions and is great for Every Day Carry.
7. A metal water bottle can be used for cooking, boiling water as well as carrying it.  Avoid insulated bottles and those with plastic on the bottle.  Plastic on the cap is okay. 

The more purposes an item has, the more valuable it becomes.  What other valuable Dual Purpose items can you suggest?

Blog Table of Contents
Best Prepper Websites (vote for this one)
Complete Sustainable Living Plan

 

Alone Season 1 Pack List 

Alone Season 2 Pack List  

Alone Season 3 Pack List  

Alone Season 4 Pack List  

Alone Season 5 Pack List 

Alone Season 6 Pack List

Alone: The Beast S1 E1

Alone: The Beast S1 E2 

Alone Season 7 Pack List

 

Alone Winners Pack List

Alone Survival Plan  

Naked & Afraid Survival Plan 

Survive on a deserted island  

Wilderness Survival TEST

 
Backpack Selection Guide

Survival Pack (Security Patrol or Bug Out pack)  

Wilderness Survival Pack (Video)  

Wilderness Survival

Dual Purpose Items

EDC For Women
EDC For Men
EDC Survival
Best Survival Knife
Primitive Shelter

Best Campsite Selection Criteria
Acorn Flour Pancakes
Emergency Water 
Prepper Gift List
Bear: Fire Arm or Spray? 

Noodling for fish 
Primitive Fire Building 
Bear Attacks 
Nomadic Prepper Strategy 
Catch your own live bait (for fishing) 

How to make clay pots 
Quickly craft stone tools 
3 Odd techniques for catching fish
Survival Fishing 
Step by Step Prepper Plan 
 

Edible Wild Plants  

Greenbriar (catbriar) 

Cattails 

Dandelion  

Chickweed & Hackberries 

Edibility Test

Top 10 List of Prepper info
Top Rated Prepper Handbook Posts of all time
Top Rated Prepper Website
Top 15 Prepper Movies or Shows

Or click on a label below for similar topics.

Best Prepper Disinfectant

The best Prepper disinfectant is one that would works well, has a long shelf life, is affordable to stockpile and more importantly, can be made at home.

Hydrogen Peroxide (3%) is a great disinfectant, but has an unopened shelf life of 1-3 years.  But once you open the bottle, the peak effectiveness is just over 30 days, and about 6 months maximum useful activity.

Chlorine Bleach with approximately 6% of sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) is a great disinfectant and good for treating water, but is only fully functional for 6 months, but becomes about 20% less effective as each year goes by.  Mixed with water at a 1:9 ratio (10% bleach) remains effective only for about 24 hours.

Last but not least is Alcohol.  Unopened, rubbing alcohol (isopropyl) has shelf life of 2-3 years. Note you can NOT drink this.

Distilled alcohol (ethanol), typically has a shelf life of 3 years, with pure ethanol lasting even longer and it also has 45 other uses,  AND, you can make drinking alcohol at home by distilling a fermented grain mash made from sugar, water and yeast.

It can also be used in food and pharma applications, like cooking additives or cough medicines.  Four ounces of whiskey, an ounce of soothing honey and two ounces of citrus juice (vitamin C) or Elder Berry juice, is a common home made "NyQuil" type of cold remedy, that soothes sore throats, disinfects & helps you sleep and heal.

This means that a 190 Proof drinking alcohol like Everclear, the Best Prepper Disinfectant.  Ideally, we should practice our Prepper skills, but we should be aware that there are laws that regulate this and insure we do not get arrested as moonshiners.

This would be especially good to remember during a Pandemic.
 

For more information:

Blog Table of Contents
Top Rated Prepper Handbook Posts of all time 

List of Top 10 Lists 

Top 10 Prepper Websites 

Top 10 Posts
Pandemic
Prepper Sanitizer
 

Prepper Santitizer

When you need to sanitize or disinfect surfaces against unhealthy germs, there are a few time tested & proven methods. 

The first is chlorine bleach.  Concentrations vary from 9 to 47 parts of water to 1 part of bleach depending on the bleach used (low cost versions are weaker).  

For a strong disinfectant, my family adds 2-1/4 cup of water to 1/4 cups of regular bleach with 6% Sodium Hypochlorite, which is adding 9 parts of water to 1 part bleach.   

If you are using Performance Bleach (8% Sodium Hypochlorite), it is suggested that you add 1/2 cup of bleach to a 1 gallon jug and then fill it up with water (31:1 ratio)

Regular bleach (without additives) can also be used to disinfect water, making it safe for drinking.  Which leads us into our next method of sanitizing. 

Our second method is hot water. Obviously boiling items in water disinfects them, but washing your hands in hot water does the same, and should not be forgotten.

Our third method is alcohol which can be made using a still and has many other uses.  Click here to see 45 uses for alcohol.  You can make alcohol by distilling a fermented mash made from sugar and yeast.  

This would be good to remember during a Pandemic.

For more information:

Blog Table of Contents
Top Rated Prepper Handbook Posts of all time 

List of Top 10 Lists 

Top 10 Prepper Websites 

Top 10 Posts



 

Understanding Pandemics

Understanding the numbers is important.  The first to know about is the R - nought (R0) which tells us how contagious it is.  Basically, it indicates how many other people an infected person is likely to infect.  Greater than 1 means the number of infected is likely to grow.

For example, the common Flu is around 1.3, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) based on early data is 1.4 to 3.9, which is likely inflated due to unreported mild cases.  The common Measles is 12-18.

Values of R0 of well-known infectious diseases
Disease	Transmission	R0
Measles	Airborne	12–18
Diphtheria	Saliva	6–7
Smallpox	Airborne droplet	5–7
Polio	Fecal–oral route	5–7
Rubella	Airborne droplet	5–7
Mumps	Airborne droplet	4–7
Pertussis	Airborne droplet	5.5
HIV/AIDS	Sexual contact	2–5
SARS	Airborne droplet	2–5
COVID-19 (early data)	Airborne droplet	1.4–3.9
Influenza	Airborne droplet	1.3–3
Ebola	Body fluids	1.5–2.5
MERS	Airborne droplet	0.3–0.8

Second, is the deaths per 100,000 people.  Because the number of deaths is generally a small, fraction of a percentage, they are measured on a 100,000 scale.


The CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 36 million flu illnesses, 370,000 hospitalizations and 22,000 deaths from flu: but possibly as many as 55,000, with a mid point of 38,500.  How does this compare to to the COVID-19?

 

Makes you wonder, why the panic over the Coronavirus (COVID-19).  The unknown risk from a new variety is a reason to be cautious, but it seems the irresponsible mainstream media is not reporting the whole story, i.e. comparing it against the common flu, to put it in perspective, which is causing unnecessary panic, with stores being overwhelmed and fights breaking out for supplies.  

ADVICE:  

Stock up on supplies ahead of time.  

This is why we are Preppers in the first place.

Visit our Blog often to learn how you can be better prepared.

 

For more information

Blog Table of Contents

Pandemic Preparations

Printable Materials for Promoting Good Health Habits: Flu.gov U.S Department of Health and Human Service American Red Cross Center for Disease Control and Prevention - Influenza/Flu WHO Pandemic preparedness

   http://www.ready.gov/pandemic

Recent updates on the flu can be found at:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm

Click on the topics below for more related information.