Hobby Thread - October 5, 2024 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. By sheer random coincidence, a spin of the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies(TM) has come up with a theme of DISASTER PREPARATION for this week.

What are the odds that disaster prep would come up on the Wheel of Hobbies(TM) with so much devastation being experienced by the good people of North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Virginia? The Wheel knows all.

We can not assume that government is on the way to rescue or help. We need to be able to survive and take care of ourselves, our families and those near and dear to us.

You might be wondering whether disaster preparation is really a hobby. With enough enthusiasm and commitment, anything can be a hobby. We do not need to resolve that issue today. Let us agree to call it a worthy endeavor that permit our continued enjoyment of hobbies, so it is hobby-adjacent. Work with me here.

Rules of the road. The interwebs are full of people with free advice and strong opinions. Topics like this lend themselves to competition and judgments about measures others are taking or not taking. Let us not do that.

Share your approach, experiences and thought process. Do not look down on others who are only prepared for DEFCON3 instead of DEFCON1. Do not call others idiots for storing only X days of water when anyone knows you need at least 4X or 5X days. Do not be that person that tells others they are not doing it right unless they are doing it the way you are.

Some who think about disaster prep are oriented towards the Red Dawn Russian Invasion scenario, nuclear holocaust, or zombie takeover. If that is you, recognize that not everybody may be as hard core or is where you are on the prepper spectrum. Do not mock others because they are still learning or are a work in progress. Not everyone is going to be fully self-sufficient or off the grid.

Help your fellow hordemates and make this a productive dialogue. Do otherwise and risk the barrel and banhammer.

This is not the place to argue about climate change politics, Presidential responsiveness, FEMA, delays in activation of military and national guard assets, equity-based disaster recovery aid, the Director of Transportation, or similar themes. We will stipulate the relevant shortcomings and challenges. Politics can wait for other threads.

Play nice. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls. Geez, TRex. Enough rules. Are pants still optional to participate on this thread? Yes, pants are still optional.

President Trump is speaking in Bulter, Pennsylvania today. Last time he did that, developments interrupted the hobby thread. We ask for protection, divine and otherwise, to avoid a repeat. On with the show...

Disaster recovery professionals often think in terms of recovery and resiliency. Resilience is being able to maintain some level of operations during an outage or disruption. Recovery is resuming operations after an outage. Similar but different. Resilience is bend, but not break. Recovery is repair after broken.

Think in terms of results, not causes. If you do not have power, the cause matters less than the outage. If you do not have water, the cause matters less than the fact that you have no water. No need for a different plan for each cause, partially because you can never fully predict the details. The longer term fixes will vary but near term needs are more immediate.

Prepare enough to give yourself options and ability to keep your family operational. But how much is enough? What preparation and planning is prudent?

What are your practices? With limited funds, what measures or supplies have you prioritized? What is in your kit that might surprise others? What tips do you have for someone preparing from scratch? Do you have lessons learned from prior disasters? How much is your preparation influenced by your location? How do you determine how much prep is enough prep? How do you think about power or fuel? Aside from equipment, what other plans do you have for managing information, meeting points, navigation, health care, etc.? Do you have favorite books, resources, checklists, and websites for wisdom?

Disaster supply checklist courtesy of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. The site has a downloadable pdf version for your printing and saving purposes.

Ready Kit from the US Dept of Homeland Security. The site has a downloadable supply list in pdf form.

How To Start Prepping. A Practical Prepper Guide. At the link:

Prepping Checklist: Cover the basics first and start to learn about mental preparedness
Prepping on a Budget: On a budget? Keep your focus and save money with this guide.
Suvival Stoic Toolkit: Learn how to train a prepping mindset
What is a Prepper? Is it something extreme or something more common?
Prepping Tips: Quick summary of things people miss as they prepare
Bug Out Bag: Find a list of everything to pack and what not to
Get Home Bag: Have everything you need to get home to your family

Do you think in terms of 72 hours? A week? A month? 72 hour outages are a lot more common than week, two week or month outages, but there is a cost to maintaining more resilience. Has Hurricane Helene changed your perspective? Has anything else you have seen caused you to re-think your approach to equipment or planning? Is anyone incorporating a Starlink into your thinking?

Seeing things like this on the interwebs - people moving away from the 72 hour guidance and setting goals of being able to keep their family healthy and safe for at least 30 days without support from civilization. No support from civilization means:

No power, running water, natural gas, or other utilities of any kind.

No supplies from the outside world, including food, gasoline, etc.

No government or commercial services, including police protection, hospitals, etc.

Being without power for a month is a big ask and requires serious planning. Can you think of ways to gradually build capability? Near, intermediate, and long term plans?

Disaster prep might involve hunkering down in place. It might also involve evacuating. Do you have a bug out bag? What is in it? Do you have a mini-bug out bag always packed in your car?

The Ultimate Emergency Go Bag Checklist. Are You Disaster Ready?

Bug Out Bag List. 111 Practical Do and Do not Tips for 2024

Beyond the bug out bag, do you know what valuables that you would grab in an emergency evacuation? Do not disclose specifics but interested in what is on your list. Family photos? Paperwork? Hard drive backups? Cash? Jewelry? Firearms? Medicine? Chainsaw? Pets? Beer?

The situation in Western North Carolina suggests that part of a good disaster preparedness plan is knowing someone with a helicopter and having a way to contact them. Private helicopters have played an enormous role and I am amazed how many volunteer private choppers have been involved.

Are you wise in the ways of generators? Do you have a portable generator? Back-up for the house? How much fuel do you keep on-site? Regular rotational storage through multiple five gallon containers? Does anyone use solar for backup power or charging batteries?

Ham radio might be the only means of communication in an emergency. This video talks about ham radio in the context of Hurricane Helene:

(Hat tip to NorCal Sierra Foothills Lurker. Thank you!)

Did you miss last week's hobby thread with a beer theme? The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.

Notable comments from last week:

Words of wisdom:

"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).

If disaster prep is not your thing and you have trouble finding something in the content or comments that resonates with you, please write your name, birthdate, and next of kin contact information on your leg with permanent marker. We will resume usual Hobby Thread shenanigans and silliness next week. Write anytime about anything to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com.

posted by Open Blogger at 05:30 PM

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