On August 29th, 2014 President Obama presented a proclamation declaring September National Preparedness Month in the United States along with words designed to underlie the importance of bringing awareness to this event. I applaud the proclamation and I want to take a few snippets of the President’s words and augment them for the readers of the Prepper Journal. I am doing this, because the proclamation was all about the month and the inference is that you should go to Ready.gov for more information. While mentioning emergencies and “simple but important steps” in his proclamation he doesn’t offer specifics.
To be honest, I really didn’t expect him to. He has a pretty big job and that is what Ready.gov is for, correct? So, I went to Ready.gov to see what the government’s plan was for making us all appreciate this month and get prepared for emergencies. The theme for this years National Preparedness Month is “Be Disaster Aware, Take Action to Prepare” but I was a little disheartened to find most prominently displayed on the National Preparedness Month page, the following suggestions.
- Download the How to get involved guide – Tips on hosting your own PrepareAthon! Day.
- A digital engagement toolkit – probably the most thorough and lengthy document that is chock full of sample tweets, sample Facebook posts and chats promoting National Preparedness Month and the NPM website.
- Share NPM messages on Social Media
- Watch an ominous commercial on YouTube about some generic disaster where people are all crowded into a room looking very nervous. It sounds like thunder (or is it explosions) in the background.
- Join their Thunderclap program which is a lot like Twitter – sharing messages via Social Media. It’s already over…
- Download the high resolution NPM Logo – Sweet!
- Promote the ready.gov page by updating your Facebook and Twitter cover photo with the NPM graphic.
- Lastly, you can register for Nation PrepareAthon! Day.
Wow! That is a lot of information to digest isn’t it? I am very glad that our government is really going all out this month and trying their very best to tell the entire world about National Preparedness Month. It sounds like they want to make sure you are more Aware of their website than anything else.
OK, maybe I am being too hard on good old Ready.gov, I mean it is really important to use social media right? Let’s go back to the President’s proclamation which you can read here to find some useful informative tips.
“Before emergencies occur, we must make sure we are ready to respond”
Exactly right Mr. President! I agree wholeheartedly with that statement so the question is what can we actually do to make sure we are ready to respond to emergencies? Well, the simple answer is we can start getting prepared to handle a lot of different emergencies at the same time. It doesn’t matter what disaster you are faced with, 99% of the time you will still need to make sure you have the following bases covered.
Water – Make sure you have at a minimum one gallon of fresh stored water for each person in your home for a minimum of 30 days. That’s a lot of water, right? Yes, but water is the simplest thing to prepare for and is the most vital to life. Just look at the recent example of the chemical spill in Charleston where they were told not to drink their water for several weeks if you don’t believe this is critical. Water, if stored in a proper container doesn’t go bad so this is a prep that you can get and forget to a large extent. You can read more about storing water for emergencies on our site at the following links.
- Survival Basics – Water
- How to Get Survival Water from a Tree
- Sponge Bath: Keep Clean without Running Water
- 100 Year old way to filter rainwater in a barrel
- Do you have water if the grid goes down?
- How to Store and Carry Water in a Survival Situation
Food – Food, is more expensive than water of course, but you need to eat almost as much as you need water. Sure you can go without food for a lot longer than water, but who wants to do that? Having a well thought out food storage plan is probably the second thing most preppers start to take care of and we have plenty of resources on our site that answer your questions about food storage too.
- Prepping 101 – 30 Days worth of Food
- After the Freeze Dried Food is Gone
- Supersizing Food Storage with Buckets
- How to make a simple root cellar
- How much food is enough? Understanding how long your food stores will last
- 7 Prepper Food Storage Mistakes
- Act Now to Ensure You Have Food Security For Your Family
- Food Storage: Knowing What You Have is More Important than Buying Something New
Shelter – What do you mean shelter? I already have a house. Yes, but you could be forced to leave your house, or more likely you could be faced with the elements. In disasters, power goes out, natural gas service is shut off and many people can’t heat or cool their homes. Freezing to death or dying from heat stroke is no fun.
- How To Test Your Family’s survival skills
- A Forgotten Skill: Weather Prediction
- Survival Basics – Controlling Your Core Temperature
- Neighborhood RECON
Security – Bad people take advantage of good people and this seems to happen much more often during a disaster or when people are seriously desperate. You need to make sure you have a plan and method for defending your family.
- Prepping 101 – Home Security
- Prepping 101 – Best Gun For Home Defense
- 10 Tips for Taking a Woman To the Range
- Bird Shot: Better Home Defensive Round?
- Obligation to Carry Concealed
- Top 5 Firearms You Need To Get Your Hands on Now
- How To Safely Clear Your Home When You Think There Is An Intruder
- WROL – Protecting Your Family When The Bad Guys Come Down Your Street
“It is every American’s responsibility to be prepared”
I totally agree Mr. President and that is why I started the Prepper Journal. If you are a Christian some would say there is a biblical mandate to take care of and protect your family. Even if you aren’t most people would agree that we feel a need to do what we can to protect our loved ones from harm. At its most basic, that means being able to protect them from disasters or emergencies as they arise and taking care of basic needs that will keep them alive.
You have to base your plans on your own situations, but by simply starting with the basics of Food, Water, Shelter and Security you will be so much better off than 100% of the people who are only updating their Facebook pages and Tweeting about how you need to get prepared. Don’t just tweet about this, do something today!
“There are simple but important steps we can all take to ensure we know what to do and have what we need in the event of a crisis”
Yes there are and we have been talking for over a year and a half about all manner of steps you can take. Everyone has to start somewhere and it is easiest to start with what you do every day. You drink water and eat no matter who you are so start with that. Once you have a small supply of food and water, move on to other items. We have plenty of free checklists on our site you can reference and learn, make plans and get prepared. You don’t have to post this on your Facebook page if you don’t want to. I won’t mind.
- How to Start Prepping
- Prepping 101 – Baby Steps
- Prepping 101 – A Step By Step Plan for how to get started pt. 1
- Prepping 101 – A Step By Step Plan for how to get started pt. 2
- Prepping 101 – A Step By Step Plan for how to get started pt. 3
- Prepping 101 – A Step By Step Plan for how to get started pt. 4
- Prepping 101 – A Step By Step Plan for how to get started pt. 5
- Prepping 101 – Food Preps: 30 Days of Food
- Prepping 101 – EDC (Every Day Carry)
- Prepping 101 – Get Home Bag
- Bugging Out Vs. Hunkering Down
- Prepping 101 – The Ultimate Get Out of Dodge Vehicle
- Prepping 101 – Communication Options
- How To Convince Someone about Prepping
- Bug Out Bag Checklist
The intent behind this month should be to get everyone in a state of being prepared to take care of yourselves if for whatever reason, the government or the usual support structures you rely on are gone. I think it is one of my most important jobs as a parent and I try every day to get more people self-sufficient in as many ways as possible. You should be able to take care of yourself without FEMA, without the police department or the grocery store, maybe the pharmacy. At any rate, in an emergency you may find that you are the only one who is coming to your aid. Taking steps now to be prepared will only make your chances of survival better and your ability to cope easier. If you aren’t doing anything to actively prepare for these events that occur all the time, I hope you take the month of September and start. You will be so much happier if you do need to use your preps and you have them.