Ytwok Personal Preparations

Maybe Y2K will be a sneeze. Maybe it won't. This page is about ways to reduce your risk.

10 Things To Forget

Forget soaking beans. Get a pressure cooker. I just fixed a plate of chilli from dry beans in 30 minutes flat. No soaking, no waiting, no preparation but throwing dry things in the pot with a little water. And I used hardly any fuel. Take the valve off the top of the thing, use a few inches of latex tube to attach it to 10 feet of coiled copper pipe and you've got a dandy BBQ-top water still. The cheap cookers have rubber gaskets that will perish; spend a couple of hundred bucks and have one that'll last a decade.
Forget heading for the hills. The hills are full of desperate loonies with uzis. No medical attention. Bears. Snakes. Poison Oak. Maybe if you'd lived in the hills all your life, you'd survive there okay. But you haven't and you won't. No, if you believe your present community won't be a safe place in 4 months (Yikes! 4 months!) rent some place right next to a military base. Yeah, martial law sucks. But getting your head stove in by your starving neighbors sucks more. You want law and order first, freedom second.
Forget gold coins and put-options. Money only has the value that popular acceptance places in it. Maybe one day gold coins will be worth a whole bunch again, but if you're looking at investment options at this date you're plumb loco. Simplify. What you want is 20 dollar bills, and lots of them. No, don't stuff them in the mattress or bury them in the backyard. Put 'em in a safe-deposit box. The banks won't close their doors overnight - you'll be able to get at your goodies long before the great unwashed burn the places down.
Forget buying a gun. Or, if you have a gun, hide it well. Guns make you a target. You want other people with guns to protect you. See point 2. If you're a techie, and I suppose most of the people reading Wiki are, make yourself useful. The military are going to want things fixed, and if you're able to fix things they'll keep you safe and well fed. Sure you may be working long hours for no pay. But eventually the lights will come on and stay on, and you can worry about making money again then.
Forget cans of tuna. Buy rice and beans. Buy about 10 times more rice and beans than you and yours can eat. They're like $25 per hundred pounds at the farmer's bazaar, so don't be stingy. They'll keep just fine any place dry and cool - no fancy buckets required. When the time comes, and not before, give the stuff away to your neighbors. If you feed them, they'll help keep you safe.
Forget buying a generator. If you already have and use a generator, fine, keep it up. But otherwise it's too late to learn how to keep one happy and you'll just get yourself frozen when the thing quits and dies. If you're leaving your unsafe community to go live next to a military base, head south. Move to where all you'll need is an extra blanket at night.
Forget gasoline. The US has 60 days oil reserves and imports aren't going to be happening again any time soon so you bet the military will sit on the reserve. Storing gasoline is hideously dangerous, so look at alternatives. Don't go electric; electric cars can't be serviced by most mechanics and most of them can't be recharged without special facilities that are unlikely to work for long. There's only one kind of mobile that'll be reliable next year. CNG cars. Compressed Natural Gas. The US makes the stuff itself, and there are outlets all over the place. You can get new cars that are Bi-fuel - will take both gasoline and CNG. Or convert your old car to CNG for $2K. Sure CNG will be interrupted like the other utilities, but it'll come back quick. Or (and) buy a bicycle or three.
Forget candles. They're too easy to knock over and they won't last long. Whip up or buy an LED flashlight. Or buy one of the many solar garden lights on the market - home depot has them for $15. And buy fire extinguishers - more than you'll think you need. Your neighbors will be dopey enough to use candles, and fire spreads faster than you think.
Forget farming. Do you know how much work farming really is? And how easy it is to get a farm screwed up? Even professional farmers lose crops to pests and bad weather on a regular basis. If you're counting on cultivating to keep yourselves fed, you're just asking to starve. Let the farmers farm. Stop fooling yourself and go back to point 5.
Forget panicing. It's too damned easy to look at the big picture and go mad. Think small. Keep to small places. Deal with small things. Shelter, water, food and fire for just your immediate family. Keep these little things controllable, and the rest of the world can go mad by itself. Stay calm and move deliberately. Breathe and think.

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