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Originally posted by PatriotAr15:
Airforce! Great Idea! My question is, how do you prevent bad things from happening to your home and equipment?
How would you save all those things if the gas and power went out for real? The beauty of this exercise is, it forces you to plan ahead.

Water pipes can be insulated--in fact, it's a good idea in winter anyway.

If you don't have a fireplace--and even if you do--keeping your home warm enough , a to survive is a trick. Remember, you don't necessarily have to be comfortable--in fact, I can just about guarantee you won't be--but a little contingency planning can do wonders. For warmth, if nothing else, a small charcoal grill set just inside a window cracked halfway open will provide warmth, and enough ventilation to keep you safe. (You do have smoke and CO alarms, and fire extinguishers, don't you?)

I don't mean to imply this is an easy exercise. It's not. The first few times you do this are learning exercises. You can expect to make several trips to the store (cheating) before you get it right.

The biggest problem we have is preserving food in the refrigerator and freezer. In the winter this is not difficult, but summertime it becomes a problem. Pick up a couple books on preserving food, and you will probably want to invest in a canner and netting for drying foods in the sun.

Of course, you could solve a lot of problems by investing in a generator, which will get you through a weekend exercise quite nicely. But, I think of that as cheating, too. wink

Onward and upward,
airforce