It’s been a mild autumn so far nationwide. Not sure about Alaska, but they usually know what they’re doing. But for the rest of us, it’s been so mild in all regions that we may be lulled into a false sense of ease about the coming winter. That first blast of cold will be a wakeup call for many. Several links are provided below; most are basics, but for the serious, here is the List of Lists.

Winter Prepping basics and tips, including some things you might not have thought about in a while or ever considered, along with regional considerations. This list is too short. There are many other facets that need consideration.

#2: Honey, get yourself a honey bucket!
Since you may you may not have water or sewer from the municipal water supply in an emergency you’ll need to think about sanitation: grey water and honey buckets.

A Honey Bucket is not a Honey Trap, nor is it a Honey Bunny. See, prepping can be fun! The term Honey Pot is very often misused for Honey Trapping. A Honey Pot is actually a computer network with no real intelligence value in the data. It’s designed to lure in (foreign) powers, so they give away their intrusion capabilities or otherwise open themselves to counterattack. Properly identifying each of these other three potential problems has, at sundry times and in diverse manners, helped me. Prepping isn’t only about dried foods. A Honey Bucket is something else entirely.

#3: Stock up on food and a way to cook indoors
You may well have prepared your long-term emergency food needs with ample supplies of rice and beans, but it’s time to stock up on the foods you’ll need to survive a power outage! Your aim for a power outage is ready to eat, shelf-stable meals, such as protein and energy bars, nut butters and crackers. If you have an alternate way to cook, then stock up on soups and canned foods.

Next, given the recent global environment, there are World War II Civilian Survival Lessons. Regardless of what becomes of America, you’ll spend most of your time doing “civilian stuff” anyway.

How American Civilians helped win World War II (and survive).
History repeats itself they say. Capitalizing on wartime lessons can help you for any disaster, not just war. Below are some civilian survival skills and ideas garnered from the civilians who survived World War II with patriotism, collaboration and a “can do” attitude. Below are survival lessons garnered from civilians during the war…

Next, don’t forget how the bankers and government (but we repeat ourselves) brought us the never-ending communist New Deal. So consider prepper Lessons on The Great Depression. The Green New Deal should be twice as good as the first one! That’s what the TV said, so we believe it. Joking aside, Solutions-based Prepping is an interesting concept.

Learn from the past: prepping for the next Great Depression.
Wondering how can you survive an economic collapse and avoid poverty? Perhaps Robert T. Kiyosaki summed it up best when he wrote: “Poverty is simply having more problems than solutions.” Think about this from a prepper’s perspective: strive to be prepared to have more solutions than problems. To ensure you have more solutions than problems, be creative, be flexible and adapt. Below is how to help survive the next Great Depression.

Further, if you’re new to the notion of viewing how to make it through tough times, here are some basics to start:

10 Steps to Basic Preparedness.

Prepping for Ordinary People.

At the CDC, we learn some rudimentary respects to being prepared for Winter Storms. The fun part about doing what the government says to be prepared is that they tell you to both get ready, and then they call you insulting monikers for taking their advice.

Also, see the basics of preparing for Winter Power Outages. This seems important now, certainly for Europe and California, but elsewhere as well.

37 Foods to Hoard

And finally, in light of the recent “pandemic,” it would be a very good idea to get books and training in basic medical and dental knowledge.

Puerto Rico today:

All of Puerto Rico has lost power after deadly Hurricane Maria swept through the island on Wednesday – with winds that blew the roofs off homes and flash floods that turned roads into rivers.

Leaving at least nine people dead in its wake across the Caribbean, Hurricane Maria blew ashore in the morning in the southeast coastal town of Yabucoa as a Category 4 storm with winds of 155 mph.

While the eye of the storm has since moved off the island and weakened to a Category 2 hurricane, it’s expected to continue lashing the island of 3.4million with life-threatening winds, storm surge and rain through this evening.

‘Once we’re able to go outside, we’re going to find our island destroyed,’ said Abner Gomez, Puerto Rico’s emergency management director. ‘The information we have received is not encouraging. It’s a system that has destroyed everything in its path.’

It looks like dystopia, doesn’t it?

Two weeks ago it was a hard week trying to prepare for Hurricane Irma.  We managed to find a Generac 5500 generator when almost all generators had been sent to Texas.  Gas lines were long and prices were elevated, and gas cans were triple the cost from a month prior.  And then they were gone.  So it didn’t matter whether you could buy gas – you couldn’t store it.

We had to think about batteries, perishable food, trying to get non-perishable food, potable water, dog food (have you considered your beasts in the event of something like this?), and on and on the list goes.  To some extent we had the non-perishable food situation handled, but not well enough for my future comfort level.

I lived through Hurricane Hugo, and was without power for two weeks.  I wasn’t prepared for it either.  At the time it rolled through I was preparing for the engineering PE examination.  The exam date in October wasn’t going to change because of the storm, so I had to redeem the time.

I lined my kitchen table with candles and worked PE review problems for two weeks by candlelight (old school, pen and paper).  But I wasn’t going to relive my Hugo experience unprepared, so we worked hard to prepare.  I consider Hurricane Irma yet another warning shot over the bow.

For the future, we need to be thinking about more than just guns and ammunition (although that’s first on the list).  We need to think long term survival in the form of food caches, freeze-dried foods, large scale water filtration rather than the small scale I currently have, and you could probably add endlessly to this list.  Feel free to do so in the comments.

I am of the considered opinion that a hurricane is the least of our worries when considering the ills that may befall us in the future.  Puerto Rico won’t rebuild for years, and won’t have power for more than half a year, if then.  Are you prepared for an attack on our electrical grid?  For civil strife and/or civil war?  For contamination of our water supplies?  For a run on the banks and a completely devalued dollar?

No, neither am I.  Not as well as I ought to be.