H2 the izzO

   Water is the second most important chemical to our survival, second only to oxygen. Number three on the list of "the survival rule of threes" (this rule will be covered in a later post), you can only survive three days without it. That's more of an average than a hard fact, but I wouldn't push it too much.
   Everyone knows they should drink eight glasses of water a day. Eight glasses, each eight fluid ounces (or one cup or about 250 milliliters), equals around two liters of water a day. Not a bad start but it is a pretty loose guideline. Depending on a whole plethora of factors the actual amount of water you may need can vary greatly. When it comes to prepping, and the stockpiling of water, another thing to remember is that two liters of water is only what you will be drinking, it doesn't take in to account all the other uses we have for water on a daily basis.
   I find a safer quantity to be three liters per person per day, just for drinking. For my young kids the recommended amount is one liter per child, but I prefer to have it at two. For my cat I need about half a liter a day. So, for my family of four plus my cat, for a 72 hour period I need to have about 32 liters (or almost eight and a half gallons) of water for consumption. That's a fair bit of water.
   Now we have to figure out how much water we're going to need for our other needs - our sanitary needs. In the event of loss of utilities (water, power, etc.) you're not going to be taking many hot showers, but you'll still need to scrub up to prevent getting sick. So, how much water should you have? Including personal hygiene and sanitation of cookware I suggest three liters a day per adult and two liters a day per child, which equals up to almost eight gallons for my family for a 72 hour period.
   Including drinking water and sanitation water, for my family of four plus the cat, we need about 16.5 gallons for the duration of a 72 hour emergency period. However, since 16.5 isn't a very well rounded number, 15 is a little easier to work with. That gives me a few ways to store my water, but the system I most like is; two five gallon water cooler jugs, three one gallon water jugs, and two gallons of bottled water. I find this the best ease of use and storage.
   Having this much water on hand poses a few problems. First of all, where will you store it, two or three water cooler jugs take up a fair amount of room if you're living in a small apartment. But more importantly than the space is the requirements for the space. Ideally you should be storing your water in a cool, dark area. This will slow down the growth of algae and reduce the number of times you will have to rotate your stock.
   Don't get me wrong, you will always have to rotate your stock of water. Unless you're going to treat your stores with chlorine or iodine (or some other method of water sterilization) - which will leave you with the unpleasant chemical taste - you will have to cycle old water out and new water in. The best way to do this is run emergency drills.
   Once a month run through your emergency water supply like you would have to if a real situation arose. I'm not saying you can't rely on your tap water, but try and use up your emergency supply and measure it against what you supplement with piped in water. This will help you see where you can conserve water in an emergency, whether or not you need to increase or decrease your stores, let you get a better feel for how to use water stores in an emergency, and rotate your stock to keep it fresh.
   There are ways to gather water in an emergency - which I will write about in other posts - but you won't want to have to go through all that work when you have to deal with other emergency related issues, especially when you can easily already have water on hand.
   I hope you've found this post helpful and can use it as the basis for your own water storage needs. Thanks so much for reading. Until next time. Be Prepared. Be Safe. Have Fun.

Shine a light

Now that we know why we are prepping, let's start looking at some products and information that will be helpful to the cause. Since I prep for situations involving power failure let's have a look at one of the flashlights I have in service with my everyday pack.

   The light we will be looking at is the Rothco Army-style C-cell Flashlight. My light is the olive drab (OD) version. This is an angle head flashlight. Rothco product number 488.

   This is a great little flashlight to have in a pack. Made from high density plastic, it can withstand a pretty good beating. All the threaded caps have sturdy rubber gaskets for a reliable water resistance. It also has a steel belt clip attached to the back of the body with screws instead of being set directly into the plastic (making it easy for replacing/removing).

   Coming stock with the flashlight are four coloured filters (red, green, yellow, blue) and a spare bulb, which all fit very conveniently in to the base cap. The base cap also hides a steel hanging hoop.

   The bulbs included leave something to be desired. Being Krypton 2.4v 0.7A bulbs, they're only producing about 16 lumens. This bulb running off two C-cell batteries, however, means you get about 15 hours of burn time. To improve the low lumen problem I will be looking at replacing the Krypton bulbs with LED bulbs (this should also greatly lengthen the burn time for the batteries).

   A great feature of this flashlight is the signaling switch. The power switch on the side of the body has three positions. Down is off, up is on, and the center position allows you to push a small round button above the switch to provide light until the button is released.

   The plastic construction paired with double C-cell batteries make a very comfortable weight in hand or on a loaded pack. The angled head makes it easy to work with both hands while having the light either attached to you or standing on its own.

   The MSRP from Rothco for this flashlight is only $5.99, which is still a very low price even for the materials used. At this price, even with the small amount of money that will go towards a new set of LED bulbs, the flashlight is a great bargain.

   My rating for this product is a 4 out of 5. Based on the solid construction, convenience of design, affordability, and useful features. The downside to this flashlight is the low lumen bulbs and the need to pack large cell batteries for spares. All things being considered, I would highly recommend this product for anyone starting out with prepping, people looking to enhance a kit they already have, or even just to have as a cheap light to keep in a drawer.

   I hope this product review has been helpful. If anyone has any experience with this product, or with any other flashlight they really like, please feel free to drop a comment below. Until next time. 

   Be Prepared. Be Safe. Have Fun.

But, why?

   The question which will determine everything you do when it comes to prepping is "What am I prepping for?" Every piece of information you gather, every item you buy, every step of your plan is influenced by the situations you feel the need to be prepared for.
   There are a broad range of situations for which people prep. They can be anything from families with medical emergency histories developing a plan to best deal with each event, to whole groups of people creating large, fortified, compounds for their survival during the breakdown of society. Obviously, these two extremes require vastly different resources and information to be properly dealt with.
   My reasons, which is what this blog is all about, are somewhere near the middle of this spectrum, nudged slightly more towards the personal emergency side of the scale. My plans are based mainly on local emergencies, such as major storms that may shut down my city for an undetermined amount of time and how my young family of four will cope with it. At the same time I'm always working on my plans for a possible escape from my city and the logistics of moving my family to a safe location some distance away.
   Prepping for a family of four, with two young children, requires the same base necessities as anyone else, however there are many more needs that have to be addressed in comparison to a single Prepper. Having a plan based on staying put requires a different approach than a "flight & fight" plan. Being prepared for a moderate duration disruption of services is hugely different than prepping for the complete breakdown of society or the end of the world.
   The first step in prepping is knowing what to be prepared for, be it one end of the spectrum or the other, everything depends on this. Knowing now what we want to be prepared for we will start touching on more planning and acquisition information. I hope this post was helpful in giving you a better understanding of the basis of prepping. Until next time.
   Be Prepared. Be Safe. Have Fun.