If you read Hope For Survival and/or attended some of my classes such as Risk Analysis, Bugging In/Bugging Out Urban, or Preparedness 101 the topic I am about to talk about may sound familiar to you. I do believe it is important to bring it up at this time in light of what we are witnessing in Wuhan, China. Am I saying this is going to happen in America? No. I'm simply pointing out that it could happen and if the Coronavirus continues to spread this could become a reality. So far what we are told is a virus has what appears to be an unknown origination with no known method of stopping it other than separation and quarantine. Avoidance is key and separating the infected from the uninfected. Right? There is no magic pill.
I talked about the "just in time" trucking and supply chain that keeps cities and communities supplied with a 72 hour survivability period. What do I mean? Almost all public trading locations are supplied with a 72 hour quantity of resources to provide fuels, foods, and medications to the public. This means if the supply chains stop, the resources are not supplied. When supplies stop, then what? How will the citizen survive if supplies are depleted and the citizens begin to starve? This will never happen in the US of A. Are you willing to take your chances on that? If you think I'm wrong, just go out and attempt to buy the N 95 mask or respirator. Sold out. Back ordered. No supplies on the trucks for the past two weeks. These are the responses I keep getting when checking around for supplies. Oh, I'm good. We stocked supplies we identified as a possible resources for a potential virus or pandemic years ago. I'm simply monitoring supply and demand and right now the demand is ahead of the supplies available. You may be lucky and get them from Amazon but you must wait on them to arrive. My point? This is why folks who prepare encourage the unprepared to do so. It is about leaning forward and being steps ahead of the unprepared. You know, the early bird gets the worm.
If you are monitoring what is taking place in China and Wuhan specifically, you may have read how supplies are running low and in some areas people are not able to get food. Point blank, folks are starving and in some cases they are dying and starving. We are roughly two months in to this crisis and officials just issued the order to seize property in two of China's largest cities. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3050092/two-chinas-biggest-cities-given-power-seize-private-property . That means, take anything deemed a resource to help and protect the citizens. We have read about this in many post-apocalyptic books and articles, right? Well, this appears to be reality in China. Now, I can't imagine the Chinese citizens having many resources stocked under the iron fist of the Communist government. So, to those who do prepare ensure you have not put all your eggs in the same basket. Spread out your resources and if possible consider establishing a cache or multiple caches. This is good for multiple reasons. Confiscation, theft, fires, floods, tornadoes.... This is your resource insurance policy.
The last point I want to point out is this. If you have been around the preparedness world for very long, one of the things you have noticed is folks who do prepare often relocate from the city or populated areas. Some may already be in the rural environment and others figure it out and find the land of their choosing and relocate. There are lots of reasons people choose to relocate. The reason I want to point out here applies to viruses and pandemic scenarios. If the federal government or state and in cases a mayor gives the order to quarantine a city, what do you think is one of the first steps taken to lock the people inside? And keep people from coming in? Have you noticed how many of our federal highways around cities are designed? Loop this and loop that. They design beltways and loops around the city. Sure this is great for daily commutes and pushing non-visiting traffic outside the city and keeps visiting traffic inside to keep traffic from being congested (wishful thinking).
Take a look at the examples below and you will see what I am talking about.
You can see on each map the point I am making. I could post 50 additional or 100 additional maps and make the point further. If you live within a loop system at your location, you may want to consider giving further thought to your location and/or if you are locked down while inside the loop, how you will get out of the loop and where will you go. If you are stuck and can't get out, do you have enough supplies on hand for a 30 day lock day, or longer. The U.S. Government announced this morning the Coronavirus could last one year or longer. Personally I would plan for longer. Storage space could impact your ability to store resources long term, especially water supplies. There's lots of information available on ways to make space in smaller dwellings if you are locked in and can't escape outside the city. I do cover this topic in my Bugging In/Bugging Out class which I will be teaching twice at Heritage Life Skills 2020. If this is your circumstance and can't attend HLS and live within a large town or city, send me an email and I will try to help make suggestions to help you out. As with everything in Preparedness. Plan ahead and lean forward. Try to see things outside the box and ask the "what if" questions to plan ahead of events. Know when to pull the plug and implement your plans to get outside the populated areas. Make sure your survival plan is self-reliant and includes like-minded individuals who you have planned with.
Blessings,
Bravo Echo Out
