As I've lurked through the forum I've read lots of info about preparing for the uncertainties of today and y2k. There have been many that did extra preps for y2k (I've been a lurker for a couple of years and have always enjoyed the forum) Anyway, my questions are: 1) how are you doing things differently this time? 2) how are you teaching or telling your small children? 3) do you think you are more prepared now or did you let things go after y2k turned into nothing.

I don't live on a homestead, I live in town (boohoo) but I try to be as self-reliant as I can. I've always been intrigued by all of you that do this.

-- RNMOM (tegan@ida.net), October 16, 2001

Answers

What we are doing differently is 1. storing more water. At Y2K, even if the lights had gone out forever, we knew we still had acess to clean water nearby, or water from the creek at the back of our place that could be purified. Now we are concerned about the possibility of fallout contamination and need to have at least a couple of weeks of water stored for us and our livestock. And 2. I'm storing more medical supplies in case of major bio attacks (read: smallpox) where we might have to cut ourselves completely off from the rest of the world for weeks or even months until the disease had burned itself out. Or be quarantined if we had it ourselves, and needed to take care of our own family members. There's been a good discussion on another forum I'm on about how to provide home nursing care to smallpox victims. Pray we don't have to find out first hand what it's like.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), October 16, 2001.

Having been a trained NBC officer in the military, I realize the true futility of preparing for a strike as a civilian. More importantly, do you want to be a survivor for 8 weeks ore more, just to die? Any comments re: science fiction novels? I see many parallels.

-- L (noname@please.org), October 16, 2001.

Why "futile" L(noname)??? If you know what the threat is, you can take steps to gard your home, kids, etc AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE (not saying that it would always work). If you knew about the anthrax, you could call authorities, rather than walk around spreading the stuff until you felt sick. I think your old job would have been rather scary. Can you tell us anything helpful? ~~ I am futher ahead from Y2K since we are more self sufficient. I understand some businesses that went down in the WTC had "hot backup" computers that saved information for their businesses. Preps those businesses made when Y2K was going on.

-- notnow (notnow05@yahoo.com), October 16, 2001.

I am trying, without a great deal of success, to live life as normally as possible. As I've said in other postings, if we let them make us change our lifestyle, they've won.

Having said that, the strikes on the WTC towers were such a shock to us that we were watching before we realized what we were watching. It was six thirty in the morning where we were, and the phone rang. My husband (who was in Calgary at the time, not with us in BC) told me simply to turn on the tv to an American network, that the US had just been attacked.

We knew nothing as we turned on the tv. My sons came out of the bedroom and there it was on TV -- there was no shielding them. Try explaining something like this to a five and seven year old. You calm their fears and hug them, and tell them you won't let anyone hurt them, and pray you can deliver on that.

We have told our boys that there will be a war. This is something that we knew from the beginning was inevitable. We also told them that they had no reason to fear any soldiers they saw, if they saw any, because they would be OUR soldiers.

My husband travels through many major cities in the US and Canada for work. It scares us, but we can't let them intimidate him into changing jobs, giving up what he does. That would be conceding defeat. We refuse to let our sons see us do that. We have worked too hard for what we have, we won't hand it over without a fight. Besides which, it'll be a cold day in hell before some man tells me that I'll cover myself from head to toe and walk ten feet behind HIM.

As per preparation, it's fall, so we have our fall "stash". In addition to that, I keep water in the basement, and I've stockpiled some everyday medications (it's very difficult to get prescription meds from doctors here unless you have an immediate need.)

-- Tracy (trimmer31@hotmail.com), October 16, 2001.

As a Mayor of a small town in Missouri, we here in town have bought a Cat. Diesel Generator 3 phase to run our city wells to keep water. We also have a Generator at our sewer plant to keep it running and will be getting Diesel tanks inorder to keep the Generator going. We have a very deep well and most anything would be filtered before it gets to that depth. Personally buying food (canned) while onsale and storing it and using the oldest first. Have lamp oil that i pick up while it is being marked down for the summer at Wal Mart and Dollar General stores. Burn wood and Propane dont have to have the propane but its nice when is not so cold, because a wood fire sometime run you out, if you know what i mean. Mostly I depend on God to meet my needs. dale

-- dale (dgarr@fidnet.com), October 17, 2001.

I never really stopped after Y2K. Actually had alot of food storage even before that, but I have been thinking about storing different things, and have thought alot about my lack of a great first aid kit.

-- Jenny (auntjenny6@aol.com), October 17, 2001.

It's geat to see you Aunt Jenny you are a respectable babe and it 's so good to see y ou doing well. It's fun o deep up on the fourm and he doing.

-- RNMOM (tegan@ida.net), October 17, 2001.

We are just trying to stock up as much food and water as possible; have installed a propane stove; and have a new wood-burning heater....things we've had on our list but didn't really get serious about until after Sept. 11th....

-- Suzy in Bama (slgt@yahoo.com), October 17, 2001.

We are re-stocking on food, water and supplies. We have a supply on hand but are going to make sure we are covered. I won't do the med stash (antibiotics), a lot have a short shelf life and can kill you (like doxycycline) if they're too old. Everything else is normal. Got the wood in, hunkering down for winter. I just pray that they don't unleash something horribly contagious (smallpox). But, if they do, we won't have a choice but to lock ourselves up in our homes. There probably won't be any power if it comes to that, not to mention the civil unrest. I think Y2K pales by comparison on the what-if scenario. Still - just like Y2K, it ain't gonna kill you to be prepared. Disasters happen.

-- Mary J (Sageladyone@yahoo.com), October 17, 2001.

I've been doing this stuff for a couple of decades now so Y2K was just another scenario to prep for to me.

Naturally, the way I prep has evolved over the years with changing circumstances. We're *finally* moving into our own homestead instead of having to rent like we've done for so long so our prepping methods are about to undergo a radical change now that we can make permanent, non-mobile changes to our local environment.

Some differences between the way we're prepping now or in the near future and the way we prepped in Y2K would be:

We're keeping a lot more water. I've got more space and storage capacity now and will need to include the water needs of my livestock. Am still sticking with plastic 55 gallon drums for the moment though.

Tools and consumable construction/maintenance supplies are increasing. I've got a workshop now with some real storage space unlike before so more lumber, nails/screws, tarping/sheeting and that kind of stuff will be stored. If we get a tornado and it doesn't completely demolish the house I want to be able to make at least temporary weatherproof repairs.

Storing more animal feed. Had no place to keep more than just about a bagful before. I'll have to study this a bit because I don't want what I've got in storage to go rancid before it's fed but I think I can get some airtight plastic drums which should make this feasible.

Storing more medical supplies. I'm not too concerned with the anthrax scare, our mosquito borne West Nile Virus and Equine Encaphalitis are still the greater threats here in Florida but some of the simple stuff can be important. More topical antibiotic and wound dressing powder because even simple injuries can become lethal if you develop blood poisoning from them. More cold medicines. When the night of December 31st, 1999 rolled around I had the worst head cold I'd had in years and my daughter had it too. We went through our entire stock of cold medicines twice as fast as I thought we would. No one's likely to *die* from a mere cold but if you have one and it's got you so messed up you can't function *that* could kill you! Thankfully Y2K was a bust and I got over that cold about four days later but it had me agitated that night.

Increased food production. This is going to take some time as I've got a to-do list as long as my leg but I will be eventually putting in a larger garden than I had before along with more food animals, fruit/nut trees and so on.

={(Oak)-

-- Live Oak (oneliveoak@yahoo.com), October 18, 2001.