Recommended - Dave Ramsey

Being prepared for emergencies can be costly. Which makes money an item we need to discuss. If you have money it is easier to deal with situations. Car breaks down, get it fixed. Lose your job, live off of your savings until you find a new one. Money takes some of the worry out of life. I've used some of these guys ideas and have seen them work for others. If you need to get your money squared away I highly recommend Dave Ramsey's idea of how to do it.

Having listened to his radio show for awhile I really like the way the way the guy explains things in words everyone can understand. He does not try to "wow" the audience with his use of big words and seems to really try and help folks when they call in. He will call people out on their BS when they call in to the show and try to say they can't get a handle on things. I also have a couple of his books and the ideas of his I have put into use work!!! No I do not do everything he says........

Here's a link to his website
http://www.daveramsey.com/store/index.ep
I also found his books at Barnes and Noble if you prefer to shop in a store.

Having your finances in order is a big step in helping yourself to prepare for a bad day. having money also helps with the day to day of living!!! You do not think of having to choose between paying the rent and buying a needed jacket for the little one once you have things in order. You can do both!

 When we are talking about food storage or other items you should build up you can go from a box of top ramen noodles to filling a pantry. 

Heck if you really get your act together you might be able to do things you never thought possible. Maybe you can decrease the amount and types of emergencies you need to think about all together? You might be able to go from living in some really bad area, where you have to think of dealing with all of the crime, lack of opportunities, etc etc etc. 

To living somewhere your kids can play outside, you rarely hear a siren and you wondering if your plants are getting enough water.......................

Or you can reach whatever your perfect living condition could be. Seems as if a lot of this ability starts with making a budget, living within your means and planning for the future instead of living for today. 

If you have time, take a look at some of Dave Ramsey's stuff. Maybe an idea or two could help you out and better your position. Something we all should be trying to do everyday..........

As Always,

Stay Safe.

Habits and Addictions - during a bad day....

The other day, while surfing the net, there was an article discussion the impact of addictions on people during a bad day. The article focused on drug addictions and the evils of smoking. From the writer's perspective these seemed to be the only two issue someone could have which would affect them negatively during an emergency. There was an emphasis placed on how people who smoke are doomed in emergencies, even more so than say a heroin addict from the way the article was written......... (here is my disclaimer; I smoke)  

I was at work when I read the article and started looking around at the people. Got my mind thinking about how the people around me might respond or how what they do now might effect their decisions during an emergency. Smoking seemed to be the least of the issues I could see around me. 

During an emergency people's habits, personalities have a way of being amplified. In some cases they might just shut down but for the most part however they interact with the world on a regular day is amplified. People tend to stick to what they know. This is especially true if the situation has a low level of law enforcement involvement. When people think they can get away with something the "real them" tends to come out. 

The easiest example of this is during civil disturbance situations. People will claim they are "standing up to the man" or taking part in some other noble cause. As soon as a storefront window is broken they seem to lose focus on the original cause they were there for. 

Being overtaken by greed or being in envy of what others have could cause you to be in a position where you are injured trying to steal or maybe even assaulted by other people. Not to mention you run the risk of having the police show up to your door after order has been restored and the video has been reviewed! 

We are using the seven deadly sins here just a framework to hang your thoughts on. You personally might have a different list of concepts you work with in your life, cool. from this list the worst of these concepts, for us here, seems to be SLOTH.....

    

Not doing anything. Not putting a little something away. Not taking the time to learn something. Not bothering to talk to your family about what to do. Seems this one might a big cause of some of the others. If you do not plan and your neighbor did......... 

We all have something we do which might not be the best idea for us in the long or short term. Some of us gamble every weekend. Some of us put things off till later. Some of us are envious of others. Some of us eat to much. Some of us get to little exercise. None of us go through life without having some bad habit....... If you do go through life without committing a sin...... lying is a sin!!!!! 

Broaden your thoughts when you are planning or thinking about emergencies. Sure your Uncle Fred might smoke a pack a day but he has skills, tools and supplies. You drink a bottle of wine a night, drop two sleeping pills and can barely get the garbage out on garbage day. Who is going to be a liability to who? 

Do what you can now to put yourself and your family in a position where you do not have to suffer from any of these issues. Understand what a need and a want is. Have your families needs covered. If you or a family member have a bad habit or addiction see what you can do to change the issue. Do not be so narrow minded as to think addictions and habits which will affect you are limited to smoking, drinking or drugs. Greed, envy and lust will most likely be an issue before Uncle Fred starts freaking out because he doesn't have a smoke! Plus Uncle Fred probably has a pack or two stashed somewhere.................

As Always,

Stay Safe.

Go or stay?

No matter the emergency you really only have these two choices. The internet is full of theories of when you should do each if the end of the world is at hand. Everyday people face situations where they have to make this decision. The same thought process applies to dealing with a fire in the kitchen, mugger in a dark alley, flat tire or any other situation. In our everyday life we do not have to settle on one answer so why would we force ourselves to during any emergency?

You have two choices. Deal with the situation where you are at or move to a position which gives you an advantage. Major storm coming your way? You either ride it out or move away from it. Flat tire on the road? You either stay and deal with it or move to a better position. Gunman shooting at you? You either deal with it where you are or move to a better position. Power out at the house? You either stay or go to somewhere with power. We make these decisions all the time with little thought. We know what we need to do for a given situation.

Planning for emergencies is no different. Somehow if you read the multitude of postings on the internet or look through all the books on Amazon there seems to be two completely different strategies and you seemed to have to choose one or the other. Why? The train of thought from these sources and others seems to be the situations you are preparing for are all going to be such you have to pick one option or the other. Of course there could be situations when you can clearly see one of the options is the best and you go for the best option. What if the option you HAVE to take is not the option you planned for?

You are cooking, your phone rings, you are distracted and the pan has a grease fire growing in it the next time you look back at it. Choosing the "Go" option of planning you never used an of your resources to put any "Stay" options in the home. No thought or money was put into a fire extinguisher but money was put into the biggest pack you could find....... You are driving late at night, your tired, your phone rings, you are distracted and do not notice the road turns and the next thing you know you went off the road, flipped your car. Of course your phone is lost, you have high heels on, storms had been reported coming and you can see the nearest town has to be five miles away. You always figured you would just "Stay" if something happened. You have the best hydroponic set up in your greenhouse but never put together a bag for the car. (side note: unless your in certain states you should only use hydroponics to grow vegetables! just seeing who is paying attention)

When we start this adventure in planning for emergencies we need to focus on giving ourselves options. Now you might need to focus on something right off the top. Is your top concern having to walk home at some point? Do you need to install a shelter for tornados? We all have different "first things" we want to address. If you're first thing is a doomsday compound, complete with a Mad Max caravan prepositioned, you might want to scale this down a bit. What we do not want to do is prescribe to only one way of responding to situations.

After you prepare for the first thing then move to cover as many things as you can. Always trying to give you and your family as many options as possible. The pails you bought to store food in your garage. Are they to heavy for other members of your family or you to move if the plan changed from staying home to getting out of dodge? Here is a good example of the idea we are talking about.

You purchased several prepackaged five gallon pails stuffed full of emergency food. You have focused on 'staying' if faced with a situation. Weather services has reported the biggest storm in history is going to rip right through your neighborhood. Authorities have ordered the evacuation of the area. Do you just leave all the food there? Do you travel without any food, having to rely on the charity of others? Do you arrive at a friend or family members home empty handed and expect them to meet all your needs? Maybe you did stay? Now your home is unlivable and you can not stay there. You and your family try to take the food buckets with you but quickly find out they are heavy and not really made to be carried long distances.

Making a purchase like these food buckets can be a good idea. (see other postings on buying this kind of stuff) You have food on hand if you need it and you can transport the food easily in a vehicle. You might have to repackage some of the food if you or noone else in your family can lift them. You might be a professional body builder and can easily move the buckets around, can your ninety pound, super model wife? How about your children who are members of MENSA and aspiring actors? This is where we keep saying we have to tailor our plans to our situation and there are no one size fits all answers to planning.

Do you have a backpack you can dump those buckets into to make the food more portable? (no stuffing the buckets into a pack is not a good idea. to much unused space in the bag if you do) If you are going to put you, your supermodel husband, two-point-three kids and the dogs into the Mini Cooper do you have some way of strapping the buckets on to the roof?

typical husband of readers of this blog!

Simultaneous planning for both options is feasible. We just have to put a little forethought into what we are doing. When you store the food in the house for 'stay' do you use containers to hold the food which could be moved to the truck if the plan changed to 'go'? Those extra cans of food you pick up on sale and stash away for an emergency, when kept in a plastic bin are now ready for both situations. A cheap surplus army bag (seabag) you use to keep extra blankets in can quickly be repurposed to hold all those MREs you have stashed in the garage. Makes it a lot easier to carry them because those boxes they come in are not made to be carried very far. They're great for throwing in the car but really suck if you have hand carry them!

Be realistic when you are planning. I had a conversation with a fella the other day about buying these prepackaged buckets. As we talked he told me his plan if he and the wife had to leave was to carry a couple of these buckets and a backpack a piece. He figured if they had to "hoof it" this system would work. Knowing the situation a little, I tried to gently point out he was not physically ready to carry the amount of weight he thought he could in the way he was planning. I also know from previous conversations his wife is supposed to be in no physical condition, due to medical issues, to carry just about anything. He just figured purchasing some prepackaged, dehydrated buckets of food, and a couple of backpacks would cover his needs. If the Big One came and the two of them had to walk away from their home he figured they were set.

This is a great example of the one size fits all planning I see people do! He looked for what was to him the easiest answer. Of course some company had a product they claimed would fit his needs and he was ready to go with what they offered. Planning for an emergency done, now he could watch the Lakers game. Short version of the conversation and focusing on this post.

We discussed how far he thought in a worst case scenario they would have to walk. We discussed and went through the contents of the bags and buckets he wanted to buy. We agreed purchasing the stuff was a good starting point and from there the items could be modified. The best part to me was when I think I was able to have him understand the need to purchase a basket, wagon or some other means to haul what he had bought. Without having to just come right out and say "Dude, when was the last time you walked that far carrying that much? Your mind might say you can do it but trust me you are no where in the shape you think you are!" I am starting to digress from the point here.

Why pick one option when you do not have to? A little prior planning can give you multiple options when emergencies arise. We should try to build our planning on a firm base of multiple options and having the ability to be flexible in our response to situations. We may not be able to plan for everything, we can plan to give ourselves the ability to respond to anything!!

As Always,

Stay Safe                  

Urban Garden - update #1

Not my garden!

I was reading up on gardening, trying to learn something new, when I came across a term I liked. The writer was describing how sometimes you do not find all of the potatoes growing under ground and if you leave them they become "volunteers" which will grown on their own. Knowing I probably missed a few and having some littles ones left which I randomly buried I wanted to see if this worked.

With almost no watering, I kind of on purpose forgot to water them most weeks and relied on the limited rain we have had I wanted to see what would happen. After a few weeks I was surprised to see leaves poking out of the ground!!!

Only after there was signs of life did I water the ground a little more often. Even then I was purposely seeing how little water, besides what fell from the sky, I could use. (of course the water falling from the sky is a scary thing for those of us in Southern California!) One thing I have learned since trying to be an urban farmer is when to pull the potatoes from the ground. The plant starts to die and you know it is time to dig. Of course digging is always the fun part, kind of like a grown up easter egg hunt!

Trying to grow even the little garden I have really gives you an appreciation for how much work goes into growing our food. Knowing how many plants I have put into the ground which did nothing and realizing there is a lot to learn about I appreciate the full grocery stores I can walk into a lot more. Growing enough food by yourself to feed your family is a full time job!!!

The harvest of my volunteers is not very large. Even the harvest from before was not very much and only lasted about a week or two. What you see in these pictures would last a meal. Which is why I am amazed when you start to think about how much food someone has to grow in order to feed us all. Someone has to work all day at producing enough food for the rest of us to eat. If we had to grow our own food we would not have time to do whatever it is we do for a living. You could not spend all day in an office if you had to worry about the fields you tried to feed your family from.  

I plan on trying to work the soil a little, turn it over stuff like that, and then use these to see what I can grown in a couple of weeks. If I come across any 'Seed Potatoes' at Home Depot I will pick some up. The next time I plant will be to see how much food I can grow. Which means I will water them, cover them with wire to keep the cats and raccoons at bay and really see how much I can get out of my little spot.

We all have something we are good at. Why not learn something new? Take some time to learn something you know nothing about. I promise it will be rewarding, just as I have found my little garden to be fun and rewarding!!!

As Always,

Stay Safe!

Take a break

When you start looking at things to do to be better prepared in your life a strange thing happens. You notice there is always something else to do, learn or buy. This is why it is a good idea to take things in small bits. Set a goal, achieve the goal and then reevaluate what it is you are trying to do. If you find yourself consumed by all the 'what ifs' it is time to take a break!

Between making sure you have food in the house, the kids make it to school, the bills get paid, the dog makes it to the vet, getting the oil changed, you got ammo to shoot the zombies with and trying to take a bath everyday.... things get hectic! Planning should not add to your long day. If it is, take a break. Remember planning is supposed to add to life, not add stress to life.

Do not worry all the issues you were thinking about will still be there when you are done recharging your batteries. Focusing on other things reminds you why you want to be in a position to deal with issues in the first place..................

You might have to force yourself to put the notepad down. You might have to not go into the garage for a day or two. Go find you a happy place, sit down, read a book, have a drink and watch the kids play.

You will be surprised how taking a break will help you to focus on what you are trying to do. Once you get back at it you will be able to see what you missed while you were in the middle of stuff. Which will let you objectively take a look at what you were doing. Remember you need to enjoy life! Heck I took a break while reading this and went outside with the youngest to play for a couple of minutes!!!

As Always,

Stay Safe!

Less than lethal

The subject of planning for emergencies and security always seem to come up together. With these two always comes the topic of firearms. The one subject which never seems to really come when people start talking about emergency planning, is anything to do with options you can give yourself which do not include firearms. We have discussed the use of force during situations and one very important aspect of the use of force continuum is having options. 

  

When you hear a bump in the night we all think this is what we are going to find. But what if you find something different lurking outside? 

Are you going to shoot them because this is the only option you have prepared for and given yourself to work with? Are you going to pistol whip the kids to make them leave? If you have answered with some form of "You bet I would!" picture this being your loved ones. Your loved ones looking for shelter, food and you are not there to help them. Would you want them to be shot? If your still saying yes just go away now................... 

For the rest of use we can give ourselves options to use, especially if you are not trained with firearms and can never own one due to your personal beliefs. Now these options are not better or worst than firearms. Each is a tool and can be used for different tasks. As with any tool if you do not know how to use the tool it might as well be a door stop. We should also think of these tools as option makers which should be used in conjunction with our personal abilities and skill level. 

  

Three of the main options you see being sold to people are Tazers, stun guns and batons. Each of these have advantages and disadvantages. A big issue is people will ask their friend what they should get, then they go buy one, put it somewhere and forget it. Tazers have batteries and batteries die, batons take a bit of skill to use above the level of a caveman smashing something and if your attempting to use a baton for less than lethal you need some training. 

Before we go any further it is absolutely important, as in do not buy anything we are talking about, NO, do not do it until you have checked your local laws!! In some locations, like sunny Southern California, simply having one of these tools is a crime! You do not want to make it through a really bad situation to only find yourself in jail facing more bad situations because you did not check the laws. No ignorance of the law is not a defense and stores will sell things which are illegal to own!! DO YOUR HOMEWORK!!!! 

Remember these tools are less than lethal but can cause permanent damage and could also kill someone. Sure you bought the baton to defend yourself without killing someone but the one time you used it the bad guy ducked and you smashed his head in......... 

The biggest tool I heard people are told to buy is Pepper Spray. Without getting into all the details, yes I could bore you with the details, not all spray or delivery options are the same. Do a little research before you go buy a keychain spray of this stuff and think you are safe. Hint; the key chain stuff in a size you will carry probably ain't enough to stop someone....

 

These photos of people standing within arm reach of the bad guy and deploying their tools to end the situation are very misleading. Having been sprayed and partaken in training with others being sprayed I can tell you in each of these pictures it would be nothing for the bad guy to reach out and grab the women. Once he has his hands on her he does not need to see and is probably even more motivated to hurt her because he is in pain. 

 

 These photos using other tools also give a false sense of confidence on how these tools work. 

This distance you see with the spray is what is used during training to ensure the trainee is inundated the first time and does not have to go through the process more than once. A hand held up between the two at this distance will do a lot for the bad guy and give him time he can close the distance with. 

At this distance you can not expect to spray the bad guy and the situation ends. This is where you have to utilize the tool as part of your overall response to the situation. You could deflect the reaching hand, deploy the spray and make some distance. This is a good idea of how to properly utilize pepper spray. Use the spray from the greatest distance you can. The spray takes time to work, might only be a second or two but in a confrontation tenths of a second make the difference

.  

If we had the video of the situation in this picture odds are we would see the bad guy, with the club. Continue forward as he followed through with the swing. For their positions it would appear the guy in the helmet will be struck by the club if he just stands there. The club guy might even take two or three swings before the spray effects him to the point he can no longer fight. In a small percentage of the population there are people who are not affected at all by pepper spray. Again, these are tools and should be part of an overall strategy for surviving the situation. If you look at the guy in the helmet he appears to be law enforcement of some type. 

Let's say he is for this post. They guy swinging the club is sprayed and as the cop changes position to gain space and time the club man keeps coming. At this point the cop would be thinking of changing tactics and would move further up the scale for using force. The shotgun, if loaded properly, could be his next step to stop the situation. Ok gun folks pay attention to this next part..........

There are less than lethal rounds made for shotguns! Again these are designed to be less than lethal but the person deploying the tool needs to understand how to deploy it. For all of the kinetic energy rounds or even the baton targeting is the key to helping ensure nothing becomes lethal. 

 

These are some of the types of less than lethal rounds available for shotguns. In essence most of them are bean bags thrown really hard from the shotgun. Some rounds are a softish plastic which bounces a lot. All of them are designed to cause pain. Pain makes people stop doing what they are doing because nobody likes pain!!!!! The next time you see a protest on TV or a situation where police utilize these remember they are made to hurt but not kill anyone. 

 

Sure these look bad, I can tell you from experience they hurt and take a few weeks to heal up, but none of these people are dead. We will skip discussing why these people were targeted......... For those of us out there who focus our security planning on firearms, here are some new ways to utilize your shotgun (you have one right) and a reason to buy more ammo. These do not fly like regular rounds and take some practice to learn to deploy correctly. 

This is getting a bit long so I will wrap it up here. In the future there will be more postings on less than lethals and I will attempt to give more details on selection and deployment. For now, if I found the women and children in the second picture in my area and I needed them to leave..... I would step up wind of them, move ten to fifteen yards away and utilize the pepper spray more like a mist to inundate them as little as needed. After a few minutes and once the kids started feeling the irritation they would leave! At least I hope they would!!  

 

As Always,

Stay Safe!!

Recommendation - ARLO

Here is something I have been using for a just over a month now. remember I do not make many recommendations and will only recommend stuff I use...... and I do not get paid to endorse anything.

This is the ARLO camera system and I have had it set up for about a month.

http://www.arlo.com/en-us/?cid=PSarlogoogleps10.26AW-Brand&gclid=CITqj96S3MoCFRSIfgodJDcDfg

We had a little situation at the house just before X-MAS. Neighbors noticed someone going through the wife's truck!!!! They came outside, the person jumped in a car and drove off! THANK YOU NEIGHBORS!!!

Luckily nothing was taken! On a side note....... I was vindicated on a 20 year old "discussion" between myself and my better half...... she has a habit of leaving the truck unlocked..... Remember if the door is locked in most cases the bad guy will move on.

Needless to say I was annoyed and did some searching on the internet. I had bought cameras when we first moved into the house but was unhappy and returned two sets before I just put the idea on the back burner. This time the search did not take long for me to find something which fit what I wanted. I wanted easy to set up, no running wires throughout the house, battery powered so I did not have to hire someone to run power and discrete. No sense having giant cameras sticking out everywhere screaming "WE GOT STUFF TO STEAL". The idea here is not to scare off the bad guys but to have a record of what happen. The ARLO system has fit all of these.

The cameras are small, can be used inside or outside and have infrared capabilities. You can operate them right from your phone or lap top after setting up an account with ARLO. Which only takes a few moments. You also get limited free storage space on the ARLO system.

The system is really easy to set up right out of the box. The only thing which takes a little while to figure out is the motion detection system and setting up when you want the cameras to record. After a few days I figure most of the system out. I do keep tweaking the sensitivity and angle of the cameras to cut down on the cameras recording things I do not want recorded. The first few days I got video of every car going down the street and when the neighbors walked their dogs. All very interesting but not something I want a recording of.

I did have to run over to Best Buy and pick up one of these brackets to get the angle I wanted on one of the cameras. Right out of the box they only have the magnetic ball mounts and although these are great I couldn't get the angle I wanted.

The quality of the video is really surprising! Even at night the video is good.

Battery life is over a month and so far I have only had to change the batteries on the camera watching the front door. Five weeks and two days before the battery indicator was low enough I figured I better change batteries. I also like how the video is saved on the internet and not at the house. Even if someone breaks in they can not take what has been recorded.

The cameras do not work in real time. You can watch the cameras live on your phone or other device but there is a delay. I had fun walking around trying the cameras out while looking at myself! The delay is a few seconds. Only other issue I have had which could be called bad is the motion sensors. You have to position the camera so someone goes across the view to trigger the motion sensor. Given the lay out of the house this is kind of hard in a couple of spots. Had UPS drop some stuff off and unless they are ninja the camera did not work right. Not a deal killer just something to work with.

If you are looking for something to add to the security around your home I do recommend these cameras. Think of them as another layer to ensuring the safety of your family and maybe having more information to turn over to Law Enforcement should something happen. And always remind your better half to LOCK THE DOORS!!!! (she going to be mad I wrote about that)

As Always,

Stay Safe!!!