coming soon

We are SO in trouble! :( hahaha... ok, make the most of this, right?

you know how i back up my data? i email myself the information. i type up my homework and then i email it to myself. that means no matter where i go i can check my email and get my data. i've been doing this since BEFORE they came out with remote back up. it's easier for me because i don't have to worry about viruses on another computer or on my FLOPPY.

so basically everything got crushed am I reading this right lol.
This should prove to be an interesting day!!

Okay I am failing on this one! No shovel. No backups for data.

The biggest hardship for me is......I will be home alone all day....in the dark. Yes I have 2 oil lamps and a battery lantern and flashlights but they do not put out much light and the barn-like thing we live in is very dark even in the daytime. Going outside is not an option as it is pouring rain and we have no porch. No internet and no DVD's on a long, lonely, dark, rainy day! I do like to read but read so much yesterday and while I am sure I will read some today my head/eyes do not like me to read for hours on end.

I do have plenty of water to drink and wash with but hmmmm how do I wash dishes without hot water? I cannot use bleach.

I will have to eat cold snacks for breakfast and lunch and for dinner DH and I will probably try out our kosher MRE's that just arrived Thursday....they have a heater thingie in them.

Thank you both for giving us the opportunity to test these things out!

I've been writing about the challenges on my blog. Quite a few people are interested and have started thinking about their own situations.
http://wendyusuallywanders.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/day-5-natural-disaster-earthquake/

OK, so no power, so technically I would not be participating in this...

Honestly, no car shovel. Not even sure what that is. Is it like the folding camp shovels?

Have enough water, so we're OK there. Lots of paper plates, etc so we don't have to worry about dishes or anything.

Keeping everyone entertained today is not too bad, we have church all afternoon, and a "no screen-time" policy (not for me!) on Sunday anyway. The kids have lots of legos, lol.

As far as the computer backup, we have things backed up on an external hard-drive in our garage. I guess you could throw in that both of the computers and the hard-drive got crushed, but what are the chances of it all being ruined?

We have a shovel, but only one in one car. We have a huge barrel of gray water, so I could clean up and flush toilets. We could go 3 weeks on stored clean water, using it for drinking, cooking, dishes. Good light from windows during the day, and flashlights (even have a large crank-handled one) and several camp lights for night.
We had cereal for breakfast. Easy, and we have shelf-stable milk. RECENTLY I found powdered soy milk; our daughter is lactose intolerant, so this has been a good find for storage.
It is too cloudy to use the solar cooker today, but I can cook dinner on the propane grill and the grill burner. We have a couple of extra filled propane tanks, as well.
Church and our traditional warm-weathered family walk and/or bike ride will keep everyone entertained when not involved in meal preps, etc.

ATTENTION everyone! I worked at the hospital yesterday, and with drive time, am gone over 13 hours, so I did not participate in yesterday's challenge. But we did have a couple of people come in with terrible coughs yesterday. One also had fever, weakness, and body aches. We had just heard a few days ago in staff meeting that the seasonal flu has not started up again (yet), so anyone with flu symptoms would be considered to have H1N1 flu. I thought we were a good month away from seeing H1N1 again, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
So, PLEASE, in your preps, do get enough supplies, from diapers and baby wipes to food and juice to antibacterial soap, laundry soap, and clorox wipes, etc so that you could quarrantine your family for a couple of weeks, if needs be. This is especially important if you are pregnant, have young children, have respiratory or major health issues, or have elderly folks living in your household.
Also, get the flu vaccine for anyone in your household in the higher risk categories. That seasonal flu vaccine should be available later this month at many places, like your doctor's office or pharmacies. The H1N1 will be available (they think) middle to end of October. Most will be a 2 part vaccine, about 3 weeks apart. The emergency preparedness person at our hospital said there was one company that might have a single vaccine out this season, but the company our hospital is getting their vaccines from is a 2 part one.
Please know that in a true disaster, like the one proposed for today, many of us medical people may not be able to get to work to help out, and the supplies at any one hospital or clinic or office would run out at some point. It might take a while to get new supplies in, so being prepared at home could be important.
Genine (since my name did not post above)

Ok, I failed the shovel in the trunk, also no hand saw. With an earthquake here you would have downed trees & need to cut yourself out. For computer backup I use a pocket drive. I have moved all my important software & files to it. I backup desk computer & laptop once a month but with quicken & family treemaker programs moved to portable drive they are safer. I can plug it into any computer & run my software. I don't like the idea of backing up online. My eldest daughter did that & when their computer crashed they were given an outradges fee per file. She had to wait for several monther before the could get enuff money to get their files. I could backup to a dvd & place that in my safe-deposit box in the bank. As for the cruched generator, we have 2. As for water we have 2 lines 1 for the house & 1 for the orchard. If both are broken I have enuff portable water to drink along with case of quart size tomatoe juice put back. I have been filling my empty canning jar with water. I have at least 1-1 1/2 gal put back that way. For other uses we have the pond. It can be filtered through a old tee shift & then boiled if use for cooking. Since I have my 5 gal buckets that are not used yet, we could store water from the pond in them. We have enuff garden hose to be able to siphon it closer to the house. If freeze & fridges crushed means my kitchen is gone. We have a propane burner my husband uses to fry fish out in the shed. We have a tripod setup with a grill to place over a campfire, along with 2 burner propane camp stove, & a large wal-mart barrel smoker with bag of charc. & wood on the ground. If we just had an earthquake and could not cook right away. I have instant breakfast, instant milk, & 2 boxes of poptartes in storage & would not be up to cooking for a few hours. I think we would eat out of our 72hr packs until we got orginized. With just the 2 of use we could make do. I 2 cans each of potatoe pearls, sliced potatoes & diced potatoes which would be easy to cook with instant white gravy. The potatoes are part of my longterm storage with cases of rice, wheat, pinto beans & oats. I think my major problem would be washing clothes. I don't have a clothesline & clothespins put back. I need to add them to my list of needs. My husband has in the past riged a indoor clothes line to save on electricity. We can use the empty buckets to wash in.

I am only on checklist 2, so we would have been in big trouble. The last few days have made me realize how unprepared we are....I have a huge to do/buy. After reading Genine's post (Thank you!!) I am going to make quarantine/ pandemic supplies first on my list to finish.

It has been interesting to see what people have and are doing. Thanks!!

So out of all the days so far I know I am the least prepared for this one and the sad thing is this is the most likely to happen to me. Also is one of my worst fears. So maybe I should really do more to be prepared for this one. But like Marci above after reading Gennie's post I too am making quarantine/pandemic supplies a priority.

Thanks ladies for really getting me thinking more about being prepared and how much of a blessing it will be if I ever have to use it.

Ok, so... we did it from midnight last night, but I realized some crucial things that we need in this process.

We have 8:30 church, and because of callings we have to be there at least 15 minutes early. Today, that didnt happen. First thing I realized we needed was a wind-up alarm clock or two. We have one battery run clock in our house, so that will suffice to help aid in the other rooms and plenty of batteries for the clock (and a few other things) but that doesnt help to wake us.

We didnt think about batteries for our flashlights!! This would have helped aid in getting dressed in the morning!! We have a walk-in closet that is dark dark dark. So, we had to be really careful and have my hubby hold candles so that we could see. I am also thinking of getting some kerosene lamps and some oil, and a few hooks to screw into the ceiling so that we can move them from room to room and have light. The candles work, to an extent, but I think I would want something that could be off of the floor/table/kids reach.

We also had to sponge bath this morning, and I am now seeing why people would get up at 5 in the morning (or earlier in some cases) to get ready for the day. My kids thought it was weird. But, it worked with very little complaints (only because of being cold, really).

We had plenty of food in the freezer (we actually have 2 small ones that are with fridges, and one large chest freezer), and used toaster strudels grilled for breakfast. We are having Ramen for lunch, and for dinner grilling some veggies and some meat from the freezer. We still have bread from yesterday, so we will have that as well.

We have my laptop backed up, but not onto a website. We dont trust things like that. We dont have the desktop backed up, but honestly, that is the kids computer and it is ancient. I do have a few things on it that I need to get backed up onto something. So, I kinda failed in that one.

We do not have a shovel in our car. I had never thought of that! We do have ice melt, and jumper cables, and a few other things, but NOT that... I will be getting one (maybe 2) when this challenge is over.

We have TONS of games in our home. We are game fanatics. I even had a ward member say today that if something were to happen, and there was an emergency, she knew they would be over at our house most of the day playing games with us. hahaha

We also need a clothes washer on a stick so that we can clean clothes when in a desperate situation. It would help a TON!

I will report a little later how the rest of the day goes. I really was not looking forward to today after feeling emotionally drained today, but I am doing pretty good. :)

I forgot to add that if we were to have no power/internet, we would have no phones. We have voip, so we would be in big trouble! But, at least we have our cells today! hahaha I need to come up with something else because of this. I also have no phones that arent run by power, so, I really need to rethink that and get back to the basics.

I realized last night that since the power was out for today, that in order to get up I needed an alarm clock. Then I realized, hey the cell phones all have one. So I figured out how to set it (that was easier than my wristwatch to set!) and got up.

I also realized that I had never found the missing fuel for my pocket rocket. I THOUGHT it was on a shelf in the LR closet. Guess again. I did have 3 bottles of it that appear to have sprouted legs and walked. After hunting around (until 2am EDT), I finally went to bed - then I remembered - I don't have to use the yellow bottle of HEET. I can use plain Isopropol Alcohol (rubbing alcohol).

I use a gal. jug for a shower. I pour out about 1/4 of it and bring that to a boil and then add it back to the jug. The alcohol worked just fine for heating the portion of water I pulled out of the gal jug to heat. Only thing was, I pulled out what I would have heated in FL. Well...I'm now in North GA and the water was a tad too chilly for comfort, but worked well enough. Next time I pull out 1/3 a bottle and heat it all the way to boiling, not simmering like I did. So lesson is, even though you're a VERY old hand at primitive living, practice in any new local you move to!

Didn't eat breakfast. I rarely eat breakfast (yeah, I know I should). For lunch on the way home from church I ate an apple. I have a variety of canned foods and stuff in freezer for lunch and dinner. For cooking, I have a choice of heat sources. I have a 2 burner Coleman stove and fuel, my propane grill and 2 bottles of fuel, my pocket stove and fuel, my barrel smoker & charcoal, or wood fire in the backyard. This evening I have a propane camp lantern, 2 hurricane lamps, various candles, flashlights of various styles and batteries, a crank flashlight and I can build a fire in the barrel smoker that gives some light too. Water is 55 gal barrel of water and about 6 gals of water in 1 gal bottles. I have books to read, food storage paperwork (contact info and other written stuff) that I can do. Plus some hand-held games, board and card games - though some of those will be boring by myself. I also have my ham radio in a grab-bag along with a charged deep-cell battery and an adapter that can charge cell phones, mp3 player and other small electronics. I can attach the battery to my car for charging it.

Didn't have camp shovel in car. Don't have computer properly, completely, backed up and don't have 72 hour kits restocked or missing items available.

Time to get some luninner. lol (Lunch but it's almost time for dinner!)

Oh and I forgot that I have the porta-potty outside, if we needed it.

One thing I thought about that some people may not know about. If you decide to turn off the water to the house, make SURE you turn off the hot water heater first. If the water is just a little low - low enough to expose the first element in the tank, you will have it burn up the instant the hot water heater turns on. You probably won't notice it until you find yourself running out of hot water sooner than normal or that the recovery time is abnormally long. But before that happens, the water heater is working over time trying to heat the water in the tank. So...flip off the water heater switch FIRST and THEN cut off the water supply. (for those of us that forget and use the potty/sinks.)

We live in farm land area. How much of the road is covered and is it possible with a small shovel?

Dianne, a few years ago I found these plant hangers that are about 10 inches long and fold against the wall. I put them up in the bathrooms and such so we can hang our lamps on them when needed then fold them against the wall when not needed. I think they came in 2 packs from walmart, and they were really cheap. I have candle lanterns hanging on the ones in the bathroom today. I love the way it makes the bathroom look (especially since it hides the messy bathroom in the low light LOL)

OK first we have no problem going without the food in the fridge and freezers, and going without power (ooh it's nice and quiet in the house) and no problem going without water for a second day. The kids had cereal with shelf stable rice milk for breakfast. We had PB&J sandwiches for lunch, using the bread from yesterday. If our generator, fridge and freezers hadn't gotten crushed by the earthquake (lol) we'd have used the genny to keep those running.

I have a collapsable snow shovel in the truck (which for where I live is more important than a regular shovel) and a small folding camp shovel in the truck tool box. I'm going to make an assumption that this part of the drill meant that the rocks were small enough to shovel, but too big for a normal car to drive over, and that would mean I wouldn't need the shovel. My husband builds maxi 4x4 rigs. All our trucks are built for extreme off-roading. We live in rural Colorado, and we get severe weather so we need vehicles that can get through it. (My "truck" is a custom, lifted 4x4 Suburban) So if the rocks on the road were moveable size I'd just drive over it all or around it. (gonna go post a pic after this)

As for my computer getting crushed.. WAHHHHHHH! I don't ever want to lose my computer LOL! I have an external hard drive on my computer and we back it up on the first of each month to another external hard drive that I keep in our Go Buckets. So I would have lost everything from the first of the month till now, but that's not much to lose.

We are in trouble. I thought we were pretty prepared, but after this challenge we are not even close to prepared what I thought we would be. I have a list a mile long of things to do and buy. I did back up my pictures on quarentine day thinking that would be part of a challenge but not the rest of my computer. PIcs would be most important though.

We pretty much bombed the rest of the day. I need to get some other cooking sources so we can heat without electricity.

Yes I agree that you need to do this again next year to see if we are better prepared.

We are doing okay. I didn't read the challenge for today until after we came home from church, so luckily I got my showe in this morning. I have noticed that some of you are talking about external hard drives. We bought one, but somehow it crashed and now we are paying a lot of money to get the files/pictures back. I thought an external hard drive was immune to stuff like that but apparently not. We just started MOSY this week. I hope we like it...I don't always trust stuff like that, but we are looking for options because we certainly don't want this to happen again.
The kids are all upstairs playing games. Lunch was just PB&J and leftover brownies. For dinner we will make quesidillas on our camp stove using tortillas and cheese from the freezer, canned black beans and canned corn.
We have plenty of water and light sources for this evening. Also, we will eat of paper plates so we don't have dishes to do.
Shaunda

Being without water was my main issue today. It was also my problem with yesterdays challenge as well. I do have some smaller containers (gallon and soda bottles) filled with water. The larger containers 5, 15 gallon and larger were not filled because I was waiting for a siphon hose to be delivered. We had previously filled and tried to use water out of the smaller 5 gallon containers but it was difficult to move and next to impossible to pour out. So we were waiting for the hose before filling the larger containers. If out water main broke we would have run out of water quickly.

We have a large freezer so we would be ok if the contents of the refrigerator was lost. Our cooking stove uses gas but has an electric ignitor which means we would have to light the stove with a match. I have several boxes including water proof ones on hand in our car kit and 72 hour kits. At least we could still use the stove without power. We used yesterdays bread at breakfast and lunch. It was easy enough to toast on the stove. Canned soup for lunch. Italian sausage (from the freezer), pasta and canned spagetti sauce for dinner. Snacks included crackers and peanut butter and canned fruit.

I bought a small tri fold shovel the last time I purchased emergency supplies for out kits. It's stored in the car kit because it can hold more. I'm not sure it would help move a really large stone but I do have the shovel :)

Computer info is backed up on flash drives. We've had several computers crash and burn in the past so I'm ready for this one.

No power all day :( Kids lasted until the afternoon before turning on the TV. At least it wasn't raining today and got into the high 70's so they played outside. We have cards and several games on hand that we can play.

My husband backed up our computer today on one of the servers that he has for his consulting work.

As I said on the wall, too emotionally pooped to try this for real, BUT it's gotten me seriously thinking about what I would need to cook without power. Although mostly I think I would be eating stuff that didn't need cooking.

I also got thinking about the fridge, much of what we store in the fridge would not actually be bad even if kept at room temp...margarine, butter (my parents keep it on the counter and have never had a problem), juice would be okay after 2 days, and all the fruits and veggies would be fine. Cheese gets greasy if warm but would be perfectly safe. Plus stuff like soy sauce, minced garlic, salsa would be fine. Just make sure NOT to eat any meat, eggs, or stuff with raw eggs in it if in question. However, obviously couldn't eat any of that if it was crushed by a beam!

I think we did ok on this one. We survived at least. We did not have a shovel in the car so it took awhile to clear the road. Not really, we just added an hour to our travel time home from church because there was no road to really clear. We decided that we should have our car a little better prepared for things like this. We used camping gear that we have stored in a shed away from the house, so that was not a problem. We don't watch TV on Sunday so that was not a problem. It is a good thing that I have learned from having computer problems that it is good to have many back up sources. I have an external hard drive that I use that I keep in a fire safe box. And I have disk that I keep in our 72 hour kit. That way if we have to leave the house for a fire or flood I still have my geneology and family files on disk. The kids always make a backup of schoolwork on their pen drives just in case. We used our boyscout knowledge with homemade stoves and burners for cooking. There are some great recipes on the boyscout site for cooking eggs in an orange or muffins. The kids are enjoying the time together and helping think up ways to complete the challenge. This has been an eye opener on what we need to do. The practice has been a big help. We have found out that we just did not have enough water. It is amazing how much a family can use in a day. We have decided that the water barrels are a good idea to get. I am glad that I had boys go through scouts, it has helped in the challenges. Can't wait to see what you have planned for Monday.

hey, no shovel in the car--we usually have one from digging sandcastles at the beach!
Yikes, we go through a lot of water! I have 2 liter bottles stored up, but yikes they go fast! We ate off the grill for lunch. Soup, cooked on the grill burner, and baked potatoes and even a frozen pizza! the kids loved that one. We did a family brainstorm over dinner and decided that we definitely needed tarps, plastic, a staple gun, etc. If an earthquake happened and trees came down on the house, we would need a way to patch it up.
Inthe kitchen, I need some heavy duty tin foil for cooking on the grill and just to preserve stuff.

***I always try to make a map of my freezer before the possibility of disasters (hurricanes). That way if the power goes out, I know exactly where the frozen food is on which shelf...so if I need to open the door to get stuff, I can get it super quick and then close the freezer .****

We definitely need to have bottles of germ-x at every bathroom and around the house.

opps! I signed in under the wrong name!

hey, no shovel in the car--we usually have one from digging sandcastles at the beach!

Yikes, we go through a lot of water! I have 2 liter bottles stored up, but yikes they go fast! We ate off the grill for lunch. Soup, cooked on the grill burner, and baked potatoes and even a frozen pizza! the kids loved that one. We did a family brainstorm over dinner and decided that we definitely needed tarps, plastic, a staple gun, etc. If an earthquake happened and trees came down on the house, we would need a way to patch it up.
Inthe kitchen, I need some heavy duty tin foil for cooking on the grill and just to preserve stuff. I always try to make a map of my freezer before the possibility of disasters (hurricanes). That way if the power goes out, I know exactly where the frozen food is on which shelf...so if I need to open the door to get stuff, I can get it super quick and then close the freezer .

We definitely need to have bottles of germ-x at every bathroom and around the house.

I didn't technically participate in today's challenge because I spent most of the day at my in-laws house after church. But I did convince them to have a little discussion with me about how prepared we would be for each of these emergencies that we have practiced in the past few days. It is helpful to get another perspective and see what you might be overlooking in your preparations. Thanks so much for putting all this together so that we can all benefit from the practice and discussions!

Today was hard! We didn't do yesterday's because I absolutely had to spend much of the day working on the computer. But we did today's and wow. I didn't realize how much water we use!

The big thing was water for the dishes. DH said if this had really happened he'd load up 5 gallon buckets in the wagon (or van) and go down to the lake and fill them up, then bring that water home for us to boil and use for dishes. But I'm amazed at how much water goes in to cleaning our dishes.

For lunch we ate fine out of the freezer, but I'd taken a roast down and put it in the fridge to thaw for today, so I couldn't use that!! Our freezer is starting to look a little bare with the challenge. I ended up raiding the 72 hour kits again for an easy supper. I'll need to replenish those once the challenge is done.

We still haven't purchased anything, though not getting the Sunday paper hurt hurt hurt - no coupons for me!!

This challenge has been such an eye-opener for me. I printed off the .pdf to-do sheet and I've been keeping a list of everything I need to work on. And it is FULL. I printed a second copy off tonight.

My mom got me a dutch oven cookbook - I'm excited to learn to use that :D

Ok so I didn't participate in this challenge. Way too much stuff to do to get ready for the work week to be without power and water today. (I know, real emergencies seldom come at a convenient time lol.)

But i did do a back up onto my external hard drive. Had been meaning to do that. And i have an account with my firewall company for an online backup so i'll do that soon too.

I'll put a folding shovel on my list of things to buy when I can shop again. (Actually, i need a whole car emergency kit, with reflectors, jumper cables, etc.)

We made a lasagna in the dutch oven. It was supper delicious!!! I read with the girls and took a nap. In October at church we are going to be tought how to make a solar oven. I cann't wait for that. I want to make one so we have more than one way to cook if electricity goes out. We didn't go without the A/C today because of new baby and triple digets. Would have been horrible without it. It is making me think so much about what we need.