Hurricane Earl is roaring up the East Coast, and millions of people are wondering if it will hit their area hard. Forecasts for hurricanes are helpful, but far from guaranteed to be accurate. The next 24-36 hours should tell the story. Hopefully it will have a happy ending, if you are one of those threatened.

Emergency Supplies

Even now there may be time to make a little difference. I suggest you do what you can. In the areas most likely to be hit, stores have already been overshopped, and crowds have made getting things difficult. Hopefully there are some items left on the shelves. Question is… is it worth going to the store? If it is dangerous, no it isn’t. If you can get in and get some things and get out without a confrontation or being hijacked, sounds like it may be still worth a try. Use wisdom.

When disaster strikes, stay away from stores. You’ll only find trouble there at that point in time.

Let’s assume you can get to a store and they have some stock left. If it were me, I’d get things in this order:
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If you’ve read Food Expiration Dates, you know that I do not agree with the people who say do not pay attention to expiration dates for food. I pay attention very closely. I think even the Best By dates can be too long. Having stored an emergency supply of food for many years, and rotating the stock, I think I have a pretty good rubber-meets-the-road viewpoint. Some food lasts nearly forever. Some is not good to eat by the expiration date. Maybe read that post.

I’m the opposite on prescription drugs.

I believe what the FDA, Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Harvard Medical School say about them. They all say (more…)

If a person is hungry, who in their right mind would trade their food for a piece of metal. Not me. I wonder if gold will buy food if things go really south.

Guns. Most people think that having guns to defend their supplies and their families is a good idea. There are reasons I can understand for that. But remember that unless you are very, very good at killing, it is a hard thing to do when it comes down to it. And a bluff threat will not suffice. More, unless you are good at it, the ‘bad guys’ tend to be better at it. Think of the numerous times a police officer has been shot with their own gun. And then there are numbers. If you are greatly outnumbered, it would take an exceptional person to survive. Perhaps you are one of those. Then I leave it up to your conscience.

Wilderness first aid. If things go really south, there will be few things more valuable than a person who knows how to treat injuries. Even the hardest ass bad guy tends to look for help when they are seriously injured. If you have some knowledge of how to deal with, say, a stab or a gunshot wound, I believe that in many cases you have something more valuable than food. And a reason for people to keep you alive. (more…)

One of the primary sources for emergency food in the United States is Nitro-Pak

There are good reasons.

1. ‘Iron-Clad’ 120-day Guarantee

2. Free Shipping in the continental United States over $100, most items.

3. Over 50,000 products

5. Guaranteed lowest price. If you find a lower price on an in-stock item, they will match it.

6. In business over 25 years.

7. Most orders ship in 24 -72 hours, although the time can get much longer when there is a perceived crisis, and then they also run out of the most popular items.

They have MRE’s, Emergency Food Units, Freeze-Dried Food.
They have Earthquake Survival Kits, Camping Survival Supplies, and Survival Food.
They even have esoteric emergency supplies like Space Food, Potassium Iodide and Nite-Vision Equipment.

Is this beginning to sound like a commercial?

Yes. It is a commercial. I would like you to go there and see if you find yourself saying… oh… I do not want to wait until it’s too late. I want some things on hand NOW. And start being actually prepared.

Have I gone through this checklist and made sure I have nearly all of what they suggest?
Yes. And I have a lot more of some categories, like first aid supplies.

Humor me. Go to Nitro-Pak. and click on 72 Hr. Survival Kits. Then when the next window comes up, click on 72 Hr Survival Kits. At the top of the page that comes up, you will see **72 Hour Emergency Info & Checklist. Click on that.

You will be shown an extremely well-thought-out emergency checklist.

The first part is a list of reasons why you should actually do something to be prepared. It is interesting.
The second part is the checklist with links to many of the supplies themselves. It is vital.

You can print out this checklist.

It is free.

Please take a little time and consider the checklist. As I’ve said, and as they say… because it is so true… when an emergency strikes it will be too late.

It’s about time for me to go through my periodic check of supplies, so I thought I share with you what I’m going to do. (more…)

You must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the methods mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are only personal opinion, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.

Some people are prone to nosebleeds, and have an underlying medical condition. This post is not for those people.

This post is about the emergency situation nosebleed caused by minor trauma… something hitting my nose and causing it to bleed. It is not for major trauma, where there is profound bleeding, or internal bleeding. That is a completely different scenario. In that case, I would seek medical help immediately.

But for the common nosebleed that is minor and not life-threatening… I take a sterile gauze pad and cut it into a piece about 1 inch square. Fold it over, maybe twice. Place it between the gum and the lip of the upper mouth, all the way up. This is assuming there is no damage to that site.

My nosebleed can stop within a few seconds.

No, I don’t do anything with the nose itself. I do not stick tampons up the nostrils, as some people do.

Why does this work? Don’t know why. But it does.

But if for some reason this method did not stop the bleeding in a short time, I would assume the bleeding was more serious than it seemed, and would seek medical help.

I have to say that you must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the products or activities mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are personal opinion only, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.

This post is going to ramble on for a little while before it gets to the real point, so you might want to sit back and enjoy the ride.

It’s guaranteed to leave you in ’stitches’.

I was in Southern California at my daughter’s wedding a couple of weeks ago. At the reception, I went over to a table where my brother-in-law was sitting. He happens to be my best friend from third grade, and it was he who introduced me to the woman who became my wife.

My wife just happens to be the twin sister of his wife. I don’t want to confuse things too much, but I must mention that my wife’s brother, whom I roomed with after high school, never told me about her. I suppose he had good reason for hiding her from me. But some things are just meant to be.

Anyway, sitting at the table was a common friend of ours from high school, and his beautiful wife Janet. As I sat down, he asked me about the scar that was forming above my right eye. He wondered what had happened to cause it. (more…)

Neil says that when he started writing his new book, Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life, his fear factor was at about 6 out of 10. Now that he’s learned some basic survival skills, he feels the factor has been downgraded to a 1 or 2. That’s pretty good. Before he started taking EMT classes, he felt he had to flee when faced with an emergency situation. Now he has joined the California Emergency Mobile Patrol, and feels the responsibility to help, instead. Very good.

This is a heavily marketed book, and definitely written for people who are just starting to think about emergency preparedness. But it’s written with a nod of the hat to the gonzo style of personal journalism manifest by Hunter S. Thompson, and so it is a fairly entertaining read as you find out how to kill a goat. Now that I think of it, perhaps it reminds me more of a Maxim how-to-do-it article. Which is natural, because his first book was apparently an iconoclastic treatise about how to pick up girls, a best-seller called The Game (I didn’t read that one… I’ve already got my Amazon Woman from the Avocado Jungle… really, don’t ask). Or perhaps an otherworldly Mother Jones News feature.

As you see, it defies description. Maybe best to just check it out for yourself at Amazon (the booksellers, not the tribe that inhabits the Avocado Jungle).

Before I even start, I have to say that you must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the substances or products mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are only personal opinion, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.

There is so much controversy about salt. One time I was talking to a fellow gym rat about taking in enough sodium through eating salt, and had a nurse who was working out in the same general area come over to me, literally shaking with rage, and berate me for making such obviously harmful statements. You would have thought I’d been caught in the middle of some particularly heinous act.

Didn’t change my mind. In fact, I gently referred her to a recent AMA release that admitted that their stance on sodium for most people, who do not have a certain relatively rare medical condition, has been in error for years. I asked her to get back to me after she read it. Never saw her again.

The body needs the electrolytes sodium and potassium to function. You die if you do not have enough of each. I’ve been studying this subject for a long time. The action of the sodium-potassium pump in the human body just happened to be the subject of my first college class that I sat in on when I was a senior in high school. If you do not have enough of both, you have huge short-term AND long-term problems. One of my high school classmates learned that lesson the hardest possible way. He died from a diet substance that leached potassium from his body.
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Before I even start, I have to say that you must talk with your doctor and find out whether your use of any of the products mentioned in this post, or indeed anywhere on this site, is appropriate for you. All statements are only personal opinion, and have not been approved by any authority or agency or anyone else whatsoever. And read our disclaimer statement.

Skeptical about colloidal silver? I was. Then I read about nurses in England demanding that their hospital allow them to use silver-impregnated dressings for multi-drug resistant staph (MDRS) infections. I can no longer find that article, but no matter. There is a new article in nursingtimes.net from October 14, 2008, that now worries about the overuse of silver… mostly for cost reasons. Nurses are now using silver products so much in their normal care of burns that some people are concerned about the ‘huge amounts’ that patients are being treated with.

So the fact that they are in official use in hospitals is 100% documented. The fact that they are effective is 100% documented. “There is a wealth of evidence supporting the use of antimicrobial silver-based products“, they say in the article. “We know silver has an antimicrobial effect and it is particularly effective in treating pseudomonas.” And this is from institutional people who really prefer the old ways.

Does colloidal silver work for me? (more…)