Lately, my
husband and I have been watching a show on the National Geographic Channel
called “Doomsday Preppers”.
Have you heard of
it?
It’s become
extremely popular since it began airing several weeks ago. If you haven’t seen the
show, it’s about people that are preparing for.....”the end of the world as we
know it”. The show begins by flashing on several people saying what event they
are preparing for “I’m preparing for Government takeover” or “I’m preparing for
economic collapse” and even “I’m preparing for nuclear war”.
Wow, right?
Well I happen to
think there is some validity to prepping for certain world/life events.
Prepping for the end of the world, to me, is silly. If and when it happens,
there’s no prepping for it. It’ll just happen. These “government takeover” and “economic
collapse” fears, in my opinion, are politically motivated and I won’t buy into
that nonsense. What I believe in prepping for are natural disasters like
tornados, earthquakes, and other severe weather.
We moved from
southern California (earthquake country) to Northwest Tennessee (more
earthquake country!). All my life I’ve only dealt with 2 seasons … hot and not, very little rain
and NO snow. Moving to Tennessee meant, for me, getting used to four real
seasons and in our 5 years here so far, I’ve seen weather events I never could
imagine.
On my daughter’s 7th
birthday (Feb ’08) I received a call from her school from the front office. The
lady on the line asked me “is there any way you can come pick up your child
right now?” Immediately I got nervous and asked why. She replied with only two
words … “ominous weather”. I said “I’ll
be there in 5 minutes” and I ran to my car and took off. Sitting in the car
line along with all the other nervous parents, I was looking at the sky. It was
a cloudy day and it had been raining off and on. The weather man said to be on
the lookout for bad weather, but where we live, it seems as though there’s some
magnetic pull or force that protects Martin from the worst of the weather. I
thought it was malfunctioning that day. As I stared into the sky, I noticed the
wind pick up and leaves and stuff around my car were starting to fly around. Then
I saw the scariest thing. Right next to my driver window a huge funnel cloud of
leaves was bearing down on my car. I wanted to jump out and run but I was too
terrified. I didn’t understand what I was seeing, but it was scaring me. It only
lasted for about 10 seconds, and after it was over, my car was covered in
leaves. In retrospect it was really nothing, but it looked like something
serious enough for other parents to come up to my car and ask me if I was all
right. Yes, it was that scary. So eventually I made to the front and picked up
my daughter. My son’s school was just up the street from my daughter’s school
so we picked him up and went home. When we got home I heard the tornado sirens.
It was the first time I’d heard them for real and not on TV and let me tell
you, the feeling those sirens impart is SCARY! Again I wanted to run and hide
but I didn’t want to panic my kids. They were only 7 and 8 then. My husband
came flying downstairs to ask me if I heard the sirens. I told him I did and
then he told me that more than likely we wouldn’t have anything to worry about.
To make a long story short, we didn’t have much to worry about. There were some
trees that fell over and a few roofs suffered some wind damage, but the city of
Jackson, which is only 52 miles south us, was devastated by an EF3 tornado. It
could have come here and wiped Martin off the map.
Following that late winter craziness came one
of the hottest summers I’ve ever lived through. Autumn around here is pretty
uneventful as far as the weather is concerned. It thankfully cools off and the
foliage starts to change. It’s a beautiful time of year here, my favorite in
fact. The bugs go away and I can drive with my windows down. The winter that
followed was typical from what I was told. It snowed and we built our first
ever snowman! The rest of that year went on….life as usual….and then January 2009 rolls around and Paducah, KY,
which is 52 miles north of Martin, FROZE OVER!!! The “Heartland” had what they
called an Ice Event and EVERYTHING was covered in at least an inch of
solid ice. EVERYTHING!! Martin got some of the freeze, but nothing like our
neighbors to the north. People in Paducah and surrounding areas didn’t have
power or running water for WEEKS! Their kids were out of school for 5 weeks!
The roads were terrible, power lines were down everywhere and many roads were
impassable. I just happen to know how bad it was up there because my husband
had a doctor appointment at the VA in Marion, IL that he could not miss and we
drove through all of that. It was so scary, but I trust my husband’s driving
completely. I took pictures of the devastation too. It’s crazy because some of
my pictures are really beautiful.
The spring (2009) that followed was riddled with an
event that was supposed to be rare, but it just kept happening. Have you ever
heard of a Derecho (de-re-cho)? It happened probably 10 times that spring, mainly
in the Midwest and south. A Derecho something like a tornado because it packs high
winds, hard rain, hail and is just as powerful, but there are no funnel clouds.
There are straight-line winds that can blow over 100 mph. It’s a severe weather
system that on a map, takes the shape of a bow (as in bow & arrow) usually
going from west to east and the winds behind the bow are what cause the most
damage. One day in May at another doctor appointment in Marion, we were forced
to stay inside the hospital because a Derecho was approaching. The hospital has
huge windows along the front that are almost floor to ceiling. We were told to
go in an interior hallway and close the doors. From where we were we could see
the windows bow in and out as the pressure changed. I thought they would crack
but they didn’t. We watched it blow through like a train and when it was over, 100
year old trees were uprooted, power poles were snapped in half and big rig
trucks had flipped over on the freeway It all only lasted about 2 minutes, if
that long. It doesn’t take long for Mother Nature to tear down what we’ve
built. I have pictures of all that too. We were lucky. Our car was only, once
again, covered in leaves but the landscape had been forever changed. It was a
day I’ll never forget!
It is those types
of events that I believe in preparing for. I’m not afraid of any man-made
anything. It’s Mother Nature that scares me. Since those weather events, there
have been several more like tornado outbreaks, 100 year floods, and tsunamis. I’ve always been a weather buff and I’ve noticed some
dramatic changes in our weather here in Martin. We’ve had an extremely wimpy
winter (what I like to call a long fall) and now this early spring/summer
thing. I’m afraid this winter is going to be doozy and I want my family to be
ready for it.
I’ve been doing
all sorts of research on how to get prepared for weather disasters and what I could
do to protect my family and our home. That is the reason I am starting this new
section to my blog. I want to document my prepping and hopefully help anyone
else that feels the same as I do. As far as prepping for stuff like a
government takeover (not gonna happen) or economic collapse (already happened
and we’re going through a slow recovery right now as a country) are just a
bunch of paranoid delusions. Prepping for the possibility of a nuclear war hasn’t
been a concern of mine since the 1980s but I do keep it in the back of my mind.
I’ll have a few things in my preps for nuclear war as well. Terrorist attacks
and pandemics are manmade issues that I just remain vigilant and observant for.
I can’t control someone’s though process or where someone coughs or sneezes.
Another possible weather anomaly I want to prepare for is an EMP or
electromagnetic pulse. The sun has been doing things lately to cause disruption
in our various electronics and it’s predicted that a large solar flare will
have the capability of causing an EMP large enough to knockout everything
electronic, whether it be battery operated or plugged-in. A large enough EMP can
wipe out our entire power grid and no one knows how long it would take to get
it back up again. In an instant we can be thrown right back into the dark ages.
I want to prep for such an event.
How does someone
prep for an EMP?
In my research,
and in watching shows like “Doomsday Preppers”, using faraday boxes are the
easiest way to protect electronics and it can be as cheap or as expensive as
you can afford.
Okay….whew! I’ve kind of gone off on
a tangent here, but you can see where I’m coming from and why I want to protect
my family and my home. My hope for this portion of my blog is to help others
and hopefully become part of a network of preppers that are prepping for
similar events and share ideas. In future posts I plan on sharing our food
& water plan, our bug in and bug out plans, and what types of items we will
include in our preps. I will go more into faraday boxes too!
God bless and
happy prepping!
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