A fringe benefit, perhaps the only ;), of living in San Francisco is that you are always prepared for major lifestyle disruptions; it is called an earthquake plan and you should have one.
Plenty of food and water to last at least seven days, evacuation meeting points etc. Oh and a wrench for those pesky gas mains.
> Plenty of food and water to last at least seven days
I'm always a little bemused to see food and water given equal weight in preparedness recommendations like this. If you have no food at all for seven days, that won't really cause problems. If you're only planning for a seven-day emergency, there's no reason to store any amount of food.
If you have water for 7 days and food for 3 months, the lack of water will cause a lot of problems.
The recommendations presume you may need to do more than just sit around.
Suppose on day four fire breaks out and you need to evacuate. Your ability to walk long distances, carry others with injuries, and think clearly and make good decisions about how to evacuate will all be impacted by a lack of food.
When I was in a mild emergency one thing the experts did that stood out to me was forcing us all to take a break and cook a warm meal. It made a significant difference to perceived energy level and judgement, even if it wasn't strictly necessary.
> When I was in a mild emergency one thing the experts did that stood out to me was forcing us all to take a break and cook a warm meal. It made a significant difference to perceived energy level and judgement, even if it wasn't strictly necessary.
It does wonders for morale, otherwise it's really not that necessary unless you're running exceptionally low in the adipose department to begin with.
I'm absolutely not an expert in this. I personally perceived a benefit to focus, concentration, and problem solving in addition to morale/group enthusiasm.
My belief, however, (without experience) is that after a few days of no food the physical feeling of hunger will start being very distracting, and you'll start feeling lethargic. I believed that was the case even if you were well nourished before. Not because you run out of fat to burn but because your body starts minimizing usage. Is that totally wrong?
> I personally perceived a benefit to focus, concentration, and problem solving
People often describe the same things about ketogenic diets and fasting, which are both fat burning modes.
The issue is if you only get into the flux state where you're in between modes. That's where you're hangry, irritable, and can't focus because all you can think about is your hunger. In that condition feeding restores normal operation, and can seem like the only path to recovery.
But it actually passes eventually, and what happens afterwards seems kind of remarkable if you've never done it before.
Water is a different story, but food is really quite optional until the fat buffers start experiencing underruns and your muscles start getting cannibalized, then you're starting to get into trouble.
We've evolved to not just struggle through periods of food scarcity, we actually perform well and can be surprisingly athletic without food. It makes sense to me, since when we're without food we need to be on our game and go find some or eventually we'd die.
When fasting, for me anyways, it really feels like a keyed-up high-alert almost stimulated mode of operating. I've gone on long hikes and runs after not eating for multiple days, it's kind of preferable now so I don't have to carry any food and it's more pleasant to do physical activities with an empty abdomen.
Edit:
Above where I wrote "feeding restores normal operation", I'm assuming that "normal operation" isn't a ketogenic diet, and feeding includes carbs.
People already in ketosis don't go through this suffering phase when starting a fast, because it already happened when they ceased consuming carbs.
If people around you are going without food for 7 days or longer, you still have a problem, and it’s directly proportionate to the number of very hungry people that live around you.
“Safe is anywhere a hungry person can't walk in three days.”
Hunger and hunger pangs disappear by day 3 or 4, and what pain there is almost entirely mental. Lots of people do 7-10 fasts (especially in California), and this experience is quite typical if not universal. Though, perhaps once you get to the point of starvation the experience changes.
I've done a few 5-7 day juice fasts starting at ~600 calories per day--all sugar as fat and protein prevent hunger from subsiding. After the hunger subsides it's easier to taper off entirely. The hard part is dealing with stress. Even though it's common to experience a mental high and to even perform well athletically, the difficulty with stress betrays the fact that your body has declining energy.
I don't do fasts, but I can attest to hunger pains disappearing after a couple of days, and the fact most of it is mental.
I went from a 3000 calorie/day diet to a 1000 calorie/day diet for 8 months several years back. A few years after that, I once went 4 full days without food (it sucked, but I was mentally prepared due to my experience from that 3k to 1k diet change).
The change in energy will mess with your head/body for about a week until you get used to it.
Edit: People keep downvoting the parent, but I'm not sure why, just because the information comes from someone who does "fasts"?
> all sugar as fat and protein prevent hunger from subsiding
I think you've got that inverted.
People easing into intermittent fasting are often recommended they start with keto to get fat-as-fuel adapted and begin their intermittent fasts with a few days of keto for the very reason that it gets through the hunger pangs while still being able to eat, just avoiding carbs.
> starting at ~600 calories per day--all sugar as fat and protein prevent hunger from subsiding. After the hunger subsides it's easier to taper off entirely.
I think that statement was easily misinterpreted.
After not eating you start to feel hungry. After a couple of days, that hunger will fade. Eating fat or protein will satiate that hunger but will sort of reset that timer on the hunger going away entirely.
I think the idea is you do a 7 day fast, eating a small amount of sugar during the first ~3 hungry days.
I think you're talking about two different things.
Fat and protein giving satiation refers to your hunger subsiding because you're full.
Whereas "eating all sugar as fat and protein prevent hunger from subsiding" refers to the phenomenon that when you're starving, you stop feeling hungry despite the fact that you aren't full. Presumably, consuming sugar doesn't interfere with this, while consuming fat or protein does.
On the other hand, if I have fuel, then I may be able to get water in the form of rainwater or other potential water sources -- boiling the water for safety. For me, that's one of the big things that people overlook when they are preparing for disasters.
But I would say definitely store food and medicine. Keeping your energy levels up is important for maintaining your health. Getting ill is just another way to die.
You need chemical treatment and not boiling for rainwater. It is often chemically polluted because we're still burning contaminated hydrocarbons, typically with NOx or SOx (nitrates or sulphates). These are rather unhealthy, but in a short emergency it's fine.
I don’t know much about the city water system, is there a likely scenario where the water shuts off due to coronavirus?
It’s a much different situation than an earthquake, nothing is going to damage the water lines in this case. Does the water grid require a lot of active maintenance on a daily basis that it’s at risk of shutting off if there are a few weeks where nobody is working?
The lesson I would draw is less "they're recommending 7 days of water because they think there's a chance the water might shut off" and more "they issue the same recommendations without regard to what circumstances you're supposedly preparing for or whether those recommendations technically make any sense".
An emergency bag with documents, first aid, and basic supplies, clothes, etc can be a good idea for the earthquake plan. Not so useful for epidemic emergency though.
Well, it would have masks as well which are directly helpful. And if you must be quarantined for days and possibly care for yourself or someone else in the house with a bad fever/illness then yeah everything else is useful.
Plenty of food and water to last at least seven days, evacuation meeting points etc. Oh and a wrench for those pesky gas mains.