[peckrob]

The thing is, you don't have to be a Doomsday Prepper to just be prepared. It's about mitigating the risk of the disasters you are likely to face in your locality.

I lived through the 2011 Super Outbreak [0]. Following the tornadoes, we had no actual damage (and most places didn't, tornadoes are pretty localized disasters, even in big outbreaks), but we had no power for about eight days because the tornadoes tore up all the transmission lines that feed the town.

The biggest lessons I took from that were:

1. Have enough supplies on hand for the duration of the event. I now keep 10 days of food and water for everyone in the family. It's not a lot and it won't win awards - mostly shelf-stable canned goods and bottled water that gets rotated out regularly - but it will keep us fed and watered. Things like toilet paper, a hatchet, matches, a first aid kit, etc. All in my "tornado box."

2. Keep enough cash on hand to last you 10 days with minimal spending. At one point during the outages that followed the Super Outbreak, we went to a pharmacy to pick up some supplies. Obviously with no power it was cash only. They were "ringing" up by writing things down on paper and manually tallying up with a pocket calculator. We were able to get some essentials using the cash my wife and I had in our wallets, but we were fortunate because we usually don't carry cash. I now keep $500 in cash in a safe in the house.

3. Keep at least a half tank of gas in both our vehicles. Basically enough to get us a few hours away from town. These days if I know we're going to have a big storm I top off. That's enough to get us to our family that lives a couple hours away, should we need to bail.

4. Have a crisis communications plan. When the power went out, initially the cell network stayed up in a degraded form on backup generators. But when those ran out, we lost cell coverage. On the third day I drove about 45 minutes down the highway to where I could get a cell signal and let everyone know we were fine. My Mom was so freaked out that she couldn't reach us after the tornadoes happened that she almost drove over to look for us. Now, they know to wait 48 hours before worrying.

Now, it's easy to say "that was a unique event." And you would be right. The 2011 Super Outbreak was a "once in a generation" event. But I have lived through so many rare events in my life so far that it makes sense to be prepared for another one.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Super_Outbreak

[rsync]

WRT fuel, it is logistically difficult to keep gasoline fresh and rotated.

BUT, if you don’t mind paying $20 per gallon, you can buy a 5 gallon sealed can of stabilized, pre mixed, chainsaw gas.

It is 50:1 and 94 octane - and it is absolutely safe and reasonable to run in any car (or generator, etc.) - it will likely be the nicest gas that engine will ever consume.

You can store and use it for years.

Also, you can just use it for chainsaws.

EDIT: This is the brand I use:

https://vpracingfuels.com/product/501-premixed-small-engine-...

"Remains stable 2 years in the tank and 5 years in the sealed container"

[germinalphrase]

re: communications - in the events that cellphone and internet infrastructure fails, what are the viable alternatives? Are landlines intrinsically more robust (or they share the internet fiber)? Shortwave seems obvious, but there’s an obvious education/investment/network barrier (no one I would want to communicate with is a HAM).

[peckrob]

In my case it is predicated on a disaster being localized. Basically it assumes that I will have 48 hours to get a message out.

Where I live is six hours from the coast so hurricanes and tsunamis are not a threat. An earthquake on the New Madrid fault [0] is a possibility although a fairly remote one in any given year. The disaster I optimize for is tornado outbreaks, because it's the most likely to happen. Those occur fairly regularly every few years and are contained enough that I could get a message out probably within 48 hours just by going down the highway an hour or so to get cell coverage.

But to more directly answer your question, pretty much everything depends on power. When the power goes out you have a limited amount of time before backup generators run out of fuel. Even landline telecom systems need power at the switching end. A widespread outage that lasts more than a couple days basically means nothing works and you're reduced to using (like you mentioned) amateur radio or other point-to-point methods that don't rely on ground-based power.

During the Super Outbreak, the cell network stayed "up" for a couple days before going offline completely. But it was impossible to get a message out, most likely because of either demand or damage to the interconnects.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone

[michaelt]

Well, the plan could be as simple as telling loved ones that you'll aim to get a message to them within 3 days, and they shouldn't panic if they haven't heard from you after 2 days.

[Nextgrid]

Satellite phones or BGAN.