Day 9 - Spread the word!

I've already talked about the power outages that we had here and how my neighbors are now considering getting power stations of their own after borrowing mine.  Today, that spread to my workplace.

I'd taken some time off around the holiday weekend and today was my first day working again since then.  I was amused to find that I'd come up in the team chat during the storms, from people saying that they need to have a talk with me to get some recommendations on power stations!  It turned out that numerous members of the team had lost power and that most of them weren't ready to deal with that.  For example, one of them has a generator, but it isn't running and they don't know what's wrong with it.  Because of that, they just had to toss a bunch of food that was ruined.  They know about me and my power stations, and several of them were asking for some recommendations (which I provided).

Then, one of my coworkers started messaging me, telling me how she and her husband have been trying to get more prepared.  We talked a bit about power stations, but that shifted into a general preparedness discussion.  She told me that she and her husband have been trying to do more of this and that they're building up a food / water backup and that storing water is hard, which I agreed with.  I then sent her examples of a variety of different water purification options, everything from a Life Straw up through a Big Berkey.  She was going to take a look at those as a way to continue to purify water if they run out of what they have stored.  We're all in the Detroit metro area, so almost everyone is on public infrastructure for water/sewer.  If that goes down, you're out of luck unless you've prepared for it!

So the storms have had a good result in this manner, that they're prompting people to look at how they can improve their preparedness.  I don't know if everyone will follow-through, but any little bit counts and I'm happy to continue to answer their questions and discuss the topics with them! (I joked that maybe I ought to offer a basic preparedness course for my team!)  

We had our CERT meeting tonight and during it we discussed the recent storms too.  One of the couples there have recently put in a large Jackery system (one with the expansion batteries) and while she'd been a bit skeptical at first, it won her over when the power went out and she didn't have to go out into the rain to get the generator going!  

Outreach and talking with others is an important aspect of Preparedness Month, so I'll take this one as today's task!

Quote from: EBuff75 on September 09, 2026, 09:04:21 PMAnd I think what you're describing is a great example of the difference between being "fit" and the idea of "farmer strong."  Heavy, hard labor may not end up with a flashy physique, but damn if it doesn't make people who can get a lot of stuff done!  My dad grew up on a farm and even at 80 and having lived in suburbia ever since his mid-20s, he can still lift and do things that are well beyond what most people his age can manage. 

Now you just need to do that same sort of thing every week for a couple of years and imagine how great your conditioning would be if you ever really needed it! 

That's a really good comparison and precisely point I was trying to make! A lot of us harbor fantasies of living off the land in primitive, wilderness conditons, or traversing 20 miles a day with a full load of survival gear on the way to some distant bug out location.  Reality can hit hard when you attempt anything approaching that as a dry run/training experiment.  

I suspect that I and most preppers have a bit more in the tank should a desperate need ever arise and the adrenaline really gets pumping. But it's instructive to put yourself out there, guage what you're really capable of and maybe adjust your expectations.  Or at least revisit and reassess your plans every few years. Because none of us are getting any younger and what might have been possible 10 years ago isn't necessarily realistic today.  And finally, it's sober motivation to get in better shape. 

Day 10 - Recharge USB power banks

Got a bit behind on updating here.  On Thursday I went through and recharged all (I think) of my USB power banks.  These are the small ones, like you'd use for a phone.  This is where I really started my current obsession with power stations more than 10 years ago, and I've got a ton of these, as they used to be my primary source of power during an outage.  I've posted previously about all the USB lights that I have (primarily the Onite USB lights) and this is how I powered them.  At one point I had a digital outlet timer connected to some USB plugs with ALL of these power banks plugged in so that they'd all get 1hr of charging each week to keep them topped off.  In recent years, with my shift to power stations, I've discontinued this, so it's been a while since they were all charged.  They're all still working just fine though, they just needed topping off. 

Day 11 - Review first aid kit from my Suburban

This is long overdue.  Almost ten years ago I bought one of those large, pre-packed first aid kits (really a base-level EMT kit) for my Suburban.  It's a large bag, but not a very good one, nor were the contents all that great.  I added quite a bit of additional stuff to it, but the bag never worked well and after a few years, some of the seams started to come apart.

Currently, I've got the contents spread all over my living room as I evaluate it all.  I've started going through and making a list of what's in it that I'd like to keep or replace and new things to add.  The bag itself has to go and I'm reviewing different ones online as replacements.  The irritating part is that I can't find one that is really what I have in mind, but I'm sure that I'll figure something out.  

Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of expired items in it which need to be replaced and I've started a list.  Because I've been planning this for a while, I'd already purchased a few of them.  Until I get a replacement bag, I'm using the current one simply as storage as I check things off the list.  Organization will come later!

I'll continue working on this until I've got it assembled.  Hopefully I'll get the new bag and many of the contents at least ordered this weekend and get some shopping done for the items which are easily acquired from CVS or Walmart.  

I have a reminder in my calendar at the start of each month to check/charge gear

    1. Phone battery bank
    2. GPS battery charge (eTrex)
    3. Both headlamps
    4. small AAA light
    5. MAG XL50 in Camelbak, charge both battery sets
    6. Garmin InReach mini 2
    7. GoPro
    8. Scanner
    9. UV-5r
    10. Bike Lights
    11. Bike Pump
    12. Garmin Striker Cast
    13. Garmin data export
    14. Nextcloud server data backup

Days 10-11 - First aid bag, investments, hydroponics, and lessons learned videos

The last few days have sort of been a blend of things, so I'm just going to list them all here. 

I've continued to work on the version 2.0 of my truck first aid kit and have ordered a new bag and some contents. Hopefully, I'll have the bag mostly updated this week.

I also reviewed my retirement accounts and did a slight rebalancing, something I hadn't done in a few years.  Financial preparedness is an important aspect that isn't always considered, but given the inability to avoid both death and taxes, doing our best to prepare for the financials involved in both of those is a good idea!

I've posted previously about my iDoo tabletop hydroponics setup. I'd finished off the last harvest a while back, but the whole system needed to be cleaned out before I could plant new items.  I scrubbed everything off today and started a new batch of seeds. Hopefully in about 6wks I'll have some fresh greens to eat.

Finally, I stumbled across a video done by someone who went through Hurricane Helene, describing things that worked and some that didn't.  It's quite well done and although it might seem to be fairly basic information for most of us, I think it's worth a watch (linked below). It lead me to watch some other videos on the same topic, but I think this was the best of the ones I watched. 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcQx-vEIvOk 

If you're curious, here are some of the other videos about Hurricane Helene that I watched:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8WSJ-VCNw8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx9z2PivCnY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTCcZB6BiYY