Emergency preparedness is sooo 1950's

I didn't grow up with a family bomb-shelter or nuke drills at school. I am from the neglected generation, too early for school shooter lockdown drills and too late for the Red Scare. We beat the Russkies before I finished high school, and it was already evident that they were dying an economic death before that. Our parents were more likely to have grown up in bell-bottoms than poodle skirts. Rugged self-reliance was a sure sign of a Vietnam vet who hadn't come down from the panic yet.

No matter. The risks are different today, anyway. Our population is huge. Most of us live within 30 miles of a hospital and within 100 miles of a potential riot threat. How many times has Los Angeles burned? I remember the occasional childhood news report about grocery stores with ransacked shelves - usually during heavy rains. Now, grocers use just-in-time distribution to minimize shelf-spoilage and store rents, but that also means stores don't have much supply for panicked consumers. Forget the Russians, we're more worried about the Mexicans, the terrorists, the inner-city punks. We've gone almost native on natural disaster threats. I don't see many storm shelters, but I have heard people say "if I die in an Earthquake, it's God's will." After the earthquake, I'm sure the tune will change. I saw news interviews with people after one of Southern California's severe earthquakes - people were angry with grocery stores for running out of supplies, explaining that, since they don't cook, they don't keep food in the house.

Most of us have some food in the house. Most of us could survive a few miserable days eating plain canned beans in a disaster, even without a plan. Most of us don't, however, have a week's worth of water. We don't even know how much water we would need. We haven't stockpiled toilet paper or tylenol. We wouldn't need food, anyway - if the TV went out for more than 12 hours, there would be a line to jump off the nearest bridge. Lose the internet, and people will be calling the cops out and meeting them at the door with soap carved into a shiv yelling "just shoot me, please, put me out of my misery!" And who could blame them - have you ever tried having a conversation with your family? (j/k)

Now we face multiple possible pandemics, with one (swine flu) actually labeled a pandemic but, at this time, it is a fairly mild illness. The fear, however, is that swine flu will behave like the 1918 pandemic, which started with a mild flu in the spring and returned as a virulent soldier killer in the fall. Don't we have enough to worry about already, with terrorists and the economy and razor blades in Halloween candy? Anybody with a lick of sense has tuned out, bought a wii, and turned on, right? Besides, Swine flu is milder than regular flu. Except when it isn't.

Is your family prepared to spend a week too sick to shop or cook? Can you handle having mom or dad in the ICU for 3 months? Who will watch the kids if mom or dad spends a day or two in the hospital (many hospitals have banned young children from visiting hospital patients due to the flu). If the flu stays mild, you're unlikely to be hospitalized. But there are still stray bullets, reckless drivers, unknown food or bee allergies, etc.

If the flu does get bad, you and yours might stay healthy. You still might be impacted by absenteeism at work. Your electric company might not have enough workers to restore power quickly after the next storm. What if a natural disaster hit in the midst of a nasty flu season? Government aid isn't guaranteed in the first place - we're advised to have a 3-day supply of food and water and several weeks' supplies in case we have to shelter in place - but it could be delayed further by a nasty flu season, even without a pandemic or particularly deadly flu.

If you have an emergency preparedness plan, have you considered the possibility of being sick during a crisis? Have you considered the possibility of quarantine? In my area, there aren't too many natural disasters - floods are localized, we don't have an earthquake fault, we don't get hurricanes, and tornadoes are incredibly rare. But I hadn't really thought about being quarantined, and many of my emergency food stocks take more effort than a sick family would want to expend. I am adding a supply of ready-to-eat soups now. If the flu threat worsens, will communities open emergency shelters in a natural disaster?

If you haven't started preparing for an emergency, please start. Here's a very simple, basic plan: 2 gallons of water per person (or more if you can), 6 cans of Chunky soup or beefaroni per person (with pull-tab tops), a bottle of tylenol or ibuprofen, a large bottle of hand sanitizer, a deck of cards, and a box of breakfast bars or granola bars. It isn't much, but it can keep you alive for 3 days, you can throw it in a backpack for an evacuation, and it doesn't cost a whole heck of a lot. I would also add a battery powered radio, a flashlight or lantern, and batteries for both, along with plastic forks/spoons, a can opener, matches, candles, a couple of clean 5-gallon buckets (you can buy them at Home Depot) and a box of trash bags.

Keep everything together in case you need to evacuate (if you store empty suitcases, you can put your emergency supplies in a suitcase, just be sure to store it in the house or basement where temperatures won't exceed 72 degrees often). If you have pets, add a small bag of animal food and more water. You can just buy several gallon or 2 1/2 gallon bottles at the grocery store. If that seems too expensive, then wash out your empty 2 liter soda bottles, disinfect with a splash of bleach in water, rinse thoroughly, and fill with tap water. If your freezer has room, stuff some 3/4 full botles of water in the freezer and they can double as ice packs for your cooler if the refrigerator dies or the power goes out.

Don't use milk jugs to store drinking water - they're fine for toilet-flushing water, but FEMA says it isn't feasible to truly disinfect milk bottles, so you could have nasty germs growing in your survival water. Yuck.