In keeping with this year's theme on the Ontario Preppers Network, it's important that you take steps to ensure that you have options when it comes time to respond to circumstances beyond your control that can dramatically affect your day to day life.

As a reminder, it was not long ago that the portions of the Ottawa Valley and southern Quebec experienced the strongest earthquake in a very long time. Today, residents of Alymer Quebec are being advised to boil their tap water before consuming it. From time to time, circumstances arise that disrupt the daily routine of many people at the same time. Sometimes, these occurrences affect electricity distribution. Sometimes they affect the water supply, the food supply or your access to banks and your money. Sometimes, all of these items are affected at the same time. We usually don't know in advance that some "disaster" is about to befall us.

I'm not asking you run out to the back yard to dig the foundations for a survival bunker. I am not suggesting to you that you need to sequester yourself in your basement occasionally peeking outside from behind closed curtains to check on the status to the "real world". I do expect you to take some rather common sense steps to ensure that if some calamity befalls you, you have options to respond to that situation.

You need, as a minimum, three months worth of stored food in the home. This means you need at least 270 meals per person plus some comfort food and snacks.

If you don't live near a river, lake or a relatively clean pond, you need to have enough water stored on your property to allow you to drink and cook for at least two weeks. This amounts to a minimum of 56 liters of water per person. If you have access to a reliable source of natural water, you need a means of filtering and and rendering that water safe for consumption. Don't forget containers to carry "dirty" water from the river back home and more containers to store the purified water in.

You must have some cash on hand in the home. How much depends on what you feel you may need to purchase. If you don't have any food or water stored, you'll need more cash than someone who doesn't need to purchase these things from somewhere else. If the power is out or the banks are closed, you may not be able to access the money in your bank account for several days or maybe longer.

You need a way to cook your stored food. A BBQ with a couple of full propane tanks stored in an outside shed works, as does a camping stove or a fire pit with an ample supply of wood to burn.
Bags of charcoal briquettes are a cheap and easily stored source of fuel for outdoor cooking, in a BBQ or in a fire pit, it doesn't matter, charcoal works everywhere.

These four survival items are the place to start. If you can't feed yourself, or drink or don't have the means to buy these supplies from someone else (not that you will easily be able to find someone selling these things during a crisis) you and your family are in for a world of hurt.

The moral of today's post: You need to be able to look after yourself!

So what are you waiting for? If you wait too long, some day you will find yourself in a situation of discomfort and distress that you could have avoided if you had just planned for the day when the store, the hospital, the bank, the water treatment plant or electricity just isn't available to you.

By doing nothing to become more self sufficient or needlessly procrastinating, you are gambling with your life. As with all forms of gambling you will eventually lose everything.

[What have you done today to prepare?]