Tags
bugging out, disability fitness, medical readiness, mental readiness, mobility fitness, physical preparedness, physical prepper, physical readiness, prepper fitness
Wow! Who am I? Let’s see: I am wife, a Mom to four children (three of which are grown and have moved out), a former Air Force buck-sergeant (they don’t have those any more), and a transplanted Alaskan. I have been a commercial fisherman, a grocery store cashier, an electronics technician, and avionics technician, an electrician, a vending machine technician, a computer technician/network technician/network administrator, and a welfare case worker (don’t ask how I ended up there). Presently I am living in Southern California, where my husband is attending school.
Why am I here? I’m sure you’ve heard the story of the ant and the cricket…the ant stores up food and provisions for the winter, and the cricket fiddles or some such and ends up starving to death. I have always been the ant. I have stored food, medical supplies, and camping equipment for as long as I can remember – as a child even. When I was growing up in the woods of Alaska every time we had lots of food I would store a few pounds of sugar, a few pounds of flour, some extra seasonings, canned goods, even tobacco and papers. When times were lean, I would go out into the woods and bring back my “stash” of whatever we were out of just to get us a few more weeks along until things improved.
But now I live in the city, and I no longer work as hard, so I have gotten soft and squishy and discovered that I am not as strong or quick as I used to be. We moved to Southern California, which is mostly desert, in September of 2013, and I realized that if there is an earthquake here we could be relegated to waiting for a government agency to “rescue” us. I don’t know about you, but I know that we could easily die waiting for government help, and I refuse to be put in that position.
I have once again started to stock up on food and I have added water storage to that as well, since we live in the desert, and water is really scarce. I have learned to distill ocean water to make it drinkable, as well. But here’s the rub: we are 13 miles from the ocean.
You have to start asking yourself “what if” questions in order to ensure your survival. What if there is an earthquake? What would the aftermath look like? The immediate aftermath: sand acts like a liquid when it is shaken (liquefaction, it is called), so it is likely that roads could collapse. The water lines could be severed, gas lines could break and cause fires and smoke, and our apartment (ground floor) could be reduced to rubble. In a matter of hours there would be looting in stores and food shortages (look at what happened in the grocery stores in Louisiana when food stamp cards had no limits on them). Since the water lines would be down, there would be water shortages.
So, in the aftermath, we could be without our basic needs. Air – fires and smoke. Shelter – reduced to rubble. Food and water – whatever we could salvage from the rubble, or had stored somewhere outdoors. Medical – again, whatever we could salvage or had stored. Safety – if people knew we had stored food, water, and medical supplies our lives could be in jeopardy as people began to want to take it from us.
Our option – “bugging out”. How? Hopefully, in our car. Possibly on our bikes. Probably on foot. Are we capable of that?
Not in our present physical condition.
So I am now on a journey to increase my chances of survival through physical conditioning, and I’m going to blog about it. I’m going to talk about physical readiness, mental readiness, medical readiness, and self-defense. I’m going to talk about gear, shoes, packs, clothing. I’m going to talk about walking, hiking, hunting. I’m going to talk about building muscle. I’m going to talk about being physically disabled or having physical mobility issues.
Why should you follow my blog?
Do you live anywhere in the world where you might have a natural disaster such as a tornado, earthquake, hurricane, flooding, drought, or man-made disaster affect you or your community? Could you be better educated about hanging on until help arrives if one or more of these events occurs? Do you think that watching my struggles, failures, and mistakes might be amusing, if not educational? Then you should subscribe and follow me!
The Fitness Prepper 