A few prepping notes

I want to do a post on prepping - this ain't anything that hasn't been covered a million times before by people that are way more informed than me - but there are some things that to me haven't been given adequate coverage.
Now I know (and I hope you do too) that folks in different parts of the country prep for different disasters and this is perfectly understandable. You can't prep for everything and you damned sure don't want to because it won't give you time to enjoy life.
So people on the coast tend to prep for major storms and tidal waves, people in the midwest for tornadoes, northeasterners for winter weather, some Californians for earthquakes, etc.
Then you've got preps for civil unrest and for the real nutjobs such as myself, for total collapse of the electrical grid.
You have to be specific for your area. You know best what you need to survive for an indefinite period of time in your location.

As an example I'm going to give you my layout.
I live in Central California, elevation about 60 feet if you're on top of an overpass. It's a very flat arid valley about 300 miles long and 90 miles wide with large urban populations down the 2 main north/south corridors, Hwys 99 and I-5. When I say arid, I mean we average 12 inches of rain a year. Our farming is done with irrigation, from several huge reservoirs in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and distributed by canals. The canals have basically turned this desert into a lush farmland, one of the richest in the Nation. We got fruit, we have hundreds if not thousands of acres of corn, wheat, legumes, tomatoes, nut orchards, lettuce, melons, you name it, we got it.
Our weather is moderate in the winter, rarely dropping below 25 degrees and fucking hot in the summer, occasionally going above 110 degrees. I can remember three days in a row of 115.
There are the Stanislaus and the Tuolumne rivers flowing into the San Joaquin which in turn flows into the Delta and eventually the San Francisco Bay.
I'm separated from the coast by the coastal range which are about 3000 feet high. Just on the other side of the beginning of the coast range and extending to the coast are millions of fucking city folks.
Don't sound too bad, does it? Prime land, lots of water, food to eat, decent weather and far enough inland that I don't even think about earthquakes. So why am I prepping? Read the previous paragraph again especially the part about millions of city folks just over the hills from me.

They do have earthquakes over there, they don't have a coast range to protect them from a tidal wave and San Francisco is a prime target for any kind of attack, terrorist or militarily because of the financial centers and that harbor.
Shit happens over there and makes it unlivable, they only have one direction to go: here. This fucking countryside is going to be picked clean. Folks naturally gravitate towards rivers so that means our rivers will be sewers. Our stores and homes will be looted and we'll have armed gangs in the streets looking for food. Okay, maybe that last part was a little much but it is possible.
Let's take it one step further - what if we have a solar flare like the one back in 1859? That one was so strong it fried telegraph lines. No big deal back then but if that happened today? It would set us back hundreds if not thousands of years. No power for anything. Back to hand farming. No irrigation because it takes electricity to operate all the locks and dams and ditches. Our rivers would quit flowing until the reservoirs crested their dams. No clean water for at least a year. Our lush farmland will turn back into desert within one year.

How do you prep for that shit?
Well, start out by laying in at least a year's supply of food while buying non-hybrid seeds for the year after. Stock up on lots of beans and rice for the protein (wild game and farm animals will become almost non-existant in a very short time), dried fruits and dehydrated vegetables. Learn to can your garden vegetables. The obvious shit, you know? Store it in food grade buckets. Buy combo cases of dehydrated eggs, shortening, milk and butter - comes in #10 cans and has a shelf life of 25 years.

Now everybody knows that you should stock up on ammo, right? How much? More than what you have is about the only answer I have for that. I go down to my local Big 5 Sporting Goods and buy at least 2 boxes of 223 per week. It's always on sale for 9 bucks a box, so I don't feel the pinch. You do that for a year and you have 2000+ rounds of ammo. 22LR is so fucking cheap that there's no excuse for not having at least 5000 rounds on hand right now. 500 rounds will run you a 20 Dollar bill. You don't have a 22? Buy it anyways, everybody else has 22s and you can use your ammo for trading material.

Another thing that I don't hear about buying in bulk - salt. Everybody needs salt. Not only does your body need salt but you use salt to preserve meats, to tan hides, to make your rice and beans taste better. I've been all over this valley and I don't know of a single natural source of salt. Buy a couple of hundred pounds of different grades of salt.

Soap is another thing. I knew a medic that served in Vietnam that used to go out on MedCaps ( sick calls at the local villes and hamlets - hearts and minds type of thing) and he told me that 99% of the diseases and ailments that he treated could've been prevented with soap. Buy soap - lots of soap. Good antibacterial soap without perfumes and shit if you can, but buy soap.

Now for the Big One - water. Gotta have water. Gotta have clean water. Go to ProBass and buy a couple of their 1,000,000 gallon water filters. They're gravity fed and all you need is a five gallon bucket. As far as finding that water, you're on your own. You know your area better than I do. But let me give you a quick tip. Go to Google Earth right now and take a screen shot of your neighborhood from a couple of thousand feet up and print it out. See all those swimming pools and koi ponds?
There will be sources of water - low spots in water mains beneath the ground, hot water heaters, cisterns, etc. You just have to find it. Hell, maybe you'll be lucky enough that your water table is only a few feet down. Dig a fucking well - but filter that water.

Oh, one more thing - those fucking 72 hour disaster kits you can buy at Walmart with 12 meals or whatever? Buy the shit yourself. Why spend money on a fucking kit with desserts when you can buy shit that'll keep you alive? You can put together a much better kit for less money. Besides that, why 72 hours? Is that when the government is going to come to the rescue? Fuck the government. Take care of yourself.

First aid kits are a must. Shit that I wouldn't pay attention to right now might pose a serious threat in an unclean environment. Buy heavy duty gear. Alcohol, lots of ace bandages, felony gloves, sterile gauze, tape, anti-inflammatories, pain killers, forceps, triangular bandages for slings, tourniquets, and especially Celox for blood loss. That is some wonderful stuff. Arterial bleeding? No sweat, dump Celox into it, apply direct pressure for 5-10 minutes and you're done until you can transport him/her to a trained medical professional. Just remember that Celox has a shelf life. Notice I didn't mention anything about suture kits? You do not want to be sewing up wounds. Leave that to the folks that know what the fuck they're doing - you'll end up stitching a fucking pine needle or bullet jacket up inside of you, not to mention billions and billions of germs that will kill you.
Take a first-aid course though your local fire department. Do you know what to do if somebody has a punctured lung? A sucking chest wound? An amputated limb? Do you know how to treat somebody for shock whose legs can't be elevated? How to perform CPR and mouth to mouth? Can you tie or clamp off a bleeding artery? You goddamned well better know how if you plan on doing any fighting or defending.

So, this isn't anything that hasn't been said before. I do want to point out though that near the bottom of my sidebar is a column for "Shit that might come in handy". That's where you'll find your prepper links.