The proliferation of natural disasters in recent years may have people thinking about what they would do in an emergency.
While some extreme weather events give you time to prepare, things change fast, and there are always unpredictable occurrences when water, wind, or fire meet earth. Take, for example, the Hurricane Helene-spawned catastrophic rainfall, floods, and debris flows that killed at least 95 people in North Carolina — four states away from where it made landfall in Florida.
One lifelong prepper shared their knowledge about what you can do now so that when the stuff hits the fan, you are calm, cool, and collected.
"Concentrate on your skills and very basic tools," they wrote on Reddit. "You don't need thousands of dollars of gear for basic survival.
"Bugging out is RARE. Fire, floods and insane storms. Everything else is bugging-in. With the coming winter, power interruptions due to snow is likely."
Their basics: Know how to cook from scratch, have a way to cook, store water with a filter or sanitizer, gather lighting options (not candles), and be able to stay warm.
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Remember that preparing, including mentally, is half the battle. Things will go wrong, so you need backups and alternatives. Basic knowledge about your surroundings — "If the lights go out, where are your off-grid lights located? Can you find them in the dark?" — are essential too.
Batteries, extra batteries, rechargeable batteries, battery banks, and more can make a life-saving difference in dire circumstances. We hope the day never comes, but it's better to overprepare than underprepare, of course.
It's all a result of the rapidly rising global temperature driven by the burning of dirty energy sources such as coal, gas, and oil. This produces polluting gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, which fill the atmosphere and trap heat, leading to more moisture in the air. One consequence is increasingly severe extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods, and wildfires.
🗣️ What would you do if natural disasters were threatening your home?
🔘 Move somewhere else 🌎
🔘 Reinforce my home 🏠
🔘 Nothing 🤷
🔘 This is happening already 😬
🗳️ Click your choice to see results and speak your mind
In addition to preparing for the worst, you can take steps to mitigate the danger, choosing to bike or walk instead of driving a car, for example. Taking public transportation and vacationing responsibly help too, as does eating more plant-based meals, avoiding plastic, and upgrading to appliances including an induction stovetop and heat pump.
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