First Aid and Trauma Kits

We keep a well-stocked first aid kit in both of our vehicles and a small one in each bathroom of our home. These little kits have bandages, gauze, antiseptics, medical tape - the things we are all familiar with for fixing little injuries and skinned knees.

In addition to those little kits, we keep a very large first aid bag and a "trauma" kit in the house. Why do we keep these larger kits? For several reasons ~ 1) We live in an area of the country that is very prone to tornadoes in the spring, summer and fall. 2) We live very near the New Madrid fault line. 3) Every few years we have a winter ice storm that knocks out power for several days, sometimes a week or more.

We like to have these well stocked kits on hand for any of these emergency situations that might arise when it could take an extended period of time for emergency services to arrive to help us.

We look at our first aid bag as a "boo-boo" bag - one that has all the helps we might need for minor injuries that are not life threatening. All of these items are stored in a large duffel bag and kept in a bedroom closet where we could access it immediately if needed.

Our "trauma" kit has items that are needed to save a life and nothing else. We keep these items in a backpack in the same place as our large first aid bag. We keep the trauma items separate from the first aid items so that we can find them quickly without having to sort through various and sundry items that aren't critical. We also keep smaller, portable trauma kits in our cars. More about this below.

Here's how we put ours together.

FIRST AID BAG:

When we were initially putting together our large first aid bag, we had a small budget and couldn't afford to just go out and buy tons of medical supplies in one shopping trip. We made it a habit starting out to buy 2 of anything we keep around our house for general first aid or over the counter medications that we might rely on. For example, if I buy a box of bandages to put in one of our little kits, I automatically buy an extra box and it goes into the large first aid bag. If I buy a box of sudafed for our allergies, I buy an extra box and put it in our large first aid bag. This way, we don't have to try to buy everything for a bag at one time and over the course of several weeks we still end up with a great first aid bag.

Over the years, we have ended up with a fantastic bag. Our bag now has everything in it that our family could need for non-life threatening emergencies. We keep it sorted into sections of like items and we rotate items to make sure they don't expire. Now, when we buy a new box of sudafed, we take the one out of the first aid bag to use and put the new one in its place. This ensures we always have the newest items in our first aid bag just in case we need them.

We keep these items in a duffel bag so it is portable. If something like a tornado or earthquake were to happen, we could hopefully take this bag with us if we had to relocate to temporary housing.


TRAUMA BAG:

We keep our trauma bag in a backpack instead of a duffel, because it doesn't have as many items in it as our large first aid bag. It only has those items that could be essential to save a life and nothing more. This bag we didn't put together entirely ourselves, as there is an excellent one available for purchase at a very inexpensive cost - $35 - from Tactical Response located here in TN. They put their kit together to address three primary areas that are life threatening - critical blood loss, obstructed airway and tension pneumothorax. The guys who put this kit together have been to both Iraq and Afghanistan and have actually used everything in this kit to save many lives.

While many of these kits are sold for those in harms way on the battlefield or in a local police or SWAT department, we determined that they are excellent kits to have on hand in our car and in our trauma bag for a variety of possible uses from car accidents onward.

I look at it this way - if I'm involved in something like a car accident, I'd like to know that should a first responder show up to help me out, I have some great tools on hand to help them provide top-notch assistance to me. And even better, the Tactical Response kit is set up so that many of the items could be used by yourself, on yourself, if no other assistance was immediately available. No, this is not a paid advertisement, but just a product that we feel very strongly about and use ourselves. You cannot go wrong having a few of these on hand.

Mindset and Practice

So far, we've talked a little about what preparedness planning is, how to identify things to prepare for in your area, how to put together your 72-Hour Kit for each family member and one for each vehicle.

Today I want to spend some time talking about Mindset, Attitude and Practice ~ because these are the things that will actually save your life if you ever need to put any of your preparedness plan into action. I hope that after reading the information here that you'll understand the importance of practicing your preparedness skills.

We've all grown up hearing the phrase "practice make perfect". Well, in reality it should read like this "PERFECT practice makes perfect". Why?

Because the more we practice something, the more ingrained it becomes in our brains until it forms a habit or an automatic response - something we can do automatically without thinking about it much at all.

If we are practicing something incorrectly, it stands to reason that all we are doing is teaching ourselves an incorrect habit, right? This is true.

This is why you will find people who are "at the top" of any game or sport have practiced ruthlessly over and over and over until they have it right. Then they keep on practicing it the "right" way over and over again. It isn't enough to just know how to shoot a basketball toward the basket, they practice until they can instinctively find the basket and hit it from anywhere on the court.

This is the same way we should approach our family emergency preparedness planning. We should practice it with the same level of desire for success ~ because if we ever need to use our skills in this area, it could be a life or death situation for our family and chances are it will be stressful. I want to know that I have excellent chances at winning when the stakes are so high - don't you?

For example, I don't want to be learning how to operate our kerosene heater AFTER the ice storm arrives, I want to know that I know how to make it work for me well before the first ice pellet ever hits the ground. I don't want to find out that my backup weather radio has dead batteries during a major tornado warning - I want to make sure it is always at the ready.

Our mindset and attitude are what will determine how successful we are at not only "perfectly practicing" our preparedness skills, but also how we put them into action when an emergency arises.

It takes commitment to practice skills that we don't need on a daily basis and hopefully might not need at all. But our mindset and attitude should tell us that we need to practice these skills anyway.

Numerous studies have shown that the brain can "ACT" quicker than it can "REACT". Think about this for a minute. To "act" implies an immediate response or course of action. To "react" requires that we first identify if there is a problem, what the problem is, then we decide how to respond to it.

Which of these do you think is a quicker way to respond in the event of a life or death emergency? ACTing is always quicker than REACTing. The only way to be prepared to ACT in the event of an emergency is through "perfect practice" - making your actions an ingrained habit.

Here are a couple of great examples of the importance of training yourself to ACT instead of REACT.

In my local paper last year, there was an article about the boy scouts who were caught up in a tornado while out camping. What struck me most about the article was this quote:

"On Tuesday, the Scouts learned what to do before, during and after a tornado. So on Wednesday night, after the twister passed, the Scouts took a head count, just as they had practiced. Then, just as they practiced, they administered first aid to the wounded."

Boy scouts practice their skills all the time until the become very proficient at them. They go on camp outs for the sole purpose of practicing their skills. And their practice here saved lives.

More recently, we've been reading about all the people in Kentucky who had not prepared at all, apparently, for the coming ice storm. They didn't have generators. They didn't have extra food that didn't require refrigeration. They didn't have little propane stoves to cook on so they could have a warm meal. They didn't have a backup method for heating their home. They didn't have a plan for what they would do if the power outage happened to last for weeks. We've ready article after article about how unprepared the majority of people in the state were for the ice storm. And it didn't have to be that way. They had advance warning. Many could have been much more prepared than they were.

In the May 29, 2008 issue of Time Magazine, there is an article about How To Survive a Disaster. The best parts of the article are reading about what people didn't do in response to impending disaster and how their inaction ultimately lead to their deaths.

People who study disasters and survival teach that when faced with disaster or impending disaster, most people go into "freeze mode". They either don't realize disaster is about to strike, they don't know what to do to try to survive, they deny disaster is about to strike, or they never saw it coming. In all these situations, people will "freeze" instead of "act".

Quite simply their brains had never, ever thought about the possibility of such an event happening and they had no automatic response for it, so they simply didn't respond at all. They froze instead.

The only way to make sure you don't "freeze" is to have perfectly practiced your "what if" scenarios for your preparedness plan so you have a survivor mindset. You can do things like:

~ Practice with your family what you all would do in the event of a fire. Know where all the exits are from any location in your home. Know where you all would meet outside the home to take a head count and make sure everyone was out. Then have an unannounced fire drill and time it. Does everyone do what was practiced? How long did it take? Did anyone get forgotten? Did everyone meet at the appropriate location outside your home? Then keep practicing it until you believe everyone has it down pat. Is this convenient? Of course not, but essential it is.

Then go a step further. Think about the places you frequent during the day or week. What would you do if a fire started at one of those places? What is your plan of action?

~ Practice with your family what you would do in the event of a tornado warning if you are in this part of the country. Where would you take shelter inside your home? What items does each person take with them to the safe room? Or better yet, how do you prepare in advance and pre-position items in your safe area? What would you do if you were out in your vehicle or at the grocery store or the mall or other place during a tornado warning?

~ Practice with your family what you would do in the event of an earthquake if this is applicable to you. Where are the safe areas of your home should an earthquake happen? What do you do after an earthquake? And again, what if you were away from home during an earthquake? Where are the safe areas?

~ We are all reading about how crime is rising. You can practice these scenarios as well. You don't have to get involved in a crime to put your mind through the practice of thinking about how you would react - What would you do if the restaurant where you were eating got robbed while you are there? What would you do if you heard someone breaking into your home? What would you do if someone attempted to carjack you while you are at a stop light? Put your mind through the paces and know what you'd do without hesitation.

Every time you put your brain through the exercise of thinking about and practicing what you would do for your preparedness plan you take a step closer toward ACTING instead of REACTING - your actions are becoming a habit.

HOMEWORK: This week try to practice at least one of your preparedness plans with your family. Perhaps a fire drill or tornado drill - whatever is appropriate for your area based on the preparedness plan you've put together. Feel free to come back here and let me know how you all did!

Vehicle Preparedness

We're working our way toward adding in a LOT of information on this site and I'm starting with a few baby steps aimed mainly at those who haven't done any preparedness planning. So those of you who are experts out there - hang with me!

I talk alot about vehicle prepping in my conversation with other moms that I know and meet. Most moms I know are out and about in their vehicles quite often - running errands, going to sporting events, going on field trips, going back and forth to work or play - you get the picture because you've been there. Some families, as you well know, spend more time in their vehicles than they do at home!

So let's think for a moment ~ What would you do if an emergency happened while you were in your car? Not just a flat tire, but a major emergency like encountering a flash flood or an earthquake or a tornado?

As we discussed in previous posts - some of my local emergencies in the West Tennessee area could be a tornado, earthquake, or train derailment. What would I do if one of these emergencies happened while I was out and about driving with my children? How would we cope and hope to survive?

We've seen images on TV of people in their cars when emergencies strike - flash flooding, earthquakes and the like - this is a real possibility when we spend so much time in our vehicles. So if it is a real possibility in your area, it pays to spend some time thinking about what you would do and how you could prepare.

It is for these reasons that I also keep a 72 Hour Kit in each of our vehicles. You can visit the previous post to see what is in our 72 Hour Kit for our family members. We just make up an additional kit for each vehicle and keep it in there. Twice a year we check ours - in the spring we add summer clothing for each family member and in the fall we replace the summer clothing with winter clothing for each person.

We happen to keep our Vehicle 72 Hour Kits in backpacks, just like our ones we keep at the house for each family member. An added plus - if we every had to evacuate our house for any reason at the last minute - if we threw our personal 72 Hour Kits into either vehicle, we'd automatically be doubling our 3 day survival items into 6 days because the Vehicle Kits are in place. Sounds like a great idea to me.

Added note: we never let our gasoline tanks in our vehicles go below 1/4 full. You never know when or where you might need to go or if there will be gasoline at the pumps when you get there. Keep at least 1/2 tank or more in your vehicles at all times.

In addition to our Vehicle 72 Hour Kits, here are some other essential items that should always be kept in your vehicle. You can keep these items in a small duffel bag, you could re-use one of those heavy zippered bags like bedspreads come in, you could organize these in small plastic boxes with snap on lids or small shaving kits with zippers - be creative and find what works for you, but please take some time to think about how you could prepare and then make sure you keep your safety items in your vehicle!

Essentials for your vehicle:

Flashlight and Spare Batteries

Blanket - wool is best as it repels water

Baby Wipes

Spare Tire, Jack and Fix-A-Flat

Tire Gauge - check your pressure at least weekly - not only does it keep you safe, but you'll get better gas mileage if your tires are inflated properly. All tires tell you right on the tire what the ideal PSI (tire pressure) is for that particular brand of tire.

Flare / Marker Light / Flasher Light / Light Stick

Water, at least 1 can of food and something to open it with!

Hand Sanitizer

Fire Extinguisher

Booster Cables

First Aid Kit and Trauma Kit (I'll be writing more about these soon)

Cell Phone and Vehicle Charger

LifeHammer Escape Tool - or similar item that has a Seatbelt Cutter / Window Breaker

Your Vehicle 72 Hour Kit

Not that this in not the only list of items you could keep and other or additional items might be applicable depending on your location. Of course if you travel a lot in your vehicle, or for long distances, this list could be much longer - more food, a change of clothing, a spare pair of sturdy shoes, maps, winter hat, gloves, ice scraper, de-icer - use your head and carry what you'd need for any of your possible circumstances!

For more reading and ideas check out this article in Backwoods Home Magazine - it tells how to put together a 10-day survival kit for your car for less than $25 - the author keeps everything in a hard-sided 6-pack size cooler with a handle. I prefer the backpack method because I think it would be easier to carry and keep up with my little ones at the same time if I had to leave my vehicle, but the cooler idea would work in many situations. You might also want to consider a wheeled-luggage type of kit.

HOMEWORK: Make an attempt this week to create a Vehicle 72 Hour Kit for your vehicle(s).

Baby Steps ~ A 72-Hour Kit

The first step I recommend in beginning your Preparedness Plan is by creating what is known as a "72 Hour Kit".

If you do the research, the overwhelming consensus is that it takes emergency workers and/or relief aid at least 72 hours - that's 3 days - to arrive, get set up and begin offering assistance. And the first assistance that goes out will be to those people in your area who have the most critical needs. Recent conversations have even said that most Americans should plan to have basics for survival for up to 14 days in the event of a major emergency. A 72 Hour Kit is a great first step.

A well-prepared 72 Hour Kit will help to ensure that you can remain self-reliant during that time period when no outside assistance is available.

How do you put together a 72 Hour Kit? It really is not that hard and doesn't need to be expensive. We have one for each member of our family in an appropriately-sized backpack. To begin stocking our 72 Hour Kit, we use items from our pantry or purchase "one extra" of some things when we're at the store on a shopping trip.

What you use to store your items in is as individual as you are. We use backpacks appropriately sized for each person. Some people use luggage that has wheels. Some use duffel bags. What is important is that you find what works for you, what you can keep up with, what would be easy for you to grab and go with, something you can store in your home in a handy, accessible place.

First, you need to identify the major items that you would need for the first 3 days of survival in an emergency. Those things would include:

~Food
~Water
~Heat
~Light
~Shelter / Protection from the elements / Bedding / Clothing
~Communication Items
~Basic Tools
~First Aid / Trauma Supplies
~Personal Hygiene and Sanitation Supplies
~Copies of appropriate personal documents
~Money

Let's take a few minutes and look a little more closely at each of these items. While this might seem like an extensive listing, remember that our family keeps these items for each person in an appropriately-sized backpack. We're not trying to put our whole house in there - just the basics we need to get through 3 days or so. And, there is some economy of scale when you put together a pack for each family member, as it could end up lasting you much longer than 3 days if you needed it to and rationed your items carefully.

For obvious reasons, it is important to put items in your 72 Hour Kit that you and your family will actually use / eat. You don't want to go out and buy the latest and greatest astronaut nuggets if your family won't touch them with a ten-foot pole. We go through our packs once or twice each year - sometimes quarterly - to rotate in new items and we consume the items about to expire. So keep expiration dates in mind when putting food items in the kits. Also pay attention to things that might leak or have excessive smells that need to go in zip-lock bags.

One more thing. We put our 72 Hour Kits together so that they could keep us going for 3 or more days whether we were in our home OR if we had to evacuate because the building was not safe. You never know when you might end up needing to grab your kit and head out. An example - if the train that runs a couple of blocks from my home were to derail in the middle of the night and we received a knock on the door to evacuate - we have no way of knowing how long we might be gone. With our 72 Hour Kits ready to go we can just grab them on the way out and know that we have our basic needs met for the initial period of uncertainty that would surround such an event.

The easiest way I can think of to demonstrate putting a 72 Hour Kit together is to share with you what I have in mine. Our family spent time last week rotating our supplies. I keep an index card in a zip-lock baggie in an outside pocket on my 72 Hour backpack that lists everything that is inside it and where it is located (upper left pocket, lower zipper pocket, you get the idea). Here's what I have:

Okay, first items on the list are FOOD and WATER. You must have food and water to survive and you don't want to be at the mercy of someone who might be charging $30 a gallon for water. I want things that are tasty, easy to prepare and light-weight. My kit primarily has a couple of MREs (meals-ready-to-eat), a few pouches of those pasta side dish packets that you make up with warm water, some pouches of salmon, small cans of fruit, a few pouches of instant oatmeal or cream of wheat, granola bars, ramein noodle cups, chocolate pudding mix, bottled waters, water purification tablets, tea bags, hot chocolate mix, instant coffee, salt, sugar and pepper (each in an empty film canister that is labeled) a stainless steel cup, stainless steel spoon and stainless steel fork and a pocket knife. Things that are light-weight, easy to prepare and that don't take up a lot of room. Things that will sustain you and a few items for comfort (and in my case, a little caffeine!)

Next is HEAT and LIGHT. These two go together in my mind. I have some of those Hot Hands hand and feet warmers that activate when you open them and shake them, a lighter, matches, flashlight and spare batteries, lightstick (2) and a light-weight alcohol burning camp stove that could be used for heat and to cook. Light sticks are important, because they provide light without a flame and can be used in the event there is a gas leak.

For SHELTER I have a emergency tent and a reflective heating blanket. We keep our sleeping bags with our 72 Hour Kits and these could be used for shelter and/or bedding. We also keep a wool blanket with our kits.

For CLOTHING I have a pair of warm gloves, a warm face-mask, a scarf and wool cap. A change of clothing, socks, winter goggles. Remember when putting together clothing that cotton is a cooling fabric and might not be suitable in all environments. Wool is water resistant and makes a good choice for winter items.

For COMMUNICATION we store our hand crank / solar / battery / electric radio with our 72 Hour Kits. We have one that gets AM/FM/Weather Band and Short-Wave. We also have 2-way radios and CB radios stored with our 72 Hour Kits.

For BASIC TOOLS (some of this repeats from items in other categories, but also fits here) a flashlight, lightsticks, good pocket knife, can opener, small hatchet, small shovel, matches, lighter, candles, mosquito netting, rope, sunscreen, bug spray, basic fishing gear (no poles, just line and lures), rubber gloves, rubber bands, zipper ties, safety pins. Empty film canisters are fantastic for storing little items like safety pins! I also have some extra ammunition to match my carry handgun and our hunting rifle, along with some gun oil.

For FIRST AID I have baby wipes, bandages, pain relievers, antibiotic ointment, anti-diarrheal tablets, tylenol, benedryl, sudafed, extras of any prescription medications. We keep our family first aid kit and trauma bags located near our 72 Hour Kits to supplement the basics in our kits. In the event we had to evacuate to another location, we could grab our supplemental medical kits if we needed to.

For PERSONAL HYGIENE I have the baby wipes, toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, a roll of toilet paper, cloth toilet wipes, a few diapers, tweezers, nail clippers, tampons (could also be used for first aid), hand sanitizer and liquid soap. NOTE: Take it from my learning experience and do not make the mistake of putting a bar of soap in your kit. A few years ago I had a bar of soap in my kit, in a zip-lock bag that was then put inside a small tupperware container. It was a uncolored, no "artificials" glycerin-type soap. And it smelled up everything in my kit. None of the packets of food were fit to eat as they all tasted like soap. I now put a small bottle of liquid Dr. Bronner's Castille Soap in a zip-lock baggie instead. No more soap smell!

For IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS: In a zip-lock bag I have copies of birth certificates, marriage license, social security cards, life insurance policies, bank account numbers, small pocket Bible and a photo of each family member.

For CASH: I usually keep about 20 dollars or so and some change just in case the Automatic Teller Machines are out of order. You can keep more emergency money on hand if you desire - for instance, if you needed to get a hotel room - in an emergency situation they might be accepting cash only for rooms.

This is a pretty good overview of what I have in my personal 72 Hour Kit. My husband's kit is a lot larger and has most of the above personal items and many additional items that would enhance mine. For the girls, they each primarily have a change of clothing, an MRE, a couple of books/school books/puzzles, a toy or comfort item, and personal hygiene items.

We keep our 72 Hour Kits all together with the supplemental items I mentioned in a rubbermaid tote near an exit of our home. My husband's kit is lots bigger, like his Army backpack, and his is stored next to our rubbermaid tote. By storing them this way, they are very accessible if we need to get them on the way out the door or if we need to bring them into a safe room, say during a tornado warning.

Our downstairs bathroom serves as our tornado warning shelter and I have a "mini" 72 Hour Kit that I keep under the bathroom sink. I also keep an extra emergency radio, small hatchet and a large juice-size bottle of water in this room. We keep extra juice bottles of water in all our bathrooms.

Please know that this is by no means an exhaustive listing or the only way you can put a kit together. This is an EXAMPLE of what works for our family for the region where we live. Your kit will be as unique as you are and should encompass those items that will work for you. I've tried to have this posting to serve as an example of things to think about - especially for the person new to prepping who might feel that it is an overwhelming task.

HOMEWORK: Make an effort to put together at least one 72 Hour Kit for your family this coming week. Please email me if you have questions about anything I've described here and feel free to share your trials or triumphs with us here in the comments!

Why Prepare?

Many who visit this site might already be well underway with their preparedness planning - many may be just starting out and some might just be trying to find out what we're all supposed to be preparing for anyway.

When I talk to people who don't have any preparedness plans, I try to ease into the conversation with them so they can see the logic and importance of preparing for events that could become a reality for them.

Many people associate words like "survivalist" with someone who wants to live in a remote little cabin in the woods with their hoard of ammunition and food. While that might sound like a great idea to some, as a mom who has thought through the importance of preparedness and how it can impact my family, I try to take a little different approach with other moms. Since my goal is to encourage them to get prepared, I need to try to meet them on their current level of understanding and then show them how preparedness planning can be important and relevant for their everyday life.

The first question most people ask is "why prepare?" or "what exactly are you preparing for anyway?". Well, we decided many years ago that there are many things that could happen outside of our control that we might need to be prepared for. We read in the news on a daily basis about some crisis that is taking place - flooding, drought, tornadoes, earthquakes, train derailments, job losses, failing banks, rising prices on gas and groceries and the like - recently the list seems to be never ending.

I usually explain that we have a couple of options for dealing with these situations:

Option 1 ~ We can be pessimistic and decide that no matter what we do, things happen that we do not control and so we might as well just resign ourselves to that fact. We can assume that if something happens the government or other agency will step in to help.
Option 2 ~ We can be overly optimistic and decide that those things only happen to other people and probably won't ever happen to us.

Or, we can be REALISTIC and know that things beyond our control sometimes do happen, they could happen to us, but I can PREPARE for some events to make the time I spend going through them a little bit easier. To me, this sounds like a great option. Knowing that we can encounter rough spots in life, but through a little advance preparation, manage to get through them a little easier than we would with no preparation at all.

So what kinds of things am I talking about? Well, before we started our Preparedness Planning years ago, the first thing we did was sit down and decide what types of things could happen in the area where we live that we might need to be prepared for. Then we put those things in order of likelihood - with #1 being something very probable or very likely all the way down to things that might happen, but chances were more unlikely.

For very beginners who want to establish a Preparedness Plan for their family this is a good first step. You sit down and decide what things you want to prepare for by looking at what they are and how they might affect you. Here are a few of the items on our list to give an example:

~ Tornado
~ Earthquake
~ Winter Ice Storm / Power Outage
~ Job Loss
~ Train Derailment

These are the top 5 things that are likely to happen to us in our area of the country - West Tennessee. Let's look at them individually and I'll tell you why they are on our list.

1. Tornado. We live in tornado alley. We are in our safe room due to storms many times each year. On one occasion just this past spring, a funnel cloud passed directly over our house and touched down a couple miles away. A few years ago, it seemed like every week during April and May we had severe storms rolling through the area and we were taking shelter. We have the greatest likelihood of severe weather every year during April/May and again in the fall around November. I have 3 little girls, so I believe it is prudent to be prepared for the possibility of a tornado.

2. Earthquake. Where we live in Tennessee we are directly impacted by the New Madrid fault, and now a new fault in Marianna, Arkansas, that was just being talked about last week. Depending on where a major earthquake had its epicenter on either fault line, we could experience significant damage, loss of power, loss of infrastructure and the like.

3. Winter Ice Storm / Power Outage. Where we live we also tend to get ice storms in the winter instead of snow storms. Our wintery mix almost always starts as rain, turning to freezing rain, turning to sleet and ending up as a coating of ice. This usually means downed trees and power lines. In the last severe storm we had, there were people without power for as long as 3 weeks. And talk about not being prepared - the local paper even ran a story then about all the people who had canned goods in their pantry, but who didn't have a manual can opener to open them with.

4. Job Loss. My husband is self-employed as a financial planner. Depending on economic conditions, increasing regulatory oversight, or a myriad of things going on in today's world, he could at some point be unemployed.

5. Train Derailment. We live approximately 3 blocks from a rail line that has trains zooming through many times during the day. We've seen numerous times in the news about train derailments and hazardous materials leaking. It seems prudent to me that we somehow prepare for a 2:00 AM knock on the door telling us to leave the area due to a train derailment a couple of blocks behind our home.

While I hope that none of these events happen to us I have to be realistic in knowing that they indeed could. So, to help cope with the possibility of these events - I take comfort in knowing that I am prepared for them.

There are even bigger events that we can talk about preparing for - a severe economic downturn resulting in massive job losses, riots - you can continue naming the possibilities. But when trying to reach out to a person who has never thought about preparedness before, or who is just beginning to think about how to start preparing, I find it is a little easier to help them start small as they are trying to wrap their head around how to get it all done.

HOMEWORK: If you are new to preparedness planning or just thinking about why you might want to prepare, take a few minutes after reading this post to jot down the things that could likely happen to you in your area and how it would affect you. In future posts I'll share how our family has prepared for some of the events mentioned here and we'll talk about how you can get started too.

Hello From Tennessee

My husband and I are excited to be a part of the Preppers Network for the state of Tennessee ~ we're sending out a hello to everyone ~ to those who have been preparing for many years to those who are just starting to think about preparedness - what it all might mean and how to get started.

We hope to be a resource of information ~ by sharing things we do to prepare in our area and things you can do to prepare across the state. If you have some information you'd like to contribute with others that might be reading or following along, please don't hesitate to let us know about it!

You can reach us at tnpreps [at] gmail [dot] com.

My husband and I will both be contributing here - we hope to provide a well rounded conversation about preparedness planning in general and what can be done in Tennessee. We look forward to "meeting" you all!