HB Prepper - Emergency Preparedness

 It has been a long time since my last post on here. If anything, the world at large has become even more hazardous, with more threats today than ever before. Natural hazards and man made threats are now coming at us thick and fast. This post is to give a brief round up of the hazards we face right now, the skills - as preppers - that we need to learn in order to get through the problems that we are facing and (hopefully) a few solutions - or ways that we can either combat these problems OR help to reduce their affect on us. Some of these hazards and examples of equipment that preppers should have (or could have) to have a better chance of survival have already been covered in the post - link showed below - so please follow the link - or cut and paste it into your search engine. https://hbprepper.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-preppers-next-door-why-we-prepare.html The writer is based in Hawke's Bay, but the dozen hazards I'm about to list are New Zealand wide and not Hawke's Bay...

 As I type this Donald J Trump has been President of the USA for a couple of weeks.  Since his inauguration he has signed a number of  Executive Orders which have started to add weight to the "common sense" side of the political see-saw. You may not agree with me - and that is your prerogative - but I view most of the rules he's brought in as a positive thing for common sense and the wellbeing of the world as a whole. Some of the major E.O.'s in my opinion were - securing the southern border - abandoning D.E.I. hires, instead selecting the most qualified person for the job based on merit and their ability to actually do the job - withdrawing from the W.H.O. which has outgrown its original purpose and has become a bureaucratic tick box nightmare with a ridiculously high budget - declaring that there are 2 genders, male and female (although technically if you are born with both sets of genitalia you would be a hermaphrodite, so the argument could be made for a 3rd gende...

 This article was inspired by a New Zealand Geographic article written by Tom Doig titled The Preppers Next Door. The link to his full article is here -  The preppers next door | New Zealand Geographic (nzgeo.com)  and it's well worth a read. It got me thinking that it could make an interesting article if I was to write about what started my journey - on the road to becoming a dedicated prepper. I belong to and facilitate/help to guide a group of around 20 preppers from a wide variety of backgrounds and lifestyles. We are at various stages in our preparedness journey with some having a lot of experience, who have been prepping for years, and others who only came onboard during the recent Covid pandemic response. In my case, my eyes were first opened to the need to be prepared yourself rather than to rely on the authorities when I saw the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina back in 2005 and how the people were pretty much left to fend for themselves, with those who did...

 My last article, published here on February 9th 2023 was titled "Timely Reminders and General Thoughts" And, timely it certainly turned out to be. Only 3 days later Cyclone Gabrielle paid New Zealand a visit that we on the east coast will never forget. I also said, in that last post, that I would make my next article about what I was doing to prepare. So, here it is.  Let me first say that compared to how Gabrielle impacted people's lives in places north of Hastings and Napier - such as Esk Valley and Wairoa, also Pakowhai - which lies between Hastings and Napier - we got off very lightly. The damage that some have endured, losing homes, livelihood's, livestock and human life has been terrible.  We personally were very lucky that our only losses, during the gale-force winds and driving rain of Gabrielle, were our veggie gardens and fruit trees. This happened because our property from front fence to back fence was under about a foot of floodwater, compromising our sep...

 I'll start off with a disclaimer. I am not a security expert. The information that I am passing on here has been gleaned from a number of places - on-line, books, anecdotal and personal experience. I suggest that you do your own research and draw your own conclusions as to what will work best for you, your family and the location and layout of your property - and of course how much money you want to throw at such a project. Although, further into this article, I mention the use of weapons for home defence, I do not advocate the use of violence or the use of weapons under normal circumstances. “Everyone is justified in using, in the defence of himself or another, such force as, in the circumstances as he believes them to be, it is reasonable to use.” (Section 48 of the NZ Crimes Act 1961). What does this mean? You are allowed to defend yourself from attack, but use your commonsense. The idea is to defend yourself – not to cause injury or get revenge. If you use unreasonable force, ...

 According to a government website, there are up to 55 companies in New Zealand engaged in the production of pharmaceuticals or their ingredients. The high cost of developing and bringing a drug to market, compounded by the scarcity of capital in NZ, has led to the industry sector being in a stagnant state, and declining over the long term.  The majority of drugs used by the New Zealand public come from China, India or the USA, plus a few other minor players. We are currently living in a time of global unrest due to a number of factors including a global recession, high inflation, shortage of resources across food, fuel, manufacturing, and shipping, political unrest in many countries and between superpowers, the threat of a nuclear war and the long-term effects, both on health and the economy, of the covid-19 pandemic response.  Any of these factors becoming critical could mean that the pharmaceutical medications on which so many of us rely may no longer be shipped to New...