"If we turn off power and water, how long will you be able to survive?"

Emergency experts say a learned helplessness has left Australians in major cities unprepared to cope in natural disasters.

With the increasing impact of extreme heatwaves, storms, fires and floods, experts say traditional reliance on emergency services and recovery support such as cash handouts needs to be urgently reviewed if Australia is to better survive both the effects and escalating costs of such disasters.

Emergency expert Lewis Winter from Charles Sturt University says Australians need to prepare themselves for a situation where emergency services are unable to help them.

"What people have got to know is that they're on their own, literally on their own," he said.

Full report: ABC News (23 Oct 2013) 'Learned helplessness' leaves people in major cities unprepared to cope in natural disasters

 

If it weren't for government handouts, my area would still not have recovered after Katrina. My first question would be this: if the governments of the world aren't going to help their own people in times of natural disasters, then what function do they serve? Are they just going to come in afterwards and fix the roads and bridges then leave? What do we pay taxes for these days?

Having said that, the seemingly increasing frequency of "natural" disasters has to take a toll on the financial security of the state. But when the state stops helping people, the people will stop helping the state(which I think the common distrust of anything government that seems to be on the rise might be a peek in to that future).

And having said that: yes, I could survive for 3 days. You get used to it after so many hurricanes and power outages...it just becomes the new normal.

 

a few days would be easy, we already have power outages that can last for a while. it depends upon what season. during the worst of the winter and certain circumstances a few days would be ok, after that things get challenging. in the summer, we could go months without too much trouble.

 

I can survive easily. My life partner would die slowly & sadly with nothing I can do due to medical reasons. I really need to find batteries for the solar panels.

 

I've probably got 3 or 4 months of food in dry storage.( staples )
I have a veggy garden and a food forest.
I can gravity feed my drinking water .
I can go to bed when the sun goes down.
Ive got plenty of sticks to cook with.

The current diet would have to change to mainly vego (and the occasional Brush turkey) as I also have lots of fridges and freezers full of meat, veg, nuts, seeds and cheese (3 or 4 months worth as well.)
This would be gone after 24 to 48 hours of no power.
So I imagine there would be a fair bit of preserving going on to try and save some.

We usually get cut off by floods, 2 times a year, for a few days during the wet.
Food gets bought in by boats and tourists get out by boat and small planes.
Power has stayed on though since they rebuilt the power station a few years ago.

 

We'd be ok, but we would be reliant on rainwater (no dams) and to that end we need more storage. Plenty of wood and sticks here for fuel, we have enough in the veg gardens to survive. I now have a defunct chest freezer that we're filling with emergency cache of non-perishables. Beans, seeds, dried fruit, grains, flour, rice, oil. We also have preserves. Feeding the pets would be a different story which I hadn't really considered properly. Think I will have to rectify that immediately.

 

I think I would be ok for a couple of months. I've got supplies but since my gardens were decimated, no fresh stuff except for some bananas and citrus. Enough water for showers and septic and enough wood for outside cooking. I live quite near a big lake and I have a boat and am a member of a group allowed to go in there (locked access) to fish for bass, silver perch and red claw. I have chickens for eggs and could probably catch and eat a wallaby or two if I had to. maybe possum stew and brush turkey roast.

 

Couple of weeks - longer if I made an effort on day one to plant more seeds. The diet would be uninteresting but I wouldn't die of starvation. Would be better if I could find a rooster to come visit my girls....

 

I found this article interesting and probably pretty accurate. I don't think they are referring to the govt not coming to help anyone, but rather that it's not possible to help everyone at once when a big emergency happens. People need to be able to eat and drink and basically survive if they get cut off from outside help for a few days or the power goes out for a few days.

From the same article:

I think the whole article is worthy of a read.

I've lived in suburbia most of my life. If the water had become undrinkable or unavailable I would have had no back-up plan. Without electricity I would have been completely lost - unable to cook or heat or cool or refridgerate. And I'd never given a thought to having a back-up of food for emergencies. When the gas crisis stopped us from showering for a week or two (?) we moved in with friends because we got sick of having bucket showers heated with the kettle. Out here I've had to put thought into those things, especially since flooding can flood us in for days and power outages means we lose our water supply also (can manually access water though, just not on tap through the house).

 

Do any of you have "bug out" bags?

 

What should be in a bug out bag?

 

I'm not allowed to "bug out". Though I guess if my job were not at stake, I'd have a bug out bag.

First aid kit, medicines, important documents, cash, anything you need to grab before the humanure hits the wind turbine. Generally not food and water.

It really depends on what you're expecting to be the reason you're running away from home. Armed thugs ravaging the streets, foreign invasion, natural disaster, terrorist attack, complete societal breakdown, stock market crash, etc. The bug out bag is what you grab and then jump in the car, leaving everything else behind. Preppers have this thing down to a science.

 

I don't have a "bug out bag", but as spring rolls around each year we start packing our evacuation kit for the very real possibility of having to remove ourselves from the risk of fire. Documents, the external hard drive, changes of clothes, radio, torch, first aid - stuff like that. I'm not prepped for a wide range of things - just power outages, and natural disasters (ie being flooded in or fire-risked out).

 

No
Im staying.
Into the basement in case of cyclone or fire, in the house in case of zombie invasion.

 

It kinda presumes that your car will work, you can buy petrol, the roads won't be blocked and there's somewhere better to go to....

Think I'll stay put and take my chances.

 

i used to keep my car packed with my camping supplies and all that, but then the mice started chewing things up. i think i have the mice taken care of now, but i won't risk putting anything valuable back in there until after i've figured out where the mice were getting in to begin with... cute little buggers, but destructive cute little buggers...

 

No bug out bags for us. This is where we would be as everything we need is right here.

 

Several weeks easily , as have been forced to do this twice recently with cyclones here in Tully . Even without electricity our water flows very well .. gas cooker I have for my coffee percolater suffices for cooking .

 

learning from recent events...

stockpile supplies in sturdy containers and bury them in various locations just in case of disaster, especially if you are in a vulnerable area where your house can be obliterated leaving you without food, water and shelter... a sheet of plastic, some rope, a blanket or poncho, extra clothes, basic first aid kit, some food...

for those who are dirt poor, just the burying of several gallons of drinkable water could mean the difference between life and death.