Our gov­ern­ment has des­ig­nat­ed Sep­tem­ber as “Nation­al Pre­pared­ness Month”. This con­trasts with the FBI’s pro­fil­ing prep­pers as poten­tial ter­ror­ists. I imag­ine the mes­sage is “be pre­pared”, but don’t be too pre­pared. We still want you depen­dent upon the gov­ern­ment, so don’t become inde­pen­dent! 😉

So, what skill do you want to devel­op for Nation­al Pre­pared­ness Month? Here are some thoughts on skill devel­op­ment instead of mere gear accu­mu­la­tion:

1) Med­ical skills — is your CPR/AED/First Aid train­ing up to date? Do you have a plan for “Col­lapse Med­i­cine”? Are aware that fish antibi­otics are the same antibi­otics used for peo­ple? [I am not a doc­tor, so don’t take this as med­ical advice] Do you have an Israeli bat­tle dress­ing and know how to apply it?

2) Secu­ri­ty — when was the last time you went to the gun range and prac­ticed clear­ing a mis­fire?

3) Water — have you actu­al­ly tried those Kata­dyn water purifi­ca­tion tablets?

4) Fire — sure, you have three dif­fer­ent meth­ods to start a fire, but how many have you actu­al­ly tried in your back yard or at the camp site?

5) Pow­er — Have you tried out that solar pow­er set­up and deep cycle bat­ter­ies to pro­vide pow­er to part of your house?

6) Cook­ing — What would hap­pen if all pow­er and nat­ur­al gas were cut off to your house? Have you start­ed that camp­ing stove you bought 5 years ago? Do you have recipes using all those stores of beans and rice?

7) Grow­ing Food — Even if you are in an apart­ment, grow­ing food at least a lit­tle food is a valu­able skill. What have you grown this sea­son? What do you plan to grow next sea­son?

Those are my ideas and sug­ges­tion for skill build­ing. What are you doing?

 

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