The Ant and the Grasshopper

A friend recently posted an article on Facebook entitled, "When the CDC Tells Us to Prepare for the Ebola Pandemic, Things are About to Get Real". Although I think the article is a bit sensationalized it made me think even more about emergency preparation. When I was young and heard people talk about needing a year of food stored, 72 hour kits, water storage and such I always thought of end of world stuff. Now that I've added a few years, these things have taken on new meaning.

Food Storage- Our church recommends starting with three months of food storage with food we eat and rotate through. The longterm goal is to build up to a year supply or temporary and long term food storage. Having a year of food storage seemed like overkill. I never thought the government would provide but I always figured I'd have access to food. The "great recession" changed my thinking. I had a friend who's husband lost their job and one of the ways they stayed afloat was by dipping into the food storage they had saved. When there are natural disasters the grocery stores are picked clean and sometimes looted. What if there is a great sickness and we need to stay home for a little while. Food storage could mean the difference between life and death.

Water Storage- Between home use and watering a new landscape we went through 70,000 gallons of water last month. (I know that sounds ridiculous, we were both shocked) There have been a lot of emergencies around the country where people have been without water. Contaminated water, broken water pipes etc can make a water supply an absolute essential. Portable water always sells out when emergencies strike. We just purchased six 55 gallon drums which won't last forever, but if our public water were contaminated, this would tide us over for a while.

72 hour kits- I attended an emergency preparedness fair and met a lady with an amazing 72 hour kit. She was prior military and her 72 hour kit would prepare her for any terrain and circumstance for 72 hours. Ours aren't equal to that. We have backpacks with some food and water, but we plan to do better.

Our church has a great website dedicated to being prepared. It's called Provident Living and covers not only Food storage but finances, emergency preparedness and other important topics.

While writing this I was reminded me of the Aesop fable The Ant and the Grasshopper. The Ant saves for a rainy day when supplies are needed while the grasshopper wastes his time and when he needs food he shows up on the ants doorstep and asks for mercy. The ants turn him away because they worked hard for what they had and needed it to survive. We're far from being as prepared as we could/should, but as I read the news and look to the future I want to do a better job preparing.