Yep. Yep. And yep. Other preps …My daughter is already homeschooled, otherwise I would have pulled her out well before the discussions about “what about education?” So we were stocked and prepared for that as well. Bought and stored some gas. Stocked up on over the counter meds. Reduced expenditures of non-necessities. Got ready to work from home. Put in a small garden. Bought gardening supplies and other tools I didn’t already have for more extensive work. Bought food preservation equipment. Put together an encyclopedia/compendium of various articles, free ebooks, etc on how to do just about everything downloaded onto a couple of thumb drives. Bought a printer. Made a will. Put together an emergency binder together for my underage daughter on what to do if I got sick. Bought life insurance. And so forth.
To be fair, I had been planning a lot of this since before the pandemic as I want to shift toward a more sustainable living model for my retirement and because a lot of things we take for granted are not going to be available to our children and grandchildren due to climate change. So the time to educate them and practice old skills while staying savvy about new ones is now. The Pandemic was an impetus to step up and push ahead faster. I’m glad I did. Like you, we’ve had an easier time of it and were able to take care of our neighbors.
Covid disrupted supply chains that have been running too lean anyway, (along with packaging issues), hence the shortages. I haven’t heard on the news yet how many farms have burned in the west. We know a lot of the Midwest agricultural acreage for leveled with that derecho. Last year floods took out a lot of farms too. And now the southeast is being bombarded with hurricane after hurricane. Lots of agricultural land there too. Nobody’s talking about it on the news. No policy initiative is coming out at a national level to and educate the public and get them started. Instead they are wasting money — our money—on half measures they can’t or won’t see through, pie in the sky miracle pills rather than prudent hard work measures, ridiculous bickering back and forth, and endless golf rounds on our dime.
They’ve made it clear. We are on our own. We cannot expect meaningful help or support from the government. They will, however do everything possible to stymy or undermine any reasonable effort to handle things ourselves and bilk every single dollar from the public coffers that they can for as long as they can.
I didn’t mean for this to turn into a rant. I am. just. so. angry. And people cannot be warned or cautioned to look ahead enough.
