For whatever reason, I got a hair up my butt to prepare for some sort of a disaster. I’m not preparing for any disaster in particular (flood, tornado, zombie attack) but I just don’t want to be caught short if something bad goes down.

I guess I really started a few years ago.  I bought a gasoline powered generator.  It’s a fairly substantial unit.  It has a five gallon gas tank on it and should be able to power my entire house in the event power goes out.  I heard about a guy that bought one specifically to run his sump pump so that his basement doesn’t flood if power goes out in a major storm.

So the generator was “Stage Zero”.  Now, I’m on to stage one… water.  What happens if the water supply gets cut off or if there’s some weird contamination thing?  Does that sound far fetched?  It shouldn’t.  The city of Milwaukee was nearly crippled in the early 90′s due to Cryptosporidium.  Water could also become unavailable due to other disasters.

Word on the street says you should have a gallon of water per person per day and you should plan on a three day supply.  For me, that adds up to fifteen gallons of water for my family of four and the useless dog.  Saving up the water is actually pretty easy.

You see… the water where I work SUCKS.  It’s hard and full of minerals and tastes terrible.  Since I make coffee for myself, I found it easy to just buy big gallon jugs of water and use that to make my coffee.  When I drain the gallon jugs, I just take it home, fill it up from the tap and stash it in the basement.  Over the course of a few months, I have built my supply of emergency water.

Simple!

Next, I’ll move on to food…