Are you prepared?

Much has been made of the Mayan calendar... you know, that big round stone thing that apparently ends on December 21 of this year.

That's only about a week off... are you prepared for the End of Days?

Here's a front yard that's filled with Inflatable Carnage... 10 days from now, it might be carcasses scattered about, instead of balloons!!!
:-O







(But slightly more seriously... I'm pretty confident those guys just ran out of rock, or got tired of chiselin'.  And maybe the Mayan Desk Calendar went out to the end of January 2013... ya never know...)

The question remains... are you prepared?

If I'm not prepared, it ain't because I haven't been warned!

I'm a long time Boy Scout - the motto is "Be Prepared."

My dad was a Great Depression baby.  Back a couple generations ago, people were much more self-sufficient.  The knew they better be prepared, or make do... or do without.  (We're pathetic and helpless by comparison, nowadays.)  When I was a kid, we had a basement "fruit room."  It had varying inventories of fruit that my mother and/or grandma canned, canned goods, flour, sugar, wheat, etc.  Once a year or so, we'd pile into the station wagon, and my dad would fill it with cases of food to replenish the supply.  Most of it we rotated pretty faithfully.  Some - like powdered milk (yuck!) - didn't get used before it spoiled.  (How do you tell when powdered milk is spoiled?  But... I imagine powdered milk isn't quite so bad nowadays, and even then it wasn't so bad when used for cooking.)

For my entire life, my church has encouraged us to have a reserve of food, water, and cash for that "rainy day."  I've also seen fuel mentioned, from time to time, but I believe the emphasis is mostly on being able to cook and stay warm.

How about being "transportation prepared"?

I don't think transportation is given much thought.  And maybe it's not a primary survival requirement... but there a LOT of people who, if they couldn't get gas for their vehicle, would be pretty much helpless.  I'm thinking mostly of the people who live way out in the suburbs - too far to get to any of their routine destinations on foot.

I'm not saying I have it all figured out, or that "survival transportation" wouldn't be a problem in my household.  But I'm confident that whatever December 21 brings, my trusty bicycle will still roll down the road, even if the power if off and the gas is gone.  It might just be the cockroaches, the bicyclists, and Mad Max out there on the mean streets.