Just in Case: How to Be Self-Sufficient When the Unexpected Happens

I've been a "prepper" long before the term became popular (or reviled, depending on your personal politics), it's how I was raised. Too many of the books out there are attempts to reboot the 70s vintage survivalists. This is not. This is solid, sane, rational information. This is one of the few books on this topic I will give five out of five stars to, and only because I can't give it six. I've gifted many, many copies of this to people, and always seems to take root.

The author makes the case that the supply lines upon which we rely today are taut and far-flung, leaving us vulnerable to feel even a hiccup of disruption. She walks you through what she does to have a home that can run for weeks without outside assistance -how she creates slack in those supply lines to absorb the effects of rolling blackouts, snow storms, and so on. She encourages you to start just by considering what you would want on hand to be safe and comfortable for three days and build from there, giving you a lot of food for thought in the process. She says, "I write about managing a home for a period of time without running water or electricity as though it is a given that such things are necessary for comfortable survival. In fact, people have lived without such luxuries for millennia, and all over the world, many people live without them now, either by choice or (circumstance). We turn these luxuries into necessities when we forget the skills we need to manage without them." It is also an infrastructure problem. It's not just that I don't know how to prepare a meal in my fireplace, it's that my fireplace and pots and pans aren't designed for that purpose. Heck, the fireplace isn't even designed to heat the room, it's just for ambience. It boggles the mind that homes are bigger than ever as families have gotten smaller and the storage industry has exploded, yet you can't do half the things in a home you used to be able to do. We've traded all our utilitarian spaces for recreational ones, deciding somewhere along the way that a third living room was better than a cellar, laundry room, mud room, pantry, and so on. We're told we need to store water, but the author points out that setting aside even a two week supply is a major strain on her available storage. And then you have to rotate your stock. It seems like homes ought to have a kind of mini suburban "well" built into them -something like your hot water tank that water is constantly moving through, but that in the event of a disaster you would close off and draw from until that system was up and running again. Create a little slack, in other words. But moving on to more food for thought: I realized that of the two big concerns -electricity and water- an interrupted water supply is by far the more serious problem for my situation. With this book, I have determined how I could store and cook food without electricity, acquired a few hand-crank lights/lanterns, a hand-crank radio/flashlight/cellphone-charger, and a first aid kit, and I've aggressively set aside water. In an apartment, sheltering-in-place is going to be more like camping and less like homesteading. My balcony makes the perfect sheltered "camping" kitchen for a camp stove. It would sit on an IKEA butcher block that is easy to move out of the apartment, putting the stove at the right height and providing counter space; we have a fire extinguisher too, of course, that would be kept in arms' reach. Hanging

Kathy Harrison has written the definitive guide for family preparedness. This book is not only chock full of useful information, it is also a great read. She not only gives you information, she actually reveals a quality of thinking defensively which is often missing in similar books. A great read from a great writer. Buy this book now before you need it!

DON'T BE SCARED, BE PREPARED, A Review Of Kathy Harrison's "Just In Case" [...] As we mark the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the horrors of a ravaged New Orleans and Gulf Coast and as the residents of those areas again wait breathlessly to see where the volatile Hurricanes Gustav and Hanna are headed, a review of Harrison's third book, Just In Case: How To Be Self-Sufficient When The Unexpected Happens is especially timely. Kathy Harrison and her husband Bruce live in Western Massachusetts and have spent many years parenting hundreds of foster kids, and in fact, in 1996 were named by their state as Foster Parents of the Year. Kathy has devoted her life to caring for homeless, abused, and neglected children, and has written two other books before Just In Case entitled Another Place At The Table and One Small Boat. That's why, unlike most preparedness books, this one is supremely family-oriented, born in the heart of an ordinary mom who simply cares about the safety and well being of her family. As we mark the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the horrors of a ravaged New Orleans and Gulf Coast and as the residents of those areas again wait breathlessly to see where the volatile Hurricanes Gustav and Hanna are headed, a review of Harrison's third book, Just In Case: How To Be Self-Sufficient When The Unexpected Happens is especially timely. Harrison notes that this book is not about long-term survival and emphasizes that her "objective with this book is to offer access to the kind of crisis information that will be helpful to ordinary families in extraordinary situations." Therefore, she hasn't offered directions for making shoes or clothing or hunting and skinning game animals for food. Consequently, her introduction asks some exceedingly practical but tough questions: **Can you provide your family with sufficient food if the grocery stores are closed? **Do you have access to safe, clean water if the municipal water system or you well is compromised? **Can you keep your home warm if fuel supplies are disrupted? **Do you have a source of light if the power grid goes down during a storm? **Can you evacuate your home with three days' worth of supplies for each family member in five minutes? **Can you shut down your home systems in ten minutes? Many Truth To Power readers are also familiar with Sharon Astyk's Causabon's Book site and the Simply Living website which offer an abundance of suggestions for food storage and rotation and which I cannot recommend highly enough. Their emphasis, however, is a bit more long-term whereas Just In Case is specifically a family disaster prep tool intended to prepare folks for an acute crisis situation. The book's first section uses the acronym "OAR" which stands for "Organize, Acquire, and Rotate". As we organize what we already have, we get clear on what we need to acquire, and then after acquiring it, we need to rotate those materials so that they do not become an