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Originally Posted by mountainmist
I don't know what to think. After 911, but before the threat of avian flu arose, the official party line was to have three days of food & water stocked along with a full first aid case and batteries, rain gear, etc....It seemed like it went from THREE DAYS of emergency supplies suddenly to a disagreement between the advisability of 3-WEEKS as opposed to 3-MONTHS.
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The standard advice for a long time has been to keep a
minimum of three days supply of the things you'd need if you were unable to leave the house or had a major power blackout or whatever. The standard advice has also included for a long time the warning that it is advisable to have 3-weeks to 3-months of emergency supplies on hand if you live in an area where you might get snowed in, roads blocked by landslides, etc.
The current debate in the media is mostly pushing for the 3-month standard because in a disease panic staying at home would be your best protection, and as soon as the "stay home" order is issued unprepared people will swoop down like vultures and strip the shelves of local stores bare for several weeks.
If I may present two personal stories as evidence:
1) I used to live in the southeast. No danger of getting snowed in. But every 5-6 years there would be a big ice storm. No one had chains. No one knew how to drive on ice. The stores were all closed for several days even if you did manage to get there. Add to that XX% of the area losing electricity because of all the pinetrees snapping under the weight of the ice and knocking down power lines, and you
needed to have at least a weeks worth of basic supplies on hand, including candles, batteries, and food that doesn't require electricity to fix. And this was in a fairly large city.
2) A couple of years ago I stepped in a hole and twisted my ankle. Not bad enough to be hopspitalized but I had to spend three weeks in bed with that leg elevated to keep the swelling down. Careful trips to the kitchen and bathroom were the limit of my walking around during that time, and if I hadn't had a months worth of heat-and-eat food on hand, I would have been sunk. Without that food, I would have had to ask casual friends to do my grocery shopping for me, and I really didn't want to impose on them, even though they would have willingly done it.