Be financially prepared, sanitised eggs, and off the grid homes

Here we look at some of the headlines featuring or likely to be of interest to any preppers out there. To start the ball rolling, here are three stories that recently caught our eye …

Financial prepping

Prepping for some future emergency or crisis, of course, places an emphasis on physical preparations such as food stores, reserves of fuel, and creating a place of refuge or safety.

But a report by Louisiana USA radio station WAFB, recently, raised the potentially critical need to ensure you are financially prepared, too. If you had just a moment or two’s warning of some impending emergency and needed to leave your home or place of work for several days – or even weeks – would you still be able to:

• lay your hands on any cash you need?
• access banking services?
• provide the identification documents demanded by many suppliers?

Here in Britain, we’re not so accustomed to carrying around forms of identity – though, a driving licence is probably the most commonly used and widely accepted. If you’re going to be in for the longer haul, make sure you also have passports, birth certificates, and insurance documents to hand.

You’re likely to be carrying various credit and debit cards, but you’ll also need some cash – and remember to keep important telephone numbers for your bank to hand in case you need to arrange further withdrawals by phone.

They’re eggs, Jim, but not as we know them

Trust Bear Grylls to come up with one of the more outlandish survival tricks – and one that you might definitely not want to try at home.

On the 20^th of May, the Independent newspaper recorded an account he gave on the Good Morning Britain TV show about cooking eggs in hand sanitiser!

Noting that small bottles of hand sanitiser are now widely carried about with us, Grylls described turning his innate resourcefulness and improvisation into how he used the fluid to fuel cooking an egg.

Faced by wet conditions that had made building a fire out of the question, he wrapped some eggs in some tissues soaked in hand sanitiser and lit the package. The eggs cooked inside it. Note to chefs: eggs a la sanitiser are unlikely to catch on.

Homes off the grid

Climate change and the increasing incidence of extreme weather it brings has prompted a boom in ways of building homes that can be powered entirely off the grid, said US news network CNBC on the 21^st of May.

The ice storm that hit Texas in February left 10 million people without power for extended periods of time, 150 people died, and it is expected to have cost the state upwards of $200 billion.

The last wildfire season in California also saw some of the worst damage ever recorded in that state, with 10,000 properties destroyed and an estimated $10 billion of damage caused.

Disasters like this are making more people think about environmentally sustainable construction methods that allow homes to function off-grid during times of emergency or crisis. Surviving off-grid has become a key objective for a growing band of conventional homeowners now converted into committed preppers.

They are investigating not only alternative sources of energy, such as solar power, but other means of generating electricity, and managing utilities – including water filtration technologies, for example.