If you’ve waited until the dead of winter, it’s probably a bit late. Prepping for this harshest and most challenging of seasons takes careful preparation well in advance.
Let’s take a closer look at what prepping for Winter typically involves …
Clothing
You’ll need a different wardrobe of clothes during winter than you will for any other time of the year. The key to winter clothing, of course, will be the ability to climb into something warm – yet clothing that still leaves you free, with sufficient flexibility to do the thousand and one things you’ll need to be doing while surviving any emergency or disaster.
As in practically any other area of fashion, you could spend a fortune on your winter clothing. But there are also several cheaper options, even if you are buying brand new – just take a look at Mountain Warehouse at Amazon, for example.
The key is layers. The air trapped between each layer of clothing provides valuable insulation while you can shed some of those layers as and when the weather warms up or you have been exerting yourself to keep warm.
Also invaluable is a nice warm coat that is waterproof on the outside and fluffy on the inside.
Keep the heat where you need it – on the inside
It’s not just a question of keeping the heat in the clothes you’re wearing but also the house or shelter in which you’re weathering the storms of any emergency.
In cold weather, your blood will thicken, thereby increasing your blood pressure, while breathing the cold air probably heightens the chances of you getting a chest infection. In a word, therefore, it is important to keep warm at home.
In an ideal world, suggests an article by the Met Office, the ambient temperature in a home occupied by anyone more than 65 years of age should be at least 18°C, and the same when any of your party suffers from a chronic condition such as lung or heart disease. For those under 65, who are healthy, are wearing warm clothing and are active, it’s quite possible to stay comfortable at temperatures less than 18°C.
As any homeowner will know to their cost, the secret to keeping the house warm – and expenditure on the heating bills less – is not just about the heat you’re putting into it but the effectiveness of the insulation that keeps the cold out.
Heating and insulation, therefore, will be the watchwords as preppers prepare for the winter.
Extreme weather conditions
We are blessed in the UK with relatively mild and temperate conditions without the wild extremes experienced in some parts of the world.
But that’s not to say that the British weather has no nasty surprises in store – and global warming is seeing to it that even in this country severe weather events are likely to become the norm rather than the exception.
What this adds up to is a need for any self-respecting prepper to keep fully in mind the risk of flooding in winter – and, even more important, of course, the measures for minimising the damage floods are likely to cause.
In some parts of the UK, significant falls of snow are also likely to occur. That means being prepared with all the right equipment and supplies – such as snow brushes, shovels, salt, and propriety brands of de-icing calcium chloride (a compound of calcium and chlorine).
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