Sustainable Preparedness Expo

I’m a little late posting this today because I usually write the day before I post it, but yesterday I was feeling terribly sick and ended up sleeping pretty much the entire day. Today I’m feeling much better though, thank goodness!

This Sunday I went to the Sustainable Preparedness Expo in Spokane, WA and it was a blast! If you don’t know what preparedness is, it’s doing what you can to be prepared for whatever the future can throw at you, everything from a nuclear war or zombie apocalypse, to losing your job or getting sick (like me yesterday). Now add being sustainable to that. So a lot of people are into growing their own food and camping and handyman fixit stuff (all the stuff that I love!).

There were different speakers going on all day and then a bunch of vendors selling all kinds of fun things. I went to a bunch of the talks including one on making money with webinars, a family plan for food self-sufficiency, an essential oils first aid kit, and more. Some of the talks were really great! Like the webinar one, even if I never do a webinar he was just an excellent speaker, was interesting and engaging the whole time. But if I ever decide to do a webinar, I know what to do!

The speakers that I liked best were the ones that were as realistic as possible. My favorite talk was called Planning Considerations for Sustainable Preparedness. He talked about how to make your own personal plan for whatever might happen, big or small, whether you are at home or out and about, whether it will last a moment or years (even if it doesn’t happen at all). For example, keeping some kind of knife on you at all times is a good idea because you never know when you might be attacked or stranded in the wilderness, or much more likely need to open a box or cut off an annoying tag in the back of your pants. It’s not that you need to do these things because something terrible is going to happen, but because it can just be a good idea for everyday things and then if something very unlikely does happen, you’re already prepared.

When I was in high school, the power to my family’s house went out for days due to a wind storm that took down power lines left and right. All the food in the fridge went bad, we couldn’t leave the neighborhood (downed trees blocking every road) we didn’t have lights… It was a good thing that we had a gas stove or else we wouldn’t be able to cook either. Our neighbors next door were much more prepared than we were. They had a backup generator so besides the noise, they hardly knew the power was out at all.

The speakers that I did not like as much were the ones that were trying to get you to buy their stuff by making people afraid that a nuclear holocaust is about to happen. One told us that we had only a couple years and by then we need to have an underground bunker in each of our basements with enough food to last a year because all hell is going to break lose! The world as we know it is coming to an end! Buy my book or else you won’t have the knowledge to survive! You will DIE!!

I don’t buy it. Not that I’m saying there’s no way that all hell could break lose, I just don’t know. But if you’re prepared for the little stuff, the stuff that is likely to happen to you in the next year, then you’ll be much better prepared for the big stuff. The biggest thing to do to help you be prepared for whatever life throws at you is to get completely out of debt and live within your means. Which I think is good advice for everyone.

The only thing I bought at the expo was a little do-hicky that makes clamps really fast. It’s good for wilderness preparedness because you can easily make crutches or spears, but I was thinking I really could have used it all summer at the farm when I was doing repairs. I am going to fix all the signs!