Miscellaneous
Disaster
Readiness Information
Updated 04apr25
Power outages, fires, floods, earthquakes,
storms and pandemics can interrupt utilities, phones, stores, ATMs, and
travel. You can be forced to leave your home because of flooding, sewage
backflow, fire, chemical accident, or terrorist threat. These things occur
when you are least prepared.
The large disaster relief organizations
can provide basic relief for a lot of people, but need a few days to get
set up. Wise people are prepared to handle problems on their own for 3
days to a week.
Do not buy any survival kits or anything
you are not familiar with. After the power goes out is not the time to try
something out. Do not waste your money buying "special survival food". It
will probably get old before you need it. Just keep your regular canned
goods stocked.
Notice
Copyright 2005-2025 Ken Young (http://www.DinoDudes.com).
All rights reserved.
This document may be freely redistributed for educational
purposes at no charge in unaltered form.
This information is for educational purposes only. There
is no guarantee of any kind that it is accurate, or that no harm will
come to anyone who uses it.
This information is provided on an "as is" basis with
absolutely no warranty or guarantee. The information is not necessarily
correct, complete, or suitable for any particular use. The entire risk
is with you. Should harm arise from using this information, you assume
responsibility for all damages and injuries. In no event shall the
copyright holder, or any other party, be liable for compensation or
damages arising from the use, misuse, failure to use, or inability to
use this information.
Hand
sanitizer recipe
- 2/3 cup of 90%
rubbing alcohol
- 1/3 cup aloe vera
gel
- 5-10 drops of
nice smelling essential oil (optional)
- Mixing bowl
- Spoon
- Funnel
- Empty liquid soap
or hand-sanitizer containers
Mix everything and put it in the bottles
Making
your own masks
There are plenty of patterns on the
Internet for sewing your own face masks. But what kind of cloth to use?
Any cloth used to make filters works well, but a microfiber cleaning cloth
is better.
Earthquake
latches
for cabinets
Earthquakes larger than magnitude 4 can
hit any place on the planet (they are more frequent some places than
others). They are unkind to upper cabinets, causing them to disgorge
their contents onto the floor causing a colossal mess. Your appliances
and ceramic dishes may break and need to be replaced.
Earthquake latches for cabinets with
double doors are a challenge. The doors pull forward and apart at the
same time as they open.
There are many solutions advertised,
but all come up wanting. We needed something that wasn't plastic,
inconvenient, or unreliable. No advertised earthquake latch was
adequate.
Working with a seismologist who worked
with the USGS, we found a solution we liked. Marine cabinet latches are
strong and reliable. "Barrel bolt" cabinet latches proved to be
convenient, also. Operating it when opening and closing the cabinet
isn't a hassle.
Most marine barrel bolts would work
fine as latches for cabinets with double doors. The ones we bought were
made by Suncor
Stainless and sold to us over the Internet by West
Marine.
We bought these "barrel bolts" for
use as cabinet latches.
|
Here it is installed on one of our
cabinets
|
Sand
filtration system for making creek water (mostly) safe to drink
- Start with a clean 10 gallon bucket
- Drill some holes through the bottom
- Make drip-guides: hang a string from each hole (run between holes and
tie) so the clean water will drip straight down
- Make spill catchers: Tie rags together and wrap around the bucket
several times to stop contaminated water from running down the outside
and dripping into the clean water
- Hang it waist high from a rope
- Put a 1/2" layer of gravel on the bottom for better drainage
- Line the bottom with a towel to keep grit out of the clean water
- Fill with 18" or 500cm of clean sand (better still, mix in crushed
charcoal, crushed chalk, powdered pumice, zeolite, or diatomaceous
earth). Note that the cheap sidewalk chalk for children does not contain
any chalk and is ineffective.
- Top the sand with gravel, and top the gravel with small rocks. This is
so the sand isn't disturbed when you pour water in.
- Put a collection bucket underneath
- Pour water in carefully until it comes out clear (don't spill any).
Put a few teaspoons of bleach in the first bucket to sterilize the sand
if you can. You may need more than one such bucket to prime it. Keep
putting the same water back in until it comes out clear.
- Once it starts coming out clear it is probably drinkable. Let the
bleach work for 15 minutes, and its ready to use.
- Use separate buckets for clean and dirty water. Mark them so they
don't get mixed up.
- Slowly pour in one bucket of water at a time. Let the water drip into
the clean bucket.
- For best results, put 1/2 teaspoon of bleach in each gallon of water
you pour in. Let the clean water sit for 15 minutes so the bleach can do
its job.
- Put more rocks on top if the sand moves around
- Remember that anything that runs down the outside of the bucket will
wind up in the drinking water
There are ready-made commercial bucket
filters. One example is the AquaPail (This is not an endorsement of that
product).
A
clever water distillation system
If you have a working stove, but no clean
water, you can distill using a big pot. Fill the pot halfway with dirty
water. Put the lid on upside down, so the handle points down. Tie a cup to
the handle. Start simmering.
The steam condenses on the upside-down lid
and runs downhill to the handle. From there it drips into the cup.
Do not let dirty water get on the outside
of the cup or it will contaminate the clean water when you pour it out.
Alternative setup: Put a brick in the pot
and set the cup on the brick. This is a lot easier but isn't as good
because the brick displaces a lot of water, reducing your still's
capacity.
Sterilizing
water without boiling it
Get some clear plastic bottles. Peel the
labels completely off.
Fill with clear water.
Lay the bottles on their side in the sun
all day.
The heat and UV radiation will do a
reasonable job killing most of the dangerous stuff in the water.
Improvised
cooler
Put a medium sized flower pot inside a big
one with sand in between. Keep it covered and in a cool shady place. Pour
water into the sand every day. The inside will be cooler than air
temperature.
Hayboxes
(ice
chest cookers)
Conserve fuel with an ice-chest cooker
(called a haybox). Line an ice chest or other insulated container with
aluminum foil to make one.
Bring a pot of rice, beans, soup or stew
to a full boil. Put the lid on and put it in the haybox (ice-chest cooker)
for twice as long as it would take to cook on the stove. Ta-da!
- Don't put fire into the haybox, just the boiling pot
- This is basically a crock-pot
- Embedding the pot in a pile of towels or dirty laundry works, too.
Hobo
stoves
These simple stoves cook one pot with a
small amount of fuel (sticks or charcoal)
Take a big can. Use a can opener to remove
the top completely. Use a church-key can opener to punch some holes in one
side of the can near the bottom. More holes on the other side near the
top.
Position the can so the side with the
holes on the bottom is on the upwind side. Fill with sticks or charcoal.
Light it using little pieces of paper. Once it gets going you can put a
pot on top and cook.
If you don't expect any wind, punch holes
all around both the top and the bottom.
The
Crayon Candle
Wax crayons make a 30-minute candle.
Use a blob of the melted wax to glue it to a plate for safety. The paper
makes a wick, so you just light it.
Warning: This may be
irresistible to children, who might burn the place down.They may also
want to recreate it later, adding subsequent fire risk.
The
Crisco Candle
You can make an everlasting candle out of
lard. Roll up a sheet of paper to make a big wick, and stick it into a can
of lard. Warning: This may be irresistible to children,
who might burn the place down.
Moser
Lamp / Bottle Light
This is a light for a temporary shelter.
Put two teaspoons of bleach in a bottle and fill it with water (the bleach
keeps the fuzz out). Cap it and push it halfway through a hole in the roof
(cap-side-up). Seal around the bottle to keep the rain out. It glows like
a 50W bulb when the sun hits it.
LED lights and your UPS
UPS = Uninterruptible Power Source.
They are used to protect your electronics from power problems and give
you time to save your data after the power fails.
You can plug a lamp with an LED
bulb into a UPS after a power failure and get light for quite
some time. How long depends on the bulb and the UPS. Most UPS models
chirp or beep in this situation because they think they are powering a
computer and want you to turn it off before the UPS runs out of juice.
Consider plugging an LED nightlight
into your UPS. It will give you a little light in the room when the
power fails. You may need a power strip or short extension cord for
better nightlight positioning. The light is good for walking around
without bumping into stuff at night, whether the power is on or not. It
is handy to have instant nightlight when the power fails.
Opening
a
can without a can opener
You can open a can without any tools. Put
it upside down over flat concrete and scrub back and forth to grind the
crimp off. After a minute of vigorous work, you squeeze the can really
hard and the lid will pop out. Or you can slam the can down really hard.
A
clever mosquito trap
Turn a 2 liter soda bottle into a mosquito
trap. It won't get all the mosquitoes, but it will keep their numbers
down.
- The trap: Start with an empty
2 liter plastic bottle. Cut the top part off, flip it over so it works
like a funnel, and attach with glue & tape. Now you have a 2 liter
jar with a funnel-top.
- Bait solution: Boil a cup of
water, add a little sugar, and cool completely. Then add yeast (brewers
yeast is good). The sugar-water must be cooled completely or the yeast
will die.
- Deploy: Add the yeast and put
the bottles around where you will be.
- How it works: The yeast
digests the sugar, producing carbon dioxide. Mosquitoes home in on the
carbon dioxide in your breath, and so enter the trap to see if you are
in there.
Mosquitoes go in but they (mostly) don't
come out. It lasts a couple weeks.
Table
heaters
It takes a lot of power to heat a house
or a room, but you can heat yourself easily.
Throw a blanket over the table you will
be sitting at; the blanket should reach the ground all around. Put a
lamp or lighting fixture underneath with an incandescent bulb. Make sure
the bulb isn't touching anything; it can melt the blanket or start a
fire.
It will take about 15 minutes for the
space under the table to warm up and start heating your feet and legs.
After about an hour it should be nice and warm under there.
This works best if you wear a jacket or
wrap a blanket around your shoulders.