Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs

I picked up this book by Wendy Brown yesterday. The premise of the book is that you have 21 days to prepare for the end of the world as we know it. The author has broken the down the tasks for each day. You can check out Wendy’s blog here.

I think that this is a great idea considering that I do live in a Suburban neighborhood.

So I will be for the next 21 days blogging about what I find that needs to be done to make it so that we could survive the apocalypse until  either things go back to normal or a new way of life is established.

Day 1

Shelter

Luckily, we have a 3 bedroom house with a full basement and  detached 2 car garage. We also have the advantage of living on a corner. The roof was replaced just a few years ago, but the windows are old and horrible. But I know how to plastic them up with duct tape and I also have window quilts to use. We have no way to heat the house for the long term if there was no electricity.

Need to Get or Do

1. Get wood burner (already spoke with Grim and we know where we are going to put it.) Nextag has a lot of different listings. Good place to start looking. If your interested click here. I think I am going to look at the local hardware and see what they have.
2. Start replacing windows one at a time. (We will replace the two in the living room first as this is where the wood stove will go. Keep that room nice and toasty warm.)
3. Fix the basement walls. (At some point the basement was shored up with pylons. I don’t think the wall will cave in but the cinder block has been shifting for the last two years. Damn clay back fill.)
4. Weather strip around all the doors. (This should be done by everyone even if they don’t expect a disruption in life. I did this a couple years ago but it needs to be done again)
5. Fix screens in windows that don’t get replaced. (Several of the screens have holes and duct tape fixing them.  Yep, my neck is a little pink… LOL! Make do or Do without.)
6. Fix or replace gutters (for future catchment system)
7. We may look into a solar heat & solar hot water systems. (I would rather wait till we one day move to get these items but we may not ever move so that is something to think about.)

Yart