Best gas up the day before.
While the pumps are still operating.
And three days prior, taken out a lot of cash.
And in between, stocked up on groceries, toilet paper, ammo, seeds, propane, engine oil, water purifiers, ......
Having been caught up in hurricane Irma on the Florida mainland, service stations were selling gasoline at $5.00 per gallon,
and limiting each car to 5 gallons (or another 100 miles).
Meanwhile the entire State population were being forced to keep going north; gasoline was expensive,
and the population that was in hotels were ordered to vacate as the storm continued nothward.
Cash was king, ..and don't bother to ask for a receipt; better to have lower denomination currency.
Sanctuary housing wasn't until you reached Georgia, Alabama, or South Carolina.
Several years ago we had a bad ice storm. Fortunately we were prepared with gasoline on hand and a generator. We had to go out of town. While in Chicago we got a call from one of the kids that said our power had gone off, our generator failed. It apparently ate it self and was not reparable. We sent the kids to Home Depot to get another one. The
$500.00 generators were now $1300 and there was a waiting list for those. We were in Chicago but were catching another flight to Salt Lake City. As soon as we got there we took a cab to a Home Depot and bought a $500.00 Generator for $500.00. We had it sent home UPS. Somehow UPS got it there the next day, we only paid ground shipping. We were without electricity for only 1 day. No freeze problems, the kids got it put in service as soon as it showed up. The kids had no power either. While they had kerosene heaters they couldn’t cook or bathe so they lived at our house while we were gone until the electricity came back on several days later.
We have decided that will never happen to us again. We got 12KW of roof top solar cells and a 16KW NG generator. We also installed a huge battery that will last a couple of weeks without recharging. It’s a lot of money but we are getting pretty old and don’t want to be without AC in the summer or a nice warm house in the winter.
I’m pretty sure we could get by without leaving the house for a year or more. It’s good to have a basement full of stuff.
It has taken several years to be as well prepared for an emergency as we are but are now prepared for us and the kids.
We have taught all the kids and some of the grandkids in town how to shoot and have plenty of weapons to protect what we have.
We expect in a SHTF situation that there will be some civility at least for a while, especially when people all have guns. We think there will be a trade system so that most people can survive but some simply will not if the power is off for an extended time.