What do you really worry about...if anything ?

[CharlesHarris]

I am a firm believer in what they call the All Hazards approach to emergency planning.

I first got started prepping as a kid growing up in DC during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Dad was in the Army and Mom had been an air raid warden during WW2 and my brother and I filled sandbags, stacking them around the foundation, and over shoring covering the stairway into the walk-out cellar, whilst Mom prepared a stocked pantry and shelter under the cellar stairs.

Over the years that shelter was maintained and used during hurricanes and tornadoes. The high school I attended was hit by tornadoes three times in the years between my attendance there and when I got out of the Navy in 1974 and returned to the DC area to work.

During the years I lived in Northern Virginia as an adult we lived through more hurricanes, ice storms, power outages and an F3 tornado which ripped through the neighborhood, missing our house, but taking 20 feet out of the top of an oak tree in our yard and dropping it onto the next house over, about 200 yards away.

Twice we had to evacuate temporarily for hazmat releases on the nearby I495 beltway, once for an overturned truckload of explosives, and another time for a tanker truck full of aviation fuel which overturned and leaked into a storm sewer.

After 9/11 everyone was on edge, expecting some kind of terror attack.

Then we had the famous Beltway Sniper, who killed an FBI analyst at the Home Depot where I shopped.

All normal things for life in the biog city. If you plan for the real hazards which are more likely than nuclear war or space alien invasion, you will be reasonably well prepared for the low-likelihood, but high consequence events.

Now that I live in the country, a concern is wildfires, if we would have a dry summer and somebody gets stupid.

If they decide to nuke DC I have a year's worth of food storage, wood stove, 5 cords of wood racked up, pump to draw water form the creek downhill, a Big Berkey water filter, my garden tools, etc.

Take like as it comes and don't sweat the details. I will be 69 in October, debt free and living frugally.