People are starting to look like dogs that have been kicked too many times. Everyone seems to be halfway to flinching all the time, waiting for the next bit of bad news. Toilet paper is sold out, restaurants are closed, you can’t find ammo if you were foolish enough to wait, the Ohio elections were postponed as the Governor defied the courts, no sports, stock market is in the toilet and so is the precious metals market. San Francisco is on a nearly total lock-down for three weeks. I am not sure how they will enforce that, I guess you can go to the store and go jogging or something. Police in Portland, Oregon will stop responding in person to “non-critical” calls (more on this later).
A lot of people are hunkering down.
So what should you be doing right now, assuming you are stocked up on essentials and in a good position to ride things out?
One thing I am doing besides spending too much time online is evaluating what we have, what we were in good shape on and what we were not. I am operating under the assumption that this is going to be more mild than we expected as a pandemic but pretty severe in terms of response. In other words a trial run. Whether you think that this trial run was orchestrated or not, or whether the timing of it happening in an election year to tank the economy before November seems suspicious as hell, it is the first significant national calamity we have had in a very long time. People didn’t hoard toilet paper after 9/11.
Look at your pantry and freezer. When you looked at it over the weekend, what was glaringly missing and should never be allowed to get low again?
How about wherever you keep your ammo. Did you burn through any one caliber practicing without keeping it stocked up? What about .22 LR, it is easy to forget how hard it was to get a few years ago, and in a long term crisis-situation having .22 to kill small game is probably more practical than an extra box of 9mm hollow-points.
Personal goods like toilet paper, paper towels, facial tissue. Or do you have a viable substitute?
Medical supplies, from first aid to basic medicines. Having enough of the basic, OTC pharmaceuticals like acetaminophen, is critical plus other remedies and vitamins.
How is your relationship with your neighbors? We are OK on milk even though we don’t have a dairy cow right now but milk and eggs are getting tough to find in the store. But I do have multiple neighbors I can reliably buy or barter eggs from and others I can do the same with milk, although I might have to settle for goat milk which I dislike. Can you rely on them to watch your back and vice versa?
If you are stuck at home, don’t do what I am spending too much time doing: watching the news to see what is going to go wrong next. Make use of this time because I will guarantee this is not the last or the worst major crisis we are going to experience in the next year or two.