Creek Stewart - The Disaster-Ready Home: A Step-by-Step Emergency Preparedness Manual for Sheltering in Place

The Disaster-Ready Home

Be Prepared With Food, Water, Heating, and Sanitation

A Step-by-Step Emergency Preparedness Manual for Sheltering in Place

Creek Stewart, Author of Survival Hacks

Adams Media

An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Copyright 2022 by Creek Stewart.

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First Adams Media trade paperback edition January 2022

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Interior design by Colleen Cunningham

Cover design by Erin Alexander

Photographs by Creek Stewart

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-5072-1736-8

ISBN 978-1-5072-1737-5 (ebook)

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Readers are urged to take all appropriate precautions before undertaking any how-to task. Always read and follow instructions and safety warnings for all tools and materials, and call in a professional if the task stretches your abilities too far. Although every effort has been made to provide the best possible information in this book, neither the publisher nor the author is responsible for accidents, injuries, or damage incurred as a result of tasks undertaken by readers. This book is not a substitute for professional services.

From hurricanes and tornadoes to ice storms and issues with compromised municipal water supplies, weve seen numerous recent disastersboth natural and manmadecut off electrical or water service to hundreds of thousands of people, sometimes for weeks at a time. If a situation occurs that forces you to shelter in place at home, do you have everything you need to get you and your family through an undetermined period of time?

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, it was easy to write off this type of question as hypothetical thinking. But we now know that shelter-in-place situations can be a reality in our lives. The need to be prepared has never been more evident, and that is what The Disaster-Ready Home will help you do.

Food, water, shelter, heat, toilets, cookingthese are the essentials for daily life. This book will help you create and implement a system that allows you to meet each of these needs should a long-term shelter-in-place situation arise.

Youll find realistic solutions to help you do the following:

• Build a functional long-term food storage pantry that works with your diet, budget, and lifestyle
• Be prepared to cook food and boil water without using your traditional grid-tied kitchen appliances
• Set up long-term water storage (and renewable water sources)
• Establish an alternative heating solution if you live in a four-season environment
• Implement an off-grid toilet and human waste removal/storage system
• And more

This is not a book about how to go off grid, how to grow all your own food, how to move to the mountains, or how to homestead. I dont think any of these are practical preparedness solutions for the average suburban household in modern America. Instead, youll find a realistic, achievable, affordable, and effective preparedness plan that I call the Disaster-Ready Home Plan. Ive taken exactly what Ive done in my own home, for my own family, and turned it into a step-by-step manual for you to follow to be better prepared to shelter in place inside your own home, wherever that might be.

This information is designed to help you build the buffer youve been looking for to get you and your family through uncertain times. The practical solutions in this book will help you reach your emergency preparedness goals and give you peace of mind.

PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 FOOD

The first five chapters of this book revolve around food. Food is the reason most people embark on a journey of long-term preparedness in the first place. While food is not the most life-threatening survival priority, hungerand the idea of preventing itis an immensely powerful motivator, especially to those who rarely experience it. In fact, food (or lack thereof) is the largest weapon of mass motivation the world has ever known.

There is a lot to think about when building your own long-term food storage pantry. By the end of this first part, you will have set your preparedness goals and will understand exactly how much food, and what kind, to purchase to meet those goals. You will understand all of the food options on the market (freeze-dried, canned, bulk goods, and more) and will make decisions about how much of each one to purchase. From planning and purchasing to repackaging and storing, this part will equip you with everything you need to build a practical long-term food storage pantry that is customized to fit your budget, space, goals, and needs.

FOOD

WATER

HEATING

SANITATION

This chapter will discuss a few foundational elements of long-term food storage that you need to consider before spending too much time or money. As many in the preparedness industry say, failing to plan is planning to fail. This is true with food storage as well. This chapter will go over a few things to consider when choosing and setting up a space to store and organize your food. Each persons available space is different, but the tips in this chapter will help reduce storage headaches down the road as you begin to build out your long-term food storage space and pantry.

This chapter will also outline the tiered system of timelines I use to make sense of long-term food storage. While you might not choose the same timelines for your own storage plan, you will need to decide what your goal is. Without knowing how long you want your food storage to last, it is difficult to put together a solid preparedness plan. Ill help you break down your storage goal timelines so you can make sense of it all.