The most likely type of Stuff Hitting The Fan (SHTF) to happen to us in the near future isn’t The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI) or being forced to live in a world Without Rule Of Law (RWOL)… rather, it’s a personal SHTF situation.
While we all know a rogue state could potentially throw an Electromagnetic Pulse, the sun could send a massive solar flare, Yellowstone could blow up, earthquakes can happen, etc.
While all of this is true (and most of those will eventually happen), we are much more likely to get hit with a personal SHTF situation in the mean time.
The house could catch on fire. Car accidents are very common. Cars break down. People fall down and break their ankles (Salty says, sitting here typing with his leg in a cast), people get ill, jobs can be lost, you name it… personal SHTF moments are everywhere.
Personal SHTF Prepping
Since personal SHTF moments happen so often, doesn’t it make sense that prepping for them is a critically important part of our overall prepping plan.
On the one hand, it sure does make sense.
On the other hand, admit it. It’s boring.
It’s REALLY boring.
The thing is, even though making preps to avoid or deal with personal disasters isn’t in the least interesting, it can sure take a lot of the excitement out of an accident when it does happen.
Let’s use fire as an example
When that grease fire flames up on your stove, it’s very exciting, and not in a good way. Isn’t it much better to turn around and grab the ABC type fire extinguisher that you have pre-positioned nearby (but far enough away from the stove to not get burned grabbing it) and just putting the fire out instead of watching your house burn down or take extensive damage waiting for the fire department to arrive?
Fires kill people
Sadly, fires kill people. Just this week, in a community not too far from where we live, two children died in an overnight fire just a couple of days ago.
Tragic House Fire in Baring, Missouri Claims the Lives of Two Children
Spice’s note: I do some volunteer work for the Red Cross, so I see a lot of the cases where the Red Cross has provided emergency assistance to people after house fires. Three things I’ve learned:
1) We see lots of cases every day, even in one modestly populated state, and even though we only see the cases where the people haven’t the resources to manage without help.
2) As soon as people turn on their heaters for the year, we see a sharp uptick in cases. That lasts until the heaters go off in the spring.
3) When the power goes out, we see an even bigger spike in cases. The alternate heating and lighting methods people are using are more dangerous than their primaries.
Here’s a podcast where we talk about personal SHTF prepping:
Detectors & Extinguishers can save your life & property
OK, look, we KNOW you guys know this already. These two items are the two most important personal safety devices that you own (short of the seat belts in your car).
We get it, you’ve known this stuff for years, and you probably have both smoke detectors and fire extinguishers in your house.
But here’s the question. Do you stone cold know they will work when you need them? Do you have a testing system set up for your smoke detector (we’ll get to your carbon monoxide detector in a bit)? I don’t mean do you change the batteries regularly and push the test button, I mean do you actually TEST your detector by taking it down and putting it where smoke will make it go off?
If not, I recommend that you do as part of your personal SHTF protection plan.
Commercial fire extinguishers are regularly tested, but home ones are not. How fresh is yours, has it been sitting around for 25 years? If so, are you willing to risk your home that it will work?
Placement matters
Where you place smoke detectors matters. They should be mounted on ceilings or at the top of walls, since smoke rises.
We had an interesting situation in our house just this week. We had one smoke detector for our kitchen and living room area. It is located on the living room side, above the doorway. Our house is an older bungalow, and it has 10-foot high ceilings. The doorway comes down about 36 inches, and we place our smoke detector right above the doorway.
A couple of days ago, we had an “unfortunate apple pie incident” which generated a kitchen full of (rather tasty smelling) smoke. I was sitting in the living room when I started to smell something out of place. I looked at the doorway and saw smoke pouring through the door. Due to the fact that we run ceiling fans year round, the smoke was sucked into the room’s fan area then pressed down.
What I didn’t hear, however, was the screeching of a smoke detector. The smoke had literally bypassed the area where the detector was setting. Call this a personal SHTF warning message.
Notice above I used the word “had” instead of “have”. That’s because Spice just finished installing a new smoke detector in the kitchen, so now we have one in both rooms. That’s better.
(Spice’s note: Put out a candle and hold the detector sensor right over the smoke wisp. This made our new detector go off. Now That is a real test for smoke detection.)
We also have a carbon monoxide detector in the living room. Let’s talk about those for a bit.
Carbon monoxide detectors
Carbon monoxide detectors are a critical safety device and should be a part of every personal SHTF protection plan.
Basically, many types of devices (and any fire that is running low on oxygen to burn with) can give off carbon monoxide, which is a colorless, odorless gas that can kill you. There are hundreds of people killed in the US annually by carbon monoxide, and many more than that are sickened by the stuff. Most of these deaths come from faulty heating and air units.
Inexpensive detectors are available which will help protect you from this invisible danger. Keep in mind that the cheaper ones that are found in big-box stores are not as sensitive as the fancier expensive ones.
Which carbon monoxide detector is best for you is beyond the scope of this article, but I did want to point out that there are differences.
Spice and I don’t like our lives depending up on assumptions… we like to test everything to make sure it works. When it comes to a carbon monoxide detector, if you do a web search of how to test the unit most entries come back “push the test button, stupid!”.
Yeah, well for us, that’s not good enough. We don’t want to know if the thing can beep, we want to know if the sensor actually detects carbon monoxide.
The hillbilly testing method for testing your carbon monoxide detector
Like anything when it comes to personal SHTF items, there are many ways to skin a cat. Putting aside why you would want a skinned cat for a moment, let’s look at both the “official” way of testing your carbon monoxide detector and our own “hillbilly engineering” way of doing it.
The “official” way is to buy a can of carbon monoxide (no, really, they sell it just for this purpose – CLICKY ) and after you drop your $20 you take that can, stick your detector in a plastic bag, squirt in some carbon monoxide, close the bag and wait to see if it beeps.
If it beeps, your detector works.
Then… there’s our “hillbilly” way.
Take your detector and place it in a plastic bag. Walk that plastic bag outside, and outside in the open air start your vehicle. (Don’t do this in your garage. Killing yourself testing your detector would be a complete Prepper Fail!) Take the plastic bag and put it under your vehicle’s tail pipe. In our case, a minute or so later the fool thing was beeping it’s brains out.
It works. (Spice’s note: Carbon monoxide is less dense than the other stuff coming out of the tailpipe. Put the detector at the top of the bag and place the bag so the exhaust enters under the detector and the excess spills out below. In about a minute, the old truck produced enough CO to set off my detector.)
But wait, there’s so much more!
There’s so much more that we can do to enhance our personal SHTF preparedness, so we have started a new category here at 3BY to talk more about it.
More articles are soon to follow, until then, be safe and be well.