4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book, but read in small bites, August 12, 2008
This review is from: Preparedness Principles: The Complete Personal Preparedness Resource Guide for Any Emergency Situation (Paperback)
Now, I'm not one to promote the "panic principle", trying to scare people with visions of potential disasters to frighten them into stocking their cellars with ten or twenty years'-worth of food, etc. Thankfully, this book is not about "panic", but simply about "preparedness". Preparedness for what? Do we really need to ask in this day and age? Let me sum it up with two words: Hurricane Katrina. Yes, many of us do not live anywhere near a hurricane zone. I live in a dessert (I mean, a desert--don't I wish I could live "in a dessert"!). Droughts, fires, and yes, even floods are the natural threats most faced by my state. Each state in the Union has its own challenges to cope with. And natural disasters may not actually be the "threats" most of us need to worry about. Loss of employment and health setbacks surely make having at least a few months' worth of supplies--both food and money--quite simply the "sensible" thing to do.
Preparedness Principles is designed to help us understand how to implement a sensible plan of approach to the unpredictable nature of life.
To be honest, the biggest mistake I made with this book was to sit down and attempt to read it straight through all at once. I found myself overwhelmed and discouraged in less time than I could say, "The monsoons just knocked the power out again!" ("Monsoons" are what we call our Arizona summer thunderstorms.) Unless you are already deeply involved with food storage, this is a book best read and incorporated in small bites. Don't try to read it like a novel. Use it as a resource, which is exactly what it is!
Some of the suggestions will be beyond your immediate means to implement. That's okay. One of my favorite quotes in the book is: "Preparedness is not an all-or-nothing thing. Something is much better than nothing, even if the something is just a little bit of something." In other words, if assembling a year's supply of food is overwhelming, then start with something smaller. Two weeks worth of food. A month's worth. Three months' worth.
One of my favorite sections of this book was the suggestion of building "mini-pantries" spread throughout your house, rather than throwing in the towel with the exclamation, "But I don't have any room to store anything!" As Salsbury points out, a few fruit bottles stashed in the linen closet, a few cans of food under the bed, will eventually add up.
Another chapter that intrigued me had to do with indoor mini-gardens. Now, I can kill just about any plant you can throw at me, but I remember one summer when my green-thumbed dad grew the most delicious baby carrots in our backyard. I've often thought longingly of those carrots, but I'm not an outdoor gardener. Too many weeds, too many bugs. It never occurred to me that I might actually be able to grow small carrots right inside my house--weed and bug free! That's an idea I might actually try, just to taste those baby carrots again! (Salsbury describes many more vegetables you can grow inside your house, but carrots will definitely be my first choice!)
Salsbury covers much, much more than mini-pantries and mini-gardens, of course. She has sections on provident living, dealing with disasters, emergency evacuations, and many helpful appendices. In this unpredictable day and age, this is a book that should be on everyone's shelf. It is a book that should be studied before the "unexpected" happens. But do so in small bites.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Comprehensive Emergency Preparedness Guide, March 23, 2009
This review is from: Preparedness Principles: The Complete Personal Preparedness Resource Guide for Any Emergency Situation (Paperback)
This book was published in 2006 and is very comprehensive in it's scope of topics. It goes into detail in a lot of practical and important areas that are only briefly mentioned in other rererences I've seen. The author has obviously had a lot of experience in this area and does a great job of sharing it in this book.
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