Preparedness and Stopgap Measures

I thought I should introduce this post with a little preface.  I know you all understand that there are many solutions to most problems, some better than others.  I know that you prepare the best you can.  This post isn’t directed at you, but might give you food for thought when dealing with others vaunting their “superior” knowledge. 

I recently made the grievous error of sharing a recipe for homemade dog food.  Based on the reaction, you would have thought Armageddon had arrived. 

Of course, we’re still waiting for it.  Sometimes I can’t wait for it to get here—there’s so much evil in this world that I just want to get the hard times over and done with.  And at other times I feel so unprepared. 

Anyway, the offending recipe is linked below.  The main ingredients and sources of nutrition are whole wheat flour and buttermilk.  Run it through any AI program and you’ll hear how horrible it is and that it won’t meet the dog’s nutritional needs.  And that’s ok, because you know what?  It’s a stopgap measure.  Something you can feed your dog if you only stored six months of kibble, but we’re going on eight months of empty shelves.  Perhaps you surmise that the lights aren’t coming back on anytime soon, so you’d like to mix it with the commercial food you still have.  Maybe your neighbor ran out of dog food and needs a solution.  After all, the game was hunted out long ago. 

Or what if your supply was somehow compromised?  Maybe there was a hole in the bag, water got in, and now everything is moldy.  You thought you were prepared, but suddenly, you aren’t. 

As Theodore Roosevelt is reported to have said and Dr. Joseph Alton, author of the Survival Medicine Handbook likes to quote, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” 

If you have an infant and there is no mother to breastfeed that baby, what are you going to do?  Find a wet nurse?  Buy a gallon of milk at the store?  Mix up some emergency formula from powdered milk and—gasp—sugar?  (Got lectured by some genius a couple of months ago that sugar was poison to an infant and honey would be better.)  Hope that you have a producing milk goat or donkey?  Tell the baby to tough it out because you don’t approve of the other options? 

What if you’re dealing with a gunshot wound?  We’re a few months into anarchy, and the Quikclot gauze was used up on the last patient.  You haven’t had time to buy or make more.  And you read on social media that some people advocated using tampons while others argued that those were a bad idea.  They even said using dirty clothing would be better than a tampon.  Who do you believe? 

Believe it or not, the dirty clothing is the better stopgap measure in this situation.  We covered why tampons are a poor choice in another post.  Still, I’m betting that most people out there would go with the tampon. 

People who have failed to prepare will be relegated to using stopgap measures.  If you want to help them out, you need to know what these stopgaps are and when they should be used.  Or whether they should be disregarded.  Make it a point to read and study preparedness skills every day.  Be prepared to care for your family and help others provide for their loved ones, even if it’s with a stopgap measure.

Links to related posts:

Good-Better-Best   

Myth of the Tactical Tampon 

Emergency Baby Formula 

Donkey Milk for Infants 

Emergency Dog Food