Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Survival Weekend

I meant to write about this a month ago, but time sure has been flying!  In May, just before it got incredibly hot, RJ & I decided to do a Survival Weekend in our apartment.  What is a Survival Weekend?  It’s a planned weekend (or in this case, 24 hour period) where you deny yourselves any amenities that may not be available in case of a local crisis (e.g. tornado, nuclear explosion, etc.)  So that means we holed ourselves up in our apartment with no electricity, no running water, and no perishable food for 24 hours.  Call us crazy!  (I’m pretty sure we are.)   

The purpose of the experiment was to try out some of the supplies that we keep for a real crisis and get a feel for what we could have on hand that would make things easier for us.  For example, we cooked MRE’s on our Coleman stove.  We made one right after the other, and one thing we realized is that a rubber spatula can really come in handy, unless you want to rinse out your dishes constantly.  Another thing we definitely wished we had was hand sanitizer.  Do you know how annoying it is to repeatedly wash your hands with bottled water?  One thing we did do well was plan out lots of electricity-free entertainment.  We read books, played cards, and RJ schooled me in Simpsons Monopoly.  Although it was far from being an enjoyable weekend, I recommend that everyone give it a try.  Everyone always thinks a crisis won’t happen to them, but you never know.