The Euro was supposed to be a precursor of Y2K and yet those conversions have gone very well with minimal impact. The stock market was supposed to be reacting by this time to the impending Y2K problems, yet it is at record levels. Gold, that eternal hedge against inflation, deflation, disruption and general "not good times" continues it's downward trend, having coasted from 414 in 1996 to 290 in 1999. Things that have been pointed out in the past as harbingers of bad times continue to be harbingers of good times.

Of course, some people recall the ancient story of the thief that was caught stealing a loaf of bread and brought before the Caliph for judgement. The Caliph, in his standard manner, said "Off with his head" and turned to other matters. "Wait," the thief cried. "I have the power to make your favorite horse talk." The Caliph was interested in this and asked, "Just how do you plan on doing this?" "It is a secret and takes a long time, Sire, but I can do this!", exclaimed the thief. The Caliph believed the thief, ordered him to perform this task within one year, and then ordered him off to spend the year in the barn with the horse. As the thief was being dragged off to serve his sentence, the guard said to him, "You must be mad! No one can make a horse talk!" "Well," the thief said, "much can happen in a year. I may die, the Caliph may die…or the horse may talk!" So we have this nagging feeling in the back of our heads that maybe, just maybe, we should prepare because, indeed, anything may happen.

I have long been a proponent of finding and then maintaining your comfort level but we no longer have enough time to plan all the things we want to do for time is short, if not nonexistent. The time for preparation is at hand. In light of the government talking about having two to three days of food and water in the house and the Red Cross and FEMA talking about two to three weeks of food in the house it is now time to look to implement our real Y2K contingency plans.

No matter what you decide to do there will be someone who will think that you are A: stupid, B: crazy, C: an enemy of the people or D: all of the above. One of my favorite expressions, what I call the Belasco Law of Gold Bullion, says that if I were to give away gold bullion, someone would complain about the weight of the bar. You will never be correct in everyone's eyes. It is not productive to base your actions on what others will say about you but to do what you yourself feel is important for you and your family in your individual and specific locales.

Let's look at what will really happen. Well, we can't. No one knows what will really happen. You could really be in a position where nothing happens to you. It is my belief that people will be impacted on different levels in different locales. I think the impact will range from a mere bump in the road for some people to an economic disaster for some other people, and almost every possible combination in-between. It is not possible to prepare for a complete economic disaster. It is impossible for a large number of people to prepare for that because a complete economic disaster will bring us back to the agrarian societies of the 1850's which could support far fewer than the billions of people that exist in the world today.

In order for many people to feel that they have done what they need to do and that they are at their comfort level, they need to at least know what things they should be thinking about in order to keep themselves going during those possibly very difficult times.

One of the things you need to think about is your pet. It is time to make some hard decisions. If you have a pet, you must decide what you are going to do with that pet. If you feel that there will be disruptions severe enough in your locale, so that you will need to prepare for weeks and weeks, maybe even months, then you must decide to either incorporate your pet into your family plans, as if that pet was another child, or make arrangements with someone else to take care of your pet as if that pet was a member of THEIR family, or you must put that pet to sleep. If you are in a city and feel that you will need to use a public shelter, you must understand that shelters will not take pets. You will wind up having to abandon the pet on the street. No matter what kind of pet it is, it must stay in the street and out of the shelters. Dogs, cats, parrots, parakeets, fish, ferrets, etc. ALL are excluded from the shelters.

There are many survival techniques, for those in the cities as well as in the suburbs and farms that are available to us and can bring us through almost any disruption. Moreover, in any disastrous situation, these techniques can maintain us until we are back to the level that we are at today. As Susan Conniry's tells us, we can not immediately have everything that we want but we can have everything that we need. It was Susan who told us that our priorities, in order, must be shelter, water, fire and food. No matter what the situation, those are the priorities. Those are what our needs are, what it takes to keep us alive.

In these times I keep thinking about my cousin and his wife that live on the 39th floor of a hi-rise building in New York City and what they can and should do in order to keep themselves going. It is clear that we need to have a community structure in a city environment and especially in a hi-rise building. It would be almost impossible to get beyond the week or two worth of survival in an apartment building if you are on your own. However, by banding together within the building you would be able to do such things as arrange tag teams to bring supplies from floor to floor, either walking them up the stairs or using block an tackle, pulleys, well wheels and rope. Etc. to bring them up on the outside of the building and then distributing them, both hot and cold, throughout the building. These same teams could be removing the garbage and other waste materials from the building the same way.Do you know how to cook? Will you have the ability to cook in your apartment if you lose electricity or gas for any period, even for 6 hours? Do you know how to make hot food? Does anybody in your building have the ability to cook in his or her apartment? Does anybody in your building have a camp stove, a kerosene stove, a barbecue on the terrace? Have you made contact with them to exchange food or water for the use of their equipment? Do you have water? Do you know how to get water from your environment, urban or suburban? Do you know how to collect dew? Alternatively, are there Sycamore trees near you? Do you know how to collect water from them? Or from other sources? Do you know how to create a cooking fire from steel wool? Not in your house, of course, but on your terrace, patio, roof? Do you know how to create and maintain a fire INSIDE a dwelling? It takes special knowledge and care but the information is readily available. Do have that information? Would it increase your comfort level if you had it, even if you never used it?

If you don't have this kind of information, but feel it would be important to your comfort zone to have it, then there are three sources I want to suggest to you.

A free source is the National Crisis Response Institute. They have a Y2k Preparedness Brochure that is very helpful. The brochure, "Preparing Yourself for the Y2k Crisis," is available for $0.50 plus a self-addressed, stamped envelope from:
National Crisis Response Institute,
2817 West End Ave. 126-427,
Nashville, TN 37203.
It may also be downloaded from NCRI's website (www.public.usit.net/jupiter) free. NCRI gives permission to make copies of the brochure for non-commercial use, and encourages organizations to use it to prepare and impliment their contingency plans.

Some of the topics covered in this site are; Food storage Potable water without electricity Hand pump installation for wells Practical firearm information Freezing canned goods Disaster planning guide Choosing a safe place Making your safe place more independent

Print out the information that you need. This information is updated weekly

The third item is a detailed manual and tape of survival information for urban dwellers. It comes from Susan Conniry and Tom Beasley. Their web site is members.home.net/shadow-scout/. The manual details such things as how to find water in a city environment as well as in the suburbs, how to collect water from trees, dew, sidewalks and other places. How to start a fire without matches, or what to use instead of matches. It tells you how to create a cave in your house to conserve heat and how to make a life saving taco out of a mattress or blankets. The amount of information is very large and very comforting as it lets you know how to stay alive in the most primitive conditions, if that is what happens. The Y2K survival manual and 90 minute audiotape is available by mail order. Y2K KISS - Keep It Simple Survival costs $34.95 and includes shipping and handling. Copies can be ordered by sending a money order to:
Susan Conniry
P.O. Box 2351
Lakeside, CA 92040

If you have an RV, you are ahead of the game. If you have a cabin in the woods you are ahead of the game. If you have a boat that you can use as a second home, you're ahead of the game. If you have any other second home of any sort, you're ahead of the game, not because you will really need it but because your comfort level will be increased because it will be there for you, just in case. It does not matter whether your comfort level is the three days worth of canned goods that the government says you should have, or the week or two that the Red Cross and FEMA says you should have, or the month that your friends say you should have, or the six months, or the two harvests, or the five years that the extremists say you should have. Part of this comfort zone is to know the kinds of things that you might be called upon to do. I have been talking for some time in non-specific terms about planning and preparations, with a few real suggestions here and there but I have stayed away from any extensive discussion of details, leaving it to you, the reader, to seek out the necessary details for your specific conditions. I have stressed the need for team work and community involvement in the trying times that might be coming. How much community involvment? It could be (in a city) you and you're next door neighbor, or your floor, or your building or the block you live on, etc. Whatever your decisions are, I think that if you are in a city, you will need to make different plans than those from a suburban or country model. Your comfort zone in a city apartment building will need to be different than your comfort zone in a private house.

There is no one answer. No one thing will suffice for everyone. You might read 50 points just in the above three sources before you have that AH! HA! moment, the connection between an external idea and an internal concept. Keep reading. Keep learning about Year 2000. Everyone's experiences will be different and everyone's needs will be different. Do not hesitate to follow your beliefs and feelings for your comfort zone. The time for planning is past. If you feel the necessity for it, do not hesitate to execute your plans now.

Author information

Howard Belasco is an independent consultant whose most recent work has included working as a Year 2000 Project Manager for a Fortune 100 trading group. Click here to go to Howard's Bio Page.


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