Emergency Preparedness: NYC Edition
I attended an event last night geared toward emergency preparedness for New Yorkers. It may seem silly and worry-warty of me, but living in New York does bring to mind certain realities—most notably that were any kind of major crisis to hit, we’d all be totally screwed. Look, I’m not saying all I do is sit around imagining all the things that could go wrong. (Although I can report that when flipping through a book at Strand last week that answered the question of what would happen if a magnitude 15 earthquake hit NYC, I resolved I needed to move away ASAP. Although, to be fair, after a magnitude 15 earthquake, the entire planet would cease to exist.)
The catch-22 for New Yorkers is that since we all live in tiny apartments and on shoestring budgets, none of us really have the space or the extra cash to get ourselves as prepared as we should be for emergencies. What kind of preparation, you ask? The speakers at last night’s event discussed everything from having extra canned food on hand (we even got to sample recipes made from nothing but canned foods, and I have to say everything tasted pretty good) to how to best store water, including how to filter and disinfect it if needed.
It both shocked and horrified me to learn that New York is about 72 hours away from eating itself. Meaning if no additional supplies were able to get here, within 3 days we’d be killing each other simply to get access to whatever pitiful supplies of granola bars and water bottles we have stashed under our beds, or, in my case, stuffed into extra compartments in my closet shoe holder since I got rid of almost all my shoes when I moved here.
I’m not trying to be all gloom and doom, and I’m certainly not going to go out and buy the full set of survival gear that the speakers recommended (what normal person has that stuff?), but I certainly left feeling like I can and should be doing more to get myself prepared for crisis, even if that crisis is as simple as not being able to get to the store for a few days because of a blizzard. Or, in NYC’s case, a “blizzard.” Just know this: If after 72 hours you come in search of granola bars, mine are the generic crunchy ones that no one likes. You can do better.