I am not normally a “prepper”. However, I believe the current situation justifies taking some precautions more than normal, especially this December 2025.

I plan to implement this starting 29 November and continue through 1 January 2026. If nothing happens in December, great. I’ll have plenty of rice and beans for 2026.

Watch the movie “Leave the World Behind” and pay attention to what it would really be like to be in that situation. Notice especially the inability to navigate without cell phones. Being separated or lost could be a big problem especially if you happen to be in an unfamiliar place.

Without being a pro, you can improve your situation a LOT with the following:

1. Be mentally prepared, not shocked, act early.
2. A basic plan to get everybody home without navigation aids.
3. Water supply and a plan to filter water.
4. Food supply.
5. Some basic communication.

Pre-Trigger Communication and Travel Protocols

• Know where all family members are at all times.
• Have a meet-up location (usually home, nothing special, just be specific).
• If communication goes down (cell phones and internet), proceed immediately home (or to meet-up location). Don’t wait very long for communications to return to operational like we would normally do.

“Trigger” Events

Under normal circumstances, if any of these events were to happen, we would assume an isolated incident and wait for it to pass, possibly watch on TV or follow the news somehow. This December I would expect something longer-term and take action to get home:

• If communications go down.
• If there is any physical attack anywhere in the US or Europe that appears to be of foreign or of unknown origin.
• Cyber attack causing anything physical to happen like a plane or boat crash.
• Common sense, anything obviously bad.

Water

• Fill up bath tub with water and any other large containers available.
• Rule of thumb water quantity requirement is ~1 gallon per person per day, which is quite a lot of water and does not include bathing.
• In general, filters are good for large contaminants while disinfectant is good for small contaminants.
• The Sawyer filter was recommended to me and notice it can filter up to 100,000 gallons of water. Don’t let it freeze. If you don’t have a dedicated filter, a paper towel is better than nothing.
• Disinfect water with Clorox bleach using 8 drops of unscented bleach per gallon of water. Notice this is a very low ratio of bleach to water, less than 1 part bleach per 5,000 parts water. So, a gallon of bleach can disinfect over 5,000 gallons of water. Glass droppers are useful for measuring disinfectant.
• Remember if you have well water, you typically need electricity for the pump to work, so use the pump while you can to get usable water up.
• Remember water is heavy, so you are unlikely be able to carry enough water to survive on for very long.

Food

If preparing for December, you don’t need to buy expensive food that lasts decades. You can really just have an unusually full pantry of non-perishable food that you can eat whether something happens or not. The following can last a year or two and you can eat it normally if nothing happens.

• Bags of dry rice.
• Olive oil lasts a year or two and contains a lot of calories.
• Beans.

Radios

Radios are useful only if somebody else is communicating on the other end, so best to get common radios that are cheap enough to have 2 of.

Without a ham radio rig, you won’t be able to transmit more than a mile or so. However, would be nice to have receivers to hear transmissions. Receiving requires a lot less battery than transmitting.

• This is the most common radio on Amazon currently. I picked a version with a scanner.
• This is the most common type of CB radio. I selected the option with an antenna and 15-foot cable because your transmission range is largely dependent on antenna size and height. You don’t have to set up the antenna ahead of time. If something happens there will be plenty of time for antenna set-up.
• If the power is out, car batteries will probably still work for a while, at least to power a CB radio or charge USB-charged radios. Would be nice to have one or two USB car chargers available to be able to charge without having the car turned on wasting electricity or gas. If your car doesn’t have accessory mode, you can connect the positive terminal to the point and negative terminal to the side of the cigarette lighter connector to charge directly from the car battery.
• Plan to attempt communication at the most recognizable natural events: sunrise and sunset.

Summary

I put all the items I linked to in this post in my Amazon cart and the total is $130 without the CB radio, $330 with the CB radio. Just in writing this I feel a lot better about my family’s preparedness. I hope it helps – but mostly I hope it’s not needed.

Oh yeah, I will probably have some hearing protection available just because of the awful noise in the movie.