BackwaterBlog

Now to give a bit of self-betterment that is directly about-faced from the previous wailing rant (and sorry, it was the end of the year and I had to let it loose, and no I ain’t gonna retract it), let’s look at a Backwater Box.

If you haven’t heard of a Bug Out Bag just go ahead now and Goog it, wade through the half million hits and learn.  I’ve ramped it up a bit from Bag to Box, since its application is a bit different.  Maybe you live in an off-grid fortified mountain retreat with a fresh water supply and 3 years of food on hand and have no need of such a thing but chances are, ye don’t.

Maybe you live in or near a city, commute to work every day and have a dwelling to come home to.  Is that you?  Yeah?  Time to feel good, you’ve got millions of folks just like yourself.  Safety in numbers and all.

Until:  You’re on the way home in a snowstorm and get stuck on the interstate for a few hours.  You’re facing a hurricane scenario and it’s time to head inland for a couple of days.  You’re sitting in your house and the smoke alarms go off and you’ve got ten minutes to haul ass before they find your charred corpse in what’s left of your bed.

Never happened to you?  Hell I’ve had all three happen to me.  And I don’t count myself all that unlucky.  It’s a fact of life.  There’s a dozen other inconveniences I could list that might interrupt your little daily suwaree.  Power turned off, or water.  Just plain running out of funds.

The Backwater Box.  Trust me, you really need something like this.  And I’m not going to get into all the explaining about why you do, or what each piece of it means.  You’re intelligent folks, you’re using a computer, use the web and your own common sense.  You know most of this stuff already.  I’m just the old buzzard harping at you.

Here’s the start of it all.  Take that $100 Christmas gift card from Aunt Mildred, head out to Wally World and get a cooler.  There’s only a couple of things that really matter about this – that it has a drain, a latch, wheels and can fit somewhere in your vehicle without too much strain.  The trunk of the car, for most of you.  This one’s $57 and holds 60 quarts.  That’s biggish.  Already got one?  Use it instead.  See, we’re gonna keep this real simple.

While you’re in the World, pick this up for $26.  Add two propane canisters for $5 (they’re 16.4 oz).  It’s an indoor heater that claims to last 14 hours per canister.

Still at the World?  Good thing, ’cause directly behind the heater, same aisle, is this bag.  Rated for 0 degrees and $23.  Yeah, I’m not sure I believe it either but it has a whole lot of good reviews.  Again, got your own already?  Or a damn fine set of wool blankets?  Use ‘em.  Save the dollars.

No picture, but check around for a flashlight as long as you’re in the camping section anyway.  Ideally, one of those emergency flashlight/radio combo’s with both battery and wind-up power.

Now go pickup that case of Shiner Bock and get out of Wally World while you can.  You’ve spent your $100, of course.  Nobody goes to the Wally and gets out for less, so make yourself feel good by doing something everybody else does anyway.  Toss all that gear in the trunk.  It does fit, right?

Now go home.  Open up your kitchen and take a look.  Pull out that extra 2 quart cooking pot with the burnt hande you’ve been saving.  A hand held can opener.  The best knife you can spare that you know how to sharpen.  A coffee cup and a fork.  Dig that spare Bic lighter out that you never use anyway.  See what we’re doing?  We’re recycling some basic living utensils.  Put the little stuff in a seal-up plastic bag.  Put the pot in a garbage bag.  Take all that stuff out to the car and put it in the cooler.  You now have the start of a Backwater Box.

Take your empty half gallon Gatorade, Diet Pepsi or moonshine jugs and fill with water.  I guess you could buy the water, the kind with the preppy name and the art deco bottle, but you ain’t that kind of person now, are ye?  Hope not.  Stuff as much of it in the cooler as possible, then fill up the rest of the trunk with more.  Cannot, cannot have enough water.  Screw on lids are important.

Every time you go to the grocery store for the next two months, buy one or two (or fifty, who’s counting?) extra FOOD items for your Box.  Semi-nonperishable.  Cans are good.  Tuna fish in oil.  Ritz crackers.  Spam (yeah I know, right?).  Energy bars, pop tarts, can of peaches.  You can obviously avoid lunch meat and mayo and bread.  We’re gonna rotate this stuff once in a while, but nobody wants to deal with moving your basic Sliced Danish Ham Sandwich Meat in and out of the cooler every day, right?

Don’t cheat.  Every trip to the grocery.  Get a little something.  Be creative.  Buy a cheap paperback novel.  Buy spare batteries for the flashlight.  Another 16.4 propane canister.  Box of kitchen matches.  Heavy duty garbage bags.  Bottle of hand soap.  How about a pack of Sterno fuel?  There’s no end of it, and as always if you already have it, stick it in there.

There are, of course, other things.  Things that ultimately wouldn’t fit.  Tools.  An extra jacket.  A rain suit (or just take an extra garbage bag and cut out some holes, but you’d look so darn foolish, right?  Maybe not.).  Cheap rubber boots from Goodwill.  Sandbags and a chainsaw.  Ugh, there’s really no end to this catagory.  I’ve got a really big truck and I don’t have half the stuff in there that I’d like, and I’ve got two coolers and a helluva lot of tools.

So, to what end, this Backwater Box and all this stuff you just packed in and around it?

You’re stuck on the interstate coming home in a snowstorm.  Stuck for a couple/three hours, in fact, because you’re out of gas and the plows are running behind.  Nab that Box outta the trunk and make yourself a Spam and cracker sammich.  Fire up the little propane indoor heater.  Maybe you’ll make it, maybe you won’t.  Bet you will though, and it sure beats hoofing to the next exit in your open toed mules to find out the 7-11 is closed.

Hurricane coming?  Everybody else is going to be looking for a Backwater Box, and everything in it, and running in a panic while you’re halfway to safety 200 miles up the road.

Displaced from the house for a few days?  No money?  Perhaps you were prophetic enough to stash some money in your . . . yes of course you were.  Open up a can of tuna and enjoy yourself in your cheap motel room.

Think.  Reason.  I can tell you for a fact that standing in the rain watching your house burn down is nothing I’d wish on anyone.  But when I realized that my wife was barefoot and wearing only what she had laying next to the bed, I fetched boots and raincoat and a flashlight from the truck I was standing next to.  From the Backwater Box.  We ate a little food from there, too.  We didn’t have to sleep in the car but we could have.

Shit hits the fan in many, many different ways.  Do something for yourself.  Make yourself forget the Armaggedon nature of what you’re doing and prepare for the inevitable.  Because it happens every blessed day we live, my children.

This one small thing you do, it matters.  Build the Box.  Start right now.  Keep yourself close to it.  Consider it the spare tire of your daily life.

Because that’s exactly what it is.