I was diddybopping around the internet and stumbled across this article from about six years ago. Succinctly, a local government in Oregon was urging citizens to be prepared for earthquakes and/or tsunami. Here’s where it gets interesting. It is urging citizens to create ‘caches’ for their families. The city will even sell you the fabulous 55-gallon ‘blue barrels’ to fill with supplies and provide a workshop to advise you on how to do it. So far so good, yes? Now, see where it goes off the rails…
Each shipping container is loaded with three different types of supplies: family cache containers; medical, administrative, and support equipment; and tourist, employee and visitor kits. City emergency management personnel will open the containers in case of an emergency.
The local government is also setting out shipping containers to be used as storage for all those personal caches. Or, put another way, you load up a 55-gallon drum with survival supplies and hand it to your local government to lock away in a cargo container so it’ll be available during a crisis … assuming the government lackey with the keys to the conex shows up and says its okay for you to get your stuff. Oh…and you pay the government a fee for yearly maintenance of your stuff. Because.
What could possibly go wrong?
The more cynical among you will opine that the local government just found a way to stockpile emergency supplies without having to pay for them.
Good intentions, I’m sure….but I would much rather have a 55-gallon drum of supplies hidden somewhere where I can have constant access to it, and no one else knows about it, rather than put my gear in a cargo container with a hundred other strangers gear and hope the government will unlock the doors and let me have it in an emergency.
I wonder if this program is still in effect or if it ever got off the ground………
https://www.ci.cannon-beach.or.us/emergencymgmt/page/tsunami
Looks like they are still doing it.
I wonder how many citizens actually have taken the city up on its offer. Sounds like a liberal hippy communal approach to preparedness.
Prepper planning by gubmit. I am sure when the SHTF the gubmit employee will be there right on time to open their facility so you can get your stuff. hahahahaahahahahaha
If I have a single, or especially multiple drums of supplies cached for emergencies, you can bet your bippy no one is going to know about it or it’s location, especially the goobermynt…… They are your worst enemy, and prove it on a daily basis…….
This is a heck of a deal. Not only do you get to buy a 55-gallon plastic barrel for $57.90 and fill it with supplies, but you also get to pay a $55 annual maintenance fee. And when SHTF, you get to be told after you show up “Sorry, we thought you weren’t coming so we took the liberty of opening your drum and distributing the contents to others who had nothing and appeared to be needier.”
Ya, a heck of a deal they have there.
“I’m from the Government -I’m here to help…..”
Yeah – riiiiiiight….
Good intentions or not, I am amazed at .gov’s rank stupidity here for thinking that this is a good idea. As you have pointed out, there are a number of ways this could go off the rails when and if actually needed. And in any case, a household that is responsible enough to participate is obviously responsible enough to purchase and store the supplies at home, without any need for .gov to get involved.
And just think, there are several GS-somethings somewhere who are getting paid a generous salary, benefits, and pension for coming up with useless programs like this. It would be far more useful and cost effective to simply send out a bulk mailing to every address in their district containing the recommended list of supplies along with a letter of explaining why it is a good idea to start prepping.
Hahahaha. NO!!! In fact, not just no, but as we say here in the South, heeell no!!
is diddybopping kinda like rippydipping? trying to remember that FAR BACK lol. dan
Fill your blue barrel with knock-out gas, so that when its opened you can swoop in and steal everyone else’s barrels.
Commander:
Are there preppers dim enough to fall for this?
Or are there non-preppers with enough to deposit?
I doubt EITHER is true…
Frankly, from the government’s view, this is a good idea. The greater the number of prepared individuals, the better the community will do in a crisis. FEMA’s encouragement to have 3 days of food and water on hand is laughable. The reason it recommends this low threshold, IMHO, is because so many people don’t even have this amount of food and water in their home, and 3 days is, well, at least 3 days. Maybe the old saying, “We’re only 3 days away from a riot” is based on the FEMA advice?
Many apartment dwellers have little extra space to store essential preparedness supplies, or at least as much as they might want. This program could benefit them.
Yet, my bottom lines is that I am with others who have opined that the participants’ supplies will disappear or be commandeered in a crisis. Perhaps this program is the best that the gullible participants can do. Those people probably aren’t reading this blog anyway.
Sorry. The old saying is actually “We’re only 9 meals away from a riot.” It is pretty much the “same difference.”
Next thing, they’ll offer to store your guns and ammo for you. Of course you’ll have to pass a background check to get them out of storage.
The Indian government offers to store your gold for you and will pay you interest if you just hand over all your AU to them to “safeguard”. Guaranteed. Problem is is, they don’t have to give you gold back – only its equivalent value in paper – if “something goes wrong” Hmmmmmm…
So far they’ve only gotten a smattering mostly from government employees who have been “encouraged” to show support for the program. Indians have a enormous amount of privately held gold and are smart enough not to fall for that government “guarantee”. Sooner or later though, it’s going to become a mandatory turn in and that’s when the SHTF…
Regards
West Germany’s gold was being held for them at the NY gold deposit bank (the one that was robbed in the Die Hard #2? movie) by the US. Turns out the bank had sold the gold, and claimed they only had to give the Germans an IOU for the value of the gold when it was deposited in the 40’s. Want to guess who replaced the gold, when they asked for it back, a few years ago?
I have seen this before, but as I remember it, the way it works is that Johnny Hooker convinces the Mark to put his bankroll into a handkerchief, and Luther Coleman gives him a wad of flash cash as the come-on. Then, while the mark is thinking of how to steal the flash cash, Johnny switches the handkerchief with the money for the one inside his pants filled only with phonebook clippings, while showing what a great way it is to sneak your money past a thief.
It takes fast hands, but it usually works out well for the grifters.