All right. Welcome to season five of Inside Mike and Newhead. This is a Canadian podcast that's all about the integration of leading an incredible awesome life, individual responsibility, individual emergency preparedness, and how do we navigate life's incredible, wild disruptions that we see among a sit-back, grab a beverage, and enjoy the episodes. All right.
This week, we want to talk about preparedness, information, where you get it, what mediums you choose, what best serves your interest. And for that discussion, we've brought back Sharon, a previous guest on this episode to talk from somebody else's perspective about preparedness, information, where you get it, and why you pursue the mechanisms and the mediums that you do. So sit back and grab your favorite beverage. Let's get to it.
All right. So thank you very much for joining us back on the podcast, Sharon. I know understand that your life has been incredibly busy and we too appreciate you taking the time. And basically, the idea behind this episode is pretty simple.
I mean, there is a plethora of voices in the preparedness world that deliver all kinds of information on all kinds of different mediums. So I mean, I think the best question to open up this discussion is when you seek preparedness information, where do you go to find it? And do you have a preferred medium? That's a great question.
I guess I consider myself not a beginner, prepared individual. So I find a lot of the government produced communication to be more on the basic side and I kind of need something a little bit more. And so I find myself looking in a number of different mediums, I'll tell I'll disclose that I'm a millennial and older millennial. So I find that I'm not on the I'm not on Tech Talk.
I just got an Instagram like a year ago. So I'm a late adopter when it comes to certain social media channels. So I do like consuming information a number of different ways. I find like one of my current favorite, although it's kind of a balance between political and he's got a little bit of emergency preparedness side is the bow of the fifth column.
He's a YouTuber. And I just love that format because it's you know, it's really short videos. I think they're like three to seven minutes each. And he kind of follows a tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.
And for me, while that's YouTube, it's just him and the camera. And I mean, that could be a podcast episode or like a format for myself. I don't need to see him staring at the camera. But I feel like I like listening to that when I'm on my way to pick up from daycare.
So it's nice, short, snappy, take something that's really complex and then like summarize it in like the three to five bullets that I need to know. And I find as a busy individual that bite size piece of information is kind of what I'm looking for. I do like the podcast for kind of like the longer drives that I do. But then I get annoyed, like when amazing podcasters like yourself say these great things or refer to these other individuals and I can't write it down because I'm driving.
So I do also like YouTube for more of the product reviews. So if you know, I don't get into a bricks and mortar store very often. And so if I'm looking to buy something, I like I find YouTube is my replacement for the touch and feel experience that I might get. So yeah, it's kind of a general overview of a different social media ways that I consume information.
I also like books. I'm a nerd and I like the hard copy books from the library. But again, you know, any of the emergency preparedness books I've gotten, I found that either are too extreme or like are just really not really relevant to me as the suburban emergency preparedness mom that lives in suburbia. Or they're just too general.
You know, they're just the high level things that I already know. Yeah, I mean, they've just released a new textbook introduction to emergency Canadian emergency management. So it's anybody looking at the very basics or wants to dive a little deeper into the theory behind emergency management, etc. It's in the textbook.
But the textbook says a lot of what you're saying is that it's basic information, right? It's the standard messaging that comes from all levels of government that, you know, is basic, it gets you in the door. But like you said, when you're living a more complex, busy life in a suburban environment, it's you need a little bit more. And that's why I think I agree with you on the YouTube side, because what you the brilliance of YouTube is it allows you to consume YouTube as an audio and allows you to consume it as a video.
So I have a number of YouTubers that I follow. And I will turn on the YouTube on my TV. It's the most watched thing on my main TV in the living room is YouTube, because I have an Apple TV and I just turn on YouTube and I'll play something I'm interested in and then I'll mill about and do other things. And so when I'm getting the audio that I'm picking up is I'm cooking or doing whatever else.
And then, you know, every once in a while, when they hold up a certain product, you're like, I'm looking at this thing, taking a visual, like you said, not all opportunities are present to say, okay, stop it right here. Let's write down the important information. And for me, a lot of times I use the notes app on my iPhone and they're similar apps and Android phones, right? I stop and I'll do that when I'm chatting with somebody, I'll just pull it out and I'll start typing.
And I say, listen, you've said something brilliant. I'm not being rude to you by pulling out my phone. You've said something brilliant. I'm going to forget it in the next 30 seconds, right?
And just that phrase or the way you characterize something. Bam, I need to capture that because it's helpful. And I've got a notes app that has like 200 quotes on it from various people that I listen to. And I think that kind of helps because I think maybe phrasing it in, you don't carve out a piece of time to do just preparedness research.
It's like a complimentary when you're doing something else. Yeah, no, I agree with that. I find that like you follow me on Instagram and I feel like I was a big face booker and I feel like I'm pulling back off of Facebook. I don't really know why I'm getting out of touch with it.
But I just find I feel more drawn to the Instagram approach where it's a visual medium, but then you can have this like great narrative. I'll admit though, I'm not up on the whole, I don't really know the difference between a story and a real or anything like technical terminology of that stuff. But what I can tell you, because I follow a lot of parenting Instagrammers. And there's one, her name's Dr.
Becky Goodensai. She's a child psychologist. She's fantastic. And she does these things, I think they're called reels.
They're one to two minutes. And it takes a problem and presents a solution with like, you know, your toddler's doing this, try this script next time. And it's in one or two minutes and I can absorb it. Do I remember it?
Not necessarily, but Instagram has this great like, it's not a like feature. It's something else where I can file it away. And that's kind of what I do to try to take notes so to speak, if I could, and come back to that as a oh, well, it was really good. I want to refer back to that.
Yeah, that's the I think they call it the save feature with all the sideways flag or upside down flag that's on the right there. And I do the same thing. Like I'll save it because it's something that I'm interested in. Like, for example, I love, you know, one of the things that I follow is a lot of cottagers who have really beautiful cottage photos and I save them all going.
I'd love to be able to patio like that, save the photo and that type of thing. And I used to use Pinterest for that. Pinterest was great for that where you just it's kind of like an online bulletin board, but I feel like Pinterest has fallen, you know, to the spammers and I don't use it as much anymore. And yeah, like you said, there's so many different mediums out there to try to consume this information.
I'm a reader too. So I like to sit back and try to decompress when I can and pick up a good book. And I'm really struggling to find a rational preparedness book, like a short read. If somebody was to write something like that, what do you what would you look for in a book?
Like are you thinking about really in-depth analysis on something superficial accommodation on both? Yeah, you know, this is actually a really good question and I thought a lot about it and I thought it was an easy answer at the beginning, but then I thought more about how I consume and it's actually it's really hard for you as the producer of something like this of what you're facing. So to me, I think the first question is answering the why, like what is the purpose? Am I reading this book because I'm trying to take all these amazing things that you've done in a podcast or, you know, maybe YouTube and those are visual or audio formats and I'm just trying to take all those wonderful things and cram them into a book.
And then now it's like a reference. That's one thing or is the why action oriented where I take the basis like I maybe already have the one-on-one that you kind of the principles that you teach and now I'm trying to take action. So maybe I need a workbook and that's another format. For me, I feel like, you know, passive reader, inform and learn versus an active reader, I meant to maybe reflect and I feel like that's kind of, it depends on the why and when I consume.
I think I want both books to be to be candid because I feel I'm not a good audio learner. And so for me, well, I love podcasts and I love YouTube. I like written words as a reference and so I feel like I need that part of a book but I also feel like I need, I'm very good at consuming a lot of different information and I really suck it through and so I need the the action oriented book to get me in gear and workbook format. But when then I was reflecting it back on the ebooks that I've read or other books that I've consumed, I find, especially in the last year, two years, my how of how I consume this has changed.
So I'm in a couple book clubs and I used to be the hard and fast. I will always get the book and hard copy. I will always get it. I like hard copy.
I like the tactile sensation of a book. I don't, I don't own an e-reader. I didn't want an e-reader. And now I'm finding as a really busy life, I find that I recently read my last book club book, 600 plus pages, electronic pages.
I don't know how many physical pages they were but there was 600 plus electronic pages and I read it all from my phone and I read it and I snuck in five, ten minutes of reading here and there as I could in my life, waiting for groceries or daycare pickups. But what I also like in a book is a lot of visuals. I like bullets. I like charts.
I like call it boxes. I like summaries and that's really hard to do in a mobile format, in like an e format. So I don't have an answer for you above of what is the best format because I think it depends on the why and then if it's the why, it's also the how, how I'm consuming it. Yeah, and I think a lot of thoughts and a lot of the books that I've read, it's are they telling me something interesting, something engaging, a topic that I think is important, it's engaging, but I think the how to do it as well.
A lot of, you know, it's like the old saying, the world's full of great advice. Just ask anybody. Right? Everybody will give you advice on something but when you want to commit them to an executable, very few people will offer anything with their name on it saying, you know, it's it's all my experience in government work is that way.
Whenever I wanted advice on something, the cubicle farm was full of it. I could get advice anywhere. When I wanted somebody to tie their name to an executable strategy, it was like crickets because it's very difficult to say, okay, this is what you should do. This is what I would recommend.
These are the steps. I think for me, what helps with me is when when an author puts forward, here are three options to solve the problem you're facing. Here are the pros and cons for the options. They may or may not work for you depending on your situation instead of a binary choice, right?
Because I find it difficult when you present people or anybody's present with a problem to characterize it as a binary choice because your life, my life, everybody listening to this podcast, their lives are also completely different that it is very, very difficult to say, this is the magical solution. Do the following, which is why I tend to rail a lot against YouTubers who say, here are the 10 things you should stock right now. Here are the five things you should buy this week at Costco to improve your preps. I'm like, does that fit the plan you wrote?
Like, is this your plan or is this some random people? Because I try to tell people that stockpiling the 10 top things into your basement does not make you a prepared individual, it makes you a person with a whole bunch of stuff in your basement. That's what you've successfully achieved. Now, if you have a plan that says, hey, listen, I need these things, then obviously logically go out and get them.
But I try to think about a book as a source to get people to think, to cue that wonderful synapse in your brain back and forth to work. Anyhow, that's what I'm trying to idea about a book is that it gets people to think about possible solutions. Yeah, no, I think to me that sounds more like that workbook, which I find the last kind of workbook exercise I did was Mel Robbins' Spring Reset. And it was, I don't know, 16 pages.
And it was three parts. And I think you did them over three days. And it was more reflective that you thought about it throughout the day. And then you might have written down a few scribbles.
And that would kind of get to the customization. I feel like it's, you see the YouTubers or you see the more prominent quote, quote, preppers out there where they'll tell you, yeah, those are the things that you should get at Costco. But sometimes I find it helpful to get the heads up of maybe shortages that are coming. So, for example, we can look at 2020 as the year of the toilet paper shortages.
But really, I feel like that was really symbolic of the fact that that was a universal item that everyone needs. And some people had enough of it in their house, and then some people didn't. And I feel like I kind of took that as something where, and I'll be honest, I actually was one of the people that was looking for toilet paper because I didn't, not that I was running at the end, but I was feeling like, okay, well, I usually just buy it when it's on sale. And I wasn't being mindful of my stock of the core things I need.
And so since then, I've just had my second child. And I've experienced diaper shortages and formula shortages. And these things are things that have very few substitutes if you have to be using a particular brand. And that can give a lot of anxiety.
I see posts daily on parenting groups looking for infant Tylenol is now the current shortage. And so on one hand, I do like the YouTubers or podcasters who feel like I guess they have an ear to the ground of shortages that are maybe coming down the pike that me is a busy mom. Like I don't have time to pay attention and be plugged into everything. So if someone has a little snippet of things like, Oh, you know what, oatmeal is going to be the next shortage that's coming or I think it was sriracha.
And I'm like, okay, well, yeah, I think we have a bottle in the fridge. But you know, if I'm at the grocery store and I see that sriracha, I'm gonna pick it up. So I feel like at the end of the day, I like having enough, yes, I have, you know, do I have a lot more toilet paper in my house than I did in 2020? Absolutely.
But I also find that I'm trying to prepare in different ways than I did before. So instead of preparing for, you know, you know, having 10 pounds of beans, you know, in my pantry, it's more of how many months of formula do I have? How many months of diapers do I have so that when and if shortages occur, and it's like, Oh, well, you know, that's on a three week back order, that's fine. I got two months worth.
And to me, it's just it's a blip, whereas other people are panicking because they can't get that formula or they're panicking because they're they don't have the infantile and all and I went when I heard about the infantile and all shortage, I went and checked my little cupboard and yeah, I've got a couple bottles and looked at the expiry coming up to expiry be nice to have some fresh stuff, but but I'm not panicking. Yeah, and that's the difference. And that's a lot. That's why I speak to what I refer to as your timeline when people are thinking about preparedness and thinking about making a plan for their family and the people, however we define that in the modern, non-nuclear age of what a family is constructed of, I ask that question, like, and because everybody has a different personality and a different risk profile that's based upon your personal self confidence, etc.
And different storage in different stores too. But I say like, it's a general question, like, how if all of your utilities shut off and the grocery store is closed, how long would you like to be prepared for? And everybody goes, well, two years, well, sure, you can drop $10,000 and put that in your basement and you'll never use it, but logically establishing a timeline that you feel comfortable with. Like I always recommend to people at most 21 days, because after 21 days, society is going to generally fix itself.
But if you have, if you're in a stage of life, like within Formula, and this is not an option, like there's, I remember those days of buying infant formula, there's no backup plan, right? Like you said, there's no place to go. So maybe you want to be a little bit more comfortable with that, come up with a timeline that fits your family's needs. You know, I have friends who love to wing it, right?
They live life by winging it, they're asking them to prepare, they might have a food for tomorrow, and they really couldn't care, they figure out they could wing it. And then I've had conversations with people who are constantly looking at their six months of food supply, and they're a little bit concerned about what they'll have for this winter. And so that's why it's very difficult to have a standardized singular message for everybody, right? You're in a stage of life, where certain things are more important that they're going to be five years from now, three years from now, right?
So thought filing makes sense for a very certain amount of goods that are very important to you at this time, right? Critical supplies that you don't want to be without, but you're not, you know, you're not going to run out and have five months of supply of toilet paper, just because somebody on YouTube told you that it's going to go. And I remember, I was interviewed for a CBC News article on the toilet paper, and I'm like, if you know, busy people don't, but if you ever study Canadian industry, we're the world's top manufacturer of paper products, right? We don't have a problem with toilet paper, they'll never ever be a problem with a production of toilet paper.
Supply chain disruptions happen when, you know, 30 days worth of supplies are purchased by the general public in three days. And then all of a sudden, there's nothing on the shelf. That's not because there's a shortage of anything. It's because the expectation that supply chain designers put into the stock levels in the store were completely blown out of the water by panic buying it in a pandemic, which, you know, everybody's looking at, yeah, no, sriracha, you're right.
When we look at, you know, when there's a frost in Florida, then we know that citrus is going to go through the route. Or if you're here to the ground and you're listening to what's going on in the droughts in California, and California is one of the major bread baskets of North America, when it comes, and good wine too. So I mean, exactly, like you're gonna have to settle for a VQA wine. That's for some people.
There's always Australia. Well, exactly. But I mean, that's part of it. But that kind of comes to the third question I wanted to post you, how, and I think you might have answered it a bit already, but how does the world environment influence your decision to prepare or consume information?
I mean, you know, the war in Ukraine, the potential famine, the potential spike in prices related to grains, fertilizers, that type of thing, like how much does it influence your preparedness thoughts? Yeah, that's a great question. So when the Ukraine war started, in fact, kind of February-ish, I started following a particular, a particular YouTuber that's very prominent in the prepping community in Canada. And I was kind of, I would say almost really not obsessed, but really consumed with each a new episode was coming out every day.
It was 20, 30 minutes. And it's like, this person has the information. And I, I'll admit, I feel like I got really sucked in to listening to that. And I felt really compelled to act.
I felt more, but I was feeling like I was making a lot more fear oriented decisions on preparedness. So I'd go instead of going to Costco and picking up whatever I was going to pick up. I'd go to the Costco business center and get a 12 pack of that. So I'd have the 12 pack instead of, you know, the three pack or something like that.
And I'll admit, it took me, I think I was consuming his content for about two months daily. And it got to the point where, you know, and I made some significant purchases as well. And it took some time before I was realizing, I think, you know, the 4560 day mark of the Ukraine where the kind of the peak interest wanes in the, in the general media. And people are realizing that this is kind of going to be, it were in for a little, little longer.
And I slowly reduced my consumption of his content. And I found myself while taking less fear based decisions and actions, I also have found, you know, now it's been, I guess, right about the six months, a month, a month back of the war, that I'm also not as action oriented. So I feel like I have to find the balance between consuming content that is, again, fear, you know, I feel like that trust factor is why are you sharing me this information with me now? Is it for clicks?
Is it for likes? Is it for algorithm? Or is this like actual information I need to know? So I feel less in touch now that I've stopped following this individual, but I also feel much less anxious.
And that's, I know exactly who you're referring to. But, and that's, that's where I've mentioned before, a lot of what people consume is about subject matter. So there's a war in Ukraine. How does that impact me?
What do I have to change here? And when you start chasing down today's news, it's very difficult to stay ahead of that. And then you get worried and anxious that I'm not staying ahead. I might have missed the latest, I might, you know, that FOMO of the real world.
But when you sit back and you have a general level of preparedness, I've used critical infrastructure as a perfect example before about, you know, you don't care that the power goes out, why the power went out, you just care that the power is out, you've thought through this and you've come up with a plan to deal with the power going out, right? And so you execute that when your power goes out, you're not running around and, and screen trying to figure out why what happened, you know that I've got a plan for when the power goes out. And I find that's it for me, you know, when there's something happening overseas, very little of the world events are really going to affect little old me running around in North America. Now I have a friend who runs a humanitarian organization out of Germany, and she periodically her and her colleagues go into Ukraine to provide some assistance.
Okay, their influence from that conflict is completely different from mine. So where I'm geo located here in the city of Ottawa, National Capital of Canada, there are so infinitesimally small number of world events that are going to have a profound effect on me. I, I generally don't, like I love news, I consume it on nonstop. I just separate news and my preparedness like, some of the videos that are YouTube's full of the videos lately that are all about, you know, get these seven things before they go away.
Before the government tells you, you can't have any more of this, you know, by it, it's like in Canada, when they, the government announced a pause in the import of handguns and a pause in the sale of handguns in the transfer of between them. It was a single greatest increase in handguns in Canadian history. So people react to government, government coming regulations, etc. But in reality, that's what happens out there in the world, doesn't influence me in my regular day.
And so I try to, for me, preparedness is all about a timeline. For me, I'm happy. Like I was at 14 days, I moved it to 21 days, I moved it to 60. And now I'm thinking about I'm in the process of moving it to 90.
And that's just me, because I look at the world, I look at the possible outcomes, I look at where the shizzi could hit the fizzy and the world could get a little bit uncomfortable. And so from that, I'm like, you know, the winter's a tough time in Canada, it's tough to get some stuff in. So for this coming winter, I think it's going to be a pretty disruptive winter for lack of a better term, right? It's going to be disruptive.
It's going to be difficult to get a few things. So there's a couple of things that come in from overseas, but how much do I use that's a product of China, or that's a product of Central America, right? My exposure to that is my own issue, right? So I try to look at, you know, there's wonderful cup of coffee I'm drinking here, they don't make coffee in Canada, they don't grow it here in this country, right?
So I, you know, if there's going to be a problem, I pay a bit of attention to that, but I have so few commodities that matter that I don't really get that much of it worried about the world, to be honest. Yeah, no, and I feel yeah, FOMO is kind of the exact thing that I felt like I was wanting to get consumed and like, I wanted to get ahead of the curve. So if the next, you know, sriracha is, I don't know, oatmeal, and then it's like, oh, man, my kid eats oatmeal every day. I can't do an oatmeal shortage.
I feel like I want I consume that content rather than more of the even keeled, neutral emergency preparedness ones that are kind of not, you know, not you don't need to worry or take it easy, but just, you know, not as urgent, you have to take action here. And so I felt like when I consumed that content previously, I felt like I was slightly ahead of everyone else because I was like, oh, I had my ear to the ground that oh, the sriracha shortage is coming. And I felt like I got that sriracha model before the shells were empty. And then all of a sudden I see around me out people are, I go to the grocery store and I happen to go down the sriracha island and take a look to see if it's back.
And it's not. And I'm like, but I've got my bottles sriracha. But, but you know, it's funny that I, you know, we get like, you know, 12 packs of canned fruit, and I don't even really eat canned fruit. But if they're shortages, either inflationary, you know, makes the costable berries or raspberries really high.
And I'm going to switch to canned food over the over or canned fruit over the winter, you know, then I feel comfortable. But at the end of the day, I felt like for the period of time, my emergency preparedness was more on the events that were less likely to happen, but seemed more urgent. But really what I should have been doing is doing more preparations of the things that are closer to home. So I'll give you an example.
So I, on last Friday, my husband got stuck at work and he's the one that does daycare pickup because he's the one that has the car with a car seat in it. And we're about a five-minute drive from where daycare pickup is. So, you know, if in the event of emergency, the plan always was that I would take the stroller and I would walk and I would go pick up my son and I would come home. Well, it turns out that the stroller was also in the trunk of the car.
And I thought, okay, no problem redundancy. Next redundancy plan is I've got an Ergo carrier. I'll carry him home. Like on my back and then I'll carry the new born on my front.
I'm going to get my kids home. No problem. And the Ergo carrier also happened to be in that car. So it was like a failure to fail here.
And so I reached out to my village and I asked a mom about a car seat in my car if I could borrow a car seat to pick up my son. Of course, it was a tick-tock clock. You know, if I did get a daycare, you got to pick them up by a certain time. And that was my emergency, my quote-unquote emergency last last Friday.
And I felt silly afterwards that you know, I wasn't more mindful of, God, sharing you know better. Like, that these things were in place. But really, it did feel like a panicked moment where I had to reach out rather than having a pre-established friend that said, hey, you and I were each other's buddies. And if for some reason, we can't do pick up, we'll pick up each other's kids.
And I didn't have that in place. I now have that in place. And that's the wonderful power of social capital, which is one of my main research fields that I delve into is the power of community. And I tell people that all the time, like, listen, the first thing you should ever do in emergency preparedness is go meet your neighbor.
Like, know the people that are around you. Know the people that do so the other parents from the daycare should be part of your social group. The other parents, part of your kid's soccer team, should be part of your social group. Because in the end, when significant disruption occurs, these are the people who are going to be most available to you.
And you have, by building these social networks, you normally have access to the human. You have access to those human resources. They have access to your resources. Because if somebody came to use it, hey, but I borrow your car seat, you're like, yeah, I understand the situation you're in right now.
And I know what it matters to step up and solve and help somebody solve that problem. And that's a huge part of social capital. Even when I talk to municipalities, I tell them, listen, build a community center, like fun community programs, get people together, socializing, meeting each other, understanding each other's needs and wants. I mean, that's when I grew up, we knew everybody on the street.
Now, days, you don't know your neighbor. You don't know the house three, four days. You may wave at them once or twice a week when you see them on the road, but you don't know anything about them. And when significant disruptions happen, like, I don't think we're up five, six years now from the tornadoes that went through Dunrobin and through Central Ottawa there, you know, we were power out for a couple of days.
And people, you know, you're not going, emergency services aren't going around door to door in a city of a million people saying, Hi, are you okay? That's your social capital. That's your network of informed people that you get access to. And I mean, I think that's so important for people to understand that.
I mean, I get slagged every once in a while, my moniker that preparedness is free, because I understand that stuff is, does cost money. But the most important things you can do is building that network. Like you said, that established friend group. Now you have somebody you know you can count on for this particular problem, and they can count on you.
And you know, book clubs, book clubs are fantastic. I mean, if you ever want to know how to power social capital, just look at the gardening clubs, holy smokes, they the gardening and most importantly, most recent decade is the environmentalist. So those who have a green climate change warriors and climate change activists, they have really strong social capital, and they have tight bonds and they're very well connected. And preparedness is no different, right?
It's just another way of saying, Hey, when life disruptions happens, I really like to not be part of that disruption. Like you said, like if you have three weeks of all your required supplies in your house and the power goes out for three or four days, then you can't pick something up at the store, you're going to be okay, right? Your anxiety level is far lower than somebody who is in a European tradition of buying supper on the way home from work, right? And because that's a cultural thing in Europe is they don't stock five months worth of food in their house.
They're getting supper on the way home because they have a fridge that's, you know, a tiny mini fridge is standard because they just don't store that stuff. So I find that finding the balance between the social capital but also being responsible for my own outcomes. So I feel like my motivation is that I do want to be self-reliant. I don't want to be, you know, in a lineup for water if for some reason we had some kind of oil, water advisory in the community.
I want to have the water in my home because I've thought ahead that if the water goes out, how much water does my family consume? Okay, do the math for that and it's easy to do. It was the other day, I was just driving around and running some errands and I drove by or urgent care, kind of like an urgent care center here in Eastern Ottawa and you know, line up outside the door and then I drove past that and then I went around the street and I went past the drivers and licensing euro and that also had lineups at the door and I'm like, we're not in an emergency right now. This is normal times.
Yeah, I know you're absolutely like the lineups are everywhere and the services are, they are what they are. I mean, make this like government only want but the services are what they are and you're like, if you need to renew your driver's license, why are you doing it the week it expires? You know, if you need to do that, why are you doing it at a moment's notice and, you know, healthcare skills, you know, emergency rooms are for life, layman eyesight. I understand why people go there because three quarters of my family don't have a family, I have a family doctor but my wife and kids don't and they my doctor won't take them on.
He's actually trying to reduce the number of people on his role. Can't find it anywhere, can't find a doctor and so you, you know, remember the old days when our grandmothers used to take care of ailments at home and you went to the emergency room when you needed medical intervention, right? But now in today's paranoia and fear-based world that we unfortunately exist in every cough and every tummy rumble other than young infants is an emergency. Oh, trust me, I remember when you're when you're young infant is not doing what they're supposed to be doing and they're burning up a fever.
That is a reason to go into an emergency room. But yeah, so that's just an element of scarcity. I mean, it's the study of economics, right? Scarset.
If you love your sriracha sauce and it's an important part of your life, like you need sriracha sauce supplies, right? Like you need coffee. I need coffee. I write in my long-term food storage is a couple of bottles and no name, instant coffee.
It's actually the best instant coffee, but instant coffee is horrible. But it is the best instant coffee. But I keep it in there because I know me. Like I know I'm a grouchy, ugly individual if I go day two or three without coffee.
So because that's me, which may differ from everybody else, I put that in my emergency supplies because for me, that needs to be in there. Other people, water's fine. My wife's a tea drinker. I need to have tea, like that's not questioned.
Like I need to be able to even the kid I have in my car has the ability to make a cup of tea for my wife on the side of the road if we're stranded on a highway because there was a major accident and we're in between off ramps and we're sitting there for like hour four, I need to have the ability to make her a cup of tea or I just need to start running away, right? So I mean, I got to be able to do that. But I mean, that's the personalized area of preparedness. So to wrap up, I wanted to pose you this one last question about preparedness information, timelings.
And it's an interesting one you spoke a bit about earlier. Does single issue short products work better than multiple discussions over one longer file? What do you think? Yeah, I think the things that I so for me, my target date is 30 days right now.
It's just kind of to me having 30 days, but to me, that is more of the critical, critical things things that I there are no substitutions for. And I would say even, I'm up to probably 60 days for diapers at this point because I've just been buying ahead because I don't want to get caught without diapers. That's just one of those things. With Formula, my son, Prior, had to be on a specific brand.
We tried other brands and his tummy just didn't like them. And so we used to have, I think about we were two months ahead on brands for that. And so that to me is just longer. But I think that is more for my anxiety level than it is for an actual need.
Do I feel like I'm going to need, you know, the lights are going to go out for 60 days of no, but it's more of just the supply change disruptions than it is for any kind of emergency that I'm preparing for. So yeah, I think general, I think the 72 hours, you know, is as you've discussed before, is kind of a moot point. But could I make dinner for my family for a week on my own if the power went out? Yeah, you know, a week or two, sure.
And to me, that timeline. So I feel like, yeah, I think I have a number of different timelines in my head. I'm not targeting one particular one. But for the critical products, those I'm having that alert, the longest timeline for.
Perfect. I agree with you. Like it's, no, that's why I'm a big proponent of individuals making their own plan, because it the plan that fits you is the one that makes sense to you. And it's the one that you are likely more than likely to execute, manage, maintain, and keep going.
So thank you very much for joining us on this podcast episode. And we'll look forward to chat again sometime soon. Sounds great. Thanks for having me.
So hopefully you enjoyed that little discussion about preparedness, information where we get the information and all of your options that are out there. So drop by our website at www.insidemycanoohead.ca. All of our social media links are there, the link to buy me a coffee to show your support for this podcast. And upcoming future episodes, we're going to have more guests talking about what does the world of preparedness look like for you?
You are your own individual, wonderful, incredible human being. You don't look like any others. You don't act like any others and you have your own hopes and dreams. So you need to be able to mold a preparedness plan that fits you and your lifestyle.
So thank you very much for joining us again this week. Take care of yourselves and stay safe.