Preparedness - Pre-Winter Logistics Assessment

All right, welcome to Season 5 of Inside My Canoe Head. 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 us. Sit back, grab a beverage, and enjoy the episodes. All right, everyone, welcome back to the Ottawa Studios of Inside My Canoe Head.

Listen, I just got back from an incredible little vacation up in the Tamagami area of northern or northeastern Ontario. A little moose hunting trip. Nope, no moose were harmed in the 10-person expedition for a week in the woods. They were clearly safe from us, hiding somewhere deep within the bush that we could not find.

But we're going to do an episode in the future coming up in a couple of weeks about mental health, and I really want to talk in some depth about the real, true benefit of a traditional, honest-to-goodness forest path. But there you go. That's why we've been absent. Thanks again for all of the suggestions everything has coming in.

I appreciate everybody's input on what you would like to hear in this podcast, what you wouldn't like to hear, what you've heard enough of. And again, I'm brutally honest. If you don't like what you're hearing, I'd much prefer you, before you turn it off, that you send me a quick email at jeffatpreparedness.ca. I mean, we live in a crazy world, right?

And we're not going to always be talking about nuclear detonation. That episode did reasonably well. Not as well as I thought it would, but it was some important information that I think needed to be shared from a preparedness point of view, whether the likelihood of a nuclear detonation in the near term, how would that affect you, largely depends on where you live in this world, and where does that go once we cross that horrible imaginary line. And again, just a reminder, if you really like what you hear at Inside My Canoe Head, drop over to buymeacoffee.com and drop three bucks and buy me a coffee.

So sit back for yourself a coffee today. We're talking logistics. So before we enter a significantly difficult time like winter, shall we say, especially with the winter 2023 predictions I did two episodes ago, I think it's important to sit back and do a little bit of a self-assessment. This is always really important in preparedness.

We all have different stages of preparedness in our life. We're all at different portions of this journey. But every once in a while, it's good to just sit back and take a no-poop assessment of exactly where you are, exactly what you're capable of doing, and then compare that to where you want to be. And it may very well be that you're high-fiving that incredible person in the mirror saying, we're ready to go.

We are good to go. Or it could be, hey, listen, there's a couple areas here that I think we should address. So today we're going to talk about logistics. Today we're going to talk about doing a pre-winter logistics assessment on your family emergency preparedness.

The first part about anything is, my old boss used to say, Colonel, or actually now a General O, open your kimono. You've got to be brutally honest with yourself. If you hold anything back, you're only causing yourself issues. So your predicament you're in right now, let's be brutally honest.

Who's your family? Who are you currently responsible for? And we all have those situations where people drop in unannounced. Who are your friends you can count on, that extended community of yours?

What's your money situation look like? How secure is your job? What current commitments have you tied yourself to that are going to carry on through the winter? And what holiday plans do you have?

Because holiday plans may involve travel and travel involves logistics. And logistics and travel involve a preparedness assessment. So really take the time to sit down and truly frame. It's like you're building a picture window through which you're looking at your preparedness equipment, plans, and processes.

And that window is made up of all of your friends and family commitments. Everything that you are responsible for or responsible to do will impact your ability to become prepared, either positively or negatively. The next thing you need to do is go back and review that timeline. I mean, every preparedness plan has a specific timeline that you have agreed with yourself on that you wish to be prepared for.

It's based upon a simple question. If I turn off all of your utilities in your house this moment, how long would you like to be completely self-sufficient for until you have to ask for external help? And the reason that does is that puts that additional frame around that window picture and basically says, hey, listen, based upon my circumstances, my personal risk profile, my own risk tolerance, and my ability to manage stress, et cetera, I've picked the following timeline. Now, I always tell people starting off with to ignore the 72-hour rule because we did a show on where that comes from and why that's generally about getting your mind into the preparedness, adopting behavior mindset.

We look at 14 days. And I always recommend people start at 14 days. So that means you have 14 days of everything that you would need, et cetera. So whatever that timeline is, like I'm publicly aware on this.

I'm just about there, but I'm in the process of switching mine from 60 to 90 days because of concerns around situations in the world, situations in inflation, et cetera, I've decided to hedge my bets and move that timeline on. It's not overnight. It doesn't happen overnight unless you're really, really rich and you've got a crap load of money sitting around with nothing to do. And even if you do that, you can't gain the skills necessary to go from 60 to 90 days because there's a set of skills in there that are not necessarily immediately learned that they take practice.

And therefore, you don't overnight go to Costco and change your supplies from 60 to 90 days and drop your timeline like that. So I'm just about 90 days, but I'm also about 11 years into this preparedness journey. And a lot of people listening to this podcast are a lot less invested in the time sense. So understanding what's your timeline, there's no wrong answer.

The reason we say that is it's very, very clear that preparedness is an individual plan to you and your family based upon your current situation. For somebody to tell you you're not prepared enough, that's just ignorance. If you've got a charlatan on YouTube telling you you need to be ready for two years or you need to have 120 days worth of food in your house, listen, understand they have an invested interest in that some way or somehow there is an affiliate link or a downloadable book that you can buy or something tied to their advice, right? So build that plan.

We've got an episode on it, how to do it earlier in this season five. Take the time to look at that if you haven't done it already, but you have your timeline. So you understand. So let's go with the individual that is sitting on the fence, a new preparedness individual who's sitting on a 14 day timeline.

And it's time to do a proper pre-winter logistics assessment. So today we're going to go through a bit of definition of logistics, some elements of logistics and what they mean. And then we're going to go through some animalistic requirements to just do an honest, no poop assessment as to where you are. Should the shizzy hit the fizzy, are you ready to go?

So first of all, what is logistics? Well, a bit of background on me. I spent 25 years in Her Majesty's service as a supply chain manager. So this is what I did to support the Canadian army.

Simply put, it was beans, bullets, and gas. It was my responsibility to make sure that the army had everything it needed to go whack bad guys. You know, they get a little grumpy when they crest the hill and there's no ammunition in the tank. Or they crest the hill and the tank runs out of gas.

From the simplest terms, logistics is the art of full life cycle management of something. So it's basically everything from finding out what you need, to acquiring it, to maintaining it, to keeping it, and to having it, to using it, and then disposing of it at the end of its life cycle. Essentially put, it's the right kit at the right place at the right time. So when we look at it in a general sense, logistics has three principal areas.

Supply, transport, and administration. There are a whole bunch of other little minor ones, fair enough. But let's just talk about the big ones today. So for supply, let's look at your animalistic requirements, right?

Let's look at the six animalistic requirements that inside My Canoe Head we talk about all the time. Number one being shelter. Remember, this is the frame for your 14 days. Do you have shelter for 14 days?

Well, hopefully you're not about to be evicted, and you're not about to miss your mortgage payment. So you probably have the physical shelter down. But remember, shelter also includes your ability to stay warm, right? So if the power goes out in the dead of winter in your house for 14 days where you are now, how do you intend to stay warm?

Now, most of us in northern Canada, or up in Canada, it gets cold here, right? It's going to get really, really cold. Right now, it's almost November, and it's 20 degrees Celsius. That's going to go away pretty quickly, and we're going to get cold.

By January, February, we're going to be in minus disgusting weather. Let's just put it that way. So how do you intend to stay warm in your house for 14 days with the heat off, right? Because we don't know why the utilities have been shut down.

You can wear your snowsuit inside. You can wrap blankets around yourself. We all have blankets on our beds. Some of us may even have sleeping bags to throw down.

We all have extra throws around. Generally, you will not freeze to death in your house because the house itself, apartment, whatever it is, will block the wind, and there is insulating factor in the walls. There is insulation in the walls. So basically, you'll learn to keep your windows closed.

Now, there's an old theory that used to happen in the British settling of eastern North America. There's something called the keeping room that a lot of people would have in the old farmhouses, and the keeping room meant keeping warm. It was one small room where everybody went to sleep so that their body heat, with the insulation, whatever they did have, would help keep each other warm. So just remember, one of the keys to staying warm in an environment where you're in your house and everything's freezing cold, there's no heat, is to reserve your movement to one small, tiny area of the house.

So pick a smallest bedroom, and you're basically all going to sleep in there. You're basically all going to hang out in there. And with your body heat, you're actually going to do a very, very good job of raising the temperature to reasonable comfortableness. Let's put it that way.

So shelter is really not that challenging of a thing, but it's just to sit back and make sure that you've got this squared away and that you've got enough shelter room for everybody else. And the next thing that I want to talk about is food. Now, people have food. And listen, you normally have well more than 14 days of food in your house anyhow.

If you were to go around and do an exercise and count out the gross calories in your kitchen, and I know nobody wants to do this, but if you would actually do that and then divide by 2,000 calories per human you're responsible for, you're probably well over 14 days of food anyhow. You have food. The question that always comes up preparing for your winter logistics is, if the power goes out, how do you intend to cook the food? What is your alternate cooking mechanism for food?

Because it's going to get pretty old eating granola bars in minus 10 weather in your living room when the heat's been off for four days. So how do you intend to heat that food? How do you intend to make a hot cup of coffee, a hot cup of chocolate, a hot cup of tea, whatever it may be? What is your secondary cooking methodology?

Now it could be a stick stove like a solo stove where fuel is just, I mean we live near the boreal forest, there is wood everywhere, right? You have a forever quantity, that's not really good inside the house. Cooking with some type of camping stove is always the best that I recommend, but you have to make sure you have a safe place to cook that food. But whatever your methodology is, have a quick review to make sure that you have the ability not only to have two weeks of food sitting in your house, but that you have the ability to heat it, and by the way, dispose of it.

Because if it's not all eaten, where are you going to put your compost in your garbage for 14 days? Because the garbage collection probably isn't coming anyhow, so as that builds up, where does that go in your house? Think full life cycle when you think logistics. Think, I have to acquire it, I have to store it, I have to cook it, I have to consume it, and then I have to dispose of it, right?

Remember, this is life cycle management for everything that we're talking about. So again, food's really not that big of an issue, because you probably have it anyhow. But ask yourself, when you look at your kitchen right now, when you look at what's in your cupboards, is that what you freaking want to eat when the power's out? Ask yourself that question.

There's nothing worse than pulling out beans and rice for everybody, saying, yay, we're doing a survival exercise, and have yourself kicked out the front door of your own house in about 30 seconds, right? So you might as well have the food that you and your family want to enjoy. Now water, not that difficult either. Two liters per person per day, a pot of water.

Make sure it doesn't freeze on you. The basement of houses are stable temperature places. That's where I keep all of my food stuff and all of my water stores, because even if the power is out of my house for 30 days, the basement, because it's below grade and below zero, is never going to fall much. Things in the basement are not going to freeze, right?

Which is probably the best place to stay anyhow. It's not going to freeze down there. But two liters to drink. But then you need to cook food.

You'd certainly like to wash, because I know the people around you would be pretty cheesed off if you didn't. So the planning figure for full cycle logistics, so everything that you need to do is four liters per person per day. If you're going to wash and you're going to cook, right? So just do that math.

14 days times four, so you're going to need 64, oh my god, bad math, 56 liters per person in your house. So if you have a family of four, you're going to need over 200 liters of water storage, right? So that's a 14 days. What does that look like?

And some of those drinks, it doesn't have to be straight water. It's liquid, right? Some of it could be pop, and some of it could be juice. I mean, it doesn't have to be straight water.

But, you know, if you're a family of four, you're looking at needing to have 200 liters in there. And just make sure it's someplace where it's not going to freeze. It's not hard to do. Health.

Randomistic requirement for health. Make sure your first aid kit is good to go, that you're going to be able to handle booboo scrapes, et cetera. And the big thing with this, when you're thinking about longer-term logistics, when you're thinking about first aid, not in the sense of, I've got to put a Band-Aid on it to go to the doctor. Remember, in preparedness planning, we're looking at breaks from critical infrastructure, which means your first aid is wrapped in an idea that you're not going to have immediate access to medical aid.

So when you intervene in an injury and you provide first aid, you're also going to have to provide longer-term care. And so I keep reminding people the importance to have antiseptics, the importance to be able to clean a wound properly so that it doesn't have infection. Because if you get a significant cut, and you get it cleaned up, and you get it bandaged, you may and post-stopping bleeding for a significant period of time, it's really, really important to make sure that you've thought of that. So it's not just the original bandage on the wound, it's the several changes of the bandages you may have to do, and the continued antiseptic, understand the signs of infection around a wound that may cause different types of intervention.

If you're interested in having antibiotics at home, which I always recommend is a great idea, either talk to your physician about getting a generic set of suite of antibiotics for your preparedness plan, case with a K, pharmaceuticals, look them online, they provide a plan where you can talk to a doctor, spend like a couple hundred bucks, and they send you a pre-prescription suite of antibiotics for your home for preparedness and disasters. That service is available in Canada. But make sure that your first aid kit does not have to be a total trauma care kit, but you have to think of it in timelines of, I'm doing first aid in the absence of immediate access to medical aid, and then make sure your skills are up to date. And you could buy a first aid book, that's fine, but I would rather download videos from YouTube, right?

Because they're free, and they're easily accessible, and when the power goes out and the internet's not available, this stuff is downloaded on your phone, and you're going to have a power bank for your phone anyhow. So just as an idea, or get a good first aid book, there's a lot of them out there, there's a big disaster medicine book, but that's it more into trauma care. And I don't know about you, I don't tend to do internal surgery, even in the times of shizzy hits the fizzy. For your fifth animalistic requirement of safety, this is all about being informed, right?

So this is making sure that whatever your source of information, so your cell phone has a power bank, your radio has a power bank, you have the ability to continue monitoring free airwaves that are out there to bring in sources of information, but more importantly than that, you've built a really strong community around you in the immediate vicinity. Because if you're not driving all around town, if the town is shut down for whatever reason, right? So what you're doing is you're looking at your immediate community, the houses that surround you, you've built these relationships already, and if you haven't, you need to get out there and do them. You're standing around talking to people, what have you heard, what do you know, how's everybody in your household doing, and you start these general conversations to build community.

Because all through humanity, the number one reliance, the number one. one preparedness and safety thing in your world is the sense of community and the people around you. It's far more valuable than any piece of crap equipment you can buy or any stockpile of food or water. It is the people around you that will make the difference when the shizzy hits the fizzy.

Make sure you have that community built and that you freely can talk to these folks and then have a review of your plans, right? You've made preparedness plans for contingencies for things that you believe could happen to you in your location. For example, I've got a bunch of listeners on the southwestern coast of BC. There are some fantastic individuals out there doing great work getting the information out for ShakeOut BC and, you know, God forbid the Cascadia earthquake pops, right?

The Cascadia subduction zone earthquake happens. If you live in southwest BC, you should have a very specific plan for what is likely to occur in your area where you currently are in the realization of that hazard and the earthquake happens. Review those plans. Have a look at them.

Do they still make sense? Is your family and the people you're responsible for the same size? Has the situation changed? Is the government planning to do something different than the last time?

Because remember, part of your information gathering and plans is that you know what your government intends to do when something happens. So I live in the city of Ottawa, right? I know what the city of Ottawa's emergency management plan is. I know what their general tendencies are.

I know what they intend to do when significant events happen in the city. So it's not that I rely on them. I don't. I don't.

I don't rely on these folks hardly at all. But what I do know is I know where they're going to be and I know what they're going to be up to and I know what they're going to be trying to achieve. So I understand that in relation to whatever plan I may have, right? I understand that 9-1-1 is a luxury and likely will not exist post event.

As we've seen in Hurricane Fiona in eastern Canada, 9-1-1 was down for like four or five days in some rural locations. Listen, it didn't matter what was happening to you. You couldn't call for help. That's the situation we're trying to address when we do our pre-winter logistics assessment.

Imagine that. The worst thing possible you could imagine. You grab your phone and 9-1-1 doesn't exist. What's your plan?

This is why we go through these plans and revise them ahead of time. What do you intend to do when a safety situation presents itself that you would normally call the police and there's nobody to call? There's a fire situation. You can't call a fire department.

There's some type of medical situation. You can't call medical, right? This is where your sense of community comes from. You build that community.

The Amish put out their fires all on their own. They don't need the fire department, right? How are you going to do this with your community? And the last one is security, right?

And the big thing about security is situational awareness, right? It's understanding the pattern of life in your neighborhood where you live. So understanding what everybody does. You're just aware of how life evolves.

And when you pay attention and you're aware of how life evolves and happens normally around you, you very quickly understand things that are outside of the normal pattern of life. You understand things that seem a little bit off, a little bit out of sorts, and you pay attention to them. Hmm. That makes you go, hmm.

You have a look and you sit down. Hmm. Maybe this is not happening normally in my neighborhood. What is this cars that keep coming up and down the road?

I don't recognize them. Who are that group of people that have not normally been walking up the street in the middle of the afternoon? I've seen a lot of them lately. I think I might be paying a little bit more attention, right?

Those of you that live in free fire zones in the America and the Second Amendment, you have a different consideration. Here in Canada, we don't worry about discharging firearms inside an urban environment. But again, security is your ability to lock the door. Can you secure your house against somebody who is interested?

I mean, get a sticker from an alarm company. Put it on your window. I shop at Costco. They sell this really neat, really bright, really simple motion detector.

Put it up one in the front, one in the back. So you're, you know, even in a power outage, because it's solar powered, you light up your backyard like a freaking Christmas tree the second somebody walks into it. That's where they're going. They're going somewhere else.

All you need to do is make your house a harder target than everybody else's. And if people in your community do this, and people are out and about, and you're out, and you're on your back deck, and you're on your front deck, and you're chatting with your neighbors, it looks like a well-occupied area. It is not a place where thieves might show up or, you know, people, uh, thefts of opportunity, that type of thing, right? And a well-lived in, well-managed, uh, well-lit area is something that people, uh, just don't come to steal from.

And it's all about deterrence, right? Security is all about deterrence. You want to make yourself by knowing situational awareness and your neighborhood by having that strong sense of community, well-lit, well, well-walked, well-patrolled. I don't like to use patrol because you don't like to use patrol.

It's deterrence, right? You want to look like a hard target. You want people who are looking for opportunities to move on to something else because you're a rock-hard target. So that's your logistics supply, your animalistic requirements.

When we think about the next logistics assessment we're going to do, let's talk transportation, right? So if you have to move, like, you gotta go to the store to get something. If you have to move, what are your modes of transportation? Okay.

You have a car. Is it in good shape? Does it need a repair? Does it have freaking winter tires in Canada?

Does it have full tank of gas? Cause you know, a line before empty does you no good when all of a sudden the gas stations are no longer available for use. The old adage is never let it fall below a half a tank. I do it all the time.

I'm not perfect at it. My wife makes fun of me because I'm the preparedness guy driving around on empty, right? Nobody's perfect, but to do your best to make sure that you keep your tank above half. Your car is in great working order.

It has winter tires. You know how to change a tire and you know how to, uh, put air in a tire. Now, one of the things I do for my vehicle is I only have run flats, right? Which means even if I poke a big hole in the tire, I can go 80 kilometers at 80 kilometers an hour before the thing goes flat on the rim, right?

Uh, I don't have a spare tire in my car. It's the type of vehicle it is. So I have run flats, which will generally allow me to get someplace safe. So then I have a patch kit for my tire.

And then I have one of those portable air compressors. They're not that expensive from Canadian tire. It has enough juice on the car motor to, uh, and it hooks through the cigarette lighter. It has enough juice to jack up the tires.

It's not the quickest thing, let's be honest, but it does the job, right? So I have the ability to patch the tire because I'm not going to be able to fix a modern car. I don't, I don't possess those skills and I have no interest in learning those skills. My best deterrence or my best preparedness for my car is to make sure that it's in great working order.

Its maintenance is up to date. The tires are in good condition and I have the ability to repair the tires. If anything more significantly goes wrong, then I have my car kit, which we've talked about at a different time. Uh, and I'm going to do another winter, uh, car kit episode coming up soon as well.

Uh, but for your modes of transportation, if it's your bicycles, the same thing. If you plan on biking around wherever you live, are your bicycles in good working order? Do you know how to replace a chain? What if the derailleur breaks?

How do you change a brake pad on a bike? Do you have those sets of skills to be able to conduct minor rebuilds and repairs on your bicycle? When it's, if something happens, do you have a spare inner tube? Do you know how to take the inner tube off, repair the inner tube, put it back on?

And do you have a non-motorized pump that allows you to pump up the tire if you don't have access to electricity? It's basically making sure that you've done everything reasonable within your power ahead of winter to ensure your chosen transportation method is ready to go. It's as best you can. You can't, I mean, that fricking check engine light could come on the day after you've certified it as beautiful and wondering to go.

But the other part of transportation is where's your destination? Everybody has to have an evacuation destination. I've done a couple episodes on evacuations. The key to that is you need to know where you're going before the government tells you to evacuate, right?

Don't wait for an evacuation to try to race and beat everybody to Expedia.ca to find a hotel within a hundred kilometers to rent. You've lost, right? That is a successful plan for failure. You will fail.

So your plan should be, and I would highly recommend to have a destination that's a couple hundred miles or a couple hundred kilometers away. So you get far enough away from the disruption. You get to a place that still has power, et cetera. You've prearranged that destination.

You've made an agreement with the people that own that destination that you're coming and you have the ability to stay at that destination for longer than a weekend. Because remember, if you have a hurricane that goes through, and if you look at the destruction of hurricane Ian, when you evacuate, what do you, you're coming back to a shell. And if you look at the time it takes insurance to rebuild housing, right? That, that rebuild to that housing is going to be a year.

And oh, by the way, you're not renting an apartment in the local area because they've already, already been rented, especially with today's vacancy rate, or they're gone too. So this alternate destination that you're going to have prearranged to evacuate to needs to be a place where you can reasonably set up longer term accommodations, friends, family, uncle, Bob's farm, aunt, Lizzie's house, whatever it may be, have it figured out, right? I've always said on this podcast that I have arranged it with a friend of mine who lives about 200 kilometers away from here. Uh, him and I have reciprocal agreements.

He can come here. I can go there. Uh, and you know, as much as disruption as it will cause, we're okay with living in each other's houses for a couple of months on end until just figure it out. So when I need to alternate road routes to get there, I'm not walking 200 kilometers, but if I had to, I know exactly what trails and what roads I would take.

But the process is, is that when I have to evacuate, I know how to go. I know not to take the main highways because if you've seen that picture, that's ridiculous. I know the alternate routes and the things with evacuation always are when somebody puts in a voluntary evacuation order, that's the time to go. If you wait for the mandatory evacuation, you might as well just stay where you are because you'll experience the event in the middle of a traffic jam.

It's never smart to do so. Transportation is not only a mode to transport, it's your destination and the routes along the way. So I've been that squared away. The last one is administration.

The boring part of preparedness that nobody really spends much time doing. This is your documents. This is your access to the information you will need should you have to and not come back in a very quick period of time. Now, you know, FEMA, Public Safety Canada, a lot of other organizations talk at length about having copies of your documents and everything.

That's great. I use a cell phone. I have an app and on my app is my insurance app, right? And on that app is my policy and all of my policy numbers and all the contact numbers, right?

I have my insurance agent on speed dial as a contact in my phone so I don't have to remember any phone numbers. And I have a little notes app, which I've shown before on Instagram. You know, I have one like, you know, you're in a car accident. What do you do?

Well done, dummy. And then a list of things that I'm required to do in a car accident. So I saw through this. It's all pre-done for me, so I don't have to find anything in an emergency.

But if you're a paper weenie and you like to have paper, well, organize your paper. I have a small little red filing cabinet that has everything in envelopes. I know if I have to evacuate, everything that is in an envelope comes with me. Everything that's not in an envelope doesn't.

It will take about 30 seconds for me to open the bag that's next to the filing cabinet, insert all of those envelopes and hit the road. And off we go. But the one that everybody seems to not want to talk about is your will. We're not going to do a long drawn out thing right now on wills, but if you're an adult with any responsibilities or even without responsibilities, as soon as you crack the age of 18, you should have a will.

You can do them free of charge or they like 60 bucks online. In Canada, it's about 800 bucks to get a lawyer to do your will, which is ridiculous. It's just a cash grab. But do your will.

Have it written out. Make sure you know where it is and make sure everybody else knows where your will is, right? Because if you're the only one who knows where your will is and you die, who are you going to tell to find your will, right? You're going to die in test state without a will and somewhere in the future, somebody rummaging through your stuff a year later is going to find this will that had a completely different plan than what actually executed, right?

Remember, none of us get out of this thing called life alive, so we all need a will. So just get it done. Make sure everybody knows where it is. Make sure you have the ownership for things that are physical goods that matter, like house, like car, things like that.

Like, for example, in Canada, when you buy a house, you need to go through a lawyer to close the transaction to register the deeds and do all of that work, right? So I have a big thick bundle of paperwork here. The lawyer is also required to keep it as well, right? So one of the envelopes is all that bundle of paperwork saying I own this house, but it's registered at the city deeds office that you own the house.

It's not like somebody's going to come take your home from you. Get title insurance, by the way. But the point is, is having the main pieces of paper that you need, whatever access process you need and have your administration in order to know where your things are. You don't need to prepack this stuff ready to evacuate your house because evacuations are rare.

They do occur, but they're rare. I just have a basic mountain equipment, 20-year-old satchel bag that I used to use for my undergrad university. I have it sitting on the floor next to the filing cabinet, right? It's not complicated.

So when you look at all of these logistics, your supply, your transportation, your administration, we went through your animalistic requirements for the winter. You've got an agreed upon timeline. This is just a great time to reiterate, to sit back because the shizzy might hit the fizzy and to make sure that you know exactly where you are. And if that doesn't fit your plan, if you were planning on 14 days and you fell short on something, these, what these logistics assessments allow us to do.

They allow us to honestly and no poop reflect on where we stand in our preparedness levels. Am I organized is things where they physically need to be. Some people are OCD and they have to have it all in one place. And lined up and everything.

And that's great. Some people have it in 18 different places in their house and they're perfectly happy with that. There's no one system that's correct. It's what's comfortable for you.

Do the assessment. I write everything down on a Hilroy Scribbler that I get from Walmart for 88 cents with a basic big blue pen. I'm an old school guy. I like to write things down in a physical sense.

It's all there in front of me. I go through it. I check it off. I'm happy.

Blah, blah, blah. Everything is good. So thanks for listening this week. I hope this was helpful as we look forward to what is going to be a nasty winter in a whole bunch of different contexts that you've got your plan.

You've got your timeline. You've done your assessment. You know exactly where you are and whatever actions you need to take to make this better for you and your family. You're ready to go.

So stick with us. Follow us on socials. Life is incredible. We're going to rock an incredible life wrapped in a blanket of preparedness.

Thank you very much. Drop over to InsideMyCanoeHead.ca and we'll see you next time.