Perimeter security is a very tough nut to crack where I live and I have yet to think of any solution that is doable.

I will have cameras around my home giving me the ability to see out of all sides of my home. And I have pretty significant outdoor lighting (via LED floodlights) providing usable light to all of my yard with the exception of one back corner that is about 70 yards away from my home.

Darkman,

Thank you for the suggestions. I will check them out.

Don’t forget perimeter security for when you can’t be everywhere at once.

I put together my 2 trauma kits for about $300 each. My Medic is a good source. Also take advantage of the interweb to get training. Prep Medic, Dark Angel Medical, and Skinny Medic are some good sites

Darkman,

I also have solar panels. I have three panels rated at 440 Watts each (1360 Watts total) already operating on mounts facing south. I have five more of those panels “in reserve”–not yet mounted/operational although ready to produce electricity within hours if I really need them. While the power production numbers sound quite high, those numbers refer to perfect conditions:
brand new panels at the equator in unrealistically cool temperatures and with the sun directly overhead. I figure that each of my three panels can produce (on bright sunny days) about 350 Watts peak from early April to early September and about 250 Watts peak late October through through February. Of course they produce a LOT less on cloudy days. I figure that each of those panels can produce about 50 Watts during typical winter cloudy days and about 60 Watts on typical summer cloudy days. I scaled my current three-panel system so that they can operate my medium size deep-freezer indefinitely if the electric grid is unavailable longer than I can run on gasoline generator.

Water is fairly easy for me: I have a well which I can operate with my gasoline generator. If something happens where I anticipate that the electric grid will be down for several months, I will stop running my gasoline generator when I am down to four gallons of gasoline and then only start the generator for run times of about 15 minutes as needed to pump water out of my well into storage containers (such as several 5-gallon buckets and never-used 20-gallon horse manure “muck buckets”.) In that scenario, I will have clean water for many months. And if that fails, we have a neighborhood park with a pond that is spring-fed about 330 yards away. (I have ways to purify that water for drinking of course.)

I have additional resources at the ready which I will not disclose on an open forum such as this website. Where things get really difficult is if a tornado severely damages my home. At that point I leave the area and connect with family/friends in other locations. Fortunately where I live, floods, hurricanes, forest fires, and severe earthquakes are an impossibility so I don’t have to worry about complete widespread devastation due to natural disasters. The only complete widespread disasters that I have to consider are man-made infrastructure catastrophes at the hands of terrorists or foreign military forces.

If you are only concerned (for all intents and purposes) about having a handgun for self-defense in the aftermath of a disaster–meaning that it will sit in storage until the disaster and you will not shoot it until the disaster strikes–I highly recommend that you acquire a revolver rather than a semi-automatic pistol. The truth of the matter is that semi-automatic pistols can be finicky: some need 200 shots to break-in before they are reliable, some are reliable from the get-go although only with certain types of ammunition, and still others are reliable from the get-go with some magazines and not reliable with other magazines. Of course some semi-auto pistols are 100% reliable from the get-go with all magazines and all types of ammunition. The problem: you have no way of knowing how the semi-auto pistol that you plan to acquire will function.

Don’t get me wrong: I like semi-auto pistols, I own a few, I carry one every day, and I like shooting them. I have also seen a significant percentage of them be unreliable until I invested a non-trivial amount of time and effort to get to the point that they are reliable. That being the case, if your plan (realistically–be honest with yourself) is to buy one handgun and store it until a disaster, a revolver is the most reliable option for that use case.

I like to think that I am extremely well informed on a lot of topics–especially gasoline and generators. I also have a ton of experience operating my home on generator (likely in excess of 800 hours thanks to our horribly unreliable electric utility) spanning very cold to very hot temperatures. While I have heard of “winter-blend gasoline” many times, I had never heard that winter-blend gasoline is easier to start in small engines in cold temperatures.

I will try very hard in the next week to drain the summer-blend gasoline still in my generator and replace it with winter-blend gasoline. Thanks for the tip Mr. Boch.

Slow down? I’m posting too quickly? It’s my second comment. What kind of bs is this?