A simple kit helps us focus on the most basic elements of preparation for an emergency or disaster, but there is a big gap between a kit and skills to survive whatever difficulties we face.

I’ve been watching and listening to coverage of the Superstorm of 2006, including days of power outages in sub-freezing temperatures. Power outages create a double emergency of several days or more. A flare in your car kit, a couple of candles and a can of beans won’t get you through a storm like this.

I am concerned that my own perparations don’t become just a compulsion to buy kits and make lists. The important point is to learn to do for myself and my family what a wildly misspent period of industrialization has tended to do for us. Feed us, keep us warm, supply our water. After the kit is used, we still need to cross that gap to reach genuine preparedness.

What would you do during a week with temperatures in the teens? What else might you need to get or do or learn? Walk yourself and your family through your typical week to find the gaps. Add the fact of extreme weather and walk through again. Add power failure and walk through again.

Make sure that your preparations don’t stop with the gathering of a kit. We need to know how to provide for ourselves whenever possible.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Lao Tzu