Most posters are talking about what natural disasters they experience and less about preparedness, so I’m going to take the preparedness angle:
We have a go bag with medical supplies, very basic survival equipment, and non-perishable food.
We have enough non-perishable food at home for my wife and I for about 3 months
We have enough water for a week, and lifestraws to use local water supplies after that.
We have basic survival things like hand crank chargers/radios, solar batteries, thermal blankets, etc.
In the case of man made disaster (nuclear war) we have iodine pills.
My take on survival stuff is to be prepared but not be a prepper. Some folks take this way too far. I feel everyone who builds a bunker and has a years worth of food is going to have someone fall flat on their house and it won’t matter anyway. That being said, I want to have enough to comfortably survive a week-month, and then after that things would be so fucked that all bets are off anyway.
On #3 water filtration is often a very overlooked thing. I’ve got a Sawyer filter I set up inline with a hydration pack for when I go hiking. Water filters are so cheap and can have great shelf life, pretty much every one should have one.
Aside from the Big One (for which I’ve been meaning to make an emergency kit but keep putting off because reasons), we get really bad wildfires now on the west coast so before every summer I load up my inhaler and nasal spray, then I proceed to not go outside for 3 or 4 weeks because outside air bad. Thanks lungs. Thankfully I don’t live where the fires are normally happening, just in the vicinity. if I did, the above mentioned nonexistent emergency kit could be made fireproof and double up for preparedness.
Droughts and bushfires are the two biggest worries here. We get occasional floods, but those occur more often in surrounding towns where the local councils haven’t done anything in years to clear out the riverbeds.
Earthquakes are the only things I’ve ever had to worry about where I live. The preparation other than basics for any emergency is (hopefully) handled by the construction companies that built my home and the surrounding buildings, since this is California and making buildings earthquake proof is a requirement here. Unless a super quake hits or something. Then I plan to move to the Eastern coast of the state. 😎
-40 temperatures every few years. I live in an apartment so I’m not allowed to install a fireplace and can’t really make changes to the heating system. Got a heap of candles that could keep a small room above freezing for a day or two.
Excessive amounts of snow. 4WD and can work remotely.
Wildfires and flooding here in northern Ontario. Can’t really prepare for these things… Just pack up and go when needed. Wildfire got real close to town last summer, and MNRF were beginning to setup sprinklers around town, but eventually the fire was taken care of. We were ready to pack up and go if the time came, but luckily never needed to.
Here in Seattle, the main scary natural disasters are earthquakes. We haven’t had a major one since 2001 or so, but supposedly there’s a massive one coming relatively soon.
The 2001 Nisqually earthquake was also a different mechanism event than the one that can cause a really large earthquake (intraslab vs subduction). The last major subduction earthquake in the region was centuries ago and these earthquakes can exceed Mw9.0. Luckily they are not very frequent but there are indications that Seattle’s due for one.
None. Chicago doesn’t flood, have earthquakes, get wildfires, get hurricanes, get droughts. Tornados dissipate once they hit the urban heat bubble. It barely even blizzards here, once or twice a year at most.
True, we did burn down once. But now we’re very aggressive about fire safety and prevention.
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