stltraveler

I've carried a sidearm for the better part fourteen years, initially as a part of my job. Once I changed careers I lost the ability to legally carry concealed here in Illinois where I live. I've got a non-resident permit which covers me when I leave my home state, but here around town I am forced to rely on an overworked and understaffed police force to hopefully be able to respond before someone gets hurt or killed. For that very reason I do 99% of my shopping across the river in Missouri where I can legally carry my weapon and defend myself if and when things go bad. I'll be the very first person to say that not everyone should be carry a weapon. With carrying a weapon comes a tremendous amount of responsibility and liability. Most CCW holds don't practice near enough in realistic scenarios, not just when to shoot but how to keep control of your weapon in a situation where you can't shoot. I'd rather see someone learn to defend themselves with their bare hands before giving them a weapon. You don't need to be a black belt but at least know where and how to hit to disable or subdue an attacker. It's also good to know how to talk your way out of a bad situation, or better yet to just avoid one altogether. Things happen that are unexpected, ask any officer who has been on the street for more than a week. They will tell you people are unpredictable, you have to be prepared for anything. The statement was made about arming teachers, personally I'm not against it. But I don't think we can really force it on the teachers either, teachers aren't cops and they aren't soldiers. In the public schools I attended growing up things were much more conservative than they are now, I wouldn't have hesitated to arm the teachers I grew up with. But things are different now, and not in a good way especially here in the Socialist Republic of the State of Illinois. I would encourage anyone interested in self defense to get their CCW but take as many courses and classes as you can afford. Learn to defend yourself any way you can, and pray that you never have to.

I know the title sounds a bit odd, but it's something that has been causing my wife a great deal of trouble. My wife and I are both 35, been married 4 years and don't have children. Due to my wife's medical condition we will most likely never be able to have children, and it's really causing her a lot emotional pain. We are literally the only couple I our ward our age who don't have kids, my wife finds it hard to relate to many of the women because the prime topic of discussion is always what little Sara or little Samuel were up to. My wife wants children in the worst way, she feels as though she is failing as a woman to not raise a family. As for me, I'm alright with the situation most of the time. There are times that I yearn to be a father, but those moments are often interrupted by the need to render medical care to my wife. I can handle her medical conditions, what I don't know how to do is make her feel more like she fits in. It's hard for her to get the feel of making friends at church, she is a fairly recent convert and the church is a big change from the previous churches she attended. She has problems making it through sacrament meeting much less Sunday school or relief society due to her health, she does associate with several of the sisters who help with getting her to appointments and things when I'm unable. But she still has difficulty finding other sisters to develop those close relationships that are needed. She pretty much a home body now days since she can't drive, I would love to be able to help her develop sme friends who she can hang out with without her feeling like she's an extra burden to them. Anyone with any suggestions on how to make her feel more like she belongs? And anyone in the greater St Louis Metro who's interested in making a new friend please feel free to pm me and I'll let her know.

I would agree with a lot of what I have read on this thread, water storage and purification are both critical to long and potentially even short term survival. One thing I noticed though that concerns me are the references that even if a creak or stream is contaminated it will still be filterable. Not all water filters are created equal. And somethings can't be filtered out, I live in a community surrounded by industry including plants which have had previous problems with their spills leaching into the ground. It's important to know where to draw your water from if your getting it from a stream, whats up stream of you that might be dumping chemicals due to damage by whatever disaster has recently hit. You might need to go up stream of the polluter a ways to get "cleaner" water. It's also equally important for those with wells to get their water tested, when I worked with the health departments and EMA's in Indiana during the flood it was a critical concern for us, since many of the private wells had been flooded over. This flooding exposed the well to a wide variety of hazards not previously found there. Just something to consider...

Hi Kyra, I totally understand how you feel. My wife and I are newlyweds, we both come from a professional background in emergency management and we like to think we have a decent understanding of the threats we face. We've been doing all we can for the last year to prepare ourselves as much as possible. One thing to remember is you don’t have to do it alone. A lot of items can be purchased as a group for a lot less than what an individual purchase would be. We do that a lot with medical items, gloves, masks and other items are especially good group buys. You can do the same with paper goods, bulk foods, and most anything you can think of. If you’ve got others who are trying to be better prepared it’s a good idea to work together. It works for us, and it might work for others as well. Check with the families in your ward see if you can organize a group purchase, or maybe set a schedule of purchases every few months for items you all need. Hope it helps, I know it’s really helped us to build up our home storage.

I know that my stake and several of the surrounding stakes have implemented a program of their own. It's a purely voluntary program which does not announce it's affiliation with the church, it's more of a dedicated support network. They conduct routine classes for the Ham licensing as well as weekly 2m radio nets and monthly HF nets to the various church storehouses. All in all it's a great program, it's appears to be steadily growing from what I have heard. I've just now moved back to my home area on a more permanent basis and will be looking into their activities. I can tell you from experience that you can achieve long range communications very easily and effectively using HF radios with very small footprints. I routinely talk to both coasts as well as maritime vessels from my Jeep while in transit from one facility to another. 100 watts goes a long way with a decent antenna and the right frequency band selection.

I do appreciate your input, it's an interesting problem to address and there are many ways to do it. I am hoping we will be able to find a cooperative doctor in the St. Louis area when she moves here after the wedding in September.

Well we usually try to keep an extra 1-2 bottles of insulin on hand as well as several bottles of test strips for her glucometer. We usually try to get the samples at the Dr's office whenever she has an appointment, since a sample bottle of insulin is the same as what we get at walgreens.

Hi All, long time lurker; first time poster. I've got a question for the group, my fiance and I are working on getting my home better outfitted for what may come. We both work in emergency management and public health so we are all to aware of the potential calamities which could fall upon society as a whole. We've been pretty good about putting away food and things at my house. I live near St. Louis and she lives in Indiana currently we've been trying not to duplicate our storage so that we can spend our money more effectively. We need to find a way to track what each of us has and make it easy enough that we can update it after our weekly trips to the market or wholesale shop. We're planning on moving her here after the wedding in September. We've spent a lot of time recently talking about the potential issues and how to best address them, she is a insulin dependent diabetic which opens an entirely new can of worms. I'm sure there have to be others on the board with diabetics in their family, I'm interested to know what you've incorporated into your plans to account for the potential inaccessibility of medications and other diabetic related issues? I've been a member of the church since I was 1, although I've been inactive for a long time. I recently had the opportunity to see the church's response to the floods in Indiana and it was truly a moving experience for me. It helped to rekindle feelings I've not had in a very long time and I think it's possibly helped to turn my non-member fiance` to being more responsive to the missionaries as well. I would like to thank anyone from the Terre Haute area for the assistance they provided with the flooding and with the help they provided guiding me where I need to be. I am enternally grateful.