What “I’ll just go to your house if it happens” means to me
Have you ever been talking with somebody about prepping, possibly trying to convince them to get on it and they fire back with, "well why can't I just go to your house when ______ happens?". This type of comment frustrates me to no end. Especially when I'm speaking with persons known to be a little more libertarian or those with a better financial situation than me. But nonetheless this is our world and we have a decision to make.
Say the ZA does come and friend/family/co-worker/random whoever is knocking on your door, do you let them in? Depending on your morals/ethics/faith/preferences you can choose what you will. I'm not here to sway you one way or another but you'll get my opinion soon enough. The point is, if you choose to say yes, how many more? And when it's all said and done, did you prep enough for ________ number of people?
The point is that we can only prep so much and support so many as our resources will realistically allow. Maybe you have a good income, great, stock up. Maybe you have a good harvest every year with your farm or garden, awesome! But eventually you're going to have to put a number on it. A number that quantifies a finite ability to support an amount of people and more than likely for a finite amount of time.
I recently had a discussion about building a long term storm kit with family and how much food was needed. I always start with 30 days of food for your household (two to five people, this time it was two) as its usually immediately financially feasible. But there are always "what if's" to throw their way if they don't get to it first. This time, the person I was speaking with figured it out before I needed to interject the idea. So it started, "What if my son and his wife come? I think they would" and I replied that he would divide the number in half, meaning they now have 15 days, then of course the inevitable, "I think my wife's friend and husband would come, they have a child" Ok, again divide in half plus a child at half the consumption rate of an adult, that's the original 30 day supply for two divided by 4.5 now, you're now at just under seven days of food. So you can see that with just a few additional people our supply of food/water/etc. is diminished rapidly.
Now, my opinion is as grey as can be and I certainly don't want to be the bad guy, but I would not be honest if I said I'd be taking in all who come, even family. I believe in charity and giving, but I also believe in stewardship and personal responsibility. The decision to turn people away would depend greatly on the severity of the event and how quickly we can reasonably expect aid and rebuilding. I actually plan to prep for "give aways" just for this reason. A few bags of rice or five gallon buckets of whatever consumables from a big box bulk store would be great to give somebody who you can't take in, but feel is in need of the charity. Unfortunately, the cruel, ugly fact of life is that we cannot fix the broken world by ourselves and in a post-event situation you may be endangering yourself or your family by doing so.
So now I ask you, how are you effected by the "I'll just come to you's" and what will you do when they come knocking, begging to come in?