I still have the year supply that we worked on when I was a TBM. The other day I walked into the fruit room and realized that we could eat it all and not worry about having to replace it. That should free up a lot of money and some room in the house.

Ack! We had a fruit room. It seemed perfectly normal growing up, but this is the first time in 20 years I have heard mention of one. I still like to keep a well-stocked pantry, but I'm thinking more along the lines of a crazy blizzard now. When West Virginia had their water crisis, I was thinking about how there are indeed practical things to plan for that don't involve the delusion that I might need to live off canned peaches for two years.

The big which?

When I was a kid, "The Big One" was nuclear war. I didn't see the point of surviving that. Oh, yay, we're alive in a totally wasted world.

When I lived in California, "The Big One" was the earthquake that would destroy the West Coast. If I were to survive that, I'd just leave for somewhere else. I was single, I was renting, so no big deal to split.

Now there are people -- preppers and such -- who anticipate the collapse of civilization. I doubt I'd want to survive that, either. Chaos and anarchy? No thanks. That's one reason I have a pistol. If the world turns to crap, I'm checking out.

Utah is one of the states that is at a great risk for a major earthquake due to the Wasatch Fault zone. I've always lived in California, where the "Big One" is when the San Andreas fault finally goes.

my dog is getting our expired cans of chile. He's happy!

None!

I think all of theirs are mold ridden and rotten.

I think the majority of houses along the moridor have rooms for food storage.

Not a clue....

Ron Burr

For those of you in and around SLC, you're dead anyway, right? Bringthem Young designed the temple on giant rockers so it can withstand the the end days as everything around it falls to the ground. Oh my heck he was smart, while he was designing modern day earthquake technology, he also included conduit for yet to be invented electric and shafts exactly the right size for elevators!

Most will be like the poor suckers after Catrina hit, begging for the government to save them. Taking care of yourself and being self sufficent are some if the things they get right. The government can't be counted in to support you when things go wrong. Some preparation on our own part is all it takes.

When the "big one" hit New Orleans any Mo food storage was destroyed by flood waters

When the "big one" hit Moore, Oklahoma, any Mo food storage was swept away by the tornado.

When the "big one" hit Oakland in 1989 food storage in some homes was inaccessible because of unsafe condition of the building.

There are a lot better things you can do to prepare for a disaster than gathering a month's worth of food. Prepare but do it wisely.

I think i'd rather go visit the neighbor with the great wine cellar. I'd make bread, and we'd have that and wine while the world rages around us.

I still think that self-sufficiency and preparedness are among the good teachings, and one of the few concepts that have actually been of value in my life.

What always made me shake my head was the was so many Mormons would miss the overall point of that advice. They would get up to their eyeballs in debt, and ignore almost every other thing to be prepared for a variety of possible contingencies, but look to that stockpile of nasty food as a badge of honor. It was so obviously about falling in line and trying to obey a letter of law rather than having any sense of genuine practicality.

There always seemed to be this idea that, "if I go through the motions of faith and obedience, the lord will take care of everything I didn't because I was too busy making things out of Cherrios and a glue gun."