Now swine flu? what events or pandemics (past or present) scare you into taking cover?

I can’t forget all the images of the killer flu of 1918. It scares me enough to stay inside as much as possible.

POLIO.
OH NOEZ!!

My brother had an actual Y2K room. It held bottles and boxes of food, water and propane gas. Yes, we all made fun of him, but if something had happened, we would have been at house, eating pretty well for awhile.

@YARNLADY isn’t medicine a beautiful thing? i was at springfield, IL at the abraham lincoln museum and learned one of honest abe’s children—i think it was willie, died at an early age of TB. now we can get a shot and ward off tuberculosis. but TB was like really BIG at one time,

If it came to my area I would likely do what we had to with our smallest child who has severe asthma. We would keep her close to home during flu season when she was smaller.

@charliecompany34 Yes, indeed. I was raised when Polio was the dreaded disease of children, and we haad to take extraordinary precautions against it. My Uncle contracted it, and I had to have gamma globulin vaccine, which is sort of like getting kicked in the butt by a mule with both feet.

So far the only thing I’ve ever done to ‘prepare’ for any scare is stock extra water in my house during the Y2K thing. I figured nothing would happen, but in case anything did I had enough extra water for a week. My thinking was that that was the only thing I needed to worry about at all, and w/in a week’s time everything would be running smoothly again. When nothing happened, we used the water as usual.

During this same time, my second step-father’s adult daughter gave everyone gas-masks for Christmas. It was pretty ridiculous.

wow, pork futures way down today. pigs get a bad rap. how bout grilled zucchini as an alternative on memorial day? oops, after spinach and lettuce scares, it might be next.

It was SARS. When it broke out, I was in Beijing, China. We reported our body temperature to the authority everyday. Anyone found with a high temperature would be sent to the buildings in restricted areas, in which there are real SARS patients. Some people there got infected with SARS and died. They died because they caught a cold in a bad time.

i remember my father-in-law on Y2k. he’d stock-piled so much toilet tissue and water, we can still go over to his house today and never have to worry about taking a dump or going thirsty.

I’d say unprotected sex in a foreign brothel, like say Zimbabwe
With around one in seven adults living with HIV
would send me for cover or rather a cover.

Any mention in the paper of an outbreak of Ebola has me stocking my pantry. That scares the shit out of me.
Back in 82 or so, I became so fearful of nuclear war (I remember I saw the movie “Testament” about that time), I began to have what I was sure was sympathetic radiation sickness. Hairloss, sores, vomiting. That had me housebound for a while.

i hear about the pandemonium and just keep living my life as usual. wash your hands. be aware. be vigilant. stay prayerful.

Fuck it all. Live life well. Tomorrow we die.

@charliecompany34 TB is still really big, and there is no “shot to ward it off”. More than 2 billion people are infected with TB worldwide, and there are 3 million deaths attributed to TB.

As far as this version of influenza, it has potential for devastation, but probably will peter out quickly, much like SARS. The CDC is worried, appropriately, any time a respiratory or influenza outbreak occurs. I would continue to go about my daily business, but remember to wash your hands as much as possible.

@SeventhSense

GA
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

@SeventhSense Tomorrow? Why, what’s tomorrow? Did I miss the announcement? Is it a meteor?

@filmfann
I’m sorry I thought you got the memo:

Swine, bird flu, AIDS, anthrax, ebola, Lime’s Disease, syphillis, gonnorhea, flesh eating necrosis, cancer, heart attacks, the bubonic plague and snakes on planes.

Oh no! Thats terrible! I could never watch that movie again!

@filmfann
Of course the greatest threat is of course this

I’ve considered preparing for an extended stay inside without the ability to go shopping, but I haven’t done anything about it, and probably won’t.

@daloon It’s a long term practice in our family to have a complete six month supply of groceries and water in our storage cupboard at all times. I was raised this way. I laughed at people on Y2K because I’ve always done it.

@YARNLADY
6 Months!!! I could never do that or I might just go into hibernation..

@SeventhSense You should have put a disclaimer in there about clowns before I opened it. shudder

@chyna
You might like this one it’s about a sweet bunny
He just wants Jake Gylenhall to come out and play.
Be sure to turn out the lights and turn up the volume and make sure the door is unlocked so he can get in…although he can pass through mirrors so it’s not necessary. :)~

@SeventhSense Not going there and you can’t make me.

It’s not gory or anything…just a big fuzzy bunny that will burrow….deep into your subconscious. Good times. :)

@YARNLADY: Just how much storage space do you have? And do you live urban, suburban, rural or off-the-grid?

I barely have enough room in my freezer for a few bags of corn and the tomato sauce I make. Our cabinets are chock full. I have no idea how long they might last, but I’m always trying to use things up, so they don’t die of loneliness.

Do you have a portable generator? That’s the one thing I think would be seriously useful in a disaster.

@daloon A generator would be the one item that everyone should have, but doesn’t. No one thinks of getting one til they are in the middle of a disaster, then there is a rush for them, the price goes up and very few are available.

I currently have storage cabinets lining my garage, with shelves full of cans and other supplies. I remember when I was a child, we stayed in a motel every summer (another story) and we had the station wagon filled with food, and drove the sedan.

We live suburban, and have a vegetable garden, plus a swimming pool. I also have a Tuf-Shed barn in my back yard. No, we don’t have a portable generator, but we do (safely)store natural gas for our camp stove.

I live in the city. Our house is over 100 years old. We have no garage. We can barely get anything down to the basement, for that matter. It leaks, anyway. On the other hand, cities have seriously complex supply lines, and so it is often possible to get what one needs in a disaster.