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Help Prepare Your Family For
A Hurricane, Ice Storm, Flood... |
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Thickness = Warmth
About keeping warm: A vacuum is actually the best insulator (Thermos bottles), but air trapped in tiny pockets is the next best. The thicker the insulating materials, the more air is trapped, and the warmer you will be. A bed's mattress is a poor insulator because air moves within it so cover your mattress with a thick foam pad. Remember that the body loses about half of its heat from the head and neck area, and that it should be as thickly insulated as the rest of the body. "Cold hands and feet? Put on a toque and scarf!" Wrap your head and neck in a thick turban or such when you sleep in a cold room. It's better to eat cold food than no food at all; food creates bodily warmth. If you're cold and you haven't sufficient thick clothing, you can crumple up newspaper and stuff it inside your clothing to keep warm. Remember that mitts are far warmer than gloves. A 'space blanket' is useful because it radiates your own heat back at you. I imagine you could make your own such blanket with aluminium foil, good ol' duct tape, staples (?), and a sheet...Ouch! Cold going to bed?
Cuddle with someone who is also wearing pyjamas (thickness = warmth). A family dog generates a lot of warmth ('It was as cold as a three-dog night!'). Use hot-water bottles and wrap them in a towel if too hot. If you go to bed feeling warm when the outside temperature is cold, you'll wake up if you get cold and start shivering. On the other hand, if you go to sleep so cold that you're shivering, the bed has no way of becoming warm and you may not wake up period.
At last, time to relax!
Get games and books to pleasantly pass the time. What an excellent time to learn how to play bridge or euchre, or chess, or to knit a sweater! Meet your neighbours! Apropos of nothing, remember the amazingly high number of births in New York, nine months after the power went off in the 50s?
The only draft I like is liquid
Put plastic sheeting over windows to trap air and create additional insulation. Two layers 1/4-inch apart would be even better. Be inventive.
Other ideas
Fill your drug prescriptions; have enough for perhaps half a year or more, if the drugs are essential. Get vitamin pills. Buy lots of rice, pinto beans and corn. A hundred pounds of each should feed one adult for four months, at a cost of about $5 per day. Pasta has high nourishment value. Get lots of sauces. (I don't cook so look elsewhere for guidance.) If hungry people call on you, try to have food available; lots of it. (They say that 'interesting times' bring out the best, and the worst, in people. I wonder how I'll react. As always, I guess, and I hope with good humour.)
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