How We are Preparing for a Zombie Apocalypse (and Other Disasters)

I have two worsts fears: Spiders and zombies. Several years ago, I watched a TV series about a post apocalyptic zombie-filled world and felt the sudden urge to get my act together and create an emergency preparedness kit. It’s one of those lessons we’ve had in church for years and years, but it took the idea of a zombie apocalypse to finally get me motivated.

My husband is an emergency responder and he can get a little amped up before a natural disaster. Most commonly in our area is flooding, occasional ice storms, or tropical storms following a hurricane hitting the coast.

Thankfully the worse we’ve had to deal with is just losing power for a few hours and then we had to rely on candles and backup batteries. But some of our surrounding areas have had much worse.

My husband isn’t always home with us when a disaster strikes, and since he’s tasked with helping others, we can’t always depend on him to be around if something were to go bad. It’s a good idea to have 72 hour kits prepared and ready to go in case you need to leave suddenly. These are usually put together and stored in backpacks so that they’re ready and easy to grab and go with.

We keep certain things on hand in our home in case we lose power, and/or need to leave our homes:

Huge batteries for the car in case we need to jump start the car or charge household items
Matches, candles, and flashlights for light
Bandages and first aid kits for injuries.
External chargers for extra battery.
Clorox® Regular Bleach for disinfecting
Some food and water storage in case we aren’t able to get to the store.

Here’s a great list provided by the Red Cross that’s good to go by.

We try to be sure to always have drinking water on hand. My grandparents have giant containers in their garage, and in our home, we always try to have extra cases of water bottles or gallon jugs of water.

I’ve seen enough survival TV to know what bad drinking water can do to a person. But if you were to ever run out, and boiling it isn’t an option, there’s another way to make the water drinkable.

First, add 8 drops (or ⅛ teaspoon) of Clorox® Regular Bleach2 with CLOROMAX® (make sure you use this regular kind, not the scented stuff) into one gallon of water. Allow it to stand for 30 minutes and you’re good to go. Properly treated water will have a slight chlorine smell. If not, repeat the dosage and let it stand for another 15 minutes. For cloudy water, use 16 drops per gallon of water..

My husband lived in a third world country for his mission and said people often made their water drinkable this way. So, they kept it on hand.

The bleach can also be handy in floods when mold begins to show up. You can use it to scrub and disinfect hard, non-porous surfaces. We had to do this to some of our trim after all the rain from Hurricane Harvey.

1. Disinfect all cleaned surfaces with a solution of 3/4 cup of Clorox® Regular Bleach2 with CLOROMAX® diluted in 1 gallon of water.
2. Let the solution stay on the surface for at least 5 minutes before rinsing with clear water or allowing to dry.
3. Routinely check potential problem spots (e.g. Bathroom, laundry, mechanical room, etc.) for moldy odors, and disinfect often with a solution of 3/4 cup of Clorox® Regular Bleach2 with CLOROMAX® diluted in 1 gallon of water.

Whether you currently have a plan you need to revisit, or you realized it’s time to develop one, now is a good time to evaluate if you have the essentials to help in case of a disaster strikes to ensure your family is safe. It can be something as simple as buying extra water the next time you’re at the store, or making sure you have extra flashlights, batteries or a bottle of bleach on hand. Because if a hurricane, flood or zombie apocalypse hits, you’ll be so glad to be prepared.