Did you know this Thursday, October 16th is The Great ShakeOut? It’s a day to focus on getting ready for an earthquake. However, we at “Cramming” are using it as a day to get ready for all disasters. So we’re coming at you with a special bonus episode to introduce you to another great tool out there.

But first, don’t forget that also on Thursday, we are hosting a virtual workshop called “Get Your Go Bag Together” in partnership with MakeWith PDX. This virtual workshop is on Thursday, October 16th from 5-7pm Pacific Time. We have sliding scale pricing AND we’re offering a special opportunity to purchase some go-bag essentials.

REGISTER HERE

Now, onto my discussion with Jennifer Heller.

“Here Comes the Apocalypse”

In this conversation, I talk with designer and fellow “liberal prepper,” Jennifer Heller about a really great resource she created for regular people to not feel super overwhelmed by preparedness.

You can learn about Jennifer in this episode. In the meantime, check out here website HERE AT www.herecomestheapocalypse.com. There you can get her really exceptional (and dare I say fun?!) Disaster Playbook.

Additionally, we spoke about a story I wrote about the North Coast Emergency Food System Partnership for Civil Eats—you can find that story here.

Thank you for listening!

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Get full access to Cramming for the Apocalypse at crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com/subscribe

Y’all, it’s our last episode of Season 2! My how time flies!

Before I get into it, a respondent to the survey I sent out the last few weeks mentioned that it would be nice to have the toolkit in one space. Well, guess what, you’re in luck! Last year, we compiled the full toolkit in this handy-dandy workbook where all of this can be found in one place. It’s helpful to reference the original posts, but this will help you walk through each step of the process. I’ll note that I’ve intended to do some updating and editing of this workbook, but haven’t had the time or capacity to do it. I’ll let you know if it gets a refresh.

In this week’s episode we talk about how to have conversations about preparedness and how essential that is for community preparedness.

You can find our original post about this topic here:

In the meantime if you want to review any of our past episodes, you can just navigate to the “Resources and Toolkits” menu at the top of the main page.

This has been a true pleasure recording this series with Brekke. As I noted in the episode, we really are going to try to record some bonus episodes. But as we head into summer, we know that extra time is not going to be afforded to us moms so nothing is planned as of yet. You can stay tuned here on the Substack for updates on those episodes.

In the meantime, let us know what other topics you want to hear about at [email protected].

Thanks for being along on this ride with us!

Happy prepping!

Cramming for the Apocalypse is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Get full access to Cramming for the Apocalypse at crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com/subscribe

If you haven’t yet taken the survey about virtual classes we’re hoping to offer in the fall, there’s still time to complete it!

In our penultimate episode of Season 2, we talk about the topic that I write about all the time in my newsletter: community preparedness. This is a much less tangible element of preparedness and isn’t one you’re going to accomplish over as weekend or even a few weeks. It’s a long-term process of relationship-building.

Hopefully this conversation that Brekke and I had helps to give you some inspiration and motivation to help you begin to branch out with neighborhood preparedness.

Here is the written version of this topic from last year to reference back to it.

Additionally, we mentioned a few FEMA resources that, as of this writing, are still on the FEMA website, but as with everything on federal websites right now, there’s no telling what will be removed and when. So here are a few downloaded PDFs that might be helpful:

* Community Resilience: Using a Religious Literacy Primer to Improve Engagement with Faith Communities | FEMA

* National Disaster Recovery Framework | FEMA

* Disaster Resource Identification | FEMA

And last, Brekke mentioned the idea of having a book club serve as the convening activity for you and your neighbors. Here are some great books to get your started:

* A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit

* Generation Dread by Britt Wray

* The Great Displacement by Jake Bittle

* The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton

* Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

* The Future by Naomi Alderman

* Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Also, I write the occasional book review in my newsletter, so if you want some other recommendations or want to check back, you can just go to the “Book Club” tab from the main page.

Cramming for the Apocalypse is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Get full access to Cramming for the Apocalypse at crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com/subscribe

Before we launch into the podcast, I wanted to let you know that I’m currently working with MakeWith Hardware & Learning Center here in Portland to develop VIRTUAL workshops that help guide you through aspects of preparedness. If you are interested in taking such a class, we’d love for you to take a very quick survey to get a sense of the topics you’re interested in and some other aspects of what we could offer. Also, answering the survey just helps us gauge whether there’s enough interest to offer it, so just taking the survey is info in and of itself.

If there’s ample interest, then we foresee launching these sessions next Fall 2025, so stay tuned!

This week is the one many of you who have tuned in because of the LA fires have been waiting for: planning for evacuation. And yes, this has the list for what to put in your Go Bag which you can also find in the original post from last year.

Also, we had a fun riff on what might go into a $5 Go-Bag, so if you’re reading this and want to partake, we’d LOVE to hear what you were able to put in your $5 Go-Bag (hint: grocery bag + dollar store finds would probably do the trick).

Cramming for the Apocalypse is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Get full access to Cramming for the Apocalypse at crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com/subscribe

This week is a fun one because we’re talking all about your poop! But also we’re talking about how not to get sick if your sewer system goes down. Those of us living in higher income countries can take our functioning toilets for granted, but it should not be taken lightly when we’re preparing for an emergency.

In fact, in this paper published in the Journal of Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America, Drs. Stephen Y. Liang and Nicole Messenger discuss the emergence of infectious diseases after hydrologic disasters including hurricanes, tsunamis, storm surges, excessive rainfall, floods, and even drought. They note that 40% of deaths after a natural disaster, specifically for people who are displaced, are due to diarrheal illnesses. This shows how important it is to prepare for sanitation for your own family.

So now you know how important it is to manage your poop and all the other germs that go along with living in this world.

You can read our original post, complete with a list of what you should have in your toilet kit and general hygiene kit:

Now enjoy listening to our discussion about…poop.

Thanks for reading Cramming for the Apocalypse! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Get full access to Cramming for the Apocalypse at crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com/subscribe

This week is the very unsexy conversation about finances and documents. The conversation also took a very dystopian turn when we discussed all that the current Administration is doing to harass and deport people who look to them like an immigrant and what Congress is doing to limit voting rights. What a world we live in.

Nonetheless, here is the original post which includes a full list of the documents we tick off in the episode:

Additionally, I mentioned 1Password as the place where I store my document information. It’s also where I store all my passwords and I love it. But as Brekke noted, she’s trying to move away from storing important docs in the cloud. So it’s up to you.

Get full access to Cramming for the Apocalypse at crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com/subscribe

You know that food you stocked up for after Episode 3? Well now we have tips on how to prepare how to cook said food.

This week we talk about the various ways to illuminate, heat, cool your home and fuel your cooking implements when the grid goes down, which is becoming a much more common prospect than it once was. We also include some bonus action step recommendations not just on the preparedness front, but to advocate for safe, resilient grid systems that are currently very vulnerable to climate disaster.

And as promised in the episode, here are some links to some of the product suggestions we gave:

* Solar-charging home generator

* EcoZoom portable wood burning stove

* Mr. Heater portable Buddy Heater

* Battery-powered fans

Last, for a text-based version of this, check out the original post here:

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Get full access to Cramming for the Apocalypse at crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com/subscribe

We’re back after a couple week Spring Break! This time we’re talking about first aid and medication for preparedness.

But first, since we’re talking about health and healthcare, a couple disclaimers.

Disclaimer One: Brekke Wagoner and I are NOT medical professionals. None of the information within should be considered medical advice. If you have any questions that are specific to you and your health, you should connect with your healthcare provider who is qualified to give you medical advice.

Disclaimer Two: We talk about vaccinations and the benefit and importance of vaccinations. We believe in science and we believe in vaccinations and this is not up for debate.

Disclaimers behind us, here are the links we mention in the episode!

* Here’s our original post with allll the lists that we mentioned.

* Here is a study about the efficacy of OTC drugs often in a first aid kit that found that they’re efficacious for up to 15 years. In the podcast we mentioned that the U.S. military’s study on the same thing found that their medications were efficacious for even longer. We are still tracking that down, but 15 years is pretty damn good.

* Here are some online resources for medications that are often prescriptions. NOTE: We are NOT endorsing any of these as Brekke and I haven’t actually used them ourselves, but they are options that are out there. If you’re familiar with or have used these companies, please report back.

* Mark Cuban CostPlus Drug Company

* JASE Medical

* Contingency Medical

* Here are the books we mentioned:

* The Survival Medicine Handbook

* Where There Is No Dentist by Murray Dickson

* Where There Is No Doctor

* US Army First Aid Manual (free online)

* Your action steps:

* Build your General First Aid Kit

* Talk to your doctor about acquiring an additional month’s supply of prescription medications including antibiotics.

* Build your IFAK/Trauma Kit.

* Make sure you’re up-to-date on your vaccines.

* Decide which skills you need to build and take steps to gain those skills by signing up for classes.

And you can find all the other recommendations including books and such at our original post.

Cramming for the Apocalypse is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Get full access to Cramming for the Apocalypse at crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com/subscribe

Food storage is, hands down, the thing most people ask me about with preparedness. So without further ado, here is your full episode about food prep.

Also, check out the Prep Series post on food storage that is complete with a one-week dinner menu and tips and images of what Brekke and I use for food storage in our own homes.

Additionally, we won’t be releasing an episode next week because it will be Spring Break here in Portland and will not get to editing or recording. But we’ll be back in two weeks to discuss first aid and medicine.

And as always, I encourage any of you who are enjoying this podcast to upgrade to paid. Brekke and I both donate our time to this because it’s a labor of love and we really want people to be ready for disaster, but it’s an added bonus if we can pay ourselves :). If upgrading isn’t in the cards, you can share this episode and this series with others.

Cramming for the Apocalypse is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Get full access to Cramming for the Apocalypse at crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com/subscribe

Water is the most important thing to think about for preparedness. We can live weeks without food, but no more than three days without clean water.

In this episode, we talk about how much water to stock up on is ideal, storage options, treatment options, and sneaky water sources in a pinch.

We discuss all of this in this week’s podcast. You can also find all the content in our toolkit post from last year.

As always, our action steps for this week include:

* Calculate how much water your household will need for 7-10 days.

* Decide where to store your water.

* Decide what storage method you will use.

Bonus action steps include completing your water storage checklist that’s within the workbook we created and stocking up on water purification tools.

As always, keep us posted on your prepping and let us know if you have any questions at [email protected]

Cramming for the Apocalypse is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Get full access to Cramming for the Apocalypse at crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com/subscribe