echo5whiskey, I appreciate you taking the time out of the chaos to post that and glad to hear you and your's are safe and dry. It's not easy posting personal experiences on the internet, kudos for you sharing your's as we all can glean some knowledge from it.
For gas cans look at genuine NATO Jerry cans and GET the nozzle for them. These are the GLOCKs of the gas container world, truly one of the best engineered man made marvels of the 20th century. I'm about four hundred miles from the gulf but even here we have gas station after gas station dry for going on five days now. I do not regularly keep gas stored as I don't have anywhere to keep it but an attached garage. However I will store it in a situation like this. I filled up my Jerry cans, added, Sta-bil and have only had to fill my wife's car up once with them so far. With the NATO Jerry cans, their gaskets, and their nozzle not one drop of fuel was spilled. Also they admit little to no odor and can be laid on their sides with out leaking due to their locking caps and gaskets. I can't say that for ANY of the plastic jugs I've used for lawn equipment over the years. If you are going to go this route just watch our for Chinese knock-offs. These will be considerably cheaper and not only are they inferior but they are dangerous. Stay clear of the Chinese knock-offs. All my Jerry cans were manufactured in European countries by NATO members, I picked them up at surplus type stores / sites. Shipping will be steep online due to weight.
As for water storage, we have a WaterBOB in every bathroom. It's a bladder that fills up and nests inside your bathtub. We also keep on hand DoD LC Industries water cans and Reliance Product's Rhino-Pak water containers.
I've heard for a long time that if you have a diesel vehicle you will be able to find fuel at stations more so than gasoline during SHTF, well the stations in my area have been out of that too. Kind of reminds me of when people use to say if you own a .45 and or a 9mm you'll always be able to find ammo for it because those are the two most plentiful handgun calibers in the US then the great ammo shortage of 2013 hit and all you could find on shelves was a random box of .357 Sig once in a blue moon. Diesel may have some advantages but availability is not one of them if Harvey has taught me anything.
As to the floating fire-ant ark's . . .
Fire ants make their home in the ground, which makes the insects extremely vulnerable to flooding. But should they detect something awry, the workers start linking together using hooks on their limbs. They form into a ball with the vulnerable members of the colony—eggs and larvae and the queen—bundled up in the center.
“They use the wax together on their bodies to keep the queen and other members of the colony in the middle of the ball dry so they don't suffocate,” says Mike Merchant, entomology specialist at the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service. And submerged workers from time to time shift above the water line so they don’t drown. (The species evolved in the Amazon, so this clever rafting adaptation allowed them to survive periodic flooding.)
They’ll float like this until they hit something dry―a log or rock or, heaven forbid, your home. “The unfortunate thing is they don't care what it is that's dry,” says Wizzie Brown, extension program specialist also at the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service. “So if it's a house that they hit and there are people on the roof stranded, they will go up there as well because that's them trying to escape the flood waters.”
Anytime we take a road trip you'd think we were moving across country. I always pack in the dead of night, no one will be the wiser that you and your family are about to be gone for an extended period of time. I do the same for firearms and ammo when I move from and into another residence. As for pre-packing I keep steel storage shelves in my garage with cases of bottled water that I rotate, Iris storage containers (I have a thread on here about them) they are air and water tight filled with sleeping bags/pads, tents, etc. so they are literally grab-and-go into vehicles already staged in the garage.
I'm a big believer in paper maps, well laminated actually and old school compasses. Have them in every vehicle and BOB. Count on any and all modern tech going tits up when you need it most.
As for comms, get some of those blister pack big box store two way radios for starters. They are better than nothing, we have the Motorola Talk-Abouts as one form of communication. Thanks to Outlander we have mucho good info on radios in this very technical sub-forum that are a wealth of info. Also, even if cell networks are down you can still use your smart phone for GPS and texts via goTenna.
https://www.gotenna.com/
On the issue of automobiles and high water, keep self-extraction tools in all vehicles at all times. I keep Benchmade Houdinis in our vehicle consoles as they have a seat belt cutter, glass breaker, and white LED light all in one handy tool.
Lastly, acquire a quality ax . . . put it in your attic and keep it there.
"In a nut shell, if it ever goes to Civil War, I'm afraid I'll be in the middle 70%, shooting at both sides" — 26 Inf
"We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them." — CNN's Don Lemon 10/30/18
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