The Third Y2K Practice Day is this coming weekend. Despite the current lull in national Y2K conscousness, and the understandable desire with the wonderful warm weather to forget it all and go play, the fundamental situation has not changed, and we still must be mindful that we face serious problems in a few months. It has been our experience that you can stockpile all the things you want, but if you are not experienced in living a low tech lifestyle, even for a few days, you are in for some rough surprises. In other words, if you have not practiced, you are not prepared.

As this is Memorial Day weekend, it may be impractical for some people to do it then. If so, it can be done another weekend. Or you may want to take a certain area such as food, electricity, water, or sanitiation, and just work with that for a few days instead of doing everything at once. Please send your feedback and experiences to us at The important thing is to do something, and get used to doing some kind of preparedness discipline at least every two months.

The computers won't all be fixed. Let's at least fix ourselves. And our communities.

Alan & Donna Y2K AWAKE alandonnaj@aol.com (Alan) seraphima@aol.com (Donna)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Y2K PRACTICE DAY #3

FRIDAY, MAY 28 NOON - 3:00 P.M. SATURDAY, MAY 29

TAKE A Y2K VACATION! GO CAMPING AT HOME! BE FLEXIBLE, ADAPT THIS GAME TO YOUR OWN SITUATION! YOU MAY DO ONLY PART OF THE GAME, OR DO IT ON ANOTHER DAY

RULES OF THE GAME

CAUTION: SAFETY FIRST!

1. Explain in advance to family and friends who might telephone that you will not be answering the phone and why. Change your phone message as needed, and make provision for emergency contacts if necessary. 2. Use extreme caution with fire, especially candles, kerosene lamps and stoves. Charcoal MUST be used outside. Ventilate heating devices properly! 3. YOU MAY MAKE ANY PREPARATIONS IN ADVANCE THAT YOU WISH! 4. Transportation: Once you get home from work or school, only human or animal powered transport. Walk, bike, horse, skis or dogsled, etc. 5. Electricity: Tape freezer and refrigerator shut. Unplug all electrical devices. Open the garage door by hand. (You dont have to shut off the house master switch.) *You may use electrical devices only if connected to a working generator actually operating during the practice. 6. Heat: Any safe source that does not use electricity: woodstove, fireplace, bearskin, buffalo robe or long underwear! IF YOU LIVE IN THE COLD NORTH, YOU MAY KEEP YOUR HEAT ON LOW IN WINTER, rather than risk freezing your pipes. 7. Light: Any safe source that does not use electricity: kerosene, oil, and camp lanterns, candles, flashlights. 8. Cooking: Any safe source that does not use electricity or city natural gas: camp stoves, gas grills, Dutch ovens buried in a firepit, solar ovens. 9. Water: Any safe source that does not use city water or an electrical pump. No tap water! Toilets must be flushed with stored or carried water: rainwater, cisterns, streams, handpumps, bottled water. 10. Entertainment: Books, handcrank radio, games, crafts, chocolate, campfires, making popcorn, telling stories. Have a party with your friends and neighbors!

This is a test of your wits, wisdom and ingenuity! Enjoy yourselves! Practice day repeats the last weekend of every other month. Next regularly scheduled games: July 30-31, September 24-25, November 26-27. Reality begins: December 31-Jan 1, 2000. For more info, or to send your experiences of practice day, contact seraphima@aol.com

-- seraphima (seraphima@aol.com), May 25, 1999

Answers

Seraphima, can you post experience reports you received based on pd's #1 and #2 ?

-- Blue Himalayan (bh@k2.y), May 25, 1999.

Last year I met a wonderful young woman on the internet who uses every Friday as a practice day...not necessarily the WHOLE day, yet they eat by candlelight, play games with the children, NO T.V., etc. Her children are quite young, and at first they were frightened without the normal lighting at dinnertime. She realized at that time that she should wean them from using night-lights in their rooms at night.

Anita

-- Anita Spooner (spoonera@msn.com), May 25, 1999.

Arnie Rimmer, paging Arnie Rimmer ...

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), May 25, 1999.

I am taking the opportunity of making meals from stored food periodically to ensure that recipes are to our liking. This also allows me to rotate a bit of the stored foods. Published recipes out on the net some day soon...

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), May 25, 1999.

I really agree with the idea of practice days!!!

PG&E recently shut our power down for a day as they laid in new transformers on our block. I had to use the solar system and the inverters to power the house for a day. I learned a lot!! Needed bigger wires from the solar array, fuse holders that got "warm" and needed to be replaced with higher current devices...

I have not done the toilet test yet...but I have the water

Keep the faith....

-- helium (heliumavid@yahoo.com), May 25, 1999.

Arnie here.

Practice is an essential piece of this puzzle. Those of you who have been around for awhile already know about the practice weekend that Mrs. Rimmer and I experienced a few months ago. We learned a lot about what we were not prepared for. If you think you are prepared to 'go it alone' for a short amount of time, try turning your electricity off some cold weekend this fall.

I won't elaborate on that experience here but if you're interested, you can read my post on this from back in February:

Our Personal 48-hour 'No Power' Test

This represents our personal experience only and you should be forewarned that we are definitely not experts at 'going it alone'. We are fairly typical people with little to no real experience at toughing it out. There are many participants on this forum with far greater real experience than we have. Still, we have to crawl before we can walk.

For those of you who are taking preparation seriously, I also cannot overemphasize the importance of safety in ALL aspects of your preparation. Modern conveniences shield us from many of the basic safety issues that those who came before us dealt with on a daily basis. In today's world, safety is often engineered into the products we use - we rarely think about the safety devices built into our furnaces, electrical systems, fuel systems, and so forth. As a result, we tend to become complacent with safety issues when choosing to use alternatives. Candles, oil lamps, shaving razors, wood stoves, chain saws, generators, stored fuel, and hundreds of other 'alternative solution' items can be extremely dangerous if their use is not treated seriously.

A windstorm here late last fall left a local trailer court without electricity. A mother living there had lit a candle for light. She left it unattended only briefly. The resulting fire killed her two children, ages 7 and 9. This specific example has nothing whatsoever to do with Y2K but it does illustrate the potential for tradgedy.

Safety has to be an issue that the whole family is involved with and responsible for.

Remember that the entire goal of preparation is to protect you and your family from potential threats. If you and your entire family cannot take issues of safety seriously (say, for example, your husband suffers from "real-men-don't-wear-safety-goggles" syndrome), then quite frankly, you are better off not preparing at all and taking your chances that no serious threats will result from Y2K. Do not allow you preparations to become the threat you will face.

Our grandparents and those that went before them did not have the luxury of a world where safety was engineered into every product around them. They had to take responsibility for their own safety or they simply did not live to become grandparents.

Make safety the top priority in all preps that you do. It does require a bit of thinking and planning but if you've come this far, don't let that stop you. Best wishes.

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), May 26, 1999.

Dear Arnie,

Right on about SAFETY!

Also, write ups of the first two practice days we did posted as separate threads above.

Seraphima

-- seraphima (seraphima@aol.com), May 26, 1999.

Hi Arnie, I enjoyed your post on the practice weekend very much and printed it out at that time. I also enjoyed the post about soybeans and although I've used mostly soy milk and other products made from soybeans, I really hadn't tried to cook the beans themselve. I did after reading your post and I love them, although my husband finds them a little bland to suit his taste. We now have lots of spices to add more flavor for him. Thanks so much gilda

-- gilda (jess@listbot.com), May 26, 1999.