Protect Your Prep From Tornadoes

[caption id="attachment_18070" align="alignright" width="300"] NBC[/caption] Last month two high school students created a prototype for a tornado-resistant home. And no, it’s not a bunker in the back yard. It’s a normal house, with normal windows, and normal walls. Except these “normal” walls have cables running through them. Cody Simmons, one of the students involved in this new endeavor, said that “if we were actually to build this full-scale, the cables would be coming down…into the ground as anchors.” Kind of an obvious idea, once you think about it. Groundbreaking, even. Their prototype was tested in Iowa State University’s Tornado Simulator, and it did well. The two sophomores plan on developing their concept. But that’s just what it is – a concept. It hasn’t been integrated into homes yet, and if it does become a thing, it will probably still be quite some time before we can look to house-anchors as our saving grace. Which leaves us with the same old conundrum: what do we do to prepare for a tornado? There is a lot of advice scattered throughout the interwebs – and hey, we’ve even written a lot about it. But there’s one topic I realized not many people delve into: What becomes of my prep if my house gets blown away? That is the question of the ages. Pat Henry of The Prepper Journal related a story of a woman who lost her emergency items to a tornado. “There was a report on the radio last week and a woman was talking about how she had plenty of emergency foods, survival equipment and redundant power but the tornado took it all away. Gone. She went from being prepared for anything to nothing in a few minutes.” Hello insult, meet injury. Can you imagine that!? You’ve prepared for an event such as this, and then it’s rude enough to go ahead and take it away from you at the very moment you need it. Mother Nature does what she wants, when she wants, and if you’re in her way, then you’re at her everlasting whim. But there are some things you can do to prepare for even her worst moods. Mr. Henry gives some advice on how to protect your prep should such a disaster threaten to remove them from your storage room. The first ditty of advice he gives relates to the old adage of “don’t keep all your eggs in one basket.” Of course, if you keep all your fragile eggs in one place, you can lose them all in one instant. Instead, spread them out, so if one basket meets an untimely fate, you’ll at least have some that are still safe. The same thing applies to, say, your emergency food storage. “Plan on at least two storage places for most of [your] emergency supplies,” suggests Henry. He goes on to advise keeping a “survival kit, some long-term food and other disaster supplies at a location other than [your] home.” This way, if a tornado does raze your home, you’ll still have supplies to get you through the next few days. Another idea he gives is to bury some of your supplies on your property. Of course, there are flaws to this plan, such as possible flooding, but if you water proof your buried treasure, it should be safe enough until you can retrieve it. Henry does understand that this could be something of an ordeal. “Again,” he said, “I know this isn’t ideal, but having [your supplies] float down the river isn’t either.” Touché, good sir. Touché. For more information on tornadoes, visit beprepared.com/tornado. How do you protect your emergency gear from disaster? Have you ever lost some during a tornado or hurricane? Let us know in comments!