National Preparedness Month: What are you doing/have done to prepare?

I have been building a year-round plan for fresh food for the last 12 years.  One of the key pieces was Loquats for fresh fruit in March/ April and I finally got blooms this year!  I also have many plants that are edible but not distinguishable as food and root food would generally not be affected.  All of these plants would survive my most likely threat ( hurricane) even if the current fruit did not.
We have plenty of warning and are able to travel out of harms way if we leave quickly, otherwise we are likely to be stuck on the road with everyone else who is trying to leave.  Ericas car items would help very much and I am getting them together slowly ( but surely).  I would also add some dry food items and a small propane stove to use upon return to my home as it can be weeks before electric, gas, and water return.  
Upon return we would need lots and lots of clean water, not just for drinking but for cooling; the only way to survive temps here is to wet your clothing and keep it loose so it evaporates.  That will be my next addition to my resilience plan; water collection and filtering!  Thank you all for helping me figure out what my next priority will be!

About 3 years ago I decided to formulate an Emergency Preparedness  presentation for our Senior Center. I put a lot of thought and work into the Power Point part of it and tried to match that with all of the items on 3 ea 8ft, long tables covered with food storage in 5 gal. buckets, 12V  LED lighting anyone could wire, Emergency hand-cranked radio, a portable DIY commode using PVC and a toilet seat with a bucket and other various items for emergencies.

Around here the main attitudes are, "Well, that's good enough (when it isn't)" and "Well, that's never happened here and probably won't", which is WHY I started the presentation - to WAKE PEOPLE UP! Unfortunately I was not too successful as most of the people zombie-walked over to the lunch area without a second thought. Out of around 30 people I had 2 or 3 that stuck around long enough to even look at the hands-on stuff on the tables and asked a few pertinent questions.

Say-la-vie! That's life in Podunk, Indiana!

9/6/23 - Interesting thread.  Took me two days to read through it, check links, download lists and Erica's templates for Family Reference Binder, something I've intended to put together for years.  Now I'm committed to doing that before this year runs out.

I've always been pretty much a minimalist, keeping only what I needed to live comfortably but frugally.  I've been an avid backpacker with more than 10,000 miles under my boots and long-range cyclist.  Since my teen years I've spent up to 3 months at a time hiking in the mountains, including the Appie Trail, Long Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and climbing most of the highest mountains from Maine to California and many in Europe, Japan, the Himalayas and Karakoram Range of Pakistan, Nepal, Tibet, and Kilimanjaro in East Africa.  Aconcagua in South America is still on my Bucket List though I'm not sure (at 77) that I'll achieve that dream, but maybe.  I'm still in pretty good shape.  The trek will just take me a lot longer than it would have 30 years ago.

While backpacking or cycling I usually carried about a week's worth of food and replenished often. But whenever I lived someplace with enough room to store it, I've stashed away plenty of food and beverages to keep me eating healthy for at least 3-6 months.

Since purchasing the farm in 2019, I've accumulated about 3 years' worth of staples and canned goods, freezer is well stocked with meat and fish, pre-made meals, and ice cream, and with a greenhouse this winter, we'll be able to have fresh veggies and some fruits year-round.  One of my next projects is to build a smokehouse in which to smoke and store a couple of butchered pigs.  Within the next couple of years, we hope to become food self-sufficient.

I'm also consistently reducing my debts and paying off mortgage, equipment loans, etc., and together we are building sweat equity in the farm and buildings and stocking up on dry firewood, poles, dimensional lumber, fence posts and other wood products from the forest.  My sense of security and confidence in our ability to survive here, come what may, have never been higher.  The land can support at least 6 families, so we are searching for others to join us here in SW Virginia to continue developing our gardens, food forest, livestock, and other farm enterprises.

I feel that we are pretty prepared.
We’re in our 60’s.
Paid off house and car.
Have 2 protected food gardens.
We have 2 cherry and 2 apple trees.
However, many wild apple trees grow wild here.
We use those for apple cider and I make wild apple cider vinegar with them.
Our pantry is full of food to sustain us for a few years, however I’ve been trying to grow beans to dry, I’ve planted six times this year, but some animal coming under ground has been eating them before they produce beans.
Goal- fugue out way to stop varmints from eating my food security.

It's not September, but I was helping a friend with prepardness, and wanted to link to this thread...only to realize that Erica Straus's website is down! Thankfully, the Wayback Machine exists, and had saved all the information! I edited my first post to have the links lead to the appropriate pages on the Wayback Machine. Hopefully that helps preserve the info for a few more years.

(I am once again thankful for the Wayback Machine, and that permies is such a long-standing, stable forum that continues to a perennial source of information for us all!)