I've been working slowly on formulating a booklet for my family. The purpose of the booklet is to designate planos of action and sops for significant events...including natural disasters, power failure, various.

Has anyone else done these things that is willing to share and collaborate.?

A large concern is I am not home half the month and often times my family will likely shelter in place. But they have little foresight as to preparation and Hawaii has been lucky so far. I am not going to be available to do the preparations as my occupation will require my time. My occupation has similar requirements for us, so that is where I got the idea.

Some things to ponder are
responses to potential Hurricanes...with scalable responsiblity and sops for increasing levels cat 1-5
examples -

secure outside funriture, trash cans, fill water, check ammo, check weapons, check cooking fuel, check vehicle fuel, check food supplies.
as the cat increases so does the immediate actions and preparation such as boarding up windows, loading weapons, various.

I welcome input and conversation.

one of the more important things to add is communication.  Possibly with a hurricane, you will have a few days warning.  With a tsunami/earthquake, you may have little notice and once the word gets out, good luck calling loved ones on your cell phone.  At the minimum, make sure everyone knows how to send/receive text messages, these go through (more) because they take up less bandwith.  Also have a good meeting place just in case one or all cannot make it back home, or if there is no home. 

Having a SHTF scenario where my family are all spread out in different areas is a major phobia for me.  I think that in many scenarios you will have to think about transportation too.  Will the roads be gridlocked?  If so, how would you get to loved ones?

This is a good link I found, it was written for the Mormon church.

http://www.abysmal.com/LDS/Preparedness/Preparedness.pdf

Very good idea. 

My wife and I know what to do, but an SOP manual would be terrific.  My wife got a bit nervous during the last tsunami and I had to calm her down a bit.  Have her read the manual before a crisis happens.  She should know where it is as well. =)

Thanks for bringing this up.  I appreciate it. 

I'm in the process of getting prepared, and I've been reading through the LDS manual.  Came across the part where it's talking about self-defense, and there is some truly horrible information put out that should probably be corrected:

Remember that a smaller caliber weapon does not
have the stopping power of a larger one, so if you
have to shoot someone to defend yourself, keep
shooting until you empty the gun. Once you’ve
wounded someone, he’s going to try to kill you
if he possibly can, so you don’t want to infl ict a
minor wound; you must stop him!

First off, firing your weapon empty if you don't need to makes no sense tactically; if the guy is down and out after two, do you really need to waste the other eight rounds in your Hawaii-friendly, low-cap magazine?  Of course not.  You just pissed away ammunition that might have saved your life later on.  Also, you're now holding quite an expensive hammer.  If you haven't practiced tactical reloads, you're going to be using your shiny self defense gun for a bludgeon if his friends didn't haul ass right away.  I'd take it as a given that the bad guys are more desperate, and therefore more motivated than you are, so this hand-to-hand scenario will likely not play out very well for you.  Thirdly, law and order will be restored at some point, and you will have to answer for what you've done.  You're going to have a tough time explaining that body with one gunshot wound on the front of his thigh and nine more peppered all over his back, with angles that indicate he was standing for the first two, on hands and knees for the next two, and flat on his face for the last five.  Good luck with that. 

Funtimes can chip in if I've misunderstood the correct application of deadly force, but you don't shoot to kill or to empty the gun, you use deadly force to stop the other person from doing whatever he was doing that forced you to shoot him in the first place.  You will be able to defend yourself in court only as long as you can prove that 1) all lesser means of stopping the bad guy had failed or could not reasonably have been employed, and 2) that using deadly force was the only way to prevent a serious offense like rape, murder, assault, etc.  In hawaii, you are not required to attempt to flee your home before using deadly force, but it is important to note that Hawaii's laws on deadly force don't allow you to defend property with deadly force.  Some guys on here might be better lawyers than I am, and if you guys have any input, I'd be glad to hear it, but how would that play out for shooting someone who's trying to loot your supplies?  If he's not directly threatening you, I don't think Hawaii allows the use of deadly force, so could you make a case that he was trying to steal the food you needed for survival, and was therefore a threat to your life?  I don't know.  (Maybe I'd better buy a $150 piece-o-crapola pistol next time I'm home and not register it, so I've got a plant gun?    DISCLAIMER:  DON'T DO THIS)

My final thought on this is that I tend to disbelieve that a wounded bad guy is going to kill you if he possibly can.  You are not under assault by Navy SEALs attempting to capture an objective; you are being attacked by thugs.  If you shoot and wound someone who isn't using drugs, they will pretty much immediately shift their focus from taking your things to surviving the encounter.  If their only or best way to survive is by killing you, then yes, he will try to do that.  But a bad guy who just got shot standing on your porch is not very likely to continue trying to enter your house; he's going to try run, or crawl, or whatever, to get the heck away from  you.  Once he starts trying to get away from you, you have to stop shooting, or you have crossed the line from justifiable self-defense to murder.  To paraphrase Funtimes' statement that I liked, "You're shooting to stop the behavior.  If his body is unable to continue living as a result of that shooting, that's a side effect." 

Nice write up Cougar. 

I would have to consider who the target audience of the LDS manual is aimed at.  I would think it's for the majority of the membership which may not have any firearm experience other than "my husband showed me how to take off the safety."  Maybe they are trying to overcome the notion that you can aim to wound. 

How about this scenario considering Hawaii laws:

Guy (or gal) is trying to bust down the door.  I usher my wife and kids to the safe room.  911/Police on the phone on speaker.  I yell to the intruder, "I'm armed with a gun." 
Person rushes my safe room door.   He's got 3 steps before he reaches me and my kids.  (yeah I got a small room.)

a.  I will empty my mag on him.
b.  I will shoot 2, check if he's hit, shoot 2, check if he's hit.
c.  Stay frozen.

For me, I choose a. 

(cause I'm a noob).  =)

(note to moderator...would be good to separate this from original topic.)

Edited for clarity who I'm shouting at...lol.

Nice write up Cougar. 

I would have to consider who the target audience of the LDS manual is aimed at.  I would think it's for the majority of the membership which may not have any firearm experience other than "my husband showed me how to take off the safety."  Maybe they are trying to overcome the notion that you can aim to wound. 

How about this scenario considering Hawaii laws:

Guy (or gal) is trying to bust down the door.  I usher my wife and kids to the safe room.  911/Police on the phone on speaker.  I yell to the intruder, "I'm armed with a gun." 
Person rushes my safe room door.   He's got 3 steps before he reaches me and my kids.  (yeah I got a small room.)

a.  I will empty my mag on him.
b.  I will shoot 2, check if he's hit, shoot 2, check if he's hit.
c.  Stay frozen.

For me, I choose a. 

(cause I'm a noob).  =)

(note to moderator...would be good to separate this from original topic.)

Edited for clarity who I'm shouting at...lol.

Thanks. 
I think for most of us, it's either going to be A or C.  Can't really say until you're in the poop, or at least that's what they say.  I'd like to believe that I would be a steely-eyed warrior in defense of my family, but the truth is I'm prepared to change a wet set of underoos, then sit down and have a good bawww while waiting for the police.     I agree that it's written for people who don't have much firearms experience, but I just wanted to make sure that people are taking away good information.  Just because you've shot somebody once doesn't necessarily mean you must or even legally can shoot him again.  The article sounded a lot like they were saying that if you've shot somebody and he's down, you'd better give him a double-tap to the back of the grape, because you never want to leave a wounded opponent.

 I think the distinction between "shoot to kill" and "shoot to stop" is mainly kind of a pretty turn of phrase for the DA and jury, if it comes to that.  Obviously when you "shoot to stop" you're really shooting to either destroy the central nervous system or cause hemorrhaging to the point that the bad guy succumbs to shock and passes out and/or dies.  Whether you think of that in terms of shooting to kill or shooting to stop is irrelevant; the bullets go in the same place either way, but it sounds a lot better for the jury when your sworn statement says you were shooting to stop him from harming you or your family, instead of, "Yeah, he had a knife, so I killed that sumbitch!" 

"Yeah, he had a knife, so I killed that sumbitch!" 

 

A gruesome thought, but, estate planning for what happens After bad things happen and one or both spouses are hurt or killed.

We have done the legal homework and made plans. 

Since we have no children or close family, Not a major problem.

But we do have dogs and do Not want them put down(Humane Society).  We have legal plans for them as well
   as $ put aside for their care.  They keep us safe, the least we can do is see that they have a good retirement pan.

A gruesome thought, but, estate planning for what happens After bad things happen and one or both spouses are hurt or killed.

We have done the legal homework and made plans. 

Since we have no children or close family, Not a major problem.

But we do have dogs and do Not want them put down(Humane Society).  We have legal plans for them as well
   as $ put aside for their care.  They keep us safe, the least we can do is see that they have a good retirement pan.

Just leave me in the will and I'll adopt the dogs.