Preparedness Is Comfort You Pack Before You Need It

A quiet getaway can turn into a resilience test the moment the power dies. We open with a quick correction on government terminology and fast-moving security headlines, then step into a vivid scenario: a historic mountain resort, roads blocked by stormfall, heat climbing, and generators keeping only a sliver of services alive. Using the 2012 derecho that knocked out power for days as a real-world case study, we unpack what actually helps when you are three and a half hours from home and the grid goes down.

I share how years in law enforcement shaped my approach to situational awareness without sliding into paranoia: scan exits, plan routes, and keep a flexible mind. From there, we get practical. What belongs in a travel-ready go bag beyond the usual flashlight and water? Why a satellite communicator like the Garmin InReach Mini 2 can be a lifeline when cell towers fade and hotel Wi‑Fi dies. How to power your essentials with compact battery banks and a small solar charger, plus the little details that save you—redundant cables, waterproof pouches, and charge rotation so the right device is ready at the right time.

We also talk OPSEC and ethics. Helping others connect with family reduces panic, but broadcasting that you have rare comms or extra power can make you a magnet. I walk through low-key ways to retrieve gear from valet-only parking, when to move at dawn or dusk, where to stage, and how staff naturally switch from hospitality to safety mode. The goal is to stay calm, contribute without courting risk, and protect your household while being a good neighbor when comfort thins out.

If you’re a traveler, prepper, or just someone who wants fewer surprises, this conversation gives you a simple checklist and a better mindset for blackouts, heat waves, and blocked roads. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who loves the mountains, and leave a quick review so more people can find practical, no-drama preparedness.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Storm Alerts And Housekeeping
• 1:20 National Security Concerns And Vetting
• 2:29 From Police Life To Civilian Vigilance
• 4:04 Decompressing At The Omni Homestead
• 5:20 Scenario Planning Without Panic
• 6:12 The 2012 Derecho Case Study
• 8:02 Guest Stories And Facility Limits
• 9:26 Accessing The Jeep And Go Bag
• 10:40 Comms Failure And Satellite Backup
• 12:01 Opsec: Sharing Gear Or Staying Quiet
• 14:11 Packing Priorities And Perception
• 15:13 Discreet Retrieval And Timing
• 16:07 Affiliate Drive And Donations
• 16:59 Deals, Giveaways, And Global Listeners
• 17:51 How To Reach Us And Farewell

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:09

The National Member Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning. Welcome. To the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, where prepping doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Coming to you from a well-defended off-grid compound high in the mountains. Coming to you from his Florida room in Richmond, Virginia. Neither off-grid nor well-defended, unless you count as chickens and cats, here is your host, Keith.

SPEAKER_00: 0:41

Hey all it's Keith with the Commons and Practical Prepper Podcast, November the 30th, 2025. Today is the last day of November. Tomorrow is December 1st, if you can believe that. Couple administrative things I wanted to get out of the way. In the last podcast, my little political rant there at the beginning, I believe I said the United States was a democratic republic. Actually, we are a constitutional republic. My bad on that. Just wanted to get that correction out there. I'm sure there were a few folks that listened to it that said, wait a minute, you're completely off base. But I was listening to it a couple times and then I realized my mistake. So, constitutional republic. If you've been following the news, two West Virginia National Guard soldiers were ambushed in DC several days ago. One of the female guardsmen has died. She was only 20 years old and she enlisted just two days prior to being ambushed and murdered. The other West Virginia guardsman is in the hospital fighting for his life. The person under arrest is an Afghan national brought over after the fall of Kabul with tens of thousands of other Afghans. A lot of these folks were not vetted or vetted enough, so he is in custody. I also read that yesterday or the day before, another Afghan national was arrested for making a video on TikTok describing how he was making a bomb to be used at a military facility. I still see videos of folks protesting against ICE agents, interfering with their lawful duties, assaulting them, ramming their vehicles. It's like we're living in bizarro world. I am not sure in what world or what country this is tolerated. A few people get arrested, tear gas, but still it continues day after day after day. So enough of that. We'll get into the main topic of tonight's podcast. So as you know, last week, so a little over a week ago, I had a chance to go to the Omni Homestead Resort in Hot Springs, Virginia to decompress, unplug for a while, and enjoy some time away from home. I've also spoken about that I'm a retired police officer, retired about nine and a half years ago. And the transition, once I retired, the transition from law enforcement to the private sector was very easy for me. Now, I was not one of these cops that eat, slept, and breathed law enforcement. When I was off duty, I was off duty. When I came home from work, I left my uniform at the door. Still, when I was off duty, I was very vigilant and very aware of my surroundings, but I didn't take it to the extreme. There are some police officers I know that live that way 24-7, whether they are on duty, off duty, and have done that since they've retired. I was not like that. After about 15 years as a cop, I realized I was gonna make this a career. And at 25 years, give or take, go ahead and retire and have a pension and move on to my next career, which I was able to do successfully. So once I retired, I quit looking for expired license plates, expired inspection stickers, people driving like idiots. It was something that I was able to keep separate. I kept my law enforcement life, for the most part, separate from my personal life, but I know some cops that were never able to do that. So how that ties into the Omni Homestead is this. Went up there to decompress and leave the rest of the world behind for a bit. But like anything else, I'm someone who can't really sit still and I'm always thinking, and but it was nice to get away, don't get me wrong. So on the second night, I started thinking about what would happen if, because again, it's all about situational awareness, knowing where you are, and having a plan if something happens. But I didn't let that be at the forefront of all of my thoughts. It was just something in the back of my head, and I had a fantastic time, so I wasn't like suddenly looking all around. What happens if there's a fire? What happens if this guy's a bad guy? What happens if the power goes out? Nothing like that. But on the way back home, and then, you know, in the subsequent days after the trip, you think about things. I drove the Jeep up there, I had my get home bag, but being three and a half hours from home, depending on the situation, having a get home bag is only going to get you so far. I'm not hiking home a hundred and some miles through the mountains. Certainly not very plausible, I guess I should say. So I'm thinking, what if the power flickers? Then the power goes out completely. So you're looking around, obviously you should look for all of your exits, plenty of exits, plenty of ways to escape, plenty of ways of egress if there is a significant situation. Hundreds of guests, thousands of rooms, and this place is isolated. So a couple days ago, I Googled the homestead history when it comes to blackouts and natural disasters, certainly up in the mountains, snowstorms in that part of Virginia. Certainly plausible. It turns out that they have been tested before. So June 29th, 2012, that big Derecho storm barrels through the mid-Atlantic like a freight train. Straight line winds up to 90 miles an hour, trees snapping like matchsticks, slamming Bath County, where the resort is located. And I found a news story by WHSV out of Harrisonburg that covered it pretty well. So it was roughly 250,000 people without power, the Shenandoah Valley, including Hot Springs, Virginia. So the way they reported it, the report paints crews, volunteers, firefighters, Virginia Department of Transportation chainsawing all the side roads through the night, trying to open up the roads as best they can. So folks at the resort hunkered down in the dark. They had generators in the kitchen, but everything else for the most part was black. There was also a heat wave in the upper 90s making it very muggy during that power outage. So you have no air conditioning. 34 people died, either directly or indirectly associated with this particular storm and the heat. They were without power in most areas between four and seven days, and full grid came back in early July. I also was able to research and locate some guest stories, some folks that were actually interviewed to try to get a little more background and a little more context on this particular storm. One couple came in just before the storm hit. They're in the middle of dinner, lights went out, whole place went dark. The staff fumbled around for about 20 minutes or so, were able to find flashlights and lanterns, got everybody into the lobby because the generators ran just a small percentage of this resort. And this place is huge. No AC, so humidity's way up right off the bat. And when I was there, we noticed that almost all of the windows, this place is old. All of the windows had been painted so many times the windows were painted shut. In the rooms in our room, and then the other rooms I were able to look at, the windows did not open. I don't know how many layers of paint. I can't even begin to count the layers of paint that were on these windows. So a lot of guests just kind of took it in stride. Some called it an unexpected adventure. Some folks were able to leave when the roads were barely accessible. So some folks were able to get out of there after a few days. But some folks were not that lucky. Some had large families, some had to go different directions, and the roads that were open weren't necessarily the way that they needed to go. So some people were there for several days. There were trees down everywhere, power outage, trying to keep the kids occupied. So according to some of the reviews and the news reports, that people raided the walk-in fridges for sandwiches before the meat soured. Now the geothermal pools stayed nice and warm, hence the name geothermal. But I'm not sure if I would want to be in a geothermal pool when it's 95 degrees and 100% humidity, but at least it's wet. At least it can cool you off a little bit. But there were no riots. Of course, there were some people that were very upset. But for the most part, the folks working at the resort did a very good job. And in situations like that, you just have to make the best of it. You can bitch and moan all you want, but bitching and moaning and being upset at the staff that's doing their very best to make everybody as comfortable as possible in some very extreme conditions and having to worry about everybody's safety because they kind of switch into safety mode. They're not worried as much about, oh, can I get you another mint julep on the veranda as you need to be very careful, please stay in this area of the resort, because once the sun goes down, we don't have flashlights for every single person. But you're always going to have people that bitch and moan about something regardless of the situation. But from what I read, the folks working there did a very good job under very stressful circumstances. So that was nice to read. I got back home, I did the research. That was nice to know that they had at least some training. They knew what to do, they had some sort of plan. And I'm sure a lot of these resorts, I don't think they necessarily train on power outages, but they might. But they certainly have protocols for taking care of guests in situations like that. Everybody hopes that it's going to be out for five, 10, 15, 20 minutes, not several days. But when the storm blew through, it became very evident very quickly that they were in for some tough times for several days. Now there is no parking lot that's really connected to the resort itself. Everything's valet. I guess as a crow flies, my Jeep was only maybe a half mile, three-quarters mile away. If I was there and that exact same type of situation happened, I would have to walk to the Jeep, get my keys from the valet, and then get my go home bag. And depending on the situation, there are plenty of trees between the front door and that little valet parking lot. Odds are that was blocked as well. So I would have had to walk up to the Jeep, get the get home bag, and then bring it back down to the resort. Now in the get home bag, I have a lot of things that would make the stay a little more comfortable for us. Flashlights, food, water, everything else you would normally have in your get home bag. My in-reach Garmin 2 communicator. Okay said they did to communicate with family members. They do have Wi-Fi, but the Wi-Fi would have gone down in a power outage. And cell service there is spotty at best. If you're not on the Wi-Fi, even now, if you're not on the Wi-Fi, you might get one bar if you're lucky. Now, after a certain period of time, those cell towers are going down as well. You're incommunicado, radio silent, as soon as those cell towers go down. So in this instance, in that type of situation, the Garmin InReach Mini 2 or any other type of device that communicates via satellite would have been a godsend. Now, as far as powering that, I did have a power bank, or I do have a power bank in my go bag, and I do have a little solar charged battery bank. It's not it's not the best in the world. And with direct sunlight, it takes a couple hours to get a full charge. It's an anchor, and all of my battery backups and all of my battery banks are anchor. In my opinion, they do a fantastic job. So in direct sunlight, that would have charged the in-reach a couple times and have to recharge it. And that gets me to thinking, I probably would have offered the in-reach to some folks to make contact with family members. But you gotta be very careful about that. Again, people get desperate quick. And I'm sure in a situation like that, eventually I would have made contact with somebody. So let's say I'm sitting in the lobby, drinking a warm bottle of water, really nothing else to do. And you try to make conversation with folks and pass the time. And since I was never presented with that situation, I would have to really think about it. It's being a hypothetical, I'd have to think about what I advertise the fact that I had a little Garmin inreach. And I'm not sure that I would. I would be worried about being stolen. I would be worried about somebody physically trying to take it from me. So I think as I think about it, I would have had to be very careful about who knew if anybody knew that I had that satellite communicator. Now of the hundreds of people that are there, I don't know what the odds are of someone else having that. I would like to say maybe a few more people would have had one, but now that I think about it, maybe not. Because you go there to get away, you go there to unplug and decompress. So I don't know if Honey, I got the golf bags, do you have your dress? Did you pack my swimming trunks? Oh, and don't forget the Garmin InReach Mini 2 or the Starlink? I d I don't think that's at the top of anybody's packing list. Now it wasn't mine, but that was my get home bag and it was in the Jeep to begin with. So the more I think about it, you know, I come trucking down the hill with this backpack on my back. Well, where else do you put a backpack but your back? Silly. Anyway, come trucking down the driveway with my backpack, and I wonder what people would have thought when they're sitting out there on the rocking chairs sweating their butts off. And here I come doot to do to doot, coming down the hill with a backpack. It's like, what's this guy up to? We got Rambo rolling in with his backpack. What in the hell does he have in that? And why does he have that? So I probably would have done that when it was dark, not to advertise. Look at me, I'm prepared, and you're not. And again, if it's a situation where the lights are gonna be out, the power's gonna be out just for eight, ten, twelve hours, that's one thing. But this power was out for several days. So you catch yourself thinking about that, and since it being a hypothetical, and I'm going through this in my head right now, I probably would have waited till early morning or late evening, dusk, borrowed a flashlight, explained I needed to get something out of my car, go up and get the keys. I'm sure they would have let me do that. I'm sure they wouldn't have denied me access to my vehicle, not that I could have driven anywhere, but just something to think about. I think I would have been very reluctant to share what I had, especially the inreach. And folks, another shameless commercial plug, like I've said before, part of the August and Farms affiliate program. And I want to thank everyone who used the affiliate link to purchase something from Augustin Farms, because again, all the commissions, everything that I make through that affiliate link is being donated to the Chesterfield Food Bank. And so tomorrow morning, when I get up, I'll check the totals and I'll go ahead and drop the money off, write them a check, however they prefer, taking donations, and I'll let you all know what the total was and when I was able to provide that to them. So speaking of the affiliate link, that'll be in the show notes. Use podcast prep at checkout and get an additional 10% off. Now I have looked at their Black Friday Cyber Monday sales, and they have some excellent deals, as do all the other companies out there: long-term food storage, Amazon, Target, Walmart. Everybody's got their Black Friday, everybody's got their Cyber Monday stuff going on. August and Farms is no different than any other company. I think their 72-hour kit was 60% off, which is an excellent price. It's a one-person 72-hour bag, got a little handle, just kind of a grab and go thing. Really nice. I am also putting together a giveaway, and it's going to be, I believe it's going to be one of those fire blankets. I ordered several on Black Friday, and they should be here tonight or tomorrow. And I'm actually going to do a giveaway. Got to figure out how those things work. And since I have folks all over the world that listen to this, I will ship that worldwide. Folks in Australia, folks in the EU, Russia. I'm not sure if I can get that to you in Russia. I don't know if Putin allows fire blankets. I'm not sure how strict Russian customs are or how long it'll be tied up in Russian customs. But regardless, we'll do a giveaway. Not sure exactly how it works. I'll pick somebody at random. Maybe we'll do it through emails. You email me with your name or just say hello, and I take all those and I do a random generator. Oh, number three, Mike from Ocala, Florida, wins a fire blanket or whatever it happens to be. All right, folks, if we want to reach out, practical prep podcast at gmail.com. I'm still on the Twitters, Common Sense Practical Prepper Prep underscore Podcast. Alright, folks, thanks again for stopping by. I really do appreciate it. There are lots and lots of survival and prepping podcasters out there. I appreciate you listening to me. Please listen to other folks. Get your information from other preppers, but of all the other podcasts and all the other YouTube channels out there, I really do appreciate that you take the time to listen to me and the information that I pass along. All right, folks, as always, please be careful out there. Take care of one another, and until next time.

SPEAKER_01: 18:22

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