As several of you have already pointed out, it will be very difficult to prepare for a truly LONG emergency unless you are already living a self-sufficient lifestyle. This means you have the land and a good stockpile of the physical materials needed so you can just keep going while others fail, and yes the greatest cultural challenge would be to deal with the hordes of those who are unprepared who would desparately seek access to your resources. Also, I count as an emergency only something that arises over days, weeks, or months. Changes that occur over years will result in a lot of alternative strategies being developed, although there will still be a lot of disfunctionality occuring as well. It is much more likely that the average person will have to deal with a short emergency. I live in Hawaii on the Island of Oahu and I was shocked to see people lining up in front of darkened stores within a couple of hours of our earthquake to buy what I don't know. How hard can it be to set aside canned goods, bottled water, and batteries? I know the topic of this thread is long emergencies, but frankly only a tiny percentage of the population has the physical resources to grow their own food, while even someone living in a highrise could stockpile enough food and water to last a month. Keep in mind that there was essentially no damage on Oahu except that a couple of power generators shut down automatically and for reasons that are sort of unclear the rest of them couldn't juggle the remaining load and dropped off one by one. It took a while to start them all back up but it was done by the end of the day. Nothing was really broken. Meanwhile, as I drove to my brother's house 5 miles away to have breakfast courtesy of his SNG appliances and standby generator, WalMart and Times supermarket had lines out front. Apparently these people had provided themselves with NOTHING to eat and drink, and they couldn't even have been hungry yet, plus we still had running water! Their first instinct was to panic and mob stores. I exaggerate. There was no visible panic or moblike behavior, but the lines were there when everyone should have been sitting at home next to the supplies they could easily have purchased the month before, and should have, since we live in a hurricane area. There were news reports of stores charging exorbitant prices for batteries, water, etc. If we can't address such basic concerns, what hope is there for the majority of the population? Should we really expect the government to feed us before we're even hungry yet? I think the greatest challenge in any emergency situation will be to deal with the panic around you for a period of days or weeks. Beyond that only survivalists who are already geared up for self sufficiency will have much of a chance. Of course, it's easy for me to talk since I have never been in a true emergency. I am haunted by stories from Katrina of people crammed into the New Orleans convention center that were preyed upon by thugs. Granted, their houses were literally under water, but those people at least might have been better off if they could have camped on their own roofs with their own food and water supplies if there was any way to make their own little patch of turf defensible.

I've quit even trying to use RoundUp in our enormous driveway, because it's a joke. I'd have to do it every 6 weeks to keep the weeds under control that come up through the seams in the cement. I got a super weed killer from Atwoods that seem to be marginally better for that area, but I wouldn't want to use it anyplace else. I'm just not sure whether it has any soil activity or not, and I would not want to find out the hard way. I always try to read the labels and check for soil activity or residual effect before I use a new product. Lily Miller has some good brush killers, but I don't know if they're available in OK. Maybe the day will eventually come when I've been able to get the worst of the crabgrass roots out of the garden, but I'm afraid it will be a very long time from now. Some of the vegetation on an edge of the veggie garden was so thick and overgrown that we didn't own a weed-eater strong enough to cope with it when we began clearing it this spring. Not even the big gas high-wheel one. It was a tangle of honeysuckle, wild rose, Virginia creeper, poison oak and a whole lot of other vigorous stuff. It all had to be sprayed and then chopped out by hand. Unfortunately, it has all come right back and seems to be thriving. I suppose that next year we could repeat the process and then I could put down industrial weedcloth and cover it up with mulch, but I don't know that it would be really effective. I've tried using our paper feed sacks, covered with mulch, but the weeds end up growing right through them. I've really never seen anything quite like it. If I could bottle up that vigor and transfer it over to more fragile commercial landscape plants, I'd have it made. Pat

In slang terms, some finishers call it a "mop". It's similar to a floor mop that has loops rather than the old standard type. Most drywall suppliers carry them but even if you were to get the exact tool used, it's giong to be tough unless your finishers know how to experiment with the mix and type of compound originally used. It can be done trial and error if they are willing to spend the time on it without gouging you for big dinero.

The mystery of the missing 3" is solved. Your blind corner notated on the diagram as being pulled 2 1/4" (really should be 3"). However, if it's a standard 42" BBC, which is usually a 42"/45" it's not being shown as being pulled on your diagram. It's shown as occupying 42" of space. A blind corner base has a minimum and maximum to be pulled. It's going to need to be pulled to 45" to not interfere with your range, but on your diagram, it's shown as flush to the wall. BBC come in 36"/39", 39"/42", and 42"/45" in most lines. If you wanted the cabinet to occupy the 42" space and give you clearance around the range, the choice should have been a 39"/42" BBC pulled to 42". That would have fit your diagram as shown. What you have won't let you open your BBC drawer with your range there. That accounts for the 3" for base cabs but not the uppers. They will no longer by symmetrical in matching the lowers. Your 18" wall cabinet on the right will need to be switched to a 21" cabinet, or a 3" filler added between it and the corner cabinet if you want to maintain symmetry between uppers and lowers. That accounts for the 3" in the uppers. Really and truly, you need whomever measured this kitchen to come back out and make sure there aren't any other measuring errors to be dealt with in this design. Using the non pulled dimension of the BBC is an amateur mistake and at this point, I wouldn't trust them to have gotten everything else right, including the correct dimensions of the original kitchen. Take your tape measure and measure that NOW! And then measure out your diagram yourself with a tape measure and a pencil on the wall to verify.