What you’re going to need after you have a plan to provide food, shelter and other basic needs for yourself and your family is to make sure that you have what you need to keep from getting the virus.

You’re going to also need a way to protect your personal safety. Whenever a pandemic occurs, there is often a collapse of certain societal norms – such as the ability to get food and water, gas and even money.

When that happens, there can be factions of people who decide that they’re going to walk outside of the boundaries of the law and take what they need. Some people are opportunists who will hunt for other people that they can prey on.

 Safety Items You Need

Because the Ebola virus can spread so quickly and be so devastating when it touches a life, you need to be prepared for all of the ways that the virus can come at you.

The first item that you’re going to need will be a supply of the N95 masks. You’ll need these for every member of your family. You can find these in packages with a few or with plenty at medical supply stores, but since you’re going to want to buy them in bulk, your best bet is to order them online.

Plus, you’ll save money getting them online over the higher cost of buying them at a medical store. Figure that you need at least several months’ worth of masks for every person who will need to wear one.

You’ll want a supply that will last you 3 months at a minimum but planning for longer (a year or two) is better. If a year seems excessive, all you have to do is take a look at the current outbreak.

It actually began in December with the host victim but wasn’t properly recognized as the Ebola virus until March. It’s raged on for an additional five months since then, bringing the total time the virus has run rampant among people to a total of nine months so far – but it’s still not controlled.

This is why getting enough masks for a year minimum is the best way to make sure your family’s safety is taken care of. When you wear the masks, you’ll want to make sure that the areas around the mask seal well to your face.

You don’t want any openings at all because the Ebola virus can get into your body through any mucus membrane area. So if you have to seal around the mask with tape to make sure it’s secure, then do that.

You can also find these masks with filters in them – but they’re more expensive. Whatever kind of mask you get, you want to make sure that you don’t try to fit an adult-sized mask onto a child.

There’s too much room for error that way. There are separate masks made just for children that you can buy, so get them a minimum of a year’s supply as well if you can.

You might have seen articles telling you that you should wear safety glasses in order to protect your eyes from being an entry point for the Ebola virus. But you should only use safety glasses as a last resort.

These are open on the sides and fluid from a contaminated individual can splash up and catch you in the corner of the eye where you’re not protected. Instead of safety glasses, you’ll want to purchase safety goggles.

These come with a rubber seal around the sides of them so they’ll adhere to your face and offer you more protection that a simple pair of safety glasses will. But if you can’t get the goggles, then anything is better than nothing.

Don’t forget to make sure you get some kid-sized ones to protect the children in your family. Outerwear is also paramount to your protection during a pandemic. There are two kinds of outerwear that you can get.

You can buy the disposable kind or the heavy-duty plastic kind, a re-usable kind. You might see these listed as chemical protection suits or training suits. If they have that label, it means that those are the suits that are used in dangerous situations like where there’s been a chemical spill or the rough places where a first responder might need to go to help someone.

These suits can be very expensive, often costing a couple of hundred dollars or more. There are pros and cons to both kinds of suits.  The disposable suits usually have sleeves and pant legs that have strong elastic in them so that they fit pretty snugly against your skin in order to keep out any viruses.

Some of these suits also come with fitted hoods so that you can cover the sides of your face to keep your ears protected. The strength and durability of the disposable hazmat suits depend on the brand that you buy and what the fabric consists of.

Some are more resistant to tears and breakdowns than other brands are. So always choose a brand that has a good track record for being resistant to tears. When you’re done using these, you have to dispose of them properly so that any germs on the suit aren’t carried back with you once you remove the outerwear.

The heavy-duty hazmat suits have to be decontaminated after use and if you’re not set up to deal with a contamination area without accidentally infecting yourself, then you’ll want to go with the disposable suits.

Some of the heavy-duty hazmat suits come with extras already attached – such as the gloves you’ll need to use to protect yourself. You’ll need to have plenty of gloves on hand and these can’t be those flimsy household gloves like the thin cleaning gloves you find at the grocery store.

Those nicks and tear open at the fingertips far too easily. They can’t stand up to long use, either. You don’t want to cover your body with a sturdy hazmat suit and then jeopardize yourself by choosing cheap gloves.

 Protection Is a Must

You’ll need to be aware of any late-breaking news in the event of a pandemic. Since you may not be able to count on society working the way it has, you’ll need to make sure that you have items that don’t rely on an electricity infrastructure to operate.

Emergency broadcasts will still be done – even if society breaks down during a pandemic. So you’ll want to make sure that you have a solar powered radio. You’ll also want to make sure that you have solar-powered flashlights and light sticks so that you can see in the event of blackouts.

You’ll need a means of keeping in contact with others. Even if electricity is down, that doesn’t mean you can’t use your phone. There are solar-powered units that can keep a cell phone charged up so that you can communicate with family members who may not be near you.

You also want to make sure that you have a way to communicate with any medical personnel if you have to. That’s where the cell phone or a two-way radio can come in handy.

You’ll need items that will help you start a fire and you’ll need a backpack that contains first aid equipment and personal hygiene items. Besides what you need to survive, you’ll also need the protection of a different sort.

Having a multi-purpose knife on hand can help you accomplish a variety of tasks you might need to do. It can help you cut twine to string up a thermal blanket as a shelter if you need to in a pinch.

But a knife can also give you protection and even save your life if the need arises. Regardless of how you feel about weapons, you will need a way to take care of your personal safety.

When a pandemic hits, there will always be someone who will be caught without supplies. These people will take yours – and worse – if you don’t have a way to defend yourself.

One of these means can be a knife. You can choose from knives like a tactical knife or a jungle knife. If you’re not sure which kind of knife you want to have on hand, you can search for survival knives and choose the one that’s best for you.

You’ll also need to have at least one gun. More is better – and you’ll need the ammunition to go along with that weapon. Long rifles can be used for protection, but they can also be used to hunt for food so that you can have meat with your food supply in the event that you need it.

You’ll also want to carry a personal handgun on a hip holster with you at all times in the event that lawlessness breaks out. You can get a small gun and some people like to go with a 9mm, a .38, or a .45.

You may never need to use any of the weapons to protect yourself or your loved ones, but you’ll be glad that you have them if an event does occur in which you have to fight back.

You must have food in order to survive an Ebola outbreak. You should start now planning on how you’re going to feed yourself and your family in the event that the outbreak reaches a crisis level in your area like it’s reached in its host country.

Remember that it’s always better to be prepared and not need it than to need it and not have a way to get it. Food security can go a long way toward easing the stress and fear that always accompanies a pandemic.

There are three ways that you can prepare to feed yourself and your loved ones during an Ebola outbreak. You can use gardens, both indoor and outdoor and you can begin to store food right now for survival.

Indoor Survival Garden

 Growing food indoors helps you be able to keep an eye on the growth rate and watch out for any potential risks. It’s one of the easiest ways to grow food. There are some foods you can grow indoors that you want to pay special attention to because of the way the foods can help strengthen your immune system.

You’ll find many of these foods in the fruit family. One of these foods you can grow indoors is blueberries. Blueberry plants can grow to a good height, so you’ll need some room – but what they give you back in return is worth it. Blueberries contain antioxidants that help your body. The berries can be eaten as a snack or added to other foods. They can also be canned. Strawberries are another fruit you can easily grow inside your home.

They give your body some great benefits, too, and can also be added to other foods and made into preserves. Tomatoes also grow well indoors. Many of the foods that you can grow outside can be grown inside the home.

That includes green foods such as broccoli and kale. Squash can also be grown in an indoor garden. It can take some time to grow a sustainable garden, so you don’t want to waste any time getting started.

Go ahead now and gather the supplies you need such as soil, containers, lighting, and whatever the plants need to grow well. You can pick up starter plants or use seed packets.

Some places offer packets of starter plants or seeds already bundled for a survival garden. To get the number of fruits and vegetables you have to have to take care of your needs, you have to provide for the plant’s needs.

This means that you need to be sure you have a way to give the plants the amount of sunlight they need to use for growth. Most people don’t have enough windows that let in the sunlight for the number of plants they want to grow.

So what some of these indoor gardeners do is use lights that can mimic natural sunlight. This helps the plant grow as if it were planted outside. The best choice for the type of lighting to use is to pick up on the metal halide ones.

Hidden Gardens

When a pandemic hits, life can quickly get into an uproar. The risk of martial law is high because ordinary citizens will often become desperate in their attempts to get what they need to survive.

This means that people who would normally obey the laws of the land won’t – because they’ll be looking for a way to survive, too. The unprepared won’t hesitate to come after the goods of the prepared.

So you don’t want to make it obvious that you’re well prepared for an outbreak. These kinds of gardens blend in with their surroundings and don’t look noticeable to anyone who might happen to be passing by. It’s tucked away right in the middle of natural vegetation, so it just looks like a brush. But you can grow foods from hidden gardens, also called permaculture gardens, with minimal effort.

These types of gardens don’t take a lot of room or time to build. And they’re capable of more yield than a regular garden. It can feed you for a good length of time without you having to use any kind of pesticide treatment and without you having to pull out any pesky weeds.

These kinds of gardens use natural compost so the soil is always rich and ready. Nature knows how to protect itself and how to thrive what it grows without any help from man.

This is what you can tap into when you’re using hidden gardens to grow food. If you’ll notice, in nature, there never seems to be a shortage of rich, vibrant plants in shady areas.

That’s because that’s what those plants need to thrive and you’ll use the same concept when you’re planting. You’ll put things that need shade closer to the taller plants and trees that provide it.

For plants that need more sunlight, you’ll lay them out beyond the shade scope. You’ll also put into place plants that will naturally protect your garden from animals that would eat it.

Every animal has a type of plant, flower, vegetable, or fruit that it knows instinctively to avoid. You’ll plant these items in a way that will circle and protect your items.

When planting a hidden garden, you don’t lay one out the way you would a regular garden. These kinds aren’t planted as row after row of plants or seeds. Instead, they’re planted as layers.

So when someone walks upon it, all they see is ground cover – but what can actually be there is something like beans, cucumbers, blueberries, and more. To someone who doesn’t know what he’s looking for, it all looks like overgrown nature.

The way that you’ll make sure that your garden has enough water to sustain it is by using natural rainwater. In nature, rain always runs from higher ground to lower ground.

You can use water runoff from above your garden to collect and water your plants from the ground up by using ridges to keep the water where you need it to be.

Survival Food Storage

You want to stockpile food while there’s still time. The stuff that you get from the grocery store isn’t going to last forever, but there are ways you can store food so that it keeps for several years and helps you and your family survive.

If you start now, you can have your supply on hand before there’s a rush in grocery stores and the supplies you want are gone. The way that you store food will determine if it will make it for the long haul or not.

Food can keep in dry, cool storage for many years – even beyond the expiration date labeled on the product. Extreme temperatures and moisture are culprits that cause food to begin to break down and make it inedible.

Store foods that have a long shelf life. These are foods like beans and grains. Meats may not be as plentiful during a pandemic, so beans will give you protein and grains will help you feel fuller.

The best kinds of grains to store are ones like cornmeal, flour, wheat, and brown rice. Since dairy may be an issue if you don’t have a cow that produces milk, you’ll want to lay aside a supply of powdered milk.

This is a product that can be safely kept for decades before being used. Always get your staples first. You can survive a long time with just staples and while it might not be a fancy feast, it will keep you from going hungry.

So if you have to financially choose where to start, begin by stockpiling your staples. This is how people in the olden days managed to make it year after year on very few items purchased from the general stores.

The foods you want to start with are foods like flour, peanut butter, sugar, seeds, honey, tea, lard, oils, coffee, and canned goods. While some people don’t necessarily think of canned goods as staples, when it comes to surviving, they are.

Canned goods are foods that have one of the longest shelf lives and can also last for many years. Make sure that if you have small children or an infant, that you take into account their nutritional needs such as if you need baby formula.

The powered cans of formula can also last for many years – long enough for a child to be weaned. The place you keep your food should have a temperature of right around 50-58 degrees for maximum storage length.

There are containers that you can buy specifically to store the food. You’ll want to do this to protect foods that come in bags because rodents can gnaw through the bags.

Place the foods into the container and seal them up. Always label every container in your storage area so that you don’t have to open them to find out what’s inside.

Oxygen is not a friend to your stored food and will quickly spoil your supply. Don’t rely too much on freezer foods because you never know how long you may or may not have electricity to keep your refrigerator and freezer in working condition.

Even in the event of a pandemic, you might have power outages because the people running the grids will be susceptible to disease, too – and there may not be enough people to keep things running smoothly.