Prepping

[CaptainSlow]

Mods: Do we really need another Brexit thread?

[AAz01]

5 pages in and only 2 people have actually read my original post

I said I'm not trying to prep for a zombie apocalypse - I want enough supplies to be OK for a week if there's a weather disaster, etc. If I had the time and money, it would be nice to know I could be self-sufficient over a long period - but I don't and I can't.

You might have always lived in Britain but that doesn't mean you can't learn from other countries' experience. I have lived in a civilised first-world country where at one point gas masks and sealing doors with duct tape was a part of our life - and no my family wasn't crazy they were government issues gas masks which everyone had to use. It does happen.

Britain's not that far from places where economic/war/other disasters have left people hungry. If I live as long as my grandparents I've got another 75 years - go 75 years back from today (1941) and a stash of food/water/medicine/cash would have been pretty bloody useful! And of course one week's worth of water wouldn't go far in WW2, but for every 6 year war there are many more short-term disasters. Is a week-long power cut or extended period of snow really out of the realms of possibility?

We're talking about a small stash in the garage of food/water/medicine/heat not Alexandria from The Walking Dead

[p1stonhead]

Captain Benzo said:

I'm not even slightly worried
Brother in law produces 8% of the UK's potatoes (circa 18,000,000kg (yup millions of kg) per year.

Thats just enough for one irish family.

[RizzoTheRat]

AAz01 said:

We're talking about a small stash in the garage of food/water/medicine/heat not Alexandria from The Walking Dead

On your original list the butane and dog food are the only thing I don't have (not much point, have a charcoal BBQ and don't have a dog, plus as any Red Dwarf fan knows there's a reason dogs lick their balls...), but I don't consider it prepping, they're all things I (or the wife) use fairly regularly

ApOrbital said:

I own a ROC post with the right amount of food and water i could live in it for over a year without going outside.

That's quite cool, what sort of condition is it in?

[Colonial]

5ohmustang said:

It was just a matter of time before they found me, the anti gun liberals are here.

Nah mate. Not paranoid at all.

We'll hector and preach and holler at you and demand you eat your vegetables. Maybe even force feed you some organic spelt sourdough with dukkah and organic extra virgin olive oil.

Better take your wife and kids and head for the hills. If you expose your family to liberals your wife may get excited about the idea of a man who doesn't spend his weekends in a twig covered hole, and your kids may get ideas about actually being part of society and interacting with people in a normal ways.

[ApOrbital]

Very good all cleaned out fully restored no damp issue at all.

[jshell]

I remember living in Edinburgh during the significant snow-falls of 2010. The rail lines South were shut, the main roads South were shut. Our local petrol station ran out of fuel and the supermarket ran out of bread.

Nothing too bad, but did make me realise that any prolonged extreme weather event or some Pandemic (google Spanish Flu) would or could lead to a fairly quick breakdown.

I haven't actually started storing food, or planning/prepping for anything, but I did find it interesting how people immediately reacted by panic-buying.

I probably won't start prepping now, either.

[DonkeyApple]

AAz01 said:

5 pages in and only 2 people have actually read my original post

I said I'm not trying to prep for a zombie apocalypse - I want enough supplies to be OK for a week if there's a weather disaster, etc. If I had the time and money, it would be nice to know I could be self-sufficient over a long period - but I don't and I can't.

You might have always lived in Britain but that doesn't mean you can't learn from other countries' experience. I have lived in a civilised first-world country where at one point gas masks and sealing doors with duct tape was a part of our life - and no my family wasn't crazy they were government issues gas masks which everyone had to use. It does happen.

Britain's not that far from places where economic/war/other disasters have left people hungry. If I live as long as my grandparents I've got another 75 years - go 75 years back from today (1941) and a stash of food/water/medicine/cash would have been pretty bloody useful! And of course one week's worth of water wouldn't go far in WW2, but for every 6 year war there are many more short-term disasters. Is a week-long power cut or extended period of snow really out of the realms of possibility?

We're talking about a small stash in the garage of food/water/medicine/heat not Alexandria from The Walking Dead

Water purification system and a case of baked beans. It'll cost about £30.

[FlyingMeeces]

AAz01 said:

5 pages in and only 2 people have actually read my original post

I said I'm not trying to prep for a zombie apocalypse - I want enough supplies to be OK for a week if there's a weather disaster, etc. If I had the time and money, it would be nice to know I could be self-sufficient over a long period - but I don't and I can't.

You might have always lived in Britain but that doesn't mean you can't learn from other countries' experience. I have lived in a civilised first-world country where at one point gas masks and sealing doors with duct tape was a part of our life - and no my family wasn't crazy they were government issues gas masks which everyone had to use. It does happen.

Britain's not that far from places where economic/war/other disasters have left people hungry. If I live as long as my grandparents I've got another 75 years - go 75 years back from today (1941) and a stash of food/water/medicine/cash would have been pretty bloody useful! And of course one week's worth of water wouldn't go far in WW2, but for every 6 year war there are many more short-term disasters. Is a week-long power cut or extended period of snow really out of the realms of possibility?

We're talking about a small stash in the garage of food/water/medicine/heat not Alexandria from The Walking Dead

Essential meds, I will concede - especially with the laws governing what pharmacies will dispense and the degree to which it's now all housed in a series of NHS IT systems with a foundation of quicksand, I've an absolute rule not to drop below a week's supply of any regular med, and a month for the two which actually are sometimes affected by supply problems. But for anyone on anything important and long term that wouldn't remotely register as 'readiness', just common sense.

Everything else - especially in terms of food shortages - won't catch us by surprise. If stuff started going South to a degree where we started having supply chain problems we'd know months and months in advance of anything actually being affected, at least anyone paying any attention at all to stuff on the world stage. Unless, possibly, you're on St. Kilda or something, extreme weather is also something we'll see coming from a long, long way off - plenty of time to fill the bath or whatever and also plenty of time for the utilities companies to put their actually-pretty-decent-really contingency plans into action.

It would be a little different if we were in a significant earthquake zone, prone to wildfires razing whole cities etc. But we ain't.

[DonkeyApple]

5ohmustang said:

It was just a matter of time before they found me, the anti gun liberals are here.

Here's the thing:

1- I am right of centre.
2- I own firearms.
3- You weren't 'found'. You are standing on a hill, waving you're arms and shouting 'I'm mental'.

We can obviously also add 'paranoid' now to the list.

[RizzoTheRat]

jshell said:

I did find it interesting how people immediately reacted by panic-buying.

Dunno if the same happened in France recently but when we had the tanker drivers strike in the UK some years back most of the shortages were caused by people panic buying, there were people queuing to refill their tanks when they'd only used a fivers worth.

I was involved with the IT side of some civil resilience exercises a few years ago, an interesting decision point was when to force garages to close to save the remaining fuel for the emergency services.

[anonymous-user]

5ohmustang said:

It was just a matter of time before they found me, the anti gun liberals are here.

And you say the pro-gun lot aren't paranoid...

[vanordinaire]

AAz01 said:

5 pages in and only 2 people have actually read my original post

I said I'm not trying to prep for a zombie apocalypse - I want enough supplies to be OK for a week if there's a weather disaster, etc. If I had the time and money, it would be nice to know I could be self-sufficient over a long period - but I don't and I can't.

You might have always lived in Britain but that doesn't mean you can't learn from other countries' experience. I have lived in a civilised first-world country where at one point gas masks and sealing doors with duct tape was a part of our life - and no my family wasn't crazy they were government issues gas masks which everyone had to use. It does happen.

Britain's not that far from places where economic/war/other disasters have left people hungry. If I live as long as my grandparents I've got another 75 years - go 75 years back from today (1941) and a stash of food/water/medicine/cash would have been pretty bloody useful! And of course one week's worth of water wouldn't go far in WW2, but for every 6 year war there are many more short-term disasters. Is a week-long power cut or extended period of snow really out of the realms of possibility?

We're talking about a small stash in the garage of food/water/medicine/heat not Alexandria from The Walking Dead

Sorry if we've picked up your thread wrong. As I said previously, I'm not a survivalist but live in a remote area where power cuts/ severe weather are quite possible/prevalent. We have been isolated for up to two weeks at a time in the past so can give some advice on what we stock up on (especially during the winter)
1) Food:- the simpler the better, plenty of flour, sugar, salt etc. We grow our own potatoes and onions but if not, buy them by the sack and have them stored in a cool dry place away from mice. Dried peas and beans.
Not an essential, but I always keep at least one spare packet of each type of dried herbs/spices as well as the one that's open. Freshly frozen prepped veg in the freezer, if you loose electricity,keep the freezer door shut as much as possible and they'll stay cold for a week, beyond that it'll usually be when it's cold enough to move them outside into a shed. Milk stores well in the freezer in these big 4 pint plastic bottles, it goes yellow and seperates but when it thaws, give it a shake and it'll go back to normal. No point in storing more than a week's worth though in case of power cuts. We keep a crate of UHT in the back of a cupboard and a couple of tins of dried powdered milk. As many tins of beans, peas, tomatoes etc as you have room for, use them throughout the normal year though and replace to the back of the store as you use them.
2)Fuel:- try to have at least two different sources of heat/light/ cooking fuel . ie if your normal cooker is electric, make sure you have a gas or meths camping stove. Have a drawer full of battery torches and candles(and matches), have one or two oil lamps. If possible, keep a small generator and fuel in a shed, get an isolator fitted to your mains fuse box so you can plug the genny into your circuit. Only use the genny for fridge and essential lights and you should get away with one of these little 600 OR 800kvA ones.
If you have a fireplace, or barbeque, keep a store of fuel or them (I've cooked christmas dinner on a barbeque in the back garden at -6C)
If you've plenty of fuel in your car, even if you can't move it, start it up regularly to keep the battery topped up, use the radio to listen for news, and warm yourself up, if it's parked near the house, connect up an invertor so you can use it as an extra electrical supply.
3) Water:- we're on a private spring supply so only have issues if it freezes, if that's the case, we thaw out ice in the bath for washing, flushing etc and have a few gallon containers of drinking water in store, make sure they are emptied and refilled regularly. In town, use the water in the attic tank sparingly, shut of the valve to the toilet cistern and use waste water in a bucket to flush.
4) Medicine :-keep a well stocked first aid kit in the house and in every vehicle, check and update regularly, loads of extra antiseptic wipes. Antibiotics are useful in extreme (survivalist)situations but not practical to obtain or store, just make sure you have plenty of antiseptic, painkillers, and anti-imflamatories and again, make sure they are up to date.
5) Entertainment:- pack of cards, board games, books, writing and drawing stuff, and share your time with neighbours.(although don't give them all your food)

[walm]

FlyingMeeces said:

...plenty of time to fill the bath or whatever...

Exactly my thoughts.
If you think water is going to be a problem just get a water butt attached to a gutter and fill the bath as soon as you start getting worried.
And buy some purification tabs - no one is that far from a river.
And it's the UK - so... you know - rain.

[jshell]

DonkeyApple said:

5ohmustang said:

It was just a matter of time before they found me, the anti gun liberals are here.

Here's the thing:

1- I am right of centre.
2- I own firearms.
3- You weren't 'found'. You are standing on a hill, waving you're arms and shouting 'I'm mental'.

We can obviously also add 'paranoid' now to the list.

So much said, so accurately, with so few words!

[jshell]

RizzoTheRat said:

jshell said:

I did find it interesting how people immediately reacted by panic-buying.

Dunno if the same happened in France recently but when we had the tanker drivers strike in the UK some years back most of the shortages were caused by people panic buying, there were people queuing to refill their tanks when they'd only used a fivers worth.

I was involved with the IT side of some civil resilience exercises a few years ago, an interesting decision point was when to force garages to close to save the remaining fuel for the emergency services.

Big risk in that the stupidity of people will exacerbate the situation - fast! If things went completely South, I think getting away from people would be paramount to survival.

[DonkeyApple]

jshell said:

Big risk in that the stupidity of people will exacerbate the situation - fast! If things went completely South, I think getting away from people would be paramount to survival.

It's got logic but it's not as if people would be leaving urban environments in an orderly manner. I would think that the reality would be that unless you have the natural ability to be wholly self sufficient out in the sticks (provide for a family in face of superior competition for supplies from locals who are a team, know the area and see you as part of their survival plan) then logic would dictate that you remain with the masses in your home environment as that is where the emergency services are going to be focusing their support. Tinned food, water purification and better door locks than your neighbours are all you really need. If any of that.

[shakotan]

p1stonhead said:

Captain Benzo said:

I'm not even slightly worried
Brother in law produces 8% of the UK's potatoes (circa 18,000,000kg (yup millions of kg) per year.

Thats just enough for one irish family.

How many potatoes does it take to kill an Irishman?

None.

[Foliage]

1. Purification system, reverse osmosis pump of similar
2. Simple off the shelf kit will do, to british standard, plenty of dressings. Make sure you have shears.
3. Pulses, Nuts and Rice/pasta ie dried long life foods
4. Small bills, stashed in various locations in your house, a few bills in a book etc.
5. A training course
7. Bic lighters, a few of them.
10. Not sure why?
12. Or wind up, also candles.
13. and thick plastic sheeting, for repair smashed windows etc or sealing larger openings (chimney etc)
15. Make sure they are correct spec, british standard.
22. Correct leads for your mobile phone
23. Fuel? Cooking Pots?
25. Why?

[bigandclever]

ApOrbital said:

Very good all cleaned out fully restored no damp issue at all.

Good point.

27) Fleshlight