I hope this topic doesn't become an inditement of the 'tin foil hat' crowd.
But there's something to be said for being a little prepared.
I live in a part of Texas that can, and has, gotten at least part of a hurricane, ending up here.
So having food and water for at least a couple of weeks, it not that outlandish of an idea.
Since most of you have seen my posts in the gun topic, you all know that I have a few of those.
But I didn't want this to become a secondary gun forum.
What types of food do you stockpile? How do you store water?
Medical supplies. Fire making. Knifes. Fishing. Lighting. Water Purification. News gathering/Communication.
And ammo.
03-09-2019, 03:19 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-09-2019, 03:23 PM by silverwolf1.)
I'm a former Green Beret, as I've mentioned in the past.
I have a nearly 5 year supply of MRE's always at hand. (In the past it was "ranger rat's", for those who knew them). I also grow, raise, butcher, smoke, cure, can etc. my own foods which gives me an additional years supply or so.
I'm on a mountain spring fed well, with two other springs surfacing on my property literally out of granite rock that I've tapped and fill emergency bottles from. I keep 2 stock tanks filled in a cellar under the "bug out" cabin, refilling every week. Not a lot of worry about purification here, but I have a 5 gallon activated charcoal unit to use if I need it for basic stuff. For personal use, I have several Camelbak bladders that have .1 micron filters.
I have multiple Medical kits, all surplus Army Medic kits that I rotate supplies from every six months to a year. One in the house, the barn, the cabin and one I carry in my truck just in case. Being in the mountains, it could be a while before medical care gets to you or someone else. They've come in handy more than once. I also have a smaller kit I carry when hiking etc.
I keep flint and steel in all my survival kits, (barn, house cabin and truck) as well as magnesium fire starter sticks and a baggy of cotton balls and dryer lint. In the truck & cabin kits I also keep a few pieces of creosote soaked "Fatwood". You'll start any fire with that. In my "carry" kit, I keep a smaller version of the magnesium fire stick and a baggy of dryer lint.
In every kit I keep fishhooks and a spool of line, and in my carry kits 25 feet of line and 10 hooks on a plastic carrier.
Lighting changed a while back in most of my kits. I went to LED lights, but YOU HAVE TO CHECK THE BATTERIES every 6 months.(My whole house is LED now) I change them out for new, and use the old elsewhere. In the buildings I also keep kerosene lanterns and candles (in the barn keep them only in my office). I'm also on a generator for the house and barn (22kw Generak) that lasts a while. The cabin is partly solar powered, a project I'm just starting. When it's complete I'll have a better "bug-out" location.
Knives. I grew up near a well known, well respected knife-makers. I have several of their knives in every one of my kits. My go-to's have always been an original USMC K-BAR, and a hawks beak bladed and wide flat straight bladed "Electricians" folding model. I have one of each I carry every day.
Those hand cranked radios cannot be beat for the price. have one in every kit, even the truck. I even carry one hiking sometimes when I still hike.
Ammo is the biggest problem. It has to be accounted for here in NY now, so lets just say I have none.
sw
MREs are a great way to keep plenty of food on hand. I've got a 2 year supply currently and add to it at every opportunity.
well water fed by an underground stream
extensive collection of medical supplies
cotton balls little bottles of kerosene and waterproof matches, flint and steel and a 'hot-wire' kit steel wool and batteries
gasoline lanterns chemical glowsticks, flares, and LED flashlights (both rechargeable and regular battery) as a backup for generator fed LED house lighting
House power is and has always been generator power, I upgraded the old 4kw cast iron set that was originally installed for a much more fuel efficient 6500w (8500w surge) Honda which is much more fuel efficient, and kept the old generator as a backup. serviced it so it works perfectly and I use it when changing oil on the new Honda.
500 gallons of non ethanol unleaded gasoline in the main storage tank and another 250 gallons in smaller portable tanks and cans. added a t-valve and fuel line so the generator feeds off a 35 gallon steel feed tank (with a 5 micron filter) for extended runtime.
6500w is plenty as the only large appliance is the window AC unit in summer. well pump is a Honda gx200 powered pump (replaced an old briggs model k powered pump with a thrown rod) cookstove is an ancient coleman "instant gas" gasoline range pic1 pic2 though mine doesnt look as nice as the one in those pictures. water heater is a similar instant gas gasoline design, and washer is a gasoline powered maytag. no drier i use a clothesline so no need for one.
heat with kerosene heaters plus an ancient coleman number 5 instant gas radiant heater, so 6500w power capability is way overkill. even the original 4000w generator that came with the house was way overkill except for running window AC units in summer but even that only pulls the new generator to about 50% load. VERY large muffler in a tall ''smokestack" in the generator shed so its really quiet.
good collection of knives.
I reload ammo so this is not a problem.
working on installing a solar power system a few modules at a time to save even more fuel.
My preparedness ideology tends to lean toward carrying a light load and being able to maneuver as opposed to the typical hunkering down. I live on the outskirts of town, though and if things did get bad, it might be in y best interest to relocate, practically.
That said, my minimalist setup includes a few lifestraws, firestarters, LED flashlights and lanterns, a few gas masks and some Tyvek chem suits (you never know, there's a lot of industry around here and large scale chemical spills do happen). I've got a few good knives, trust my life to KaBar, a small gasoline generator, drone with a camera, med kit in the truck and in the house.
Food-wise, I've got about two weeks worth of non-perishables that'll feed four individuals and I keep around the same in a supply of water.
plenty of paracord, freshly stocked tacklebox, assortment of tools, CB radio, batteries, batteries and more batteries.
Firearms and ammo, I'm good, got enough to hunt if needed or put up a defense against most practical threats.
Now that I own my own home, I may eventually work toward getting it a little more setup to hunker down in if that's an option but for me, personally, I like the idea of being versatile, mobile and light. I may build a small, offroad camper here soon.
Lyc
I'm not really one of the 'doomsday prepper types', but I do think in a lot of cases: food, water, and survival skills are important. Especially if you're in a more 'isolated' area.
It can really be beneficial to learn your local land, it's wildlife and it's flora and fungal species. As Silver and Ramseys have said too, keeping good food and water reserves, and a form of defense can't hurt.
I hope to someday be mostly self-sustaining, at least to some degree, for a myriad of reasons I won't really go in to here.
Sorry, I don't really have any 'preps' to speak of, so can't really comment / contribute 'directly' to the topic. [img]<fileStore.core_Emoticons>/emoticons/smile.png[/img]/emoticons/ [email protected] 2x" title=":)" width="20" />
Quote:
3 hours ago, LycanTheory said:
My preparedness ideology tends to lean toward carrying a light load and being able to maneuver as opposed to the typical hunkering down. I live on the outskirts of town, though and if things did get bad, it might be in y best interest to relocate, practically.
That said, my minimalist setup includes a few lifestraws, firestarters, LED flashlights and lanterns, a few gas masks and some Tyvek chem suits (you never know, there's a lot of industry around here and large scale chemical spills do happen). I've got a few good knives, trust my life to KaBar, a small gasoline generator, drone with a camera, med kit in the truck and in the house.
Food-wise, I've got about two weeks worth of non-perishables that'll feed four individuals and I keep around the same in a supply of water.
plenty of paracord, freshly stocked tacklebox, assortment of tools, CB radio, batteries, batteries and more batteries.
Firearms and ammo, I'm good, got enough to hunt if needed or put up a defense against most practical threats.
Now that I own my own home, I may eventually work toward getting it a little more setup to hunker down in if that's an option but for me, personally, I like the idea of being versatile, mobile and light. I may build a small, offroad camper here soon.
Lyc
That's a good philosophy for human threats, but sucks for natural disasters or other emergencies. Most of my preparedness, being up in the hills, is for the latter where 5 feet of snow or sudden hillslides might make hunkering down the only option. Even so, my personal kit (and truck kit) is easily adaptable to sudden "bug-out". In fact, it is designed to be. Always being prepared to be mobile is perhaps the greatest survival skill.
Yea I have MRE's also. Been eating 'em since they came in the dark brown bag. They have the best cracker in them. Not only can you put the peanut butter on 'em, they can be used as a Shuriken. As for water. I have several stock tanks around the ranch, as well as a small lake. But for short term emergencies, I spent several months buying water in gallon jugs, not the 'milk jug' ones, but nicer harder plastic ones. Still were under a buck. (Insert deer joke here). Every time I went to the store. Since I'm taking meds for diabetes (pills and insulin) I figure I only need enough food and water to last until the meds run out.
I live far enough from the main road to probably not get zombies here. (Not the un-dead types, just the folks coming out of the big cities, looking for food).
Hopefully things won't get that bad. Us Texans are lucky in that our electrical grid is in pretty good shape. But I lived in Ohio and was just on the edge of one of those major power black outs they had on the eastern seaboard. I was working sign off shift at a radio station. That late I always kept the network news feed on the cue speaker. Their engineers would play old jazz music just to keep something on the feed. That night I heard the record start to slow down. Slower and slower it got, until it stopped all together. I guess the phone lines were battery back up, and probably their engineering dept also had power for the racks, but no one thought to power the turntable from the UPS. After several minutes, their was the un mistakable sound of a mic being plugged in to some thing and someone started talking about the building loosing power. I listened well past when we signed off. That single mic was passed back and forth and you heard people telling someone else to hold that flashlight so they could read their notes.
In just a few short minutes, NYC went from playing soft jazz, to having to find candles.
I shutter to think about that happening now, for an extended period time. Even Miles Davis wouldn't be able to help them.
In that black-out in the early 90's, I and my old ranch supported 45 neighbors from a 20 mile radius ( I lived closer to folks back then). It took a week to get power fully restored then. I laugh at that now as we get that regularly from winter blizzards up here. I'll pull folks in from all around me and put them up still thanks to snowmobiles and word of mouth, thus the big generator. The cities below us stay snow free and open, but the mountains make reception of news a bitch anyway. Sat. dish full of snow doesn't work nor does downed cable lines. Cell phones are useless. Surprisingly, the best bets are CB and HAM radio sets, probably because of more users and antenna. I have a base CB. My closest neighbor has a HAM and is going to start teaching me next summer. In good weather everything works, but good weather ain't when you need it.
sw
03-19-2019, 06:52 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-19-2019, 06:54 PM by heavyhorse.)
Farming in rough country most of my life, "prepping" is just normal life. We are used to losing electricity fairly often, sometimes for a week at a time, for often amazingly stupid reasons (ex: someone stealing copper from the electric substation, part of his scalp found burned to the bus, takes a week to repair burned-out transformer.) I have an absurdly large propane tank and an absurdly small 96% furnace, smallest you can buy, gets used maybe 50 hours a year. Primary heating is wood. House is super-insulated. Whole-house air cond is 5 amps/110v. Have a 9Kw generator with a 3-way carburetor (gas, propane, nat.gas) and the old B&S 3Kw permanent-magnet flywheel generator for backup. (Propane is stable, will last forever; "gas" isn't gasoline anymore, it's a "blend" of bunker fuel, isobutane, benzine, paraffin, ethanol, basically whatever is cheapest on the commodity market, and is stable for about 30 days before the low-boiling components vaporize off and it turns into a yellow oily mess.) Water is from a 400 foot well with bulk storage. There's the biggest Sears freezer in the house, and a bigger backup freezer in the shop, and 2 refrigerators (daily user and long term storage). And of course, it's a given, livestock are largely produced for food. I will basically last only as long as my pills do, so I keep 90 days+ of meds (refill another 90 days when I get down to 90 days). I am far enough off the beaten path to mostly avoid Ramsey's "zombies"; propane is a lot harder to "siphon" than a bulk tank of gas or diesel and besides it is in the ram lot, in the brush behind the electric fence; the propane guy uses a 100 ft hose to fill it. And for those who don't know, I'm an ardent fan of Giant breed dogs (for whom I keep a 60 day supply of dog food). One of them has the local reputation of “putting (doorknob rattlers) back in the truck”. I don't have enough guns to "pay for a farm" but have at least 1 of most types, and shoot slow, one bullet--one hit most of the time, and it's a nice clear view for about a quarter mile down the valley. And to the extent that it matters, only one vehicle is computer-operated, the rest are pretty much EMP-proof.
My strategy in life so far has mostly been to acquire as many skills as possible to thrive as sustainably as possible with as few outside sources as possible. My living accommodation is very small which limits what I can store but I do like to store at least a few weeks of what me and the dogs would need to survive. This is changing shortly though as I finally have the means to settle down in a house on my own land. The goal will very much be to move towards self sustainability as quickly as possible when the right place is found though I expect this will take a couple of years to achieve fully. I think life would be difficult in a true SHTF scenario in the UK due to how many people are here and how relatively small the land area is but at least I can try to put myself and my loved ones in the strongest position possible to survive and thrive.
As a possible tin foil hat aside - I think the most likely threat that I am likely to experience in my lifetimes is economic collapse. I wonder who else thinks that and if anyone else prepares for that by storing wealth in mediums other than fiat currency - gold, silver, etc.
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