Prepper lessons for the paranoid ...

[dogtag]

How to survive when a hundred thousand starving people
are coming for your can of baked beans.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ply-fails.html

I read "One second after" a while back.
Sobering but excellent read.

[togor]

People willing to short-sell our civilization with a bet on catastrophe. I hope the consultant takes them for a lot. DT you're spot on---one man, however well he is prepared, will be hopelessly outnumbered. The #1 survival skill is: getting along with other people. Won't hurt to have some CMP Garands and ammo to share, while you set yourself up as the group's armorer. Maybe stockpile cleaning supplies too.

[S.A. Boggs]

Something like this has been going on for the last 40 years, people stockpiling beans and rice for food. People putting away gold in the hope of using it to buy a future and a dark future at that.
Sam

[Jiminvirginia]

Togor is more correct on this. We should plan for disaster as a community and not isolated and small individual groups.

[Allen]

If there comes a time where doomsday preps need to stash and hoard food and other supplies it would be best to do it as a community AND small or family groups as well. Community groups will only work while there is an abundance. When supplies get tight you will see favoritism and other such acts that would be decremental to the program. Also, there would be some who would not contribute much or at all. In other words just like the government.

[p246]

If SHTF it will be a young persons game. Just think how many people would be in trouble without their medications alone.

[dogtag]

That's what "One Second After" is about.
A small rural community faced with multiple thousands
pouring out of the city, coming their way.
What to do ? Can't feed them. Too many to shoot,
but they have to protect what they have for themselves.
(EMP attack)

[Jiminvirginia]

If SHTF it will be a young persons game. Just think how many people would be in trouble without their medications alone.

It will be a young healthy persons or grizzled old fart who doesn't give a darn game. There are three basic needs. Food, shelter and medical care. I think medical care is the most vulnerable.

[dogtag]

It will be a young healthy persons or grizzled old fart who doesn't give a darn game. There are three basic needs. Food, shelter and medical care. I think medical care is the most vulnerable.

You forgot water. The rule of 3:
Three minutes without Air.
Three days without Water.
Three weeks without Food.
= You're in a heap of trouble, if not already dead.

[Vern Humphrey]

While communities need to plan, look at New Orleans in Katrina. Their disaster plan was on the internet, and I read it. It wasn't a plan, just a disaster!

So your first step is to READ your community disaster plan -- then develop your own plan based on that.

[S.A. Boggs]

I live in a rural area where we help each other otherwise each lives their own. It would be fairly easy to block the two roads that lead thru the community. Water is not a problem due to natural springs, food is grown as well as cows, pigs, chickens. As pointed out medical care is needed. I have a stocked crash kit for the house as well as kits for the trucks and an ample supply of honey for wound control. Thinking in the spring of getting into hives.
Sam

[dogtag]

It might pay to keep Murphy's Law in mind:
"If anything can go wrong - it will"

[Art]

It will be a young healthy persons or grizzled old fart who doesn't give a darn game. There are three basic needs. Food, shelter and medical care. I think medical care is the most vulnerable.

True. Anyone who is dependent on medical treatment to stay alive, dialysis patients, brittle diabetics, people confined to wheel chairs or have other mobility impairments or are in long term medical care or people who are dependent on some medication they have to have to live (me) are going to die first, people like this were a very high proportion of the casualties in Hurricane Katrina and in the great scheme of things that was a short term event. After that the healthy who have not planned ahead.

My wife and I are short term (two to three weeks - two to three months) natural disaster preppers. Where we live that means hurricanes and floods. It also means that "bugging in" is preferable to "bugging out" in our case though we are prepared for that if the house goes. I have had surgeries that require me to supplement almost all of my hormones. I have about a one year supply stored up. After that I'm truly toast.

[S.A. Boggs]

Preppers "think" the world will return to a century or longer in a "disaster" HAVE BEEN WATCHING TOOOOOOOO MANY MOVIES. Short of a nuclear/biological incident I doubt that it would happen as "they" are preparing for. Think more of the 1930's, even then the unemployment rate was 25%, what about the other 75%? Some rich people lost it all, other's didn't and prospered. Joe Kennedy was getting a shoe shine and the shoe shine boy was giving advice on what HE had invested in to make money in addition to shining shoes. Kennedy felt that if the shoe shine boy was giving advice it was time to get out of the market and Kennedy did. 6 weeks later the market crashed, Kennedy was in pretty good shape, friends of his weren't. He changed his market to "importing" liquor from overseas for his "friends" on the quiet of course. Rumor has it FDR was a good customer. To my way of thinking way prepare for bad times, just prepare for life as this is hard enough. No one is guaranteed tomorrow, your presence might be called elsewhere so what does a bag of beans do you? If I have no control over it, why should I concern myself? To me gold is worthless, I can't eat it or readily trade it for other goods so why have it? In hard times an ounce of lead will relieve the owner of the gold so which is more valuable? Personally I feel a case of Jim Beam or Makers Mark is more valuable then a ton of the yellow stuff. Honey is a source of food, energy and medicinal properties so it is really "gold" that I want.
Sam

[RED]

I don't think anybody over 60-65 has a chance to survive long term in. a true SHTF scenario. Most of the so called "preppers," that have stock piled thousands of rounds of ammo, dozens of guns, and some beans and rice, are fools. How long you live is totally dependent on where you live, who you know, and important things like water (a well), sewage disposal (septic tank/lagoon), electricity, and tools like chain saws, tractors, plows, and etc. that are far more important than dozens of AR's and 1,000,000 rounds of .223.

Flame away about your arsenal, and your bug out bag, a well thought out locale, with a one way in, one way out access, in a sparsely inhabited area is far more important, especially if you and your 2 or 3 neighbors in a 1 mile area, are all on the same page.

Which is more important, having a 15K Generator and 1,000 gallons of propane fuel or a 100 AR's and a million rounds of .223?

The hoarders will say, "I can't do that where I live!."

"So why don't you move?"

Answer is: "I have this job..." Or "I have family here..."

So what? If the SHTF really happens, your job is gone and your family is going to die if if you don't provide them a place to "bug out to."