To be a bit jealous of the Doomsday Preppers?

[slatternlymother]

Watching a show about it on National Geographic.

They are SO prepared.

I want a secret Doomsday Shelter in the country, with stockpiles of food and water.

I am seriously considering stockpiling tinned beans and bottled water when the next offer comes on in Sainsburys...

What are you all planning for?

My name is Squeak,and I am prepping for the collapse of society and an energy crisis.....

Thats what I'm prepping for. Energy and possibly financial crisis.

A couple of tips which stayed with me:-

Stockpile things like matches, candles, loo rolls, toothpaste etc which you can use in due course to barter with/exchange for something you don't have

Get some wind up torches and wind up radio which don't need batteries or electricity to power. it seems I'm a bit more into this than I thought!

Financial collapse or epidemic

I have a couple of hurricane lamps too Bowlers.

I,ve read "The Road", only thing I,ll be prepping is sleeping tabs and a nice brandy.

i worry about oil (eventual lack of)..if push came to shove, the tough would be the ones to survive (local bullies), they would go round murdering and taking whatever they wanted..

grim really, to put into writing, but i have kept sleeping pills i was given years and years ago (way out of date but may still do the job) as well as some SUPER STRONG pain killers given to me when i had an op' last year and when i gave birth to dd. i know at the back of my mind why i have kept them, how awfully grim :-(

We camp a bit so we have wind up torches, gas stoves and a wind up radio. I have a thing about running out of batteries so we have loads of those.

I'll download The Road onto my Kindle, I need a new book actually.

I'm going to start sneakily prepping, then by the time I've built up a good supply, I'll tell DH and he'll just have to accept it.

So... I'm going to start by stockpiling stuff in case of snow (we live in South Cornwall, last time we had snow the shops ran out of essentials and didnt get restocked for 10 days in some places; so it would seem faily sensible). I'm going to stock enough for 10 days initially; tinned goods, bottled water, toilet paper, UHT milk and tea, baby wipes, basic medicine, a gas stove, blankets, torches, batteries, a radio, a solar phone charger, matches and petrol.

Can anyone recommend quantities/storage techniques?

wintertime don't think like that!

I don't think the local bullies would be the only ones, actually. I think in many, many places, people would pull together in groups of streets, say and make miniature communities.

wintertime I think in the situation we're talking about it would pay to get on well with your neighbours so you can form a supportive group especially for protection against marauding looters.

I remember during the London riots there was a group of people who protected their cul-de-sac and their children in their houses by putting up a barrier at the cul-de-sac entrance and then standing guard while all the rioters went on past them

I try to keep stuff in plastic lidded boxes (like 'power cut supplies') and I also have a bug out bag ( a rucksack).

Tbh it's better to start with the more likely eventualities such as a long power cut,flooding,loss of water for a few days.fire etc.

Sensible preps that no one could really smirk at are things like a fire escape plan,knowing how to turn your gas,water and electricity off and having a RV point known to all the family (somewhere to group close to the home,,and somewhere further away if for some reason you had to leave/couldn't return to home).

Definitely cheaper to make your own supplies shit the bed it's expensive!

I love doomsday preppers. Is it back on?

The last series there was a family who had built their home out of old storage containers and had enough food to last two years. They even had a hidden location in case their current one was raided.

I on the other hand have a few tins of beans and some scones from Costco in the freezer.

This stuff scares me shitless and this thread is scaring me now too!

We live at the seaside so pointless even trying to live here as nothing grows so we are at a disadvantage to start off with as we would be homeless. It scares me even more as my DCs are older and away from home so we would be apart and even the idea of that panics me.

If it was some kind of nuclear holocaust, I am not sure I would want to live.

But. My mum is in her 70s and she is Dutch, she lived through the hunger winter ( last year of WW II) and they starved. People died of hunger. She remembers being hungry, proper hungry. Her dad once cycled 200 miles for a bag of flour, which was then confiscated by the Germans. Her mum traded all her good linen and any jewelry for food. You never forget it, I think, and she always keeps a few big tins of dried beans and a good stock of things like canned ravioli and beans.

It happened in her life time, it is not that long ago or far away. Things like that can easily happen again, at some point.

I would be dead as soon as my insulin ran out, but I hereby donate my sugar imbalanced body to anyone who wants it.
Quite happy to be eaten once dead, in fact I would insist on it.

the army use these you don't have to heat them or add water, you can get a 10 man pack for £75. Maybe worth buying and chucking in the loft in the event of another fuel strike/bad snow?

I love the preppers, you can get lots of good tips although admittedly some of them are utterly mental (making your little kids practice bug-out scenarios twice a week) or a bit dim (as in, "I'm prepping for financial and societal collapse, so I have stockpiled all my food in one place- my house. And every fucker in a 100 mile radius knows this").

We're a bit out of the way here, and can get snowed in during winter for several days to a week, so I generally keep a mini stockpile of basics anyway (and even if it doesn't last long, all the bloody shops run out of basics for ages).

If I lived in a more urban area (or even here tbh, we're not that far away from civilization) I'd rather be mobile that have an enormous stockpile of food etc., that tied me down to one place. Obviously it depends on the scenario, but there are at least a few where I would want to take off to somewhere with as low a population as possible.

Comfy combat boots, an ability to forage and make a fire, hunt/trap, make shelter etc., wins out over 100 tins of beans for me

Can you tell I read too much zombie apocalypse fiction? Perhaps I shall become a zombie evangelist and wander the streets shoving copies of the SAS Survival Guide and Food For Free under peoples noses.

Great topic!

We have about 3 months of tinned supplies in the cellar, with sealed water, bog roll, camping gas cooker etc. Plus a stash of gold and silver coins just in case the financial system turns to shit.

DW and I both shoot (clay pigeons) so we have 2 shotguns in the house. Gawd alone knows if either of us could blow the head off someone trying to kick our door down and nick our food and stuff. Quite possibly if it came down to it, but in reality? Not sure.

chandon bloody hell can't say I blame her!

No, I wouldn't be too enthusiastic about surviving a nuclear winter! I'm more thinking about a fuel shortage, so supermarkets wouldn't be able to be restocked for a few days or so.

sonofaradia are you in the UK? I am very jealous of your preps.

chasingdogs I know! why would you go on that show?! Their neighbours are eyeing up their stores, blatantly!

ChasingDogs give me World War Z over Fifty Shades any day

Chandon your Mum sounds an amazing woman.

Aye slatternly, in the UK. It's just a good idea to keep some supplies I reckon. It's easy enough to build up a supply of tinned goods. Just add a few to your normal shopping and Bob's your Survivalist. Rotate them out as they hit their use-by dates, but of course those dates are very conservative anyway.

Shotguns are easy to get. And gold and silver coins are on Ebay ;-)