To be disturbed by the "Prepping" board.

[TheoriginalLEM]

Is this a thing now?

Is there really a need to be stockpiling food, medicines and creating a bolt hole?

Am i missing something? Seriously (this is not a light-hearted thread), i suffer from anxiety and this is really disturbing me.

Hopefully people have just been watching too much walking dead.

A cricket bat against the inmates from the 2 local prisons, Don't? Yep, that'll do it.

Don't - what kind of weapons are you talking about? Do you have one?

Well, that's your situation. The biggest threat of violence I'm likely to face is a starving bull.

Most of you seem to be deliberately and spectacularly missing the point. Most of us live rurally, and we are simply looking at scenarios that are all too possible for us. There seems to be a huge mental divide between us and city dwellers who live within a stones throw of everything.

Same here Through, the thought of a laundry mountain does actually fill me with dread. I hate doing tHe laundry.

This is why we don't generally talk about it to others. Those big and ugly people you're talking about won't be searching every home, they are going to go to the places they think they can get stuff from. I'd imagine most preppers do have a weapon of some sort even in the UK. And if I was a looter, I'd probably avoid prepper households for that reason. Yes they are likely to have more supplies than a random household but they are also more likely to have a weapon and be willing to defend that stash.

In the beginning people loot stores and then they start on houses.

Those big and ugly people are ordinary people pushed to the extreme.

And what are you going to do write a giant P on your front door?

"Don't - you're still not telling me what you are anticipating will happen in the UK that will mean you have to make the choice to watch your neighbours starve to help yourself."

The most likely would be bad weather to an extent that means a town or a village is cut off from the outside world for several days. In that time, as New Orleans showed, people can and do die from lack of supplies. Even assume that government help arrives within 4 days, that's more than enough time for a lot of people to die from lack of water. And as New Orleans showed, several days is all it takes for a modern 21st century 1st world city to turn into a warzone, people dying in the streets because they had no water supplies, people fighting and and looting over supplies.

"A cricket bat against the inmates from the 2 local prisons, Don't? Yep, that'll do it."

Good luck if you seriously think that, my choice would be to not become a target in the first place, those guys wouldn't literally be searching every home top to bottom, they would be smartly targeting the places they thought were most likely to have supplies.

There was this pub which got cut off for 9 days and many other isolated places have a similar story.

Having enough bread, milk and tinned stuff to last you for a week or so makes sense, even in a big city.

If you live somewhere that could have an earthquake etc it makes sense to have an emergency bag.

Already deciding that you would let next door's toddler starve to death because they would die anyway is another level.

Don't - what kind of weapons are you talking about? Do you have one?

lots of people have weapons.

We have a few axes and hatchets. They aren't here to use as weapons but they could be.

I ran an intruder off with a shillelagh, that is actually an ornament that my nana brought back from Ireland in the 1930s.

If I hit something with it it would probably snap. Looks impressive though

Already deciding that you would let next door's toddler starve to death because they would die anyway is another level.

Precisely Pipbin.

So today we go to the Art Gallery where they do family activities for rainy Sunday afternoons. We pay our money, go up to the exhibition to find it all about risk. A lady in a biohazard suit comes along and says to me and DD, would you like to consider things that you might need to protect yourself against?? Then decorate your own biohazard suit to take away?

I SHIT YOU NOT!!!!

Its a fucking conspiracy i tell ye!!

I seem to recall some very panicky posts from people during the London riots. Just in case anyone's forgotten that sort of thing does happen in the uk.

Most healthy adults can survive 3 weeks without food, or 3 days without water, depending on temperature.
I don't like hunger, stress, cold, sitting in the dark etc so I don't wish to test those limits personally.
I'd be surprised if most preppers are thinking beyond at most a couple of weeks, so all the talk of fighting off hungry (weakened) people is fantasy, imo.
< goes off to read preppers topic >

Well lem you can fucking hide that.

What were they promoting?

I seemed to have survived the power cuts of the 70s without getting my head caved in for a candle.

I know, I made it through the 3 day weeks without having to fight off people for a carrot.

When I was little we used to have power cuts that lasted for about 3 or 4 days. We had our own gas supply so had hot water and could cook. The neighbours would come to us for a bath!

I would love to be stranded in that pub for 9 days. I could do with a break.

"Having enough bread, milk and tinned stuff to last you for a week or so makes sense, even in a big city. "

Exactly, that's all that prepping is.

"Already deciding that you would let next door's toddler starve to death because they would die anyway is another level."

I don't think so. I already decided that if I could share with others without it affecting my chances of survival, I would because I would want to save as much lives as possible. My decision not to help someone who is starving is that if they are at the point of starvation, the one meal I give them won't actually change their fate, they will still die anyway, all I did was maybe buy them a little bit more time before they starve. Unless they'd want me to continue feeding them from my supplies, but that means taking more and more food out of my mouth to the point where I end up in the same boat as them, and we both starve to death. It may seem unfeeling and I understand that, but if it's a choice between a neighbhour dying and me surviving, or a neighbhour dying and me dying too, I'd chose the former. It makes no sense for me to needlessly die when I ultimatley don't change that neighbhours fate.

I armed myself against a potential burglar with DD1's wooden hobbyhorse once. It was actually a pigeon that fell down the chimney, but I could have ninja'd the fucker with the hobby horse for sure

Living in a rural area I have experienced being snowed in, boiler break downs, power cuts for several days and also being flooded. We survived comfortably through all of these events without being prepers. The thing is that most people (unless they go shopping everyday) have enough resourcefulness to cope with a crisis for a few days.

I suspect the big problem is that prepers are a bit control-freakish and need to have all sort of eventualities planned and (I suspect) in reality be unable to cope very well when things aren't 'as normal' so this is their way of dealing with an irrational fear.

In my experience when you are faced with a crisis what causes you problems is not what you would expect. For example when we were flooded we tried to take stuff to salvage upstairs, but we were short of plastic storage boxes.

I suspect the majority of prepers will end up running around like headless chickens as the real scenario they have to face will be different to their planned ones. For instance it's all very well having a stock-pile of food water and ammo, but what if you are evacuated because of an impending event, cannot take your own transport and are being put onto buses/coaches? It all looks pretty silly then. The non-prepers will just go with the flow and depend on their own resourcefulness.

We tolerate people going hungry, including toddlers, already.
No revolution against benefits sanctions, or needing food banks

I've always hated this Hollywood mentality of people turning into savage hordes in the face of a disaster.

I lived through the 1985 Mexico City earthquake and it brought out the best in the common people. One of the hardest hit parts of town was also famous for its young hoodlums. Well it was those young hoodlums who were the first to risk life and limb by tunnelling into wrecked buildings to save lives.

The fact is that if there was a terrible disaster, the ones who would survive would be the ones who had a sense of community.

Don't worry about it Where snow is predicted I make sure I have some long life milk in and a loaf/food in the freezer, some tins soup etc plus the usual torch/grit/shovel stuff and that's my prepping!

OK so i have been giving it some thought and this is my plan

You're going to be disappointed BigChoc, I don't think anyone has mentioned fighting off hordes or self defence at all.

And yes, of course I'd help as much as I can. But there is such a thing as personal responsibility.