Topic Takeover - why did you become a prepper?

[LadyMaryofDownt0n]

I became interested in prepping a few years ago after we had a terrible winter. We had a huge storm and ended up with no electric & frozen pipes. It was just the week before Christmas & lasted about 6 days. The pipes froze so we had no water, no toilet & no shower. No heating, no cooker... Nothing just a shell of a house. It was awful plus we live in the middle of no where so we couldn't just nip out & sort the problems.

I read up on things & decided I wouldn't be so unprepared the next time. So started prepping. Now I've a decent supply of food & water & also some candles/board games/torches/warm blankets etc.

So what prompted you to begin?

Not for us. Preparedness isn't just about buying stuff.

Brexit/Trump ; snowed in and houseful of unwell family; water contaminated in my parent’s’ hometown - now fixed; resurgence of terrorist attacks in nearby city; wanting to kid myself I had some control in a world acting bananas.
No, I don’t have a house awash with tins. Fair few bottles of water in the garage, though.

I’ve been a prepper for a year. My house isn’t full —dh keeps eating it— but I’m working on some of my supplies

For me it’s a hangover from living in an earthquake zone, and experiencing a big one. I wouldn’t call myself a fully fledged prepper though.

@atticusclaw2

Did you ever open the hatch?

Why would you be typing 'long numbers' by the way?

Cozy, are you asking me that question?

Typing in numbers is a reference to the hatch in the series Lost

Ahhhh.

ha binary they think your numbers are linked to your question

I too was hoping for an answer to the hatch post. @atticusclaw2

Lost - American cult TV series - Desmond typing numbers into the computer in the bunker below the hatch

Big spoiler for anyone who hasn't watched the series - sorry!

I started because when I was on maternity leave, DH was unemployed, & we were so poor we couldn't afford formula. Or vegetables. Or bread. Or most things. We were about £200 a month short on our rent & bills, before we even started considering food, nappies or clothing for DD. DH, in particular, lost a lot of weight. He would lie to me that he'd eaten, knowing that I needed to eat so I could feed DD (before I had to quit breastfeeding).
Ever since then, we've kind of fallen into automatic prepping mode. Not the "stashing it in the wardrobe" kind, but we bulk buy when it's cheap, & don't like to run out of staples. We buy rice by the sack, for example. Much cheaper. We could probably live for several weeks, just on what's in the kitchen cupboards. It would be boring, and maybe not always terribly well balanced, and there might be some rather odd meals, but there would be food. We actually cried when the CAB referred us to the food bank & they gave us so much we struggled to carry it home - a stranger helped me with one bag, as I was pushing DD in the pram. DH had a big box full of stuff too. It was raining, & we were freezing, but it was a brilliant day.

These days, it stands us in good stead to have a decent amount of food in the cupboards as we don't have a car, DH has mobility issues & I have a chronic pain issue, so we can't always get out. The supermarket is a decent walk away. In good weather, it can be a problem. In bad weather, or if we're both ill, getting to the supermarket is impossible. Delivery is great, but it failed us last winter, understandably.

I live on a fairly small island, supplies are interrupted when the weather is bad and shops can run out of basics like toilet roll very fast - a couple of days. In addition, my house is very rural, and accessed by a long dirt track ending at the house. We are high risk for being cut off by weather or fallen trees or losing power, and as a single house would be very low priority in severe weather situations. We're also vulnerable if we all got flu or similar and weren't up to driving to the shops. So, prepping seems sensible and the circumstances in which we'll need the prepping don't seem too fanciful.

Utterly sensible. I think more people "prep" than us realised but they just don't call it that. People are far more ingenious and resilient than is generally assumed- it's just they aren't called upon to show it so much when gadgets and technology solve lots of problems. So much so, we forget the obstacles ever existed. I seriously doubt that, apart from the odd blip, people don't have at least a couple of days' food in the house.

....at least....🙂

We got snowed in last winter. Thankfully i had done bit shop the day before so we really enjoyed it!

However had it snowed a day or 2 earlier we would have really struggled!

It got me thinking about having certain stuff well stocked up. Things like cat & dog food. Milk, bread, tea, coffee, hot choc etc.

I try not to get too serious about it as it would keep me awake at night so I'm just basing prepping on being snowed in or similar winter/weather conditions.

Haven't done much yet but making a good start!

A sensible approach. 🙂