(whispers...) what is prepping?

[ClaireSW32]

What are you prepping for?

I have a stash of food for emergencies, eg, snowed in, swine flu quarantines us etc.

What are you prepping for?

I've just found the board and I am now officially prepping for this (see pic).

On a normal year we get snowed in for three/four days, twice a year. And the power can be quite touch and go. Due to trees who decide to end it all by throwing themselves on the ... leccy gubbins.

But the last time that was predicted it went down to minus fucking twenty bleeding six degrees ! my pipes froze for ten days and the track to the main road (2k away) became an ice skating rink.

We only just had enough water and food until the track was passable. Usually we wouldn't have risked it, cos it was still VERY SCARY on the uphill bit, even with chains on. However we HAD to go to town. I still get flashbacks to the moment when we started slipping on the hill. I never want to feel like that again, so the more I am prepared, the better the chances of being able to wait until the track is actually safe to drive on.

And we were smelly. Very smelly. So I am going to stockpile wet wipes and buckets of water for the loo, in case I have to turn the water off at the mains to save the new pipes that replaced the ones that got trashed last time.

This time I want to be ready.

I'd call myself a "new to prepping to decrease anxiety" prepper. In my wound up state during The Great Freeze I had a few ... undignified moments. Just reading threads, making lists, and sorting out a doable preparedness plan means I can head off the headLess chicken feeling before it takes over. I have no control over the weather but I do have control over how ready for it I am .

There is every chance the other forecast ( I.e. a warmer than usual winter) will happen rather than The Great Freeze 2.0. In which case my shopping trolley will be lighter in the months to follow. Except for the choccie rations.

I intend to eat all of those, regardless of actual temperatures that come to pass.

You need a little camping stove, and to learn how to make either a Swedish fire log, or a Dakota fire pit :)

Eek, where are you, Ato?

Stratters

I'm in a rural backwater not all that far from Milan. So rural that the council (who knows damn well our little tiny not quite a hamlet is down here when they want their local taxes) tends to forget all about us until we dig ourselves out of whatever has gone horribly wrong this time.

We are in The Forgotton land of "can't see my own outstretched hands" Fog, Mosquitoes, ridiculous humidy in the summer, Occasional Terrifying Storms, Regular Deluges that threaten to flood the house if the pump goes all temperamental and One Great Freeze (so far).

But really, it's great. When the weather isn't being all "exciting". I can see Monte Rosa from my bathroom window and am surrounded by an offical EU Oasis of Natural Beauty (that sometimes tries to kill me !)

I love it here, when my weather app isn't going all doom laden on me.

Sounds amazing, very wild and beautiful:)

Can't work out if the fact we live in a tiny third floor flat in zone 2 means we're totally fucked because there's simply no space to store anything like water etc (though i guess we're ok on rice and frozen peas for a while, and we've a wad of euros in the drawer left over from holiday) or we'd be lucky because we're not rural and it'd be quite hard to get snowed in / flooded. (Unless the Thames Barrier went, then we'd be proper fucked.)

All very well saying buy a bit extra each time, but put it where? Is prepping only for those with big enough homes? Bit elitist. And I've just Marie Kondo-d the place anyway...

I've just Marie Kondo-d the place anyway...

When our water went we wee'd in a bucket and once full used it to 'flush' the loo.