The Reality of 'Doomsday Preppers' Is Upon Us

http://www.huliq.com/12092/reality-doomsday-preppers-upon-us

Apparently teh show will be on the National Geographic Channel for thiose that have this

It' s a big business in USA and they are beginning in UK. There was an article in the Mail last month. Firms selling kit and long storage food. They say we are just nine meals away from anarchy. Must admit to laying in extra grub here at home but whatever you have can only last so long.
Hard times a comin'
Once that Euro collapses in summer we'll see some fireworks and no mistake.

I remember the dire predictions when the Gulf oil leak was happening - all manner of catastrophes were forecast by 'knowledgeable' individuals.

Similarly when Fukushima occurred last Spring. And then there were the Australian floods and widespread droughts elsewhere in the world. Always the doom-mongers just loving to predict an end-of-days situation. Predict enough disasters and eventually one will come about.....

But the world is still turnin' much as it ever did and I ain't too concerned.

Well as long as the flour lasts then you will always find a welcome and a filled bap here at maison KK if the going gets tough mac.
Might only be tinned pilchards in there though.

mac wrote:I remember the dire predictions when the Gulf oil leak was happening - all manner of catastrophes were forecast by 'knowledgeable' individuals.

Similarly when Fukushima occurred last Spring. And then there were the Australian floods and widespread droughts elsewhere in the world. Always the doom-mongers just loving to predict an end-of-days situation. Predict enough disasters and eventually one will come about.....

But the world is still turnin' much as it ever did and I ain't too concerned.

I've lived through one, Mac: Hurricane Katrina, 29 August 2005. We had some canned food, bottled water, batteries, candles, matches, etc. on hand: as everyone everywhere should do, and as people on the Gulf Coast do, during our hurricane "season", which lasts 6 months.

I told my step daughter it would veer to Florida. I was wrong. I told my life that damage would be mininal. I was right, at first. She sat up all night. I went to sleep! The wind and ran woke me once. Next morning, the streets were covered with leaves and tree branches, but no real damage. I was smug.

Before I went to sleep, we lost cable TV. Then electricity. This was typical when hurricanes hit. But then we lost cooking gas, water, and cell phones. The house phone worked throughout the crisis, and was the only thing that did.

Within two days we were hearing reports that the levee had broke and the city was flooding. It did. Most of the city (East Bank side) flooded. We lived on higher ground, and the flood waters stopped a mile from us.

We never saw a fight, or heard a gunshot. The neighbors banded together, looked after one another, cooked food that was going to spoil anyway and passed it away to anyone who was hungry. The gang kids here actually took it upon themselves to protect the neighborhood, and became a help rather than a problem.

It hit on a Saturday night / Sunday morning. By next Saturday, there were almost no police, firefighters, or medical personnel left in the city. No utilities had been restored. My wife was running low on prescription medicine, so we decided to vacate.

After a couple weeks of wandering, we ended up on a Navy base near Memphis: where my job had temporarily relocated.

We didn't return to New Orleans till early December: more than 3 months after the hurricane hit. The city was still largely empty.

To this day - 6 1/2 years later - our population is still lower than it was, and repair work is still being done.


Jim

Want to survive a short term disaster?

Have on hand everything you are going to need for a 15-30 day period: water, non-perishable food that doesn't require cooking, durable clothing, blankets, prescription medicine, over the counter medicine and disinfectants, candles, matches, flashlights (torches), batteries, pet food and medicine if needed, a full tank of gasoline (petrol) on a well-maintained vehicle, if you own one.

Some type of home heater(s), if it's cold where you live. They must NOT be dependent on outside gas or electricity! Battery-powered fans are a nice touch. Battery-powered radios are a necessity. Some toilet arrangements, be it a plastic bucket (loss of water = your toilet flushes only once, with the water that's already in the toilet's bowl and tank), and somewhere to dump it.

Good locks / bars on your doors and windows, to keep the bad guys out.

Soething to defend yourself with. DON'T get anything that's illegal where you live! I know that most of you are in the UK, where it's difficult to legally own firearms. But there are always airguns, baseball and cricket bats, swords, walking sticks, etc.

Jim

We were in LA as that storm hit. We followed events as best we could because we were entertaining guests. Later we saw the Weather Channel's and other compilations of all the events and the aftermath, the wrecked parts of town.

In these 'spooks' forums, though, the happy-clappy doom-mongers love to use any disasters, natural and human made alike, to predict the 'end of days' situation. I guess if they do it often enough they may eventually be correct as, conceivably, humankind's activities may be sufficiently destructive to screw up this world in which we're livin'....

It probably won't totally destroy the world but it might destroy the world as we've been experiencing/enjoying it for a very long time. We almost certainly have the capacity to mess it up so much that it would not recover for many decades by which time the situations faced by humankind globally would be unlike anything we've experienced before.

I don't envisage an 'end of days' scenario but I'm half-expecting something mighty unpleasant.

Thanks for that story Jim

Many years ago I lived through a cyclone in Townsville, North Queenland, and we were also in Townsville when Cyclone Tracey devastated Darwin in 1972 ( I think that was the date).

I remember seeing the big RAAF planes flying into Townsville, evacuating Darwin residents at that time. I was very young then.

People really worked together to help each other.

Sometimes the worst events seem to bring out the best in folks. We only saw horror stories on TV post-Katrina so good to read your slant on that Jim.

Left Behind wrote:Want to survive a short term disaster?

Have on hand everything you are going to need for a 15-30 day period: water, non-perishable food that doesn't require cooking, durable clothing, blankets, prescription medicine, over the counter medicine and disinfectants, candles, matches, flashlights (torches), batteries, pet food and medicine if needed, a full tank of gasoline (petrol) on a well-maintained vehicle, if you own one.

Some type of home heater(s), if it's cold where you live. They must NOT be dependent on outside gas or electricity! Battery-powered fans are a nice touch. Battery-powered radios are a necessity. Some toilet arrangements, be it a plastic bucket (loss of water = your toilet flushes only once, with the water that's already in the toilet's bowl and tank), and somewhere to dump it.

Good locks / bars on your doors and windows, to keep the bad guys out.

Soething to defend yourself with. DON'T get anything that's illegal where you live! I know that most of you are in the UK, where it's difficult to legally own firearms. But there are always airguns, baseball and cricket bats, swords, walking sticks, etc.

Jim

Thankfully mac's an optimist who's not expecting any kind of major disaster in Sherwood Forest area in his lifetime so I'll not worry too much....

And as our fifth wheel basement is kinda full with Budweiser, lawn chairs, barbecues, boxed wine etc. we ain't got much space for the emergency kit. Also, and luckily, AZ is away from the edges of major techtonic plates, several hundred miles from the ocean so no tsunami risks either. Our Saguaro cactuses are the tallest common 'trees', totally unlikely to topple on power lines if hit by a storm or (highly unlikely) an earthquake.

I'm just gonna risk it!

What's a fifth wheel mac?

KatyKing wrote:What's a fifth wheel mac?

big caravan.... kinda.....

OIC
Ta

Want to survive an "end of the world as we know it" catastrophe?

FORGET the "generator, and two year's supply of freeze-dried food" foolishness!

Instead, buy rural land, NOW, and MOVE there!

Learn to grow crops, raise livestock, make your own soap and candles: learn medicine, how to make fire from flint and steel, magnifying glasses, and bow drills. Get several good air rifles, a couple of .22 rimfire rifles, and stockpile ammo for them: air gun pellets by the tens of thousands, .22 rimfire by as much as you can legally own. A couple of shotguns: same thing as .22's on ammo.

Stock up on hand tools: knives, axes, hatchets, hammers, saws, crowbars, picks, shovels, screwdrivers, etc. What you don't use, you can use for trade.

Learn to hunt and fish.

Your property will need a well, pond, or stream: preferably all three.

Lots of durable clothing, boots, blankets, bootlaces.

Lots of durable cooking ware and eating utensils.

Disinfectants, medications, etc. Lots of liquor if anyone's a drinker, lots of tobacco for the smoker, to bet kept in a humidifier. Great trade items even if you don't indulge.

Books and magazines.

Board games.

Left Behind wrote:Want to survive an "end of the world as we know it" catastrophe?

FORGET the "generator, and two year's supply of freeze-dried food" foolishness!

Instead, buy rural land, NOW, and MOVE there!

Learn to grow crops, raise livestock, make your own soap and candles: learn medicine, how to make fire from flint and steel, magnifying glasses, and bow drills. Get several good air rifles, a couple of .22 rimfire rifles, and stockpile ammo for them: air gun pellets by the tens of thousands, .22 rimfire by as much as you can legally own. A couple of shotguns: same thing as .22's on ammo.

Stock up on hand tools: knives, axes, hatchets, hammers, saws, crowbars, picks, shovels, screwdrivers, etc. What you don't use, you can use for trade.

Learn to hunt and fish.

Your property will need a well, pond, or stream: preferably all three.

Lots of durable clothing, boots, blankets, bootlaces.

Lots of durable cooking ware and eating utensils.

Disinfectants, medications, etc. Lots of liquor if anyone's a drinker, lots of tobacco for the smoker, to bet kept in a humidifier. Great trade items even if you don't indulge.

Books and magazines.

Board games.

nuthin' to it then....

My point was, Mac, that it would require a total commitment to what would be for most of us a radically new life style.

You'd have to learn to create and live in a new world: not to try to survive on bits and pieces from the dead old one.

This is where our "survivalists" (not in the Spiritualist sense ) just don't get it.


Jim

Left Behind wrote:My point was, Mac, that it would require a total commitment to what would be for most of us a radically new life style.

You'd have to learn to create and live in a new world: not to try to survive on bits and pieces from the dead old one.

This is where our "survivalists" (not in the Spiritualist sense ) just don't get it.


Jim

On a serious note I did follow you, Jim, but to even begin to adopt the principles you've outlined would need a world so vastly de-populated that only a few would be able to find the space in which to live, even assuming they had even the first idea about how to approach the new way of life. Total commitment might come eventually provided each was able to deal with the psychological shock(s) that would have preceded such a monumental change. Whatever the success rate of adaptation, this world would be unrecognisably different.

Not sure I'd want to remain in it - don't forget I'm a Spiritualist so death would have no fear for me. I doubt I'd fight to survive - why would I want to?

It would be a world totally beyond our comprehension.

The irony would be that the factories and utilities and such would still be there, and people would still remember what they were, and would probably teach their children about them: but they'd lack the skills and manpower to make these things work.

Eventually these things would all decay. Windmills and blacksmiths and horsebreeders would become the new type of technology.

As memories faded, and archives crumbled, the world we know might well become the stuff of myth and legend.

Left Behind wrote:It would be a world totally beyond our comprehension.

The irony would be that the factories and utilities and such would still be there, and people would still remember what they were, and would probably teach their children about them: but they'd lack the skills and manpower to make these things work.

Eventually these things would all decay. Windmills and blacksmiths and horsebreeders would become the new type of technology.

As memories faded, and archives crumbled, the world we know might well become the stuff of myth and legend.

I hope that never happens but it's got to be a possibility. I find it a depressing thought that humankind couldn't have done things better. But would it matter in the overall scheme of things, one might wonder?

mac wrote:

Left Behind wrote:It would be a world totally beyond our comprehension.

The irony would be that the factories and utilities and such would still be there, and people would still remember what they were, and would probably teach their children about them: but they'd lack the skills and manpower to make these things work.

Eventually these things would all decay. Windmills and blacksmiths and horsebreeders would become the new type of technology.

As memories faded, and archives crumbled, the world we know might well become the stuff of myth and legend.

I hope that never happens but it's got to be a possibility. I find it a depressing thought that humankind couldn't have done things better. But would it matter in the overall scheme of things, one might wonder?

In terms of this material world: yes, overwhelmingly so.

In terms of the spirit life: probably yes in the short run: we all should have done better.

But in terms of long-term spirit life: no. eventually we will work all things out. We have eternity!

Left Behind wrote:

mac wrote:

Left Behind wrote:It would be a world totally beyond our comprehension.

The irony would be that the factories and utilities and such would still be there, and people would still remember what they were, and would probably teach their children about them: but they'd lack the skills and manpower to make these things work.

Eventually these things would all decay. Windmills and blacksmiths and horsebreeders would become the new type of technology.

As memories faded, and archives crumbled, the world we know might well become the stuff of myth and legend.

I hope that never happens but it's got to be a possibility. I find it a depressing thought that humankind couldn't have done things better. But would it matter in the overall scheme of things, one might wonder?

In terms of this material world: yes, overwhelmingly so.

In terms of the spirit life: probably yes in the short run: we all should have done better.

But in terms of long-term spirit life: no. eventually we will work all things out. We have eternity!

Indeed we have - and that's a long, long time for us all to get things right.

Chap with the appropriate surname of Bunker has a book on Amazon on How to Survive Off Grid.