Are you "prepping" or prepared for long term...

[t2van]

Out of interest as its faceless here. I guess some know some and so on.

Is anyone here preparing for any long term knock on from Iran "war" talking good, water, fertiliser shortages so knock on to food next year.

And so on?

You buying in food or going on as normal?

 

[Zwielicht]

Yes. I've been shifting toward using reusables around the house. Rolled up dishcloths instead of paper towels, washable cloth wipes instead of toilet paper, a washable house air filter instead of the disposable air filters.

You already know about us growing our own vegetables. That's not at the point where we can sustain ourselves off of it, but it has come through a few times now already, and more is on the way.

I have a supply closet I've been filling up with stuff over the years for emergency situations where we can no longer afford things. Unfortunately, some of this was depleted over the last year, but we're just getting better at using less.

Other than that, there's some other stuff I've set up like filtered rain water collectors I made.

If anything, some of this stuff was just to cut back on bills and to make us less dependent on this place.

 

[t0mmy]

Nope, I'll worry when the Toilet Roll buying frenzy begins.

 

[Dopious]

Na, never been a prepper .. although I understand and see the benefits of being prepared, a cool bunker would been nice to buy, like an old command center bunker with all the amenities to shut out the rest of the cunts out there.

 

[roydan]

Nah..

 

[ggmopa]

I can't afford it - Zuckerberg prepper private islands and territories costed him at least hundred of millions of pounds each. That's propper prepper stuff. As for this 'inbetweener' shit, it will amount to nothing. Worst scenario you build a dream estate; you have rain harvesters, water irrigation, biogenerators, cows, sheep, hydrothermal, geolelectric, piezoelectric. And so on. All that will happen is that your little sanctuary will attract the worst kind of marauders and mercenaries. From everyman-for-himself type former 'normies' through to professional mercenaries scoping people from their snipers range. They will all see your prepping like an oasis in the desert. Because if it reaches that state, a desert is what the economy will become. There will be no civillisation as we know it. So the above scenarios suddenly spring to life and become very real. What can you do about it when the prepping might even work against your own surivival?

And, that being said, it's not necessarily the case that money will save you either. There's no guarantee even zucks million cam save him from a nuclear fallout. The cause and the effects are just far too unpreditable.

Tl;dr I think it's just not worth the effort

 

[t2van]

Doesn't have to be against a nuke or whatever though, I think thats the miss conception about "prepping" where I am its 1 road in and out. So if snow comes in your cut off so you kind of have to "prep" or have food in during winter months - not that we had much heavy snow fall of late but still.

Helps in these times to edge against inflation as well.

Was just interested if anyone is worried or buying into cost of Fert and the knock on for crop production - I get a lot of mixed news in the UK about it direct from various sources because of the nature of my work.

There's a LOT of UK growers possibly not going to grow salad crops because the cost to produce them is higher than the crop value in terms of heat and fertiliser costs.

Or just the general supply lines being effected if you was getting ready for the possible worse, if fuel not getting around then transportation comes to a halt etc.. Not sure it will reach that point but then again you never know the wider implications this has or how long it goes on for.

 

[SilverClouds]

Out of interest as its faceless here. I guess some know some and so on.

Is anyone here preparing for any long term knock on from Iran "war" talking good, water, fertiliser shortages so knock on to food next year.

And so on?

You buying in food or going on as normal?

Hmmmm. Not a war but natural disaster but had a bit of a demo recently during the flood so it got me thinking. We usually buy shitloads of stuff in advance so it's a bit cluttered here, but I'm not gonna run out of shampoo and drinking water any time soon . Food is a hard one... This is the first thing we ran out of, especially since at some point electricity broke and it was harder to keep it cool (I mean we have these portable travel 'fridge' bags). Actually, do you guys have any suggestions on what to buy that can be stored medium or long term in a tropical climate that won't spoil fast and how to store? This really bothers me because that's what we had problem with recently. Because everything else... You can just stuff in some spare room in mass quantities and you're good to go. Maybe not self-sufficient but you have everything during shortages. During the flood we saw people were going to the store hysterically couple times but we stayed inside whole time because we had everything. Eventually we had to go get groceries too but it was like, the last day and they let me charge my phone at the store (atms and stores had electricity fixed before homes because people had limited cash) but once we were back the electricity at the house was back too and internet as well , we still had to wait a bit for the cellular network to be available. Before we went neighbours feed us some rice and we went by foot (taxis unavailable, especially since everyone uses a smartphone app for that and we all ran out of power). Later when we had to leave because of visa problem we couldn't take food with us because it wouldn't go through customs so we gave away our fridge contents to these neighbours . Honestly, if not friendly neighbours and how hard and quickly armed forces and people that were fixing wires were working it'd look completely different. Sure, it helped immensely that we had stuff but eventually you run out and what then? Good that here it's helpful environment in such situations.

Also paradoxically it helps that country has regular shortages because it's normal to have backup in place ie people use gas tanks to cook when electricity is off and you can use electric cooking appliances when you run out of gas. Some houses have water tanks on the roof (ours is unfinished and non-functional ). If electricity is off you can't use water heater but you still can take a cold shower, etc.

But yeah, we ran out of electricity last (some neighbours had a generator, I thought they'd ran out later than us but I kept vampirizing power from one device to another so somehow my phone went bye bye last ), we also ran out of food last but... It was only a couple days. I realized that it's a serious problem. Probably electricity is easier to fix! Landlord said electricity no problem, tons of sun, we'll just get solar . But how to store food and what kind when it's so fuckin hot...

Yes. I've been shifting toward using reusables around the house. Rolled up dishcloths instead of paper towels, washable cloth wipes instead of toilet paper, a washable house air filter instead of the disposable air filters.

You already know about us growing our own vegetables. That's not at the point where we can sustain ourselves off of it, but it has come through a few times now already, and more is on the way.

I have a supply closet I've been filling up with stuff over the years for emergency situations where we can no longer afford things. Unfortunately, some of this was depleted over the last year, but we're just getting better at using less.

Other than that, there's some other stuff I've set up like filtered rain water collectors I made.

If anything, some of this stuff was just to cut back on bills and to make us less dependent on this place.

So cool! Do you guys have a bit of prepper / self-sustainability culture in the US? I remember I read some booklet about Earthships?? People were buying 'undesireable' land and making these off-grid homes with solar, rain water, built-in gardens... Quite amazing.

Now that you talk about it... Do I need hankies???? *Looks at a HUGE pack of tissues in front of her* Well... Maybe not yet, but let's get a couple just in case. I actually have these multiple use ear cleaning sticks, it's popular here , but I prefer single use buds, which I have stuffed tons of here.

 

[Zwielicht]

So cool! Do you guys have a bit of prepper / self-sustainability culture in the US? I remember I read some booklet about Earthships?? People were buying 'undesireable' land and making these off-grid homes with solar, rain water, built-in gardens... Quite amazing.

Now that you talk about it... Do I need hankies???? *Looks at a HUGE pack of tissues in front of her* Well... Maybe not yet, but let's get a couple just in case. I actually have these multiple use ear cleaning sticks, it's popular here , but I prefer single use buds, which I have stuffed tons of here.

I wouldn’t say so, but I’m not really sure what other people in the US do. Although I’ve heard of some people who buy those bunkers for prepping, but if I recall correctly, that’s more of what a wealthy-ish midwestern family does. The people around where I currently live don’t do anything of that sort, though.

Personally, I really like the idea of an off-grid home, but it’s difficult to do here and we don’t have money or the resources to pull that off right now.

We have some multiple use ear cleaners as well!

The ones we have are from a company called Clinere.

 

[t2van]

Hmmmm. Not a war but natural disaster but had a bit of a demo recently during the flood so it got me thinking. We usually buy shitloads of stuff in advance so it's a bit cluttered here, but I'm not gonna run out of shampoo and drinking water any time soon . Food is a hard one... This is the first thing we ran out of, especially since at some point electricity broke and it was harder to keep it cool (I mean we have these portable travel 'fridge' bags). Actually, do you guys have any suggestions on what to buy that can be stored medium or long term in a tropical climate that won't spoil fast and how to store? This really bothers me because that's what we had problem with recently. Because everything else... You can just stuff in some spare room in mass quantities and you're good to go. Maybe not self-sufficient but you have everything during shortages. During the flood we saw people were going to the store hysterically couple times but we stayed inside whole time because we had everything. Eventually we had to go get groceries too but it was like, the last day and they let me charge my phone at the store (atms and stores had electricity fixed before homes because people had limited cash) but once we were back the electricity at the house was back too and internet as well , we still had to wait a bit for the cellular network to be available. Before we went neighbours feed us some rice and we went by foot (taxis unavailable, especially since everyone uses a smartphone app for that and we all ran out of power). Later when we had to leave because of visa problem we couldn't take food with us because it wouldn't go through customs so we gave away our fridge contents to these neighbours . Honestly, if not friendly neighbours and how hard and quickly armed forces and people that were fixing wires were working it'd look completely different. Sure, it helped immensely that we had stuff but eventually you run out and what then? Good that here it's helpful environment in such situations.

Also paradoxically it helps that country has regular shortages because it's normal to have backup in place ie people use gas tanks to cook when electricity is off and you can use electric cooking appliances when you run out of gas. Some houses have water tanks on the roof (ours is unfinished and non-functional ). If electricity is off you can't use water heater but you still can take a cold shower, etc.

But yeah, we ran out of electricity last (some neighbours had a generator, I thought they'd ran out later than us but I kept vampirizing power from one device to another so somehow my phone went bye bye last ), we also ran out of food last but... It was only a couple days. I realized that it's a serious problem. Probably electricity is easier to fix! Landlord said electricity no problem, tons of sun, we'll just get solar . But how to store food and what kind when it's so fuckin hot...

So cool! Do you guys have a bit of prepper / self-sustainability culture in the US? I remember I read some booklet about Earthships?? People were buying 'undesireable' land and making these off-grid homes with solar, rain water, built-in gardens... Quite amazing.

Now that you talk about it... Do I need hankies???? *Looks at a HUGE pack of tissues in front of her* Well... Maybe not yet, but let's get a couple just in case. I actually have these multiple use ear cleaning sticks, it's popular here , but I prefer single use buds, which I have stuffed tons of here.

Food is a tough one and your climate with it being warm probably and does bring its own struggles.

I bought myself a Bluetti Power Station (and recently 2 extra batteries) the power station alone has been a life saver when power goes out we have 3 freezers and it helps to keep them running for an hour or two a day and everything kept frozen the AC180 I have can run my fridge If I needed for 9.5 hours straight without charging. I have a 200W solar panel then I use to keep it topped up.

But I only need to run a freezer for an hour a day in order to keep the contents frozen!

With us its cold / wet to keep away so you cant cook out doors if you got no gas supply (thats not happened) but I have log burners in the house.

I guess even if you bought tinned food you would need to keep that from direct sunlight and massive temperature changes as it can vary. If you like lettuce crops etc you could maybe grow micro greens on a window keep sowing and rotate every week from harvest it takes 30 days to get a salad meal but it won't offer half or all that you need. But it's something.

Id maybe go down keeping crackers and that kind of thing and then find out what locals keep that doesn't spoil. I can't comment much on that as my climate is sooo different.

I got 60 acres of land I can and do grow my own food on and we can and store everything either pressure cooking in jars or we store root crops in sand in buckets and boxes (sealed because of where we are, field mice can be a problem)


As for your wipes Id buy them - if power goes down you got some to get clean and freshen up.




For me more recently I've been "stocking up" food and what not just because of whats going on in the world not just for "winter" I figure things will only keep going up in price at the moment and it doesn't matter how much money I got I hate paying 3x the price for something when it was less last week.

Plus the whole thing of prices go up instantly but take a life time to drop annoys the crap out of me. Plus USA / Iran I think they thought that was going to be 4 days? Then it went to 4 weeks and now they saying will be months and beyond (its day 22 now I think?) the more infrastructure that gets destroyed the harder and longer it will be to get back to normal regardless of if and when it all ends.

I don't just see the "fuel" side of it, it's the knock on effect for everything else. Everything has oil or needs it to be made in some form.

Just yesterday on the radio people where saying interest rates with mortgages are having a knock on effect and people are coming off fixed rates and finding them selfs having to pay an extra £400-600 a month now due to the conflict vs the quote they had months prior to it starting.



IF the world ends from a dooms day prepper point of view id rather sit out side and watch that bomb land by my feet. IF anyone lucky enough to live they can have what I stashed away, id don't see the point in being in some fantasy doomsday scenario.

 

[ggmopa]

Food is a tough one and your climate with it being warm probably and does bring its own struggles.

I always thought in worst case scenario, keeping bee hives wohld be the cheapest and most practical way to gather food - let the bees do the foraging for you. And they adapt to the climate. Some people have even started keeping them on their balconies in apartments.