Posted on 04/14/2015 7:28:54 PM PDT by Kartographer
Bad Strategy #1: “I’ll just hunt and live off the land.”
Bad Strategy #2: “I’ll go into the woods and live there.”
Bad Strategy #3: “I’ll bug out on foot for 73 miles through the mountains, even though I don’t regularly exercise.”
Bad Strategy #4: “I don’t need a group. I’m going to go it alone.”
Bad Strategy #5: “I don’t need to store food, I’ll just take everyone else’s because I’m a bad-ass.”
Bad Strategy #5: “I don’t need to store food, I’ll just take everyone else’s because I’m a bad-ass.”
Bad Strategy #7: “I don’t store food. I store seeds.”
Bad Strategy #8: “I’ll just run a generator and continue on like nothing ever happened.”
Bad Strategy #9: “I’ll just use my fireplace for cooking and heating.”
Bad Strategy #10: “I’m going to hunker down in the city and scavenge what I need.”
Bad Strategy #11: “I’ve got my supplies, and now I don’t need to think about gloom and doom.”
Bad Strategy #12: We’ll set up a perimeter and shoot anyone who breaches it.
(Excerpt) Read more at theorganicprepper.ca ...
Judging by the recent small shtf events even approaching a gas station in a full scale SHTF will be a death sentence.
I don't have as much chlorine as I'd like, but there are ways of making it in usable quantities if you have a source of aluminum or aluminum processing dross, and I do. Likewise, the nitrogen mustard and sulfur mustard.
On the other hand, I can put a pretty sizable quantity of nitrochloroform/chlorpicrin together, should a matter of wide area pest control come up. I've not bothered with Sarin or Novichok 60/A232. Yet.
How do you immediately grown corn or other grains in a forested area?
How do you cure meat for long term storage?
What is the value of a muzzle loader?
I have just killed a rabbit. What useful products will come from this animal?
Why should I fry this rabbit rather than grill him?
Defense against such marauders is but one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is to take the offensive.
Hunt them down, and they'll head elsewhere where they're not hunted. Those that are not smart enough to do so become the live fire training exercises, aka NEPUTS.
Vegetables have about 200 calories or less per pound. Seafood, poultry and meat anywhere between 400 to 800 calories per pound.
Just GOOGLE "Calorie Counts of Foods Per Pound" for greater detai.
A subsistence diet would probably require 3 to 4 pounds of food per person, a 2,000 calorie diet perhaps 4 to 6 pounds.
Assuming consumption of 4 pounds a day, a population of 300,000,000 will consume 600,000 tons of food per day.
That is a lot of porcupines, deer, dogs, fish, birds, bugs, worms, cattails, kudzu roots and palm hearts for people to forage every day. And the next day. And the next day.....
Especially when they live in cities.
"As of 2011, about 250 million Americans live in or around urban areas. That means more than three-quarters of the U.S. population shares just about three percent of the U.S. land area."
Ref: "American Cities On The Rebound"
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/american-cities-on-the-rebound/
911 was an interesting warning about how quickly gas can disappear and how dangerous it can be as it runs out.
On the afternoon of 911 I was at a gas station with a couple of friends. When we finally got to the pump we had guys with cans getting aggressive about wanting to pay us to fill their cans before people in line behind us.
That instant shortage was just a few hours into a purely psychological crisis where we didn’t even lose electricity.
Plus we have to consider that at the same time people would have to forage or grow, harvest and prepare food.
And forage for water, fuel, medications, ammo, etc. - whatever else it takes to survive.
I have been bitten by a rattlesnake [back in the mid '70s] not too far from Deming. I spent about four real interesting but not fun days getting stable enough to be transported for better medical care [I was with an Apache kid who had been a tank crewman in my outfit, though not my own crew, who knew what he was doing with me] and I was very happy to live there at that particular time.
Survival Hint: when stepping outside the immediate camp area to attend to a call of nature during the hours of darkness, do not step on a western diamondback longer than you are tall.
The only thing I can think of that won't get used is the squeal.
I do like rabbit bones for needles.
/johnny
Plus we have to consider that at the same time people would have to forage or grow, harvest and prepare food.
And forage for water, fuel, medications, ammo, etc. - whatever else it takes to survive.
Concur. But note how the critters who do so work it: wolves survive by working together and hunting in packs. Bears do not.
And where will I get the grease or oil to fry him in?
Rabbits meat has very little fat.
Good for weight loss, bad for survival.
One of the reasons I've got sufficient fuel storage for better than 1250 miles for one of my pickups. But if that load of fuel goes up, that too can be a death sentence, and it can be a temptation for others who are aware of it.
You pays your money and makes your choice. But it's an option, to be considered, and used or discarded as circumstances dictate.
I don't figure on approaching gas stations much. Last time I made the run from Indiana to Wyoming, I ran it as a shakedown exercise, with no gas station pit stops, though refueling in remote campsites was necessary, three times.
Go in a convoy, burn more fuel- but you've got more hands for the work, and more eyes/ears/hands for site security. An option, as circumstances dictate....
Well done, the facts about food are totally unknown to most people.
just as a start:
Fat for storage purposes. Very little with a rabbit, much more with other animals.
Fur for fishing lures.
Bone needles
Guts for fertilizer
Skin for re-usable patches for a muzzle loader.
(One rabbit’s worth of patches can generate a lot of protein. Very valuable.)
Brain for tanning the skin
IMHO, that's the worst of it. Most of us have prepped and can deal with quite a lot of crap after it hits the fan...but 'Ol Uncle Sam sending troops and assets to do round up or confiscations is going to be a deal breaker.
I, for one, will not be herded nor will I give up essential supplies to any government agency. It will end badly and not just for me.
Read ‘One Second After’, by William Fortchean. Foreward by Newt Gingrich.
It’s an OPTIMISTIC scenario about what would happen after an EMP attack, and about what the Feds would do for us if one ever happened.
Can you imagine the Federal government being able to work, secure in the knowledge that all elections after that point would be moot?
It’s a thought I just had, actually. I should have thought it after finishing the book about eight months ago, but . . .
Anyway, I’d rather be hit with an H-bomb.
I'm not big on muzzle loaders, since I can and have make/made those here without a problem. And for most stuff, I don't need a firearm at all. The skin (without fur) is useful for translucent windows. With fur, and cured, it makes a great liner. Very tender to work with, but I've done it.
And while bone needles are nice to work with, I've made plenty of my own steel needles out of the scrap pile. The needles I used for the quilt top made from my uniforms were hand-made from steel out of the junk pile.
/johnny
Didn’t sound as good to say “One Less Than A Dozen Bad Strategies”.
lol
Those who hunker down outside the cities will have it ok for about 3-5 weeks. After that, you'd best have lots of ammo and teams who can maintain and protect a perimeter. Ferociously.
Diabetes is going to kill a bunch in that situation. The meds are sparse and expensive. Insulin doesn’t keep, though it keeps longer than it did.
Like I said, a massive nuclear strike would be more merciful.
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