Bought more Mosin ammo
So you will be sitting around smoking a cigarette and eating oatmeal and radishes. Sounds like a plan...
But ...no man or family is an island either. I think it is time, way past time, if you haven't already started to think about people around you. If you plan to bug out or hold fort you can't defend all by yourself.
Identify folks in the neighborhood you'd want to be sure to ‘be on our side.’ If you have not done so already, introduce yourself and cautiously befriend them. Host a potluck dinner for your immediate neighbors etc. Don't talk about all the ‘prepper’ things you are doing, but strategically build alliances. Who will be able to help? Who will need help?
Example: Neighbor two doors down maybe hunts, owns a few rifles or power-bows. Somebody else is a good fisherman. Another hikes(GPS & map reading skills).
Example #2: Elderly lady next door. What are you going to do? Leave her to die? Or does grandma have a place with you? Nothing like grandma's meal, wisdom, and inner strength.
Even if you decide to bug out, you may need to leave as a group to safely travel outside the danger zone. You may not be headed to the same destination, but leaving as a group that can strategically defend itself could save more lives.
Do you have a route planned with two alternatives in different directions? And most importantly do you have copies of your Bible and the Constitution.
I bought some knee pads so that my knees don’t become too sore from all the praying that I will be doing.
I bought some good gloves for all the hard work I will be doing.
Stashed a little food, a little seed, keep the tank on my car full and have a good bit of water.
My mother always told me—root, hog or die.
The rest is in God’s hands.
Here it goes:
Canned 14 chickens (were on sale)
Shot deer, canned half, jerked other half in dehydrator
Cured bacon sides, smoking now
Dehydrator going full out- 20 lbs frozen sweet corn, 20 lbs sweet peas pre cooked, and assortment of fruit this week
Monthly run to Sams for canned fruit and beans, rice, flour, salt and dried beans.
Re-sighted in all scoped rifles (not an easy chore).
Order monthly lantern oil, wicks and parts.
Reload, reload, reload.
One case of Kentucky Delux.
Cheap whiskey will bring top dollar in barter.
Smart move with tobacco. Author Pat Frank (”Alas, Babylon”) wrote in 1962 that “the day may come when a pound of tobacco is worth more than a pound of gold.”
BTW, what’s the best form of bulk tobacco? Bugler tins, say some. Just curious.
First and foremost the question is are you prepared for eternity and what about family and friends. All the food storage, etc in the world is for naught if everyone is not ready to stand before God. The plan of salvation is the ultimate preparation. I download http://patburt.com/ and share with others. It has the ‘prepare” theme.
Besides food, water, generator (solar), and of course toilet paper, plastic bags, etc., I would have a supply of silver biotics (non-collodial silver - American Labs) that comes in gel and tube. You can’t go wrong in putting that in your emergency kit. It is not only like an antibiotic but also is used for prevention.
Thanks for the post!
For some; it is cheaper to die.
It would be good to have a camp stove for use in the kitchen when the power goes out. They can run on gasoline. I got a propane adapter for my Coleman stove. Got to have something to boil those Y2K beans for days. Got an antique 4 foot saw for firewood.
“We often have threads that quote recommendations of others about things you should do to prepare.”
Prepare for what, exactly? No sarcasm intended. And whatever the intelligensia says about it, who or what represents the intellegensia?
Is it preparation for four more years of Obama? Is it the December, 21, 2012 Mayan calendar thing? Biblical prophecy or some other catastrophic geological or astronomical event?
When something like that does not come to pass as expected, how many will be disappointed in the outcome? How many will be disappointed that they will not be able to say “we told you so”?
Bill Mauldin grew up in the mountains of NM, near Cloudcroft/Ruidoso.
He wrote a book about it, titled "A Sort of a Saga".
In it, he relates a time when a flood isolated his family and several others from town for a few days.
Tobacco was widely used, and ran out.
I don't recall the details, but it didn't go well.
Ping.
Short-Term (1-2 years) - canned goods and items from the supermarket. Ammo for my hand-guns and rifles, paper goods, a water conservation system (2 dozen blue barrels and a rain-catcher system),learning how to can and dehydrate anything that will last and vacuum sealing or dry-canning that which I dehydrate. I also purchased some just add water meals packaged for convenience. I'm thinking that these meals will get me through the first few weeks/months when everyone is still in a state of shock and trying to figure out the best way to do things. Non-Hybrid or heirloom garden seeds, enough for 3 years of crops) and gardening items (fertilizer, roto-tiller and materials to build the beds). All of this was accumulated over the course of a year.
Mid-Term (2-3 years)Some of the same items as in short-term storage but not so many store purchased canned items - more dried beans, rice, pasta, 3 year supply of hard red wheat, wheat grinder, etc. More dehydrated convenience foods, etc. By this time my garden should have been producing and I am putting by some of those items to add to my food storage. Again, more ammo for guns, more paper goods and freeze dried food items.
Long-Term (3-4 years) More of the same as above.
I've also included a good stash of vitamins and minerals, a still for making alcohol from composted yard and garden waste, a converter for my car so that it can run on the alcohol, I've got solar panels that can run appliances and recharge cell phones, solar oven for cooking. Several years ago I put in a dozen fruit trees, 2 avocado trees and some pecan trees. I've had several seasons of fruit and nuts from them all. I'm fortunate that at this time I'm healthy and don't take prescription medicines, but have stocked up on rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, vinegar and and lots of other commonly used otc items. I also have a bicycle, extra tires and parts, a hand operated air pump, extra oil & filters for the car, extra water filters for my water filtration system along with bleach, bleach tablets, I have a 4 bedroom home and the ability to use a alcohol/gas run generator in order to run a/c units and refrigeration units. I have had 5/8" plexiglass panels placed over all my windows as storm windows and to make the house harder to access from the outside. I have had the glass in my storm doors replaced with lexan for the same reason.
I do something every day to try to make myself ready. Several of us in my prepper group are taking first-aid classes in the next few weeks.
As much as I admire all the prep some are doing, I am both a realist and a bit of a pessimist. We live in a suburb of Philadelphia, close enough to be walking distance from some “not so good” areas if thugs were so motivated. Daughter & son-in-law (with baby on the way) live with us. Elderly mom & her DH nearby, they’d have to be taken along. No basement, no real storage other than a garage that is not accessible from inside, small cars, not a lot of discretionary income. No guns (thinking about it but haven’t made the move, yet) We have a pool for water to flush toilets and such, but not for drinking.
If things go really bad, we’d already be in a bad place, logistically, and would have to get out, if possible. Probably would go to my brother-in-laws first, as he has multiple guns and knows how to fend for himself (hunter, outdoorsy, wouldn’t hesitate to shoot in a hostile situation). I do have a lot of seeds & can garden/can stuff, but large amounts not realistically portable.
Praying it never comes to more than thinking on it :)
I live on a small cruising sailboat, so I’m simply preparing for a long trip.
In the interim, I’m working on my fitness and keeping the dialogue open with other people in the local boating community who are stocking up for a crisis. I teach a community martial arts class that some young men attend. Not too focused on firearms, other than a .22, shooting for the pot. Really, not too much more than what would be involved preparing for a long cruise. Extra fishing gear, hand tools, tarps, lines and wire, perhaps.
Boat people tend to come together in a crisis.
Bought more Mosin ammo
There are always more things than can be planned for, so the best advice is to train yourself to see when something bad is coming, and make your preparations quickly with respect to it.
Let’s parse this:
1) “There are always more things than can be planned for.”
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t plan and be prepared, just that your plans and preparations must be flexible. Emotionally invest in people, not things. That is, if you and your family have to flee buck naked, and you lose all your stuff, keep in mind that it was just stuff. Write it off. Stuff is expendable.
2) “Train yourself to see when something bad is coming.”
The ‘slowly boiling frog’ nails a lot of people; but at the same time if you prep too early your prep might be wasted.
The rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis is an excellent example of this. Hitler was in charge of the Nazi party in 1921, but only got real power in Germany after 1930, and in a big way in 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor, after which he rapidly established a totalitarian regime.
Most Jewish emigration from 1918-1921 was *from* Soviet Russia *to* Germany. Then a very large number left eastern Europe to Germany as well. But from there, many of them left Germany to go to the US and Palestine.
The largest outflow of Jews from Germany didn’t start until 1930, when the Germans started making restrictive anti-Jewish laws.
So look at this from a prep point of view. Interestingly, there is no association with movement based on the international depression. Remember that Weimar Germany had been devastated by depression and hyperinflation even worse than the US was by its Great Depression.
There are all sorts of lessons in here for preppers.
3) “Make your preparations quickly.”
I believe it was the great violinist Itzhak Perlman, who said something to the effect of “I make as many mistakes as anyone else, but I correct them faster.”
Exploit news immediately. For example, if you lived in California right now, as soon as you heard there was a major gasoline refinery fire, you should not only have filled your gas tanks, but invested in gasoline cans and filled them as well, because that means not just much higher prices, but shortages as well.
WOW, this thread has tinfoil hat dripping from its very core.
Sheesh