three guitars, a half dozen top board games and some not so well known, a dozen large jig-saw puzzles-several large 3-D ones too, a fairly large library should be good for awhile
Posted on 08/31/2011 3:47:21 PM PDT by EnglishCon
The One Long Term Survival Tool Everyone Forgets.
OK, the SHTF big time, and it is going to be a very long time until things settle down. You, as a prepper, have your food, medication and fuel stores, your guns and ammo, your water and power needs sorted out and your retreat. You have even arranged allies amongst your neighbours. You are set to ride this thing out until things slowly get back to normal. Your garden is growing, and the odd intruding deer, raccoons and rabbits that fancy a free lunch are making a welcome addition to your meat store.
You have probably forgotten all about the major tool for serious long term survival.
Entertainment. After all, there are not going to be any TV shows or movies for a while. Talk radio is off the air, and the HAM radio is used for contact first, gossip second.
Books are not just for information but, more importantly, entertainment. A musical instrument or two, if you or one of your party are blessed with musical ability. Songs, as anyone who has had to do a route march knows, makes even the most mind numbing tasks bearable. Music in general, as there is nothing more pleasing than listening to music of an evening.
For books, we have a mix. Some paper and ink, mainly the how to manuals and the repair manuals for every piece of machinery we have. At the insistence of my wife, one inclusion I should mention is a good vegetarian cookbook, for the summer months. The ability to trot out into the garden, grab some veggies and make a truly tasty and interesting meal without digging into your meat store is not to be sneezed at, yet, like most preppers, it was a blind spot for me. We have three kindles, and a hand cranked charger that will charge both them and the MP3 player. http://www.survivaldepot.co.uk/product474753_3307984.aspx is dirt cheap, easily repaired if it breaks and takes up almost zero room (as usual, I am not affiliated with this site or product in any way, merely a happy customer). Two of the kindles have yet more manuals on them, with duplication of the vital ones like the Bible, Gray's Anatomy, the Handbook of Medicine, various gardening books and, oddly, several law books. One of the things to be considered in a community after TSHTF is law, which a lot of people don't consider. American readers might want to add the constitution to their list, though I would bet that most preppers can recite that by heart! The third kindle though, is the important one. Stuffed with books, both classics and modern, children’s and adult, fantasy and biography. We already have the habit of reading to each other in the evening, which is surprisingly entertaining, and is a good habit to develop.
Music, well, there is the MP3 player, as mentioned. Three of them, in fact, each with SD card slots. Our entire music library (something I am REALLY going to regret losing when TSHTF, but it is simply too bulky to move) is all on SD cards. A battery powered docking station, with a solar charger, lets more than one person listen at a time. Instrument wise, we have 12 sets of guitar strings – bugging out with a guitar on your back is, shall we say, impractical. I can make a guitar or a dulcimer easy enough, but the strings I cannot make. Drums are easy enough to make and provide a good beat for evening singalongs.
Prepping is for survival. This I understand and approve of. Simply surviving is not living. I have added maybe 3 pounds to your survival preps with this post, but have added a huge amount to your quality of life.
We have books, cards, horse shoes, dominoes, every Sly Stalone movie ever made and lots of popcorn. Do not forget the popcorn.
Harmonica, have to have a harmonica to play those sad tunes.
three guitars, a half dozen top board games and some not so well known, a dozen large jig-saw puzzles-several large 3-D ones too, a fairly large library should be good for awhile
I always felt sorry for that guy at the end. Poor Henry Bemis!
Then please remember to stock up on diapers and nappy rash cream!
My friends always used to say that if everyone disappeared, I’d shrug and head for the library.
I’m set for a week or two.
Same here. Everyone in my family reads. When the kids were smaller, we even went to book stores rather than toy stores.
I picked up a few games and different types of card games. It won't be easy without technology, but we'll do what we have to do to get by.
Got books, but would like to see a discussion on generators. We have a gasoline generator that pumped our well water and heated the water, kept some lights on plus ran the coffee maker, toaster and microwave (alternately) during the time we were out of power since Sunday from the hurricane. We had kicked around the idea of having a propane generator because we wouldn’t have to worry that the local gas station might not have power, but it sounds like the propane tank doesn’t hold much more than a weeks worth and costs more than gasoline. Maybe a diesel generator would be good because we would have our furnace fuel tank to run off of if need be.
The nice thing about beer is that it provides both nutrition AND entertainment.
I have a steer but he is food. Ain’t it grand!!
There’s always mending clothes, making clothes, fixing shoes, and fixing all manner of tools. And cleaning the guns.
That episode was so sad.
I did have a 10kW diesel backup genset, and used it for very large tools as required, and the couple of times that we had blizzards in the mountains for more than 5 days (design time for the solar power system).
I could run the genset for an hour a day to recharge the batteries and that would last 24 hours.
I was VERY happy with the diesel genset. Just make sure that if you are in a cold environment, that you have a few extra glowplug sets and filters for it.
/johnny
Been there, done that. Still there, some ways.
Folks don’t know what they can put up with until they have to.
Then it becomes normal.
Just sayin’...
We are ‘preppers’, I’m just glad it is no longer forced on me as part of my religion.
We've learned everything we could about survival all the way back to the stone age. We've learned how to live with absolutely nothing. It's not an easy task, but it can be done.
There's a good chance, especially for those near a city, people will have to flee from all their material goods because of rough gangs. The welfare recipients will steal for themselves when they can't get a politician to do it for them. I don't think a lot of people think about that.
Now all you need is a flock of sheep.
The best defense is a good offense. That will also become entertainment enough.
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