Posted on 05/02/2009 2:46:51 PM PDT by appleseed
Stockpiling useful things isn’t hoarding. Anyone not prepared is deemed to suffer.
Why would you conclude that the people you love would be the ones coming to steal your supplies? If they are there to take what you have the forethought to save up and in turn starve you and your family, then they ain’t your loved ones.
This load of weak-kneed compassionate conservatism is what got us in this mess!
when he’s drunk someone will take his food and guns....
This is exactly where I’m coming from. I live in the sticks also. We have also been through stuff where we have been isolated from civilization. We have plans for water food and the basics for survival if things come to that point. This includes foraging for food on the land, water in the raw and transportation which probably means hoofing it.
Our family has plans for meeting and getting to my place if and when it comes to that. This is actually something everyone should think of no matter what.
:)
On the list too, Johnny
So does the enemy.
So does the enemy.
As long as it’s a lifestyle versus a hobby or gimmick .......it’ll work , long or short term.
Stay safe !
Powder is dry. Prior experince dictates you are probably right. Been there and done that.
You think so? I didn’t say the people would come and rob you, I said they’d ASK for your supplies. So what are you going to do?
As for the forethought, some people simply will never have the resources to even stock up.
You think weak-knee’d compassion is the problem and for every week knee, I can show you a hard heart that thinks only of itself.
I have no intentions of ever participating in this kind of silliness.
Not preparing for one’s family is a different issue altogether. I will repeat my earlier point. When a person takes it upon himself to hoard enough supplies to last through, what? Armageddon - a year, or whatever, then he better be prepared to turn away the many who will come to him for help and I would not want to be in that position.
It’s better to learn how to hunt, fish, and cook from scratch and very few people today even know how to do the third, at least the young people I meet.
You know what Appleseed? I think it’s a far better use of one’s time to work at NOT having the collapse in the first place.
LOL. Who told the newspaper? Maybe I missed that. I can just see this scenario, ala “Night of the Living Dead,” ensuing.
PP,
Hard to fulfill the commands to be generous and share
if you don’t have anything to share...
First of all, keep in mind that no matter how bad things get, Mugabe is still in charge of Zimbabwe. Governments just won’t die on their own. There was no Weimar Revolution in Germany. Hyper-inflation, if it even happens (hasn’t in Japan), is no guarantee of a government falling or even of a stock market going to 0.
Naturally, prepare first for the idea that a societal meltdown won’t happen. That’s right. The good times might just edge out the bad no matter what. So...
Good job/business, education, strong family ties, no debt, positive savings, etc. Cover the basics. I’d hate for a good person to so over-invest in TEOTWAWKI that she gets crushed instead by society functioning normally. That would be tragic irony.
That being said, this is an awful time to be taking chances in major investment categories likes stocks, bonds, and real-estate.
Get into cash. Sell whatever you can. Drop your asking price to sell fast. And renting is better than owning during these sorts of deflationary downturn panics.
The time to invest is later, after the dust settles. Until then you want ca$h. Trust me, I’m an expert!
With the basics covered, you need to be prepared for a short-term emergency like all banks being closed for an extended period of time. Do you have enough cash on hand if your ATM card won’t work for a month?
Really? Banks are closed. ATMs won’t work. You’ve still got bills. You’ve got that much ca$h on hand? You better.
Checks and credit cards (bank cards!) may be unusable for a while, too.
At the next level, can you survive inside your home without going to a public/government food/shelter depot if a hurricane/tornado/tsunami/volcano/avalanche/earthquake or other natural event renders all stores closed for a month? What if society has a hiccup? Roads aren’t being cleared of downed trees/powerlines. Goods aren’t moving from the country into town, or between towns.
You’ve got your meds? Water? Safe canned food (#10 cans keep food fresh for 25 years). A certain way to start a fire, even in the rain? Winter clothes?
Do you have a 72-hour “bug-out” bag to grab and run if a wildfire or medium-sized meteor puts your home in an unsafe region? Or a plague (e.g. terrorist infection in your area)?
Does each member of your distributed family know how to call you if cell lines are working, and know where to meet up if they aren’t?
Do you have basic first aid available (painkillers, asprin, hydrogen peroxide, bandages) and know where to find a doctor/hospital?
Pause...
Surviving for longer periods of time is an order of magnitude more difficult than preparing for any of the above...and most people won’t come close to having the water or cash handy to handle even expected outages of the comforts of civilization (e.g. sanitary).
A few tips if you are in a longer-term survival situation:
#1: avoid all contact, especially violent, with military and paramilitary groups. You won’t have the firepower of a Destroyer or B-2 bomber, and you won’t have acces to their level of medical care. You want to survive. This is not about starting or winning a war. You’ll likely end up like one of the 3 dead pirates off the coast of Somalia if you violate this rule.
#2: stay put if you can. Once you leave you will become a forager, and that’s a very difficult way to survive.
#3: if you have to leave (e.g. to avoid contact with paramilitaries), then leave. F’in go! A stocked sailboat would be nice at that point. Go fishing. Come back when the crisis is over.
#4: announcements on loudspeakers, radio, TV, posters, and handouts, are not to be believed. But they’ll be out there.
This is important because in a desperate situation various bad actors will have incentive to tell you what you *want* to hear in order to manipulate your behavior.
Also, weapons, dogs, and body armor are great things (get them!)...but they aren’t going to help you against paramilitaries and they won’t sanitize your hands before eating or after septic disposal. The daily grind can kill you dead.
Likewise, while a gun is nice (and better to have one than not), shooting a deer in a nation that is starving will bring *large* numbers of people toward what they hope will be a deer kill. Drawing attention to yourself by firing a weapon or turning on lights at night...perhaps even a campfire, may be contrary to improving your survival odds.
This might be a great time to have a simple slingshot for squirrel hunting. Very quiet.
Now, just remember that the worst is unlikely to happen. Being prepared for the plethora of catastrophies that are possible is difficult. Moreover, you don’t want to scare yourself silly *or* become so invested in the mental idea of a crash/disaster that you begin *wishing* for it.
It’s unlikely to happen. Many a 1980’s “Reagan nuclear war” survivalist wound up disappointed. So too did the Y2K nuts (e.e. World Nut Daily).
What’s more likely is higher unemployment, limited riots/arson attacks near colleges and ghettos, and some inconvenient bank failures that tie up some access to capital.
You might also consider some redneck car armor for your family/commuter vehicle. Used police surplus ballistic body armor panels (soft armor) can be found online for as little as $25 each. Stuff them behind your door and rear hatch interior panels, plus in front/under your driver instrument cluster pod.
Lower your windows on your doors, remove your interior panels, and insert old phone books. Duct tape them out of the way of the glass windows and electric window motors. This can be done by an amatuer with as little as 1 hour of your time per door.
Lighter calibers of street-thug firearms such as .22, .38, and 410 shotguns won’t penetrate into your interior through your metal outer door panels plus through phone books.
This is a very quick and inexpensive way to help protect your family from small domestic riots where some bad actor in the crowd is likely to have a small pistol.
You can do the above without even alarming your family that an elevated level of threat exists. The windows will still work, after all. Your car will appear normal. If you want to go the extra step, pick up on-line some Llumar or C3 bulletproof window film for your windows.
You aren’t Rambo. You aren’t going to be machine-gunning down whole crowds of rioters before one of them can shoot your car from behind or from the side. TEOTWAWKI is *not* Hollywood! A little armor can thereby improve your daily sense of security without running up a big bill.
Obviously the above is worthless against more powerful handguns, but a rioter is less likely to be carrying around heavy artillery without being picked off by whatever police/national guard forces are still in existence.
For trading materials under riot conditions or TEOTWAWKI, I’m a bigger fan of dual-use materials like liquor.
Cheap Vodka, Everclear, and Moonshine have sanitizing uses, firestarting capabilities, painkilling uses, as well as trading and entertainment value. They also store for longer periods of time than you and your children and their grandchildren will live.
In contrast, you might find that single-use materials like gold hold no luster during actual panics.
Well, I suggest you try to Google it. But off the top of my head, I think of the man who said he was going to store up all his grain and the Lord said he was foolish b/c his life was going to be taken. That’s why I think God doesn’t like hoarding.
There are numerous verses that talk about being content and giving to others and so on that also support the concept of not being a “hoarder.” Hoarding, traditionally, has been considered a sin, because the hoarder tends to have selfishness in his heart and no faith that God will meet his needs.
Why are you assuming one would have nothing? Why do you assume you will even be alive? You are quite presumptuous, aren’t you?
Stockpiling useful things isn’t hoarding.
Buying 50,000 primers when it prevents others from practicing their shooting skills is hoarding.
I have been listening to this same claptrap for 23 years now and if I had done what all these doomsayers have been saying for the 23 that I even KNEW about it (they’ve probably been around longer), I’d have no money, no home, and no education. What a waste. Of course, one can lose everything in a heartbeat, but the point is to rejoice in the blessings.
Incidentally, I have no idea what JABERWOCKI or whatever it is you wrote is - don’t use acronyms that are not in common use - it’s rude.
As for prepared, I am always prepared for small-medium emergencies but like my husband says, if the world collapses on the levels that these survivalists talk about, even they are going to be in deep doo-doo - they just don’t KNOW it. I have my eyes wide open and am not into these survival fantasies. Frankly, I don’t want to survive if the entire world is gone.
And finally, I have no idea whether your post was sarcasm or not. It really was not clear.
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