Doomsday preppers?

[chairohkey]

I'll greet any looter I see with this:

Just one of many.

[Crxmahan]

Me and bruce are teaming up we will set up a NF refugee camp.

[wildross]

He followed me out eventually and I made him watch the baby while I took my kayak and snorkel/mask to go find my purse and other important items.

cool

[Zorch]

Frankly though, I know that 2012 is no different than every other doomsday prediction...life will go on.

Exactly. If something happens this year, it's not because it's 2012, it will probably be because we allowed Ahmadenijad and his counterparts in Israel to get to the point of doing something completely idiotic - not the product of some stupid doomsday prophecy.

That said, in a hypothetical doomsday scenario I think more important than massive stockpiles are friends and family - allies you can trust, and know how to find/connect with. In addition to my family and friends nearby, I have a network of friends and family around the world, so I have options should I decide that Tokyo, Shanghai, or London is where I need to be at some point in time. When you're dealing with lawlessness and all its perils, 5(or 20) smart, decently-equipped allies will beat 1 person sitting on massive stockpiles, almost every single time.

[REKER]

The most likely Apocalyptic/Doomsday/etc event would be some type of virus outbreak or natural disaster. The scariest would be, of course, Nuclear warfare simply b/c you cant necessarily "protect" yourself.

That being said, having some type of plan is better than nothing, especially when it comes to natural disasters.

[oystergirl]

I got friends and family the world over. For me I find it important to know what to do after the stockpiles are gone. who knows how to hunt? Fish? preserve meats? vegetables, live off grass if necessary? leach acorns? slaughter an animal? sew? desalinate water? grow food etc. I took wilderness survival and orienteering in college with the army (so I could have some classes with my friends) and I know a lot of stuff that I think would help, which makes me feel pretty darn good, but seriously, I think we will all be drinking champagne on new years and laughing.

[Crxmahan]

I dont think 2012 will happen but if somethibg does im not going to be a victim.

[Guest Snake McClain]

Me and bruce are teaming up we will set up a NF refugee camp.

I'm okay with this.

[CalvinHobbes]

I've been going to a lot of FEMA conferences and stuff and I volunteer with Mass's branch the past two years and I can say I'm prepared...they give us flashlights, pocket knives, etc. every time, then they give us checklists of what we should buy... Some people were joking about how stupid it was, but I'm prepared.

[BoydLabBuck]

I am just starting to get into the survivalist stuff. I don't plan on going all out on supplies, but learning as much as I can to take a minimalist approach if necessary.

But today I ordered this. The famous USMC KA-BAR. Now I need to learn how to use it.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1832[/ATTACH]

[Crxmahan]

Watch steven segal in under seige thats where I learned all my knife fighting tech.

Joking.. Theres plenty of tutorials and free classes and info online, check out youtube, and there may be an ehow

['Roos]

My kit trends towards the heavy-duty first aid (triage! Sewing you back together! Taping everything else!), water, protein and duct tape. The only real natural disaster I'm worried about here is an earthquake, as I grew up in an earthquake zone and now live in a brick house, but I'm fairly certain the whole city would be leveled in the case of an earthquake... So I really wouldn't have to worry since I'd be dead.

[scotticus]

I think preparedness and being self-sufficient are totally sane/smart things to do.

We've had a well equipped bug-out bag for a few years now, and I have a small cache of food and water that gets rotated as required. We garden as much as possible, and we're working on the licencing process for a .22

In short, we're probably better equipped than a lot of folks, but not quite as ready for the unexpected as we'd like to be.

[adampm]

Guns:

I've heard everyone should have basically four guns.

1) BB Gun for varmits (think fall out)

2)Pistol for more personalized protection.

3) Shot gun for bigger game hunting.

4) One machine gun type weapon (i.e. ak47/ar15/etc)

For guns you'll typically want:

1) a .22 rifle and pistol. They make great varmit and training weapons.

2) a pistol (last line of self-defense, the big advantage to a pistol is less weight than a rifle.)

3) a shotgun able to shoot shot and slugs.

4) an AR style rifle of a caliber capable of taking game in your area and for self-defense. (Would you rather fight the bad guys at 500+ yards or at 20-30 feet?) Popular calibers are 5.56 and 7.62. Unless you have a class 3 license you won't legally be able to have automatic weapons.

If you read survival books if tshtf .22 ammo will be a very viable for trading since currency probably won't mean crap. Paper money is after all just paper and if things did colapse then it won't even make good toilet paper.

[chairohkey]

Is anyone else into SHTF/TEOTWAWKI fiction? Its actually how I got into the whole survival thing in the first place. A couple of my favorites:

Earth Abides - George Stewart

Alas Babylon - Pat Frank

Swan Song - Robert McCamon

One Second After - William R. Forstchen

Lights Out - David Crawford

Day by Day Armageddon - J.L. Bourne

[adampm]

I've read a few of those. Out of the ones listed my favorite is Light's Out.

I don't know if anybody is as prepared as they'd like to be. I live in an apartment that without AC is over 110 in the summer. Even with the AC running full blast last summer the temp rarely got below 83. I figured I'm pretty much screwed.

I grew up living in a farm and used to be really into wilderness survival and living. Sadly I don't remember even half of what I used to know. I do still remember how to shoot though

[AuroraNorth]

I grew up in Alaska and disaster preparedness was something automatic. Then I moved south and when I mentioned it people looked at me like I had two heads. I ran across Neil Strauss's Emergency and he mentioned Community Emergency Response Team training, so I signed up for my local class and met my kind of people. I have food and water stockpiles, and a prepped BOB. I'm slowly doing more as I can afford it.

[morethanjustamom]

I got friends and family the world over. For me I find it important to know what to do after the stockpiles are gone. who knows how to hunt? Fish? preserve meats? vegetables, live off grass if necessary? leach acorns? slaughter an animal? sew? desalinate water? grow food etc. I took wilderness survival and orienteering in college with the army (so I could have some classes with my friends) and I know a lot of stuff that I think would help, which makes me feel pretty darn good, but seriously, I think we will all be drinking champagne on new years and laughing.

Me. I can do almost all of these things.

[tonyfoto]

Call me crazy but I'm prepped to get moving at any moment. I have two packs I got form the ARMY surplus. One is kept in my closet and the other in the trunk of my car. They are designed for any event from a zombie outbreak or military invasion (Russians, Chinese, etc) to any national disaster.

Main pack in the closet: (this kit is always growing.)

- compact 1-person tent (could fit in a 2liter bottle folded.)

- sleeping bag

- hatchet

- folding shovel

- Wisconsin state map

- Compass

- electromagnetic flashlight

- Kaito Voyager 5-Way Powered Emergency Radio

- 100 ft rope

- First aid kit

- water test kit and cleaning tablets

- pack of 12 large garbage bags

- a roll of shop towels (more durable then paper towels)

- Desk of cards

- Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks

- Poor Mans James Bond by Kurt Saxon (everything you need to know about turning house hold items into weapons. This book should be outlawed.)

- Hunting and pocket knife

- lighter, waterproof matches, and flint/steel.

- 4 MREs (also a 12pack case stored in the closet)

- attached to zipper. key to gun safe holding a Mossberg 500 12 Gauge Pump Shotgun, a remington 300 w/ and a Ruger SR9

In the car I purchased a Professional Survival & Medical Combination Kit from survivalmetrics.com. list here.

My friends and I also have a plan in the even something happens.

[Mulisha7]

My wife and I have short and long term plans if things go wrong. We live in Alaska where 95% of our food is from outside the state and there is maybe 3 days worth on the store shelves. So any serious disaster on the West Coast that disrupts shipping or another earthquake like the one in 64 could really put this state in trouble. We are building up our food reserves at the house, and both have bug out bags in our cars. We also have a remote cabin about 90 minutes outside Anchorage to bug out to if things really go downhill.

We try to be reasonably prepared. Many of the people in the prepper community make it their life, it's all they do. I think a catastrophy of such scale that the US will be plunged into widescale rioting and looting is unlikely but not unthinkable so we want to be ready but not obsess over it.

Oh, and it's a question of when not if, the dead rise from their graves to feast on the flesh of the living.

[JPanda]

One thing everyone in this thread should invest in is either a Crovel, E-Tool, Fubar or something similar.

[Waldo]

For this thread though....I don't really worry about it.

You don't need a store of drinking water if you know how to make water safe. Any examples of where this is not feasible (major floods a la Katrina) do not apply as it is virtually impossible to flood where I live. If my home is flooded it is pretty safe to say most of SE US is dead and by proxy most of the world, as sea levels would have to be 1000'+ too high, I'm on too high of ground to worry about a flash flood of overflowing flood, even at regional level disaster levels as la what happened in Iowa a couple years ago.

Even disasters at the regional level are sufficiently covered so that dying of starvation is not going to be an issue. It would take a near collapse of the gov't for starvation to be a real issue in the wake of disaster.

And should that occur, I'm covered as well. I have a very useful skillset to any pseudo-tribe. I can fix pretty much anything myself, electrical/mechanical/structural, grew up a boys scout so understand the whole outdoor survival thing, and via my engineering background understand completely how to make water drinkable and how infrastructure is put together. People wouldn't just go around killing other people in a free for all, I don't see that as an issue.

But guns.....don't own one. Know how to use them. But I am of the ilk that you invite bad things into your home by owning a gun. You stand a much higher chance of yourself or others you know of being hurt by your gun then preventing somebody else with one from harming you. I don't hunt (anymore) so that isn't an issue.

[Naturally]

I want to ask those of you who talk about being prepared for Zombies. To me, they are just a bit of a myth, same with vampires and werewolves. I may be being very thick here and taking things too literally, but do some of you genuinely believe that a future where the dead rise out of their graves to come and attack the living is remotely possible or likely?

I don't mean this in an insulting way. Just very curious because I am into some very "spooky" things, but this is something that has never crossed my mind until I came on this site. Spirits of the dead, yes absolutely, some of them harmful, but not as zombies.

If a disaster hits the UK, I may be a bit more likely to live to thank those of you who contributed to this thread, since I have started to create two grab-bags, one for the car and one for the house, and I now know how to collect water from plants and from the earth. Makes sense to be prepared, as long as you don't obsess about it, in my opinion.

[Ryan Sannar]

Its not about beliving in zombies. Its that they are the pinnacle of prepardness. If your prepped for a zombie invasion, your prepped for anything.

[Mb82]

Personally where I live I really only have to worry about Hurricanes. Any tsunami would kill me. Living a few miles from several major military instillation if a country decided to nuke us I would never know it because I would be killed instantly. I have enough white gas to run my camp stove for a week and food to make that also( although not "healthy" there is better then none). I have a VHF radio that can comm with rescue workers that I use for my kayak when I am fishing. I know how to fish hunt find water and "make" water. I know what is edible in the woods and can navigate( not great) without a GPS just with a map and compass. My apartment is in an area that will only flood if a Cat 4 hurricane were to strike which I head west whenever they say cat 3 or higher anyway. I am on the second floor so again I have another 10ft before I start being flooded. I am not someone who considers themselves a prepper, it is more knowing I live in a hurricane prone area I need to be ready so I am not running to the store like a crazy person.

Funny thing about that whole head out of town because of a hurricane. Last year Irene hit, I had headed to Richmond to be away from the storm to my parents house. Richmond got HAMMERED by the storm and where I live didn't even have any flooding beyond a normal above average high tide. Shoulda stayed.