SHTF/PREPPING

[DAVE]

I have been thinking of posting this topic for some time. Now with the recent disaster in Japan and Ken’s700 post on water filters has got me thinking.
If you do a search for PREPERS or SHTF you will get a bunch of info. Myself I started some food and water storage a few years ago. The tragedy that is going on in Japan has got me fired up again to be as prepared as I can be. There are some lessons to be learned from these events. To me, number one is you cannot count on anyone but yourself. Food, shelter, water, heat, ect, and some form of protection from those that have not prepared.
There seems to be a lot of emphasis on fire power and not so much on food and water.
I would think the most likely event would be some form of natural disaster, earthquake , flood, fire, an attack from the Canadians.

Just wondering if you guys are doing any prepping??
I talk with some of my friends and family and they look at me like I am a whack job.
To me having some extra food and water is like having money in the bank.
The LDS seem to have it together when it comes to being prepared.

[Ken]

It definitely has me thinking about it.

The one water advantage I have....is I have a well....So as long as I can get a generator run...an hour a day...or whatever..I can pump water. That's not a lot of gas, would last a long time. I also have a small pond that I could throw a ball and hit....so filter would be all I needed.

Food...another story. A big 5 gal bucket of rice would be a good start...there's also MRE's...but those are pretty expensive.

Interestingly..my friend Chris, who lives in Tokyo....his hardest thing to find? Toilet Paper.

[GrizzlyGuy]

Yes, I've been prepping for years. I'm still not where I want to be and have TO-DO and TO-BUY lists that are a mile long each, but I'm way better prepared than the average person. I'm confident that my wife and I could shelter in place (my plan A) for up to 6 months in relative comfort with no outside help at all. I'll feel better once I can extend that to 1 year like the Mormons do. The rear bag on my Grizzly is a pretty well stocked GHB (Get Home Bag). I'm still tweaking my BOB (Bug-out Bag), no plans for an INCH bag (I'm Never Coming Home bag) but my BOB design isn't too far off from being one.

Unfortunately, a lot of people have been thinking the same thing lately. I say "unfortunately" because it is now real hard to find long-term emergency food (e.g., freeze-dried food in #10 cans) in stock anywhere. I had placed an order a few weeks before the Japan quake and I still haven't received all of my order. Check out the status of Mountain House. Things have only gotten worse since I posted that. It's not just Mountain House, as much of my old order's food that is still on backorder was from Provident Pantry. I had also ordered some beans, green peas and onions in superpails from Walton Feed prior to the earthquake and even that stuff was backordered for a while (all has since arrived fortunately).

If you want to see someone who really has his shit together check out this. I bow down to his greatness.

WARNING: Some people will still think you are nuts for doing even the most basic common sense preps. Less people think that now, as we were discussing here: Wondering if your nuts for preparing?.

There is actually a pretty active discussion of prepping topics in this section of Calguns. There are other forums dedicated to it as well, like Zombie Squad.

[hemingray]

Common sense preps make sense to me. However, the level of your most prepared guy seems almost like a hobby in that it would require a lot of management over time. It did make me think that with a little planning and management, you could have supplies in much better shape than a few bunches of canned stuff for earthquake emergencies like I did down in the Bay Area.

I was intrigued by the comment at one place of not using a gas stabilizer. "it has enough additives" - but I'm not so sure it's the right stuff to preserve for a longer period. On the other hand, we have a pressure washer at work that nobody has maintained and the gas in it is probably 2 years old. If I were at home, I probably would have drained everything and replaced with fresh gas first - but since it's at work - what the heck, I choked it and started pulling. 3 pulls and it was up and running! I was amazed. It ran smooth and with full power. (it's a good quality DeWalt machine)

I have two generators here, one Yamaha (of course!) 2400 watt inverter for clean power and the other is a brute force Generac/Tecumseh 5500 watt (POS Y2K variety) for running the well if ever needed. I store the Yamaha wet with Sta-Bil added (and run it periodically) and the Generac is stored dry so there is no fuel breakdown since it's really never used (i think I should probably change the oil and fuel it for some short run time this season))