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Sa Skimrande

Any Preppers here ?

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Any of you into preparing for possible difficulties to come ?

 

Are you a prepper ?

 

What's a prepper you may ask, well here is a fairly rounded explanation of what a prepper is

 

And so do you prepare for possibilities which might or might not happen ?

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Today is enough for me to be getting on with, the future is too unpredictable.

 

I've got a first aid kit and enough toothpaste for tomorrow, that's probably less than 0.1 on the preppometer.

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Maybe I am just odd then, as I have always had stuff for odd eventualities, and even now in the house I have portable water filtration and purification equipment, two portable pressure cookers and a couple of meths cookers and a home made wood gas cooker and loads of candles and a few lanterns. Oh and the first aid kit contains a lot of stuff one would take on an expedition to include sterile needles, sutures emergency dental kit and I know how to use them if need be as I still do my own dental fillings.

 

What caused it, well ex scouts, ex military and just a belief in murphy's law and I had a rude awakening recently when my household fuse board went on fire one of my smoke detectors detected it as I have both class one and class two detectors and I ended blasting the contents of one of my dry powder fire extinguishers all over the hall way, but no more smoke, then I isolated the flat from outside then called my landlord. It being what it is with electricians at the moment, it was a week before my power was safely restored, but without electricity in an all electric home it highlighted my unpreparedness, I am now prepared if I lose power again.

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My husband and I prepped a lot for bird flu (before swine flu - it would have been about five or six years ago. I still wonder if bird flu is yet to hit). We filled the larder we had at the time with cans, and as we used them for a few months we always restocked to maintain the same number of cans. We also stocked up on anti-bac wipes, various flu-specific medicines and huge bottles of water. We installed an outside letter box, so that the post wouldn't bring infection into the house. I'm fairly sure there's some other stuff we did, too but I can't remember right now. But my husband took the whole thing very seriously.

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I have found travelling light and being resourceful to be a better strategy than lugging huge quantities of stuff around just in case something happens. Being prepared for a known, or highly possible, eventuality is sensible. Where to draw the line on the likelyhood of something happening is down to how much one is willing to carry the associated burden. The fact of carrying that burden could also make one more vunerable to events.

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I would say yes because of my first aid box, also have antibacterial gel.. we are expecting floods down here in winter so i am ordering handcrank radio, make sure I have spare gluten free/dairy free in date food, my documents in zipped waterproof bag , torch, wellies, 4 litres of water per person, cash on me

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Well regards natural semi disasters I believe we should have learned something in recent years, through the fact it rains a lot many houses are built on flood plains and drainage rarely ever gets maintained and so we experience floods, small potatoes compared to what the US gets what with the hurricanes, the extreme winters and tornados, but prepping is big in the US and understandably so. Where I live the worst I can expect is a power cut as I live on top of a hill, but if the power drops out so do the pumps that pump the water up the hill and as t whether we get a power cut, many experts are forecasting within the next two years we might see them.

 

But I remember the seventies and all the strikes, the bin man strike and rubbish piling up in roads, I remember the smell and I remember my father and countless others burning what rubbish they could in the gardens. I remember the power cuts and when bread was rationed and I remember my mother always had stuff in just in case, but her mother saw the war years where food rationing only ended in the 1950's and so she passed on to her daughter to always stock up, never rely on shops as deliveries fail and as we know now, any hint of anything being in short supply people panic buy and clear shelves of what they don't really need.

 

In the long run it pays to be prepared, which is the scout movement motto.

 

But the year before last it was icy in the winter and we were besieged by a sheet of ice the gritters didn't go anywhere near it being a residential road, but I had several sets of ice spikes for shoes, they were intended as xmas presents, but I ended up donating them to the more adventurous of the OAP's in my block just so they could get out and they did, no stopping them, but for others that wouldn't risk it I was doing the shopping runs, but judging by the patterns in the snow quite a few people had various forms of snow and ice spike under foot, and good on them.

 

As to this winter local opinion amongst the mariners and farmers is be prepared this winter could be rough.

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I have always been a planner...I plan ahead for most things that I know can or will happen at any given time, but like before were I would go out of my way to look at every detail and make sure it was all ready and waiting for when needed, I now don't stress myself too much but will still be prepared without becoming too anxious...for instance if i've invited my LARGE family on one of our occasions I will get the shopping in at advance, pre-cook, chop, dice, my veg etc the night before, take out my dinner set and cutlery etc, sort out the place we they will be seated and in the morning I will do the rest having time to be a good attentive host without blowing a fuse:)!....I have always kept spare candles for the occasional bulb blowing or the electrics going off and keep a blanket, water and coats handy in our car when we travel a little further out just incase of any accidents or probs with the car on the highway...though nothing to the extent that you have preapred for Skimrande:)!...but good on you, its better to be prepared...!

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Do you think there's a difference between planning for realistic things, like having a first aid kit. or putting sensible things in the car for emergencies, or having a stove on hand if the leccy goes - and other types of prepping for things that have a minute chance of happening?

 

Like how far is too far?

 

And if you wanted to have a portable prep kit for walking around with - what would you have in it and why?

Edited by darkshine

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Ha, the EDC bag, the every day carry some go too far I believe with backups for backups, one has only to view Youtube under the title EDC to gauge your level of madness against others, but what will you realistically need during the course of your day should guide your EDC.

 

For me I do carry that unholy of unholy things a knife, not for a weapon but as the tool it is, the blade somewhere inside a Leatherman Juice Xe6 multi tool I bought off a squaddie who found it not man enough for Afghanistan and I have used the multitool many times but not in public these days for fear of the; ''He's got a knife'' knee jerk response form an irrational and negatively educated public. The knife is however within legal every day carry, no reason needed size but young plods like to be a pain in the ass, I have been there on that, where they have not got a clue what is legal and what is not despite the public education. But as a one time custom knife maker I know the laws and know what I carry is legal.

 

I also carry a pen, a pencil and a notebook for obvious uses and a torch, a piddly little single cell cree light and I have also used that often, usually by shoving it in my mouth so I can direct light somewhere I may be working and needing both hands.

 

The car, well consider the car what is likely to go wrong that can be fixed easily at the side of the road, if you haven't got the knowledge of what to do carry nothing and rely on your breakdown cover as all fluids, lighting and warning indicators should have been checked before you set out on your journey, so what can go wrong ? But if you are familiar with continental driving you will understand the legal requirement the continent has for a fire extinguisher, a first aid lit, a warning triangle and a box of replacement bulbs, for anyone can crash into something else or something else crash into you where the key is not to make a mountain out of a molehill by involving others in the hazard you create.

 

Currently in my car is my tool box, enough to do most jobs on a car including lift the cylinder head if need be but I would avoid that if it came to that, but suffice to say I do carry a comprehensive tool kit and that is partly because wherever I am when I drive, my tools are so I can repair other things if they need repair. I also carry jump leads, a foot pump and a warning beacon, oh and a spare ECU I pulled out of a scrap Clio. There is also a litre of coolant in there and a litre of oil, but what I carry is really nothing to what I used to carry when I had and drove daily an air cooled VW camper where with that things two hundred miles from home I got towed to a campsite with a failed clutch after Cornwall's hills where the break down people admitted they hadn't a clue with such an old vehicle (1977). So I took the engine out on a campsite on my own and found the problem was only oil leaking out of the crankshaft oil seal which had failed, so I took the clutch plate out and de oiled it by cooking the friction material on my camper cooker then refitted it. The job was finished off by drilling a hole in the clutch bell housing to drain any oil that snook past the oil seal, which I then tapped out with a homemade threading tap and fitted a bolt so oil could be drained off periodically on my journey. I refitted the engine and everything was fine for the rest of my holiday with only extra attention needed on the oil levels, both in the engine sump and the oil in the bell housing, where I found it must have been a rare event that the oil got past the seal, probably when I was working the engine hard on the hills, where later it was lower speed lower gear work, but the 1600 campers were always seriously under powered, but at least easily repairable.

 

But one thing regarding preparation I do understand, is experience is a great teacher and preparation serves to ease worry.

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I used to carry all sorts of cr4p around with me as a teenager and I mean 'all sorts' cuz it could get pretty weird (to other people - it made sense to me) and then I got so I couldn't be bothered with it any more, and now I'm not sure - although the comedy side of my brain can think of some amusing (to me) options in going completely over the top - I might check it out on Youtube if I get a decent amount of wireless signal at some point later as its really bottoming out right now and as such pretty tedious loading pages.

 

I think some of the car stuff makes sense - I say 'some' because it would depend on an individual's mechanical knowledge and ability, and also where you were going and when and what time of year, so driving in high hills or mountains at night in winter would require different things to driving to the beach in summer (for a clichéd example) but I guess its debatable.

 

A knife can be a really practical thing to carry around (I've owned many in my life), also tools can be useful to have... it all depends doesn't it? On who you are, what you do, what comforts you, what could have a use, and what a person can be bothered to carry around. It's an individual choice, so what may be really weird to one person, makes complete sense to another.

 

One thing I plan to start doing again is carry a notebook and pencil/pen, cuz there's so many ideas and things that I just forget and don't write down (I stopped carrying those things around due to negative thoughts and beliefs) but I want to see what its like now.

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Exactly why I carry a notebook and pen, the pen telescopes down and fits down the spine of the book, one of the moleskin notebooks, but not the moleskin trade name, a cheaper one for a third the price from, ''The Range,'' I get a new one every year, and it is useful in that it has a ribbon page marker and a pocket at the back for 'stuff'. I use it for anything I don't want to commit to memory as the stuff I commit to memory I forget. I also use it for jotting down ideas and working stuff out when I am bored. The pencil, is a 1960's Staedtler techno clutch pencil, I just like messing with it and it has it's uses, like tamping my tobacco down when I make a rollie.

 

The knife is inside the multi tool and the multitool goes in a pouch on my belt, similarly the torch and sometimes the cell phone when I haven't lost it. I also keep a sewing kit in my wallet and I have used that for running repairs before, and one of the needles for re-aligning the washer jets on my car. Oh and there is a WW2 pilots brass button compass in my wallet too, it's been with me decades, and it still points roughly at north, about five degrees off, not bad given it's age.

 

And of course being a smoker I always carry a zippo with spare flints and a capsule of fuel. And I always have my Creative Zen Vision M with me with my entire music collection on it and a lot of videos and photographs of stuff I have made and there is still 15gb unused space on it. And of course, my keys.

 

That's enough for me to carry

 

Oh and I forgot, I also have a 1967 American silver half dollar in my wallet too, something my granny gave me to commemorate the year I was born where she visited relatives in the USA, it doubles as a water purification device.

Edited by Sa Skimrande

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