So whilst carefully avoiding the politics about why preppers might be wise in the UK, it's fairly likely there will at least be a short run on the shops.
We've never really had the preppers idea that the US does, as we're not that self sufficient and never that far away from supplies. We also don't really have much space.
So what have / would you recommend for preparations for shortages for those that are short on space?
All I've done so far is buy a chest freezer (we were going to do so anyway, as we can shop in bulk more easily), and I've bought in a wind-up charger and a few lamps.
I've still to get rechargeable batteries and potentially a solar charger, and will stock up on stuff that'll keep a while (toilet roll, kitchen roll, cleaning stuff, tinned goods), but likely only to the extent of an extra couple of items.
Presumably we'll be back to normal within maybe a week, or we'll go full mad max in which case it probably won't make that much difference.
I liken some of this to the Millennium bug - loads of hype which might well fall into nothing. Partly because on the back end many companies are preparing with their own stocks and holding more in warehouses to cover the week or so of utter chaos and confusion that is likely to arise.
The most likely result is that prices will rise on a load of things and will likely remain high even once tariffs and trade details are secured which might result in the same or even lower prices to buy in those goods Just like when the currency changes or the economy has a "downer"
Yeah, I suspect the main thing is just don't get ill or seriously injured in the week or so of chaos that is likely to ensue in said scenario. Not that you want to at the best of times.
Of course, that is easier said than done...
The NHS is likely to be one of the worst hit areas in the short term- I was talking with one of the chief managing pharmacists at my hospital placement before Christmas and they are extremely concerned about maintaining supplies of certain drugs and in constant meetings with suppliers to work out contingencies and legality. There is no deliberate scaremongering here- this is senior clinical management staff trying to find solutions to an impending legal minefield. This includes some basic generic items that are primarily supplied from outside the UK, like saline- the UK cannot just up domestic production at short notice to meet demand. The whole situation is exacerbated by the NHS being forbidden from stockpiling (I have no idea why this is), and by the incredibly regulated environment of pharmaceutical manufacture and distribution.
So don't get ill
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh, and if you need to carry an epipen, make sure it is not going to go out of date around that time- renew it beforehand. Epipens already have a national shortage at the moment due to supplier problems, so be careful if you have a severe allergy.
It'll be totally grand right up until it absolutely isn't but everything will be too buggered to make any difference at that point anyway. So, nip to the pub for a cheeky half and maybe at a push buy some peanuts?
In a nutshell. Prepping for food is a bit pointless. I'll give a few stats to show why.
Right now, we're about 60% self-sufficient in foodstuffs as is right now. 10% of the remaining imports come from outside the EU (and will be unaffected).
We currently produce more than 80% of the eggs and beef consumed internally, we export more wheat than we import (meaning bread isn't an issue), and dairy farming is the largest agricultural sector in the UK making us roughly self-sufficient in butters and milk with a little planning. Sugar imports come primarily from outside the EU. With poultry, we produce about 80% of the chicken we consume, but there's something of an imbalance beyond the figure, as we export many bits l(ike thighs) we don't like; whilst importing far more breast meat than we produce. So the most preferred bit of chicken might become a bit scarcer, but the flip side would be a large increase in the amount of thigh/wing meat.
So what's in that 30% coming from the EU?
Annoyingly, the sector that will primarily be hit by us leaving the EU on the hardest possible terms is actually the one you can prepare the least for; namely the fresh fruit/veg sector. We only produce about 50% of what we use there, and most of it is sourced from the EU. So if out of season Spanish strawberries are your thing for example, you might find it hard to get replacements. Domestic potato production has risen drastically in the last few years however meaning that spuds will be fine at least.
You also might find some specialty fresh products (like slightly fancier cheeses or German sausages) hard to acquire. Wine should be easy to source however due to the sheer quantity of booze laid up in the country.
So yeah. Grab some of that Gruyere if you like, and prepare for a few weeks without fresh grapes. But that's about the worst you'll likely see.
I happen to really like this sort of subject. from the sensible to the extreme.
Id ask though. What are you expecting to prep for. are there government plans for those situations (local shelters to run to in case of emergencies). if not how long do you plan to stay stationary.
id say the bare minimum is have enough stable food and water for you and your family for what ever amount of time you want to shelter for. keep it in your pantry and eat and replace them as you go so you dont waste it. after that probably a simple emergency bag with clothing, emergency radio, battery pack for the cellphone, edit: also basic first aid stuff and i hear its good to have a book or activity otherwise you can go nuts. its basically what i do for the ever looming death earthquake here in Cali.
also since its the UK i guess it wouldnt hurt to have a cricket bat near the door for them zombinos
Ketara wrote: Right now, we're about 60% self-sufficient in foodstuffs as is right now. 10% of the remaining imports come from outside the EU (and will be unaffected).
Well prepping would also take into consideration things like major power outages, flooding, zombie apocalypses where markets and refrigeration would be out. its not going to take long for your meats or produce to go bad when the fridge is out.
(how is the UKs infrastructure and natural disaster vulnerabilities?
Most likely the rush will be similar to the one we get when the news announces that there's going to be a dusting of snow in the south. Everyone rushes to the supermarket and buys double of essentials for the week and the shelves empty.
Then it all blows over after a while and people realise that they didn't need to panic and things settle down.
Media hype is what will set most of it off with panic situations.
Overread wrote: Most likely the rush will be similar to the one we get when the news announces that there's going to be a dusting of snow in the south. Everyone rushes to the supermarket and buys double of essentials for the week and the shelves empty.
Then it all blows over after a while and people realise that they didn't need to panic and things settle down.
Media hype is what will set most of it off with panic situations.
Well prepping would also take into consideration things like major power outages, flooding, zombie apocalypses where markets and refrigeration would be out. its not going to take long for your meats or produce to go bad when the fridge is out.
I don't think OP is talking about the crazy provisions people in the US or Japan have to make. We're talking about making sure you're good for the first few weeks of a hard Brexit. The power will still be running.
In which case, the answer is as I gave above, more or less. Drugs are the only thing I'm aware of potentially having any key shortages (i.e. serious impact on life and wellbeing); but anything pharmacy dispensed will be distributed from central NHS points. So basically pick up a couple of extra packets of ibuprofen/Paracetamol and Codeine, look up more potato based recipes, re-arrange any flights you might be taking, and that's about all you can do. We're not going to suddenly starve.
You might find you have to eat chicken wings instead of breast for a month, and fresh grapes are off the menu, but that doesn't exactly qualify require extensive preparations. People managed without all year round fresh produce of every type fifty years ago, and most people in the world still do. It kinda sucks, but a little inventiveness in the kitchen goes a long way.
The situation in the OP doesn't really qualify as an SHTF situation where you'd need any preparation beyond stocking up on the regular stuff you would buy.
Frankly this doesn't warrant any sort of "Prepper" type behavior at all.
But for those who are interested in being prepared for an actual SHTF* situation, the following are things to consider.
1) Have a supply of bottled water. At least enough for a week for each person. Enough for both drinking as well as brushing your teeth.
2) A supply of shelf-stable non-refrigerated food, again at least a weeks worth. Canned foods, dry goods, etc... Realize that expiration dates do not actually mean anything, particularly on canned foods. Canned foods are technically edible for an indefinite amount of time, assuming the food was not contaminated after the canning process due to a fault in the container. So there isn't actually a great need to rotate your stock. Just throw out any cans which start expanding as those are definitely contaminated. Expiration dates are put on food as a psychological marketing tool to get you to throw them out and buy new ones, even though most food, even fresh foods which do spoil quickly, is perfectly edible long past the expiration date.
3) If you or anybody in your family takes medication, it is an extremely good idea to have an extra supply of any prescription drugs you take in the event that you will be unable to fill the prescription. Having a small supply of over the counter medications and first aid supplies is not a bad idea either.
4) Harsh weather clothing, blankets, tarps, some way to light a fire, and rope. In the event you cannot remain in your home, you will need something in the event you have to sleep outside. A tent isn't a bad idea, if you get a relatively simple one. But most outdoor stores sell very complex ones with a million little pieces that require a degree in engineering to assemble. A tarp, some rope, and sticks can do the job as well.
5) Copies of all your important paperwork. Certified copies of birth certificates, Social security cards, etc... All in a water proof container that you can easily grab. Once the situation is over, saving these documents will make the recover period easier since you wont have to go through those steps.
6) For those who can get one, a good reliable firearm. The main reason is to defend yourself from other people. Even relatively minor incidents often see looting happen, and those people aren't going to limit themselves to just stealing TVs and game consoles. Once it drags out a bit, they're going to start going after anybody with food, water, and other supplies. The second reason to have one is for hunting. If relief doesn't arrive within the first week, food is going to run out fast. Modern food infrastructure does not have much in the way of long term storage, so its going to run out very quickly. Ideally, you want a firearm that can do it all. Preferably an intermediate caliber semi-automatic rifle, and a semi-automatic pistol for backup. More is better, but you might only have enough time to grab one or two guns. Thats why most preppers default choice is an AR or AK variant. 5.56 or 7.62 rifles can cover the most bases while also being widely available in terms of ammunition. The rifles are good for defending yourself, and they are also more than capable of hunting game. 7.62 can handle much larger game than 5.56 of course, and AKs are more reliable and durable weapons, which makes it a superior choice in my opinion, but we're getting into personal preference at that point.
*In this context, we are defining this sort of situation to mean most if not all utilities have been shut off(Water, power, gas, etc...) and there is limited/no access to outside aid.
nfe wrote: If it gets really bad, you might need to buy some extra milk.
Milk and other perishables is one of the worst things to buy if you're actually trying to be prepared for some sort of disaster or shortage. Having some extra water and non-perishable food on hand is always a good idea, and if whatever disaster you're trying to prepare for doesn't happen, you've got things you can still use anyway.
Desubot wrote: are there government plans for those situations (
Aha ha ha hah...
(insert pages and pages of nervous laughter here)
Good one.
---
Personally I'm terrible for keeping food basics in the house so I'll join in the run on the tinned food shelves and get enough in for a couple of weeks of awful 1950s style meals. If it all works out fine then it's not like I can't use the food later anyway,
Luckily I've got no medical issues to account for.
To sum up, I'll be buying beans and instant mashed potato.
I would not encourage nor recommend buying up firearms to defend yourself in the event of a No-Deal Brexit. That's taking the absurd and putting it on a whole other level.
Everything is going to be fine.
[The advice about ensuring you have enough essential medication is sensible, but you should be doing that regardless if there's a Brexit or not.]
AdmiralHalsey wrote: I would not encourage nor recommend buying up firearms to defend yourself in the event of a No-Deal Brexit. That's taking the absurd and putting it on a whole other level.
Everything is going to be fine.
[The advice about ensuring you have enough essential medication is sensible, but you should be doing that regardless if there's a Brexit or not.]
And nobody was suggesting you do it in response to Brexit. Brexit is not a prepper worthy event.
My suggestions were for anybody who is prepping for an actual SHTF event.
nfe wrote: If it gets really bad, you might need to buy some extra milk.
Milk and other perishables is one of the worst things to buy if you're actually trying to be prepared for some sort of disaster or shortage. Having some extra water and non-perishable food on hand is always a good idea, and if whatever disaster you're trying to prepare for doesn't happen, you've got things you can still use anyway.
I was being flippant. Beyond a possible rush on things people buy every couple of days, like milk and bread, and, if we're very unlucky, some prescription medications for a few days, there isn't going to be a problem.
I'm not making a serious suggestion for stocking a bunker in some insane Colorado militiaman's garden.
nfe wrote: If it gets really bad, you might need to buy some extra milk.
Milk and other perishables is one of the worst things to buy if you're actually trying to be prepared for some sort of disaster or shortage. Having some extra water and non-perishable food on hand is always a good idea, and if whatever disaster you're trying to prepare for doesn't happen, you've got things you can still use anyway.
I was being flippant. Beyond a possible rush on things people buy every couple of days, like milk and bread, and, if we're very unlucky, some prescription medications for a few days, there isn't going to be a problem for anything other than.
I'm not making a serious suggestion for stocking a bunker in some insane Colorado militiaman's garden.
Wait, am i also insane for having a stocked bunker?
nfe wrote: If it gets really bad, you might need to buy some extra milk.
Milk and other perishables is one of the worst things to buy if you're actually trying to be prepared for some sort of disaster or shortage. Having some extra water and non-perishable food on hand is always a good idea, and if whatever disaster you're trying to prepare for doesn't happen, you've got things you can still use anyway.
I was being flippant. Beyond a possible rush on things people buy every couple of days, like milk and bread, and, if we're very unlucky, some prescription medications for a few days, there isn't going to be a problem.
I'm not making a serious suggestion for stocking a bunker in some insane Colorado militiaman's garden.
Wait, am i also insane for having a stocked bunker?
I didn't know that was still a thing in Switzerland - and presumed the old ones were full of ping pong tables, kids' gang-huts, and porno mags like the ones I've used in Israel.
I've already collected enough whisky and gin to last a few months.
I'm going to lay in a few weeks supplies of tinned food, dried goods, lavatory rolls and bottled water. It's easy and cheap to order that from Tesco Direct and have it delivered.
I did have some weird fantasies of everything breaking down, so that I would have to walk down to the river, fill up jerry cans and purify the water with tablets. I started pricing jerry cans, a Radio Flyer trailer, and an emergency generator. But I think that's taking things a bit too far.
To be honest, I don't believe the UK is ever likely to suffer the kind of SHTF scenario in which a moderate supply of preppedness would be useful. What I mean is, there are short term events such as earthquakes, hurricanes or volcanoes, which significantly disrupt normal life, by do get resolved in weeks at the most. The UK doesn't have this kind of danger at all. The worst that happens to us is a snow-fall disrupting transport for a cuople of days.
Beyond that kind of situation you are looking at asteroid strikes, WW3, pandemics, and zombie apocalyse type events which likely will lead to the complete breakdown of civil society. It's impossible to prepare for long-term survival of such scenarios just by filling your cellar with tinned food and spare batteries. If anything, it might make you a juicy target for looters.
nfe wrote: If it gets really bad, you might need to buy some extra milk.
Milk and other perishables is one of the worst things to buy if you're actually trying to be prepared for some sort of disaster or shortage. Having some extra water and non-perishable food on hand is always a good idea, and if whatever disaster you're trying to prepare for doesn't happen, you've got things you can still use anyway.
Milks actually my biggest concern; I've got 2 toddlers so we're pumping through about a litre a day. They are also fussy eaters so I'll need to stock up on what they'll actually eat but it's mostly tinned/frozen anyway.
As mentioned I'm not planning to prep for a large scale disaster, but if things go wrong I'm expecting the supermarkets to be picked clean by panic buyers (self fulfilling prophesy there) and generally nuisance things hard to get hold of.
I'll need to get a full tank of diesel a few days before hand too, since I can see the forecourt having giant queues of people putting £2 of fuel in to keep topped up.
I'm not expecting power cuts (though we import some from France? So who knows).
Milk is also essential for Tea.
I know if you cut off the tea supply there'd be serious results! Just get a few and stick two or three bottles in the freezer and defrost when needed.
In a nutshell. Prepping for food is a bit pointless. I'll give a few stats to show why.
Right now, we're about 60% self-sufficient in foodstuffs as is right now. 10% of the remaining imports come from outside the EU (and will be unaffected).
I believe it is nearer to 50% The best number I can find is from 2017:
50% UK 30% EU 4% Africa
4% North America
4% South America
4% Asia
2% Rest of Europe
1% Other
This adds up to 99%, so no idea where that is lost.
The primary issue is not what the EU do. They are not going to stop selling to us or importing, it just may be on very poor terms. The issue is that our ports may become totally blocked up with a backlog of a huge influx of customs checks and getting import duties paid. This will impact almost all imports, whatever the origin. I think the only ones that won't be impacted, or will be less hit, will be fresh air freight, such as fresh, highly perishable, fruit and veg from Africa such as soft fruit. You may be fine getting grapes!
I believe it is nearer to 50% The best number I can find is from 2017:
The figures I was pulling were also 2017, so it's probably a difference in methodology. I found another one that qualified as being 75% self-sufficient if you cut out 'exotics' like avocadoes and tea. It really depends, I suspect, on how you define 'self-sufficient' and group items together. We might be self-sufficient in 'cheese', but if you qualify expensive French cheese as a necessity, the self-sufficiency percentage goes down. Or something like that.
In a nutshell. Prepping for food is a bit pointless. I'll give a few stats to show why.
Right now, we're about 60% self-sufficient in foodstuffs as is right now. 10% of the remaining imports come from outside the EU (and will be unaffected).
I believe it is nearer to 50% The best number I can find is from 2017:
50% UK 30% EU 4% Africa
4% North America
4% South America
4% Asia
2% Rest of Europe
1% Other
This adds up to 99%, so no idea where that is lost.
The primary issue is not what the EU do. They are not going to stop selling to us or importing, it just may be on very poor terms. The issue is that our ports may become totally blocked up with a backlog of a huge influx of customs checks and getting import duties paid. This will impact almost all imports, whatever the origin. I think the only ones that won't be impacted, or will be less hit, will be fresh air freight, such as fresh, highly perishable, fruit and veg from Africa such as soft fruit. You may be fine getting grapes!
At fear of running into the Politics Ban, HMRC have stated officially that the plan is to wave ALL EU goods through ithout checks in the event of a hard Brexit - this has serious knock on effects for negotiating free trade deals as WTO rules will require everyone to get the same (tariff free) entry but it does mean no mass blockage at ports.
Regarding milk, you could always get a couple of cartons of UHT milk for back up- it doesn't need go be kept in a fridge until opened. Makes for a grim cuppa, but better than nowt.
I believe it is nearer to 50% The best number I can find is from 2017:
The figures I was pulling were also 2017, so it's probably a difference in methodology. I found another one that qualified as being 75% self-sufficient if you cut out 'exotics' like avocadoes and tea. It really depends, I suspect, on how you define 'self-sufficient' and group items together. We might be self-sufficient in 'cheese', but if you qualify expensive French cheese as a necessity, the self-sufficiency percentage goes down. Or something like that.
I am fairly sure that counting tea as an "exotic" in the UK is grounds for having funding revoked and citizenship questioned If I remember correctly, even during WWII tea imports were highly prioritised fof morale reasons. If tea imports suffer from a hard exit, then the felt impact amongst the population is likely to be huge.
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The way I have always thought of surviving a true SHTF situation is not to fortify everything, but work with my local community and freely offer services and help to those who look for it. My family has medical skills that will be useful, we can offer them to anyone who comes looking. No one will need to loot anything if they can just get it anyway. In addition, I live in a rural community, so we will certainly have a food surplus that can be traded, and the community has it's own borehole for safe water. Being rural, there is also an unusual high number of firearms to start with, so hunting and protection are there if absolutely necessary.
But then the UK has a much less individualistic culture than the US, so I feel cooperation is much more the norm over protecting your patch.
nfe wrote: I didn't know that was still a thing in Switzerland - and presumed the old ones were full of ping pong tables, kids' gang-huts, and porno mags like the ones I've used in Israel.
You underestimate the Paranoia of the collective swiss hivemind.
hillarious artilcle name in the NZZ:
"The EU plays on time and the UK has no plan."
Has no plan is also colloquially used for saying here that you have not the slightest clue or idea what to do.
Amusing to see people not know about our distributed network problem. In short, if our logistics chain breaks down, the supermarkets start to run out of food.
Five days without food and people start killing each other. Look up 'Operation Dark Winter'...
Of course, this is unlikely to happen here.... right?
History is *littered* with the corpses of people who said, this can't happen here...
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Well, I've got a new box of Yorkshire Teabags. So I'm sorted.
You don't want the new boxes, the bags split... you need a tea strainer with Yorkshire teabags
Got a cupboard FULL of tea here. Breakfast, Earl Grey, Everyday, Decaf, Redbush.... about 20 varieties of fruit tea too. Advantage of working in a factory making and packing teabags
It's all panic over nothing, driven by the media, who have nothing better to do. It will be end of the world on the first morning, and forgotten about by tea time.
I think there could be short term problems due to panic buying, and in the worst case scenario there could be disruption to supplies of drugs. People with Addison's disease or Type 1 Diabetes should probably have some extra just in case, because the downside of disruption could be fatal for them.
I think any problems would be pretty short term, but we are talking about a country where people called the police when KFC ran out of chicken so I am not sure how calm the populace will be if there is some panic buying going on.
Right now, we're about 60% self-sufficient in foodstuffs as is right now. 10% of the remaining imports come from outside the EU (and will be unaffected).
We currently produce more than 80% of the eggs and beef consumed internally, we export more wheat than we import (meaning bread isn't an issue), and dairy farming is the largest agricultural sector in the UK making us roughly self-sufficient in butters and milk with a little planning. Sugar imports come primarily from outside the EU. With poultry, we produce about 80% of the chicken we consume, but there's something of an imbalance beyond the figure, as we export many bits l(ike thighs) we don't like; whilst importing far more breast meat than we produce. So the most preferred bit of chicken might become a bit scarcer, but the flip side would be a large increase in the amount of thigh/wing meat.
The problem is that these figures are taken over a year. March / April can be some of the worst months to be self sufficient as we are in-between crops. All of the winter crops have been harvested and the spring crops are not yet ready. I'd agree that the idea we need to prep is overblown for foodstuffs as in reality the food stuffs that could become higer priced and shorter in supply will be the fresh food that you can't really stock up on. Meat products especially the poor grade ones will be available if not quite to the standard we are use to. So it will be spam for breakfast, spam for lunch, spam for dinner all washed down with a mug of Bovril. The real issue could be the health impacts from not getting sufficient fruit and vegetables to those on lower incomes. Long term it could generate health issues, but also lower quality diets impacts productivity through increased tiredness and so forth. We may also run out of stomach tablets quite quickly. If there is less supply then those with the money will be able to pay the higher premiums driving prices up even further and making the poorest even worse off. Still it would probably be considered economic growth... The only reason to prep is if we think that things are so incompetent that if something does go wrong the whole house of cards will come down. Still I'm sure some would see rationing as a good idea.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
War Drone wrote: For the 1st month, 30x bottles of Vodka and a sawn-off shotgun.
Obviously, I can't get a shotgun, but the Vodka should be doable ...
I'm pretty sure this is gonna be another Y2K thing ...
The Vodka might be able to be used as a Molotov at a pinch as well.
The problem people misunderstand with the Y2K thing is that an awful lot of work was put in to stop it happening. There were still areas of failures, but they were relatively small compared to what could have happened. Dismissing the Y2K bug completely misunderstands that the world recognised a problem and acted on it to prevent it. In comparison the current issues are more like actively denying there is a problem and doing nothing about it (and this covers multiple issues).
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: In terms of veg, I’m hoping this sees an end to pointless ‘aesthetic ideals’ foisted by Supermarkets.
Will help reduce overall wastage.
That this contributes to wastage is a myth. All the food that's not pretty enough - it's in one of three places: the shops where people poorer than you shop; sauces/premade meals; fodder.
The vegetable and fruit industry is rife with problems, but wastage of edible foods is not one of them. At all. There's profit to be made, after all.
xKillGorex wrote: X1 plate carrier, x6 smoke grenades, x 50 mts of paracord plus I have a tin of hot dogs somewhere and half a bottle of captain morgans,,,,, good times
I sincerely hope they're within--or semi-reasonably out of--date:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: In terms of veg, I’m hoping this sees an end to pointless ‘aesthetic ideals’ foisted by Supermarkets.
Will help reduce overall wastage.
That this contributes to wastage is a myth. All the food that's not pretty enough - it's in one of three places: the shops where people poorer than you shop; sauces/premade meals; fodder.
The vegetable and fruit industry is rife with problems, but wastage of edible foods is not one of them. At all. There's profit to be made, after all.
Indeed. 'Unsightly' food is very rarely wasted when it can sold for profit in other areas.
Eggs which do not meet acceptable standards for supermarket sale, any egg that isn't A grade or higher, are usually sold to restaurants or other commercial food preparation facilities. The eggs in McDonald's Egg McMuffins are usually going to be B grade eggs. Any restaurant that makes scrambled eggs is most likely not cracking them open at the restaurant. They're buying either whole shelled eggs, or just prescrambled eggs, which come in a sealed bag or a 5 gallon bucket.
Fruits and vegetables which do not meet acceptable visual standards are usually used in processed foods. Canned soups, fruit jelly or preserves, etc... In the event the food is actually unfit for human consumption, it will be used in animal feed. Canning companies aren't shelling out for high quality produce, they want the cheap stuff and as long as its legally edible they'll put it in there.
The vast majority of food waste occurs at home, or at restaurants by customers not finishing all of their meals. It spoils in our refrigerators or is tossed as uneaten leftovers. Profitable restaurants are very careful with their food stocks, they do not want any food being tossed because it is spoiled. Thats why restaurants usually get resupplied with new food at a minimum of weekly, if not daily. They simply do not keep large quantities on hand because it might spoil. The only food they will willingly throw away is food that was purchased by a customer and left uneaten at the table. Any prepared food that wasn't sold is often recycled in some fashion. At Costco, any Rotisserie chickens which are not sold within 2 hours after being cooked are remove from the display case and the meat is immediately salvaged for cold products made in the Deli. Which include but are not limited to Pot Pies, premade Chicken Soup, and 5 lb packages of rotisserie chicken meat.
At the very least, most restaurants have arrangements with either charities or local farmers to use their leftover food. Either pig farmers will come and feed the food to the hogs, or if the food is still legally consumable it will be fed to the homeless through charities. The latter method is extremely common with bakeries.
The cream removed from your semi-skimmed or skimmed milk simply finds itself into a different part of the national diet.
A statistic I remember roughly is that in the first world we waste about 30% of our food after buying it, while in the third world they lose about 30% between the farm and the table (through pests, inadequate storage, or whatever.)
And people talk about how indigenous peoples "used the whole animal" as if we don't do that today. Yet modern processing plants use literally everything. Hide gets used for leather. Blood is either composted or used in pet food, or human food in places where there is demand. Excess fat and organs are rendered. Every scrap of meat is used. That "pink slime" everyone was so freaked out about is the end product of wringing every scrap of edible food out of an animal, which is a good thing. Even the bones of chickens/turkeys which have had the meat stripped off them for meat cuts get ground up and pressed through sieves to get the last little bits to make hot dogs out of.
Yep. Industrial farming gets a bad rep, but a lot of it is about getting maximal efficiency out of the process, and that has it's upsides for the environment. If we switched to organic farming it would definitely mean more wastage, which would result in more land use for farming and less wild land for non-domesticated creatures.
I am about as enviro-lefty as you can get, but I am always frustrated by wooly thinking around food and farming.
Da Boss wrote: I am about as enviro-lefty as you can get, but I am always frustrated by wooly thinking around food and farming.
I always just think it's a bit out-of-touch-middle-class, y'know? Not the belief that there must be waste, but the campaigns that pass that idea around based on a few people from Mumsnet who believe that 'the ugly fruit must get thrown away because I don't personally see it in Waitrose'.
I think the point about wonky fruit and veg is that the supermakets force farms to grow more than is needed so that the aesthetically less appetising items can be discarded or recycled.
Force growing extra stuff adds to the environmental degradation of farmland by requiring more fertiliser and pesticide than if you generally accepted blemished items in greengroceries.
It seems from these reports that the 'recycling' means various channels including ploughing it back into the soil, animal feed, and presumably some of it goes into tinned fruit and baby food. So it's not all wasted, but some of it is.
As it happens, Waitrose and Lidl both have introduce "wonky" ranges of some fruit and veg. (Well, Lidl's is mushrooms, which is a fungus.)
I didn't think it was the farming side of things that caused the wastage; I thought most of the wastage came from the supermarkets throwing out perfectly good food that had passed some completely arbitrary 'best before' date?
The Metro article follows a Journal of Cleaner Production article, but doesn't name the authors. There is a special issue from July 2018 on food waste, but nothing in it appear to be the study in question. It does include this example that sets out the total dearth of research on aesthetic factors in food waste and on aesthetic-related decision making processes in the supply chain, and setting out to address it.
Particularly interesting is the observation that in the literature, 'there is general agreement that food waste concerns all foods that are produced for human consumption but are ultimately not consumed by humans', whereas 'supply chain actors seem more focused on the economic and environmental aspects rather than on the social aspects of their business practice. Consequently, they do not consider as food waste alternative uses for suboptimal products, such as transforming these products into biogas, cattle feeds, or into fertilizer by ploughing them back into the ground.'
Basically, there is only notable waste if you consider everything not eaten by a human to be waste.
Just make sure you consume everything in your Fallout Shelter, Herzlos!
Da Boss wrote: I think any problems would be pretty short term, but we are talking about a country where people called the police when KFC ran out of chicken so I am not sure how calm the populace will be if there is some panic buying going on.
Yeah we're not famous for handling supply problems well; an inch of snow will result in people going to the supermarket to buy 4 litres of spare milk and 2 loafs of bread. The milk/bread isles will be empty within a couple of hours. They'll get restocked the next day or so once things are cleared/gritted, and people will be having bread with every meal for the next week to use it up.
Ditto when there was a fuel shortage - it seemed anyone with room in their tank would queue up to top it up. Really annoys me when you get to a petrol station on empty and need to wait half an hour because everyone is putting a litre in.
We're so used to everything just being available, that we can't handle any disruption.
at the risk of getting into risky territory, if you're an illegal alien in france, they just send you to the UK anyway.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Da Boss wrote: I think there could be short term problems due to panic buying, and in the worst case scenario there could be disruption to supplies of drugs. People with Addison's disease or Type 1 Diabetes should probably have some extra just in case, because the downside of disruption could be fatal for them.
I think any problems would be pretty short term, but we are talking about a country where people called the police when KFC ran out of chicken so I am not sure how calm the populace will be if there is some panic buying going on.
First, powdered milk is a thing. ANY of those dehydrated food items store well.
Lots of bottled water is good, but I'd stock up on Propane and a single stand burner. You can boil fresh water to kill microbes and it becomes drinkable. At the very least save your bottled water for drinking and use boiled water for everything else.
When we had an ice storm back in '91 or '92, my dad had an old kerosene heater that had a top that allowed for boiling water. We heated the house AND managed to keep water going.
Canned goods are always good, and as a military man I like to keep some MREs stashed just in case.
In addition to MREs, you can also get dehydrated food used for camping and stash that. It keeps for like 10 years, and it doesn't taste bad at all - I took some with me camping when weight was an issue since we were getting on a teeny little puddle jumper plane.
I don't have any idea about almost anything brexit related, just a mention.
In a nutshell. Prepping for food is a bit pointless. I'll give a few stats to show why.
Right now, we're about 60% self-sufficient in foodstuffs as is right now. 10% of the remaining imports come from outside the EU (and will be unaffected).
No. A 30% reduction of food supplies, even if only on the short term will have major implications. Some food businesses will go under, others will have to raise prices, others will get greedy and follow suit. Inflation is highly likely, shortages in some areas also.
Also the 10% of non EU foodstuffs is also nonetheless mostly governed by EU trade deals with said countries. They will be effected.
This has the potential of being a major problem, at least on the short term.
In a nutshell. Prepping for food is a bit pointless. I'll give a few stats to show why.
Right now, we're about 60% self-sufficient in foodstuffs as is right now. 10% of the remaining imports come from outside the EU (and will be unaffected).
No. A 30% reduction of food supplies, even if only on the short term will have major implications. Some food businesses will go under, others will have to raise prices, others will get greedy and follow suit. Inflation is highly likely, shortages in some areas also.
Also the 10% of non EU foodstuffs is also nonetheless mostly governed by EU trade deals with said countries. They will be effected.
This has the potential of being a major problem, at least on the short term.
Highly likely, potential..... could be, may, expected..... In a nut shell, no one knows. Business has to be prepared with a worse case scenario, but media outlets enjoy pumping out bad news, so we get the end of the world happening at the slightest change.
Until the day before, there will be lots of poker faces, then all the deals in secret, behind the backs of those stating there can be no deal, will be released, and the world won't end.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I'm going to start stocking up on kits, then, once we are out, offer to send them to Oz in exchange for kangaroo meat
Prepping is a subject I should have covered earlier. Thank you for the thread.
First the T L: D R
If you live in the UK you should be prepping now, it is likely not too late to meaningfully prep, but may be soon. Buy tins, lots and lots of tins.
Should I be prepping?
Short answer is yes, but some caveats apply. If you are so filthy rich that the lives of the average citizen are distant from you, you probably dont need to prep. Same for highly mobile people, people with multiple passports and people with desirable professions that command high compensation for their work need not prep either. Though on the other hand preparing to leave is a form a prepping in itself, though not one covered fully here.
There is more to it than just Brexit. In the modern UK of Universal credit rollout and zero hour contracts many people in the UK should already be prepping. Now unlike brexit the other two circumstances named dont effect everyone, but can effect more people than you might realise. If you have an accident, or fall ill and can no longer work then Universal Credit might apply to you, with all the clusterfeth that that entails. If you are disabled, unemployed or have a zero hours employment then you should already be prepping.
As for Brexit. Well there are many options. Covered very briefly if you think Brexit is a great leap forward please note that even pro-Brexit pundits believe it will take a while for the golden future to arrive, as new teade etc needs to be set up. You will need to prep in the meantime. If you are a remainer and think the whole exercise is a potential disaster waiting to happen, are you prepping? You should be, and if you are one of those who is certain Brexit is an inevitable total nightmare and somehow you are not yourself prepping then frankly you are an idiot.
Some people think it will not be so bad. I hope you are right, I really do. But No Deal is a realistic outcome at this stage and people should be paying more attention to that. Sadly i see no evidence of this. With seven weeks to go most times I visit the supermarket i see people go in for a little milk, bread and catfood, other make a larger regular ship, too few, way too few, are leaving with a trolley full of tins or dried goods.
The thing is, if No Deal is still a possibility by mid-March everyone will be a prepper, including those on this thread who think there is no risk no danger as panic buying begins. Thing is by then it may be too late.
The stigma of prepping.
Sadly prepping carries a stigma. It is associated with conspiracy nuts, tin foilers and those who want to survive the zombie apocalypse or alien invasion. Brexit is NOT a fantasy. Universal Credit is NOT a fantasy. Brexit may result in a huge economic downturn and major resource shortages. Universal Credit can result in medium term destitution, and already has claimed the lives of many unprepared people.
Please shake off the stigma and start prepping, you need not tell anyone, in fact you shouldn't, but more on that later.
Downsides of prepping.
Lets say you dodge Universal credit and there is a late deal that mitigates most of the potential problems of Brexit. You have wasted all those resources prepping. Well no. If you are careful how you prep, which will be explained below you will not suffer from your preparedness.
As for low income, you can prep on low income, you just have to be more careful how you buy and might have to forgo luxuries for a short while so that you can fill up with essential supplies. In fact if Universal Credit rollout is possible for you you should already be prepping for low income. There are many videos on YouTube about Universal Credit prepping I will cover these techniques in their own section.
Remember if you prep and consider you have had no need to, you have stocks that you can naturally use over the course of the coming year, prep well and you can live well, and if you had to make sacrifices to prep later this year you can live on the surplus and channel more of your income back into hobbies and luxury goods, possibly affording you items you might not otherwise have afforded. Preparation is a reward in itself.
How to Prep.
1. Like fight club, don't talk about it.
Ok, breaking rule 1 in a way, but I have the semi-anonymity of the internet to shield me. Certainly people in my local community don't know i am prepping. Why? Two reasons. First people stigmatise preppers, sometimes for good reason, but there you go. More importantly people can get desperate if in a tight spot. If the worst comes to the worst the desperate will come to the prepared and demand sustenance. Now say you are a sharing generous guy, still be careful. Remember Machiavelli's principle. If you are generous, especially if you are forced into a position of generosity (i.e you have a large stash, we have nothing, give us some...) then as soon as you are no longer able to provide, or choose not to you are seen as a miser, worse than if you had never given anything to begin with. And in the case of desperate people this will not go well for you.
The state might also look at you differently. We might want to think that if you prepare then you are wise and those who did not are short sighted. This will be true to the point when local government might blame people for short sightedness and limit help, but preparedness is conversely not seen as foresight, but hoarding.
This is precisely what happened to the 1939 preppers. Excepting those in power or authority, who could have larger larders to themselves, if the common man saw the signs, and a great many did, and started to prep buying dry stores and tins; they were expected to 'share', and if you think share meant equitable distribution I have a bridge to sell you.
However the primary reason not to openly prep is because your home may become a crime magnet. Sadly if you get a reputation of having stores when around you those who didn't store up have none, you will still be targeted long after all you have is taken away,
I am painting a bleak picture, but not an unrealistic one, Societal breakdown is only ever one week of distribution failure away, and it might not even take a week.
2. How much should I prep.
Wallets are as full as string is long. Prep according to your measure. Not everyone can have a years supply of good in their homes. The Mormon church has this as a tenet, but the Mormons prep a little at a time over either whole lives so after the initial outlay do not notice. Even two weeks supply is going to make a huge difference. If suddenly on Universal Credit, or face a benefits strike, a two week supply of food could have meant the difference between life and death in many cases. It takes longer than that to starve, but two weeks will allow you to adapt to circumstances without having to wonder when your next meal is coming from. Those who cannot start adapting cant continue to adapt.
I cannot put a reasonable target goal for supply accumulation, ultimately the more the better, and please remember that more also means more opportunity for variety in what you store, ultimately a large preppers larder is just a well stocked larder, don't be afraid to dig into it, just replace what you use.
The other point about volume of prepping is that what you prep lasts as long as circumstances require.
Say you buy tins of curry and packets of rice. One tin plus a portion of rice is a meal for one person. In harder times it could be a mean a meal for three people, supplies can stretch to account for desperation, and frankly should. If you are alone and facing a personal disaster, say Universal Credit waiting time have a tin a day each of meat vegetables and pudding. When the zombies come those same three tins are a day's survival rations for you and your whole warband of shotgun and fireman's axe wielding loons, OK, bit carried away there but the point is the worse it gets the more you can realistically stretch supplies.
3. What to prep.
Frozen foods?
First lets discuss food, and that normally means tins and dried goods. You can include frozens too but depends what you are prepping for. Universal credit waiting is a problem you can overcome with frozen meals, but if Brexit causes shortages which causes power outages, frozen might not be as good a solution. Do buy some frozen for longer term prepping but use it first. I would say three days supply is fine, because you can choose to eat it now and replace as you go along, and if you do get power failure you have the equivalent of three days fresh food.
Also don't laugh at prepping for power failure, it need not mean the zombies have got into the power station, or the Russians launch EMP or anything, you can get to this state if Universal Credit takes its merry time and you can't afford the electricity bill.
Also remember frozen goods have a long life but do decay. It requires special refrigeration to minus 40 or below before you can store foodstuff indefinitely by freezing them. So unlike tins you will need to rotate out and use your frozens over time. It also costs energy to store, obvious, but don't overlook this. If you are a frozen food prepper and need to defrost the freezer, or turn it off while going on holiday for a month you are going to have problems if you cant clear it. Its a bad idea to keep a full freezer anyway, things tend to get forgotten at the bottom.
Dried foods.
These normally require a lot of water, which isn't normally a problem, in most realistic prepping scenarios. Rice and pasta lasts a long time, technically indefinitely. The trick here is storage units. Get sealed containers to keep out any moisture and also rodents. Bags of pasta are fine for general storage but a mouse can smell through that. You need to place those bags in sealed containers for a double layer. Mice can gnaw through plastic, but generally wont if they have no reason to.
The main problem with dried goods is a relative lack of nutrition, this is not a problem if you mix dried goods with tinned, in fact it is optimal to do so.
When buying dried foods don't immediately go for the large bags of rice or pasta, check the price per weight on the labeling on the shelving, larger bags don't necessarily mean better value. It is not uncommon for two 500g bags of pasta to cost less than one 1kg bag of pasta.
Tinned foods.
This should be the bulk of your purchases. Some people decry tins as inferior to fresh etc. Ignore that rubbish, you can have additives in tinned goods that is true but you also tend to lack preservatives and sometimes even most colouring as you see the tin on the shelf not a transparent packaging for food that need to be artificially beautified. With some minor exceptions you can live a perfectly healthy live entirely off tinned foods, and while some food are not easily tinned or are unrealistically expensive when done so, such as tinned bread, you can cover most needs.
I should stop to take the time to explain tinning to you. Tinning was invented by Nicholas Appert in the late 18th century and the system he used is more or less the same as the system today. In a nutshell food is cooked in the tin which is then sealed driving out all air. The contents of a tin of food are sterile and so long as the tin is intact the food within is good to eat. People have eaten century old tins will no ill effect, your tins could easily be good for that long.
When buying tins reject all dented ones, this doesn't matter if you want to buy a tin for immediate or short term use, but if you want to store them for long term this becomes important. Dented tins have a pinch where the metal is weakened, the tin can corrode or even break at that point and can break in the tin dooms th contents within. If you catch a tin as it breaks you can consume it, but if you leave it or don't notice the contents will quietly putrify. They can also leak causing a nasty mess.
Do check nutritional information but don't be afraid to buy white label tinned goods. Due to the processes involved cheap tins are often no worse than expensive ones. However tastes vary, if you want to stock up on a cheap white label curry try one and use it now, see if you like the curry, if you don't there is no point buying fifty, As a rule of thumb the simpler the food the more you can rely on while label. Something complex like a tin of curry and you get what you pay for, though a £1 curry is better than a £1.50 curry because at the volumes you want to buy them in for prepping you cannot afford to waste money. However a 70p cheap white label curry might be garbage to you. But Orlanth, this is survival right? Not necessarily, if you prep for Brexit or Universal Credit you still don't want to eat foul tasting crap, an average curry can be as good as a premium one. Test the tins and see what you can afford to buy lots of.
Now with simpler foods like custard, fruit and vegetables white label is generally best, there isn't too much to go wrong by going cheap with tinned custard. Yes there is often a taste difference, but not one so enormous that it is not worthwhile getting those 20p tins.
Other goods.
Don't forget the basics, toilet roll, kitchen roll, tampons, toothpaste, nappies, bin bags, include as appropriate, just buy more than you normally would and slowly build up a larger regular supply. Done this way it isn't really even prepping, just having more. Also consider matches, candles, batteries, bleach, disinfectant and some medicinals with long shelf lives. Unlike most goods where you can wing a sell by date, especially sell by dates on tins, don't use out of date medicinals unless desperate and know what you are doing. Frankly don't even then.
Tips and Tricks.
If you buy tinned goods you like then if you find you have no reason to prep anymore you can add that to your menu over time. Toilet roll will always be useful, even if you bought bulk and cheap and normally have better than that. However some items are very good for survival storage but only needed if you have a real survival need,
- Powdered milk. Doesn't take as nice as regular moo juice, especially on the longer term, but powdered milk is the Number One preppers survival product, unless you are lactose intolerant that is. Powdered milk contains all the vitamins you need in one single product, and the energy to live on. It is why powdered milk is so often used as a primary food aid package, as its easy to transport, easy to store and if all else fails you can mount a successful aid program on that one product alone, though better if added to rice. You could just buy powdered milk and rice and say done. Problem is it isn't very satisfying to live on that alone, depressing even, so its not unreasonable to collect that last.
I am prepping fairly heavily and have for some time now but have no powdered milk, because it is something that I would not normally use if I no longer have to prep. Hence i will buy that last. If left with fifty tins of curry or fifty tins of tomatoes i can eat those, but five kilos of powdered milk will be wasted so long as I can buy fresh. I will be buying powdered milk this time next month if No Deal is still a possibility.
- Flavourful sauces. Note that if you do buy a lot of white label tins, or even otherwise remember to also buy strongly flavoured sauces that you like. Hot sauce covers a multitude of culinary sins, and pepper, soy, worcester sauce and others are worthy buys. Tomato and brown sauce less so as you need larger volumes to make use, can be wasteful and often require refrigeration after opening. Worcester and soy sauce can sit on the shelf forever and is a good condiment, especially as you don't need much, and the taste covering benefits of chilli or garlic need no explanation if you like that.
Note that I restrict this tip to bottles of condiment sauce, not cook in sauces due to the volumes concerned. Not to say you shouldn't prep with cook in sauces, if you like them why not, but they can be expensive and don't add anything you don't get from a regular tin. However a cheap tin of curry, plus a small amount of a quality curry powder can really make the meal where you get your money's worth.
- Large stackable containers. Buy these for storing your foods. You could separate them by item but I think you should separate them by time. Instead of storing all the rice together et al, store a weeks supply of all foods in one box, then make up another box for another week. It will help you with rationing and help you visualise how much stores you have left. Note that you should also have monthly boxes for those items that you might use up over a month rather than a week. Finally seasonal boxes for those items you expect to last. What goes in what box is up to you, and you might consider making fortnightly boxes rather than weekly depending on how many people you are supporting for.
If preparing for short term problem s like possible Universal Credit then you won't need seasonal boxes.
4. Prepping for Universal Credit.
This is a separate concern, you will need to prep for Universal Credit if UC is going to be unveiled in your area and you are likely to be on a related benefit, which means low income, unemployment or disability. Universal Credit might leave you with zero income for up to two months, in some cases longer. In the past it could be longer still and there was no support, hence the deaths. Universal Credit is something social services are on the lookout for and is no longer liable to kill the unprepared, but it can seriously disrupt your life and cause great distress.
Here are some tips to minimise the disruption.
a. Store at least two weeks food and basic supplies. You will need this much to adjust to UC. Do this now.
b. When UC occurs remove all monies from your bank account, put it under the matress or elsewhere. DO NOT SPEND IT.
c. Ask for your first UC payment to be made now because you have no money in your account. This is not lying. You are now entitled to one advance payment for UC because of the embarrassment the government felt after many people died due to difficulties in UC transition.
d. Talk to everyone you have bills due, energy suppliers, landlord etc. Withhold payment from all you can but let everyone know you are on UC and payments will be resumed eventually. Most will be accepting of that if grudgingly.
e. Use all stored monies, and the advance payment to keep you going for the two months until payments resume. While you have to 'pay back' the advance payment, it is part of your ongoing claim so by the time you get your first cheque you wont notice the debit much, but will notice the extra monies at the beginning.
f. Remember that UC is likely to be less than what you were originally on, sometimes considerably less and there might be additional hoops to jump through, some provisions as part of UC might be tests for eligibility on an ongoing basis. So when you do get your monies dont fall at the final hurdle. You will get two or more months UC all at once, a bonanza, however that includes rent money, and is also paid in arrears. Too many claimants spend their first payment quickly without budgeting and then fall into a new cycle of debt, or worse dont rid themselves of any debt generated in the transition. This can seriously feth you up long term. Be careful, budget carefully when UC payments finally come and don't assume that you are going to get a regular benefit, UC doesn't work like that, its designed to be flickered on and off according to 'circumstances'.
5. Prepping for Benefit strike.
This applies to people on JSA. If you have a problem with your JSA claim even if not actually your fault you can be sanctioned for up to six months. If facing a sanction you are basically screwed if you did not prepare. Unlike Universal Credit, which is imposed on a region from on high, you can do much to prevent a Benefit strike from occurring to begin with, though some of that involves seeding and preparation.
a. Make sure you dot every 'i' and cross every 't' with regards to your JSA contract, no matter how petty and minor. Do not be late for any meeting ever, and if you are have an excuse. Do not give the JSA office access to your online work history, it will only add extra ammo against you. Print out every activity to make sure you have a track record that cannot be argued against.
b. Again store at least two weeks supplies if on JSA. This is just a start, because things will go very badly for you very quickly, but despite having to find new ways to support yourself you still need to continue to jump through JSA hoops or your strike will be extended.
c. Most important tip. Be nice to your benefits advisor. I cannot stress enough what a difference this makes, They are people too, if they see you as a fellow human being and not a statistic they might consider overlooking opportunities to strike your benefit. Remember that they get a performance tick if they strike peoples benefits, its matters little whether this is deserved, or how petty, and over time some minor infractions are bound to happen. The passmark to avoid a benefits strike is 100% compliance, anything less than that can you may be sanctioned, as there is a kickback for doing so it is not unlike to happen. Your primary defence other than maintaining a perfect JSA record is to have people in the Jobcentre who have your back. What matters to the government is that claims are down, not whether this is handled ethically, from what I have heard there have even been quotas of sanctions in some offices.
d. If you have a benefit strike you might be eligible for a hardship payment from your local council.
e. If this happens to you find your local food bank, church or mosque. In that order, regardless of your cultural orientation or beliefs, unless affiliated already, these three are the most likely to help. Get ongoing help in order to feed yourself.
Ultimately due to the long lasted effects of benefit strikes it is no really possible to fully proper for them by the people this applies to. Those in danger of this cannot possibly store up for the expected duration of the crisis, six months no money per strike. Stay alive. Benefit strikes kill people, even more so than UC failures, and many strikes are unwarranted or unfair. Appeals take a long time, but in the meantime benefits are stopped and hunger and bills are not deferred. Expect little sympathy from most officials and society at large.
I for one, welcome the Mad Max style Wasteland to come. If Fallout has taught me anything, it's that I need to prep thoroughly and collect as many desk fans and toasters as possible to make sweet sweet upgrades for my Fat Man.
Ketara wrote: I for one, welcome the Mad Max style Wasteland to come. If Fallout has taught me anything, it's that I need to prep thoroughly and collect as many desk fans and toasters as possible to make sweet sweet upgrades for my Fat Man.
I seriously doubt that gak is going to hit the fan so hard that you will have Fallout esque raiderbands pillaging everything.
That said, it would be in no interest to eitherside to escalate certain unnamed issues.
Ketara wrote: I for one, welcome the Mad Max style Wasteland to come. If Fallout has taught me anything, it's that I need to prep thoroughly and collect as many desk fans and toasters as possible to make sweet sweet upgrades for my Fat Man.
For some reason, a few years ago I started to save bottlecaps in a kitchen drawer. There's quite a number of them in there, now and I've been wondering what the point was of hanging on to them.
I feel that EVERY family needs to, no matter what situation you are in, be able to survive a minimum of 2 weeks without leaving the home. I've been in floods, extremely cold, snowy winters without electrical power, and tornadoes.
Food: I once found out that a single shopping cart at Sam's Club can get me enough calories to survive 6 months. My top 6 food stuffs to stock up on for cheap money; Long grain white rice, dried beans, honey, peanut butter, powdered milk, Spam. If this is all you buy it will get you through. However, feel free so get other non-perishables as well.
Water: Bottled water is easy, but there are cheaper options. 5-gallon water jugs can be had VERY cheap ($6 at my local Wal-Mart) and are tough. A few of these can last you a while. Fill them and add a couple drops of bleach (perfectly safe). It will store for a couple years that way. Perhaps invest in some new, clean plastic rain barrels or trash cans for rain collection. Water purifier pumps are pretty cheap.
Clothes. I'm a size 14 shoe. I keep 3 spare sets, just in case. That's because even under normal circumstances they are hard to find. Have a good supply of anything you might need. Washing clothes might not be an option, and being dirty is a good way to get sick.
Medical: Build up a month of all necessary meds. In addition, rubbing alcohol, band aids( various sizes), gauze, and medical tape. Anti-diarrhea pills are a necessity, and I'd also stock up on Tylenol. Baby wipes to keep clean when there isn't water for a shower.
Security: People that don't think ahead WILL steal from those that did. Deadbolts are a must. A super easy way improve a door is to buy a $10 door prop from Wal-Mart. It wedges under the door handle and onto the floor. I tested one with ONLY that keeping a door shut (latch taped open) and my 350 pound body didn't budge it. Battery operated motion activated security lights can help too. Also, keep your curtains shut. No one needs to be looking in to see what you do or do not have. Limit their temptation
Misc.: Batteries, stock up. Have at least 3 flashlights. Battery radio. Cash (keep well hidden). I also have a couple cheap 36-channel walkie-talkie for emergencies.
Also, decide if you want to go alone, hermit style, or forge a group. Groups can look out for one another, but I'd only go for one or maybe two neighbors, and make sure you can REALLY trust them.
Also, entertainment. You will be shut in a lot more than usual. Have a good supply of books, magazines, and board games, or any other activity you can think of. Change activities often. Being bored will make you want to do stupid things.
cuda1179 wrote: I feel that EVERY family needs to, no matter what situation you are in, be able to survive a minimum of 2 weeks without leaving the home.
....
Clothes. I'm a size 14 shoe. I keep 3 spare sets, just in case.
You sly fox. You go outside for a little while leaving your prints everywhere then hide at home for a fortnight while people go around looking for sasquatch. Repeat.
Good post though. The US is different, we don't get many monster snows, though the press claims we do so, much to the mirth of Canadians and Norwegians. Tornadoes flash floods, miss all those. We don't need natural disasters, we have governmental decisions. Though it appears you now have a touch of that madness too.
However excellent advice and again savvy over not advertising your preparedness from someone who has seen it.
Bleach in water barrels. OK, will remember that. Though clean water shortage is not a major problem in the UK. I will admit to buying a box of 2000 water purification tablets off ebay. On a basis of, its best to have it and not need it. They are in a sealed plastic box.
Something to look for are Bruschetta. This is a form of dried bread, keeps indefinitely, and useful for anyone not willing or able to make their own bread. Overlooked product over in the Uk but inexpensive.
Ketara wrote: I for one, welcome the Mad Max style Wasteland to come. If Fallout has taught me anything, it's that I need to prep thoroughly and collect as many desk fans and toasters as possible to make sweet sweet upgrades for my Fat Man.
Don't you mean it will be a world full of bugs, sunlight that can penetrate through the ground and microtransactions...
Orlanth wrote: Orlanth's Short Guide to Prepping in the UK Prepping is a subject I should have covered earlier. Thank you for the thread.
There's a lot of mentions of tinned curry in there... I hope your bunker has adequate ventilation/sanitation.
Curry was an example, most tinned meats are either expensive, or very bland.
Tinned chilli and curry is the exception. You get 400g tins for about £1. SPAM and equivalent products cost more for less, though the meat is solid, so I give it that.
Also in my article I didn't mention bunkers, because it isn't that sort of prepping. Now I have heard that prepping for one type of disaster leaves one exposed to others, but frankly if I need a bunker I haven't got one, not even a decent cellar. If there is a nuclear war I am going to die like most other people in the UK. The temporary chaos after a no deal Brexit I can survive.
Anyway i do have a fair bit of curry and chilli, and rice which is the real wind generator. My mainstays are things I can gather for a low price. Tinned tomatoes for 25p, custard for 21p, peach slices for 33p, sweetcorn 34p, pasta 45p a bag. I have stocked up a fair bit on those and want to buy more.
Smart prepping means buying things you don't mind eating anyway, so that if nothing bad happens you can live on the stocks. However I might consider a 3 month dry/tinned store anyway from this point onward. If I lose my income it will come in handy. Universal Credit is a potential problem for me, but not one that is likely.
Something that used to be common here in the US that is starting to die out is home-canning. Back in the 1980's many people still did it, but today few people do.
It's a shame really. For a single day of labor you can make enough preserved canned food to last a month, for a tiny fraction of the price of actually buying it. It is also likely better for you, and you can tailor it to your taste.
Back when my parents were younger, between home canning and hunting they probably shaved 50% off our food budget.
It'll be fine. May will just keep repeating herself loudly and slowly until the foreigners 'get' it. It's how Britain and the Brits have dealt with the world at large for basically forever.
And the schadenfreude in watching it all fall apart is wonderful.
Whatever you do, DON'T get yourself "John Wayne" as we call it. just don't. Atleast not the one we used in the military.
After 2 doses of it in 2 days people have begun detonating it instead of eating, me included.
It'll be fine. May will just keep repeating herself loudly and slowly until the foreigners 'get' it. It's how Britain and the Brits have dealt with the world at large for basically forever.
And the schadenfreude in watching it all fall apart is wonderful.
The fallout of this however will not be worth the Schadenfreude.
Also in my article I didn't mention bunkers, because it isn't that sort of prepping. Now I have heard that prepping for one type of disaster leaves one exposed to others, but frankly if I need a bunker I haven't got one, not even a decent cellar. If there is a nuclear war I am going to die like most other people in the UK. The temporary chaos after a no deal Brexit I can survive.
There is zero point in building a bunker.
They would only be helpful in a hypothetical nuclear attack (or perhaps as a very secure stockpile), but even then, the use is incredibly limited. For starters, most of the population has no ability to even contemplate one, living in flats or rented accommodation. Anything you could build in the back garden of your suburban house is also going to be pretty tiny. Only those living in rural areas have any reasonable ability to build a decently-sized bunker.
A small bunker is pointless- any direct hit from a nuclear device is likely to destroy you whatever defenses you have thrown up, short of a very deep bunker (and even then...), so no back-garden bunker is going to help there. You might survive in the cellar of a skyscraper, but then you are most likely trapped there. However, a lot of the population is unlikely to be killed by the initial explosions- even in the UK, the area to cover and the way modern nuclear weapons rely on a multitude of small warheads rather than a few big ones means that many deaths are likely to occur from acute radiation poisoning (and ultimately chronic radiation exposure). Outside of the big cities, areas are unlikely to be directly targeted at all. It is just not worth targeting a town of 80,000 people in, say, Shropshire when 13 million live within the M25. So either you die instantly, or you have a good chance to improve things for yourself through canny evacuation procedures. As rural areas are only going to be hit by sporadic warheads that have missed their targets/are aimed at military installations, investing in large bunkers is also unlikely to be helpful.
So you can't do anything about the main detonations (except try and get out of a major city as quickly as possible- unlikely), so all preparation for a nuclear attack should revolve around surviving the fallout. The acutely dangerous levels of radiation from a nuclear attack occur in the initial blasts and for the first few days afterwards. Nuclear weapons do not contaminate the ground anywhere near as bad as nuclear power plants. Therefore, the primary goal is to find sufficient shelter to protect from radiation initially, and then to move away from the blast zones once the initial radiation has dissipated.
A small back-garden bunker could be useful here. But frankly, it is no more useful than any hard-skinned building, and you are better off finding a cellar or a large concrete building of some kind unless you can make a bunker with walls and ceiling over a foot (30cm) thick. Any brick, stone, or concrete building will provide good protection. Cellars are best, and the more stories of building above you, the better. However, if you can find no hard-skinned building before the attack hits, literally any cover is better than none- even a wooden shed is worth it for the initial radiation blast, and may save your life. Thankfully, hard-skinned buildings are very common in the UK, so it should be easy enough to find at least a brick building to shelter in. I know that the US has a much higher number of soft-skinned buildings, so this advice is more pertinent there.
The difference is how long you should stay put- if your initial cover is poor, then you should relocate to a hard-skinned building very soon- up to an hour at most. If your cover is good, you should wait for a few days, or even a week if you can, before leaving the area to less irradiated areas, unless directed to do so earlier (government services should have a handle of which way the fallout has travelled). By this point, surviving emergency and military services will likely be directing any evacuation efforts.
The other key point is to avoid drinking any water that has not come out of a bottle during this period if possible, unless you have already received thyroid protection. Radioactive iodine is one of the longest-lived isotopes produced in such blasts, and can cause a lot of thyroid damage and thyroid cancer.
There have been studies done on the optimum time to wait in different types of structures before seeking better shelter/evacuating the area. This article actually discussing some of them, and is eminently sensible.
In other words, if a nuclear attack is incoming, hide at the bottom of the biggest building you can find and wait until you are evacuated. If you have to (say a fire or something) then move to another hard-skinned building as quickly as you can.
A small bunker is pointless- any direct hit from a nuclear device is likely to destroy you whatever defenses you have thrown up, short of a very deep bunker (and even then...), so no back-garden bunker is going to help there. You might survive in the cellar of a skyscraper, but then you are most likely trapped there. However, a lot of the population is unlikely to be killed by the initial explosions- even in the UK, the area to cover and the way modern nuclear weapons rely on a multitude of small warheads rather than a few big ones means that many deaths are likely to occur from acute radiation poisoning (and ultimately chronic radiation exposure). Outside of the big cities, areas are unlikely to be directly targeted at all. It is just not worth targeting a town of 80,000 people in, say, Shropshire when 13 million live within the M25. So either you die instantly, or you have a good chance to improve things for yourself through canny evacuation procedures. As rural areas are only going to be hit by sporadic warheads that have missed their targets/are aimed at military installations, investing in large bunkers is also unlikely to be helpful.
It largely depends on the yield of the weapons. It only takes about 9 of the largest ones ever created to basically impact most people that were exposed. It's not just fallout that is the problem but thermal radiation from the blast that can basically cook your insides. In these cases an underground bunker woudl also help as it you will be shielded from the worst impacts.
Yeah. If you are near a nuclear blast you are probably dead, however as was pointed out unless you are in a major population center or near a high value military target you will not be nuked. There simply aren’t enough nukes to spare for minor civilian targets.
Fallout only lasts about 2 weeks. So if you can find a place to hide and not go outside for 2 weeks you will survive it nicely too. After that, even initial blast zones will be relatively safe to enter as modern nuclear weapons do not leave vast amounts of nuclear material behind.
The real killer of a nuclear war is the EMP and the disruptions it will cause to infrastructure. Any vehicles which use computer chips will cease to work, which means no transportation is available. Which means that food will not be transported where it is needed. Which means most people who do survive the blasts will starve.
A small bunker is pointless- any direct hit from a nuclear device is likely to destroy you whatever defenses you have thrown up, short of a very deep bunker (and even then...), so no back-garden bunker is going to help there. You might survive in the cellar of a skyscraper, but then you are most likely trapped there. However, a lot of the population is unlikely to be killed by the initial explosions- even in the UK, the area to cover and the way modern nuclear weapons rely on a multitude of small warheads rather than a few big ones means that many deaths are likely to occur from acute radiation poisoning (and ultimately chronic radiation exposure). Outside of the big cities, areas are unlikely to be directly targeted at all. It is just not worth targeting a town of 80,000 people in, say, Shropshire when 13 million live within the M25. So either you die instantly, or you have a good chance to improve things for yourself through canny evacuation procedures. As rural areas are only going to be hit by sporadic warheads that have missed their targets/are aimed at military installations, investing in large bunkers is also unlikely to be helpful.
It largely depends on the yield of the weapons. It only takes about 9 of the largest ones ever created to basically impact most people that were exposed. It's not just fallout that is the problem but thermal radiation from the blast that can basically cook your insides. In these cases an underground bunker woudl also help as it you will be shielded from the worst impacts.
Just being in the ground floor of a large, concrete building will provide similar protection to a small bunker in your back garden, so long as you are not near any windows. There were actually some survivors of one of the bombs dropped on Japan from very close to the fireball, because they were within a stone/concrete bank rather than a wooden-and-paper building (as was typical for Japan at the time). Any brick, stone, or concrete building is going to protect you from the initial radiation wave pretty effectively if you stay away from the windows and bunker down as best you can.
Of course, if you can bury your bunker reasonably deep, it will be better, but at that stage you are going to start running into issues of cost, planning regulations and the like.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Grey Templar wrote: Yeah. If you are near a nuclear blast you are probably dead, however as was pointed out unless you are in a major population center or near a high value military target you will not be nuked. There simply aren’t enough nukes to spare for minor civilian targets.
Fallout only lasts about 2 weeks. So if you can find a place to hide and not go outside for 2 weeks you will survive it nicely too. After that, even initial blast zones will be relatively safe to enter as modern nuclear weapons do not leave vast amounts of nuclear material behind.
The real killer of a nuclear war is the EMP and the disruptions it will cause to infrastructure. Any vehicles which use computer chips will cease to work, which means no transportation is available. Which means that food will not be transported where it is needed. Which means most people who do survive the blasts will starve.
I actually don't know enough about EMP to give a definitive answer, but will the EMP blast from a nuke really render all modern vehicles inoperable? For a start, won't the metal shell of a vehicle provide some shielding, as well as surrounding buildings, and I thought that switched-off electronics were also partly protected too?
In addition, many vehicles will be on the road between major settlements, so they are likely to escape due to lack of proximity to major population centres? Add in the huge drop in population caused by immediate deaths, and there won't need to be so much food infrastructure. Surviving military reserves are also likely to be mobilised to provide additional transport and stabilise the country- military vehicles being routinely EMP and NBC hardened nowadays.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Something I forgot to add before is that a MilSurp gasmask with a handful of spare filters will help a lot in such situations to reduce fallout exposure- alpha and beta radiation sources are not especially harmful on the skin, but can be harmful if ingested/breathed in. An effective NBC gasmask will further reduce the radiation exposure from fallout.
Of course, it goes without saying that if you do this, you will need to make sure your respirator filters are in date, and you know how to apply the mask in a hurry.
There will be no stabilization post nuclear war in the UK. Civil protection is pretty much non existent, and what few resources there were assigned to civil defense were scrapped at the end of the cold war.
In 1980 when nuclear preparation was at least on the public agenda 'Protect and Survive' was no better than Neglect and Die.
There is something better than concrete to help protect you from radiation. Steel stops way more radiation per inch than concrete. If you have few options, getting into a shipping container on a ship or inside a building isn't a bad idea.
I'm not some doomsday nut, but I did stumble across some stuff that I might put into effect at some point. One of my life goals is to find a spot of semi-rural land to make a weekend cabin to hang out in. Prefabbed tiny homes are readily available, but they have no basement. I then found out Lowes (the home improvement store) actually sells tiny bunkers.
These tiny steel bunkers are meant as tornado shelters, but do have electrical and water hookups built-in. The company that makes them will ship most of their products to any Lowes for free. An 8x16 foot bunker with stairwell is about $8000. I was thinking that burying one of these before placing a prefab cabin on top would make a decent basement. For added durability you could also pour concrete around it .
Another place to avoid fallout is in a tall building. If you can place at least 6 floors below you (more is better) and at least 4 floors over you (more is better) it will drastically cut down on fallout exposure. If in an office building, make a "bunker" by pulling metal filing cabinets around you.
cuda1179 wrote: There is something better than concrete to help protect you from radiation. Steel stops way more radiation per inch than concrete. If you have few options, getting into a shipping container on a ship or inside a building isn't a bad idea.
I'm not some doomsday nut, but I did stumble across some stuff that I might put into effect at some point. One of my life goals is to find a spot of semi-rural land to make a weekend cabin to hang out in. Prefabbed tiny homes are readily available, but they have no basement. I then found out Lowes (the home improvement store) actually sells tiny bunkers.
These tiny steel bunkers are meant as tornado shelters, but do have electrical and water hookups built-in. The company that makes them will ship most of their products to any Lowes for free. An 8x16 foot bunker with stairwell is about $8000. I was thinking that burying one of these before placing a prefab cabin on top would make a decent basement. For added durability you could also pour concrete around it .
Another place to avoid fallout is in a tall building. If you can place at least 6 floors below you (more is better) and at least 4 floors over you (more is better) it will drastically cut down on fallout exposure. If in an office building, make a "bunker" by pulling metal filing cabinets around you.
The only problem with finding a high rise is that these are generally in the centre of cities which are prime targets for the nukes if all hell breaks loose (in the UK anyway).
Yes metal is generally better (lead being ideal).
As for alpha and beta radiation, alpha won't get through your dead skin cells so outside your body is fairly safe (except for new skin such as when repairing from burns). Beta will get through to the skin layer and can cause damage there. However it can be easier to excise any small tumours. Gamma generally goes straight through us and except in extremely high doses is generally safe (in a post nuclear fallout type of way). As noted alpha and beta radiation is really problematic when it gets inside through food, water and air.
I always thought that the problem with alot of this is most people will have families that won't be doing this - often elderly that will need to be helped, protected etc and who donlt live near by.
EMPs have a range significantly larger than the blast. It would only take a couple high altitude detonations to cover the entire US in enough disruption to render most vehicles, and other electronics, inoperable for example. This is actually a cornerstone of modern nuclear strategy. You save a few ICBMs for high altitude detonations which are harmless.
It takes a lot of shielding to make a vehicle resistant to EMPs. Enough to where it’s not done routinely even for military vehicles, and it’s effectiveness depends on proximity.
We are no longer discussing prudent preparations for a poor Brexit outcome, but just general planning for major disasters, in this case a large scale nuclear attack. In part because it is a fun thought exercise.
Probably none of us will ever need it. But if a terrorist or something does ever manage to detonate a nuke in the city you are in, maybe these fun hypotheticals could save someone's life. Who knows?
filbert wrote: I didn't think it was the farming side of things that caused the wastage; I thought most of the wastage came from the supermarkets throwing out perfectly good food that had passed some completely arbitrary 'best before' date?
At least here, most supermarkets are more likely to get in trouble for keeping food around too long. 'Repainting' meat with a chemical to make it look more red (like how raw beef is 'supposed to look') then re-shrink wrapping it and banging a new label on.
A lot of 'best before' dates are anything but arbitrary, especially for meats in what passes for 'refrigerators' in a grocery store display.
Gray Templar wrote:And people talk about how indigenous peoples "used the whole animal" as if we don't do that today.
And notably, the indigenous peoples thing tends to be a myth. The archeological evidence suggests otherwise, sometimes shockingly so. There are a couple canyon sites in the midwest that have layers of buffalo skeletons where the local tribes just drove entire herds off cliffs and salvaged what they could carry from the resulting slurry.
War Drone wrote:For the 1st month, 30x bottles of Vodka and a sawn-off shotgun.
Obviously, I can't get a shotgun, but the Vodka should be doable ...
How things vary. I'm pretty sure I couldn't get 30 bottles of Vodka locally (though give me an hour in car and it's no problem), but can think of _at least_ half a dozen places I could get a shotgun. Without any wait at all, depending on what sort of events are going on. (The radio blurts about a gun show every other week or so)
cuda1179 wrote: For added durability you could also pour concrete around it .
If you want your underground extension to be safe you will need to do this. A number of survivalists have bought shipping containers and buried them, then found that unless set in concerete they get crushed by the pressure of earth on their walls.
I would love to add a 8x16 extension under the house, for any purpose, space is at a premium here.
I'm reminded of the Humanity vs. Humans monologue from Men In Black.
Seriously, Britain did fine before the EU, they'll do fine after. If anything it may be better in the long run as they don't get to chip in for Greece's bills.
We don't know. While it would be reasonable for things to end rationally that is not how politician's think. I cant give a direct reason for this due to current forum rules so let me give you an analogy instead.
In World War One generals had two options, simply put, continue to send men over the trenches into machine gun fire to horrific loss of life, or admit to themselves that they had lost control of the situation and didn't know what they were doing.
Human pride and ego triumphed and men were still sent 'over the top'. Hence the phrase.
I think the mentality is similar to what it was a century ago.
We might have a No Deal Brexit, and it might be a disaster. Note that I am not saying we will, and not saying it will be a disaster if it happens. But I cannot say it won't. Hence I prep.
I think those who are saying everything will be fine, are fixed on a false certainty because of the stigma of prepping.
Please do not mistake Brexit prepping for alien invasion/zombies/sudden fascist guv'ment.
Everyone, I think we should steer away from the politics of Brexit and if it will be a disaster- much as I would love to engage in it, that is banned territory. Lets stick with how to deal with any potential FUBARs, not how likely they are. I don't want the thread locked.
In World War One generals had two options, simply put, continue to send men over the trenches into machine gun fire to horrific loss of life, or admit to themselves that they had lost control of the situation and didn't know what they were doing.
Human pride and ego triumphed and men were still sent 'over the top'. Hence the phrase.
I'm pretty we had a big thread about this on Dakka a year or so ago... but suffice to say much of this is just the modern mythos of WWI. The politics behind WWI and reasons for fighting were obviously dumb and a failure of diplomacy, but what the generals did was usually logical and far more complex than simply "send men over the top".
While I appreciate some people are engaging in an interesting nuclear fallout thought excerise, some posters have been actively advocating 'prepping' for Brexit.
If there is one thing that will cause issues when Brexit happens [if it happens] is everyone panic buying stuff. Or hoarding stuff.
cuda1179 wrote: For added durability you could also pour concrete around it .
If you want your underground extension to be safe you will need to do this. A number of survivalists have bought shipping containers and buried them, then found that unless set in concerete they get crushed by the pressure of earth on their walls.
I would love to add a 8x16 extension under the house, for any purpose, space is at a premium here.
Ditto. I've been tempted to put a bunker type thing in the garden, low enough that I can still plant a lawn on top for the kids to run about, and big enough to use as a mancave and workshop.
I always found it pretty disappointing how UK houses don't come with basements, it just seems like a lot of wasted space.
Haighus wrote: Everyone, I think we should steer away from the politics of Brexit and if it will be a disaster- much as I would love to engage in it, that is banned territory. Lets stick with how to deal with any potential FUBARs, not how likely they are. I don't want the thread locked.
In World War One generals had two options, simply put, continue to send men over the trenches into machine gun fire to horrific loss of life, or admit to themselves that they had lost control of the situation and didn't know what they were doing.
Human pride and ego triumphed and men were still sent 'over the top'. Hence the phrase.
I'm pretty we had a big thread about this on Dakka a year or so ago... but suffice to say much of this is just the modern mythos of WWI. The politics behind WWI and reasons for fighting were obviously dumb and a failure of diplomacy, but what the generals did was usually logical and far more complex than simply "send men over the top".
Two points here.
I think it is totally OK to mention that Brexit might be a disaster. We need not describe why, and so far nobody has tried to. If it is potentially true, it's a social issue not just a political one. It can effect you and me in our daily lives. What we are discussing is prepping. Now nuclear prepping is a nice theory for discussion. Brexit prepping is a current high risk scenario. Its not just a theory, I am hoping that someone will benefit from what I am saying, or at least think through the options themselves. All I will say here is that high risk doesn't mean certainty and no party political or factional blame is atrributed, that isn't the point of the topic, and would get the topic shut down, which would not help me warn anyone.
As for World War One generals, yes there were some good ones, and Haig routinely sacked or gave out of the way postings to those who were both forthright and competent enough to oppose him. This is what happened to Allenby. He was a rising star on the Western front and knew what he was doing, and criticised the strategy, so Haig got rid of him. In doing so he was shipped off to Egypt, just to get him into a 'useless' position. This made him his own boss, and gave him an small army, and thus he was able to show what he could do. It was perhaps accidentally the only 'smart' thing Haig actually did.
Dixon summises that it was easier for generals to continue to send men to their deaths than to move outside the comfort of their own thinking. I mention this because delusion can still proliferate when the stakes are very high, as what stakes could be higher than the lives of multitudes. You can apply this to our current situation as and how you choose.
AdmiralHalsey wrote: While I appreciate some people are engaging in an interesting nuclear fallout thought exercise, some posters have been actively advocating 'prepping' for Brexit.
If there is one thing that will cause issues when Brexit happens [if it happens] is everyone panic buying stuff. Or hoarding stuff.
Don't be the problem you want to solve.
The panic buyers will be those who do not prep. Preppers prep in the good times, panic buyers prep in the bad. My supermarket visits and stocking of tins does not cause a resource spike. Yes I buy a lot of tins but a responsible prepper need not buy every tin of tomato on the shelf, unless there are only a few left, which is just being another shopper. I don't say, today I am buying my full supply of a particular product. For two reasons. First I am not prepping for one weeks supply or two weeks supply so I can buy items in sequence. I am buying half a weeks supply of preserved foods, than another half a weeks supply, once i feel I have enough I still buy more but as an when I feel I can afford. My prepping now is very casual. There are exceptions to this, items needed for prepping supply but not for casual consumption, most of those will be batch bought later when i know I need to. My personal deadline for those items is one month to Brexit.
The second reason I don't suddenly buy lots of tins of tomatoes, is because it is irresponsible to cause a resource spike like that, it messes with stock control. Tins of tomatoes are a case in point, because my local supermarket has a long term offer of 25pt tomatoes, its a quality product not white label goods, and also an EU import. Tomatoes are a catch all as you can make soup from them, add them to various foods and also help feed any veggies I have as guests (though they have more than this). So I have disproportionately bought a lot of them. I buy a dozen tins per visit, which is a fair mount but not a spike.
As for hoarding. Preparation isn't a problem, lack of preparation is a problem. You are proving my point, those who do not prepare will want to take from those who have. The first problem is from those who prepared being seen in a negative rather than a positive light, as its helps self justify what might happen next. First opportunity is to label foresight hoarding, which I mentioned earlier. And we have one poster who is a regular prepper, to some degree or other and claims to have seen this, or at least experienced other in his community who have known same. I agree wholeheartedly, if you prep, others who do not prep will turn nasty when they get desperate.
Now even if there is a problem with Brexit it is highly unlikely to get that bad. But the principle of prepping remains, keep it to yourself that you are stocking up, as in don't let people know where the stash is, warning people that it might be a good idea to consider prepping is still responsible.
Kilkrazy wrote: If you want to prep for possible disruption in the UK in in early April, buy some extra stuff every time you go shopping.
You won't be panic buying, just stocking up a bit like you do when relatives come to stay.
In four or five weeks you will have enough spare food for a week or two, which is all you will need in even the worst case scenario.
That is in my opinion semi-wise. Two weeks is a lot better than none. If we get a poor resolution to Brexit the disruption will potentially last longer than that.
People who prep for bad weather, Universal Credit rollout etc can settle for a two week backstop. In fact that really is just stocking a larder not prepping. Most housewives in past generations would stock up that much.
I remember the 1970's, there was a lot of industrial action and thus a lot of stoppages. Having a supply of essentials was the norm, you were a bad housekeeper if you didn't have tins for a fortnight already there for when the unions decided to throw a strike and throw the whole country into chaos. People forget this. I was only a small child at the time and don't really remember much directly, other than the frequent electrical shortages in the late 70's, which we found a lot of fun. The current generation has never known want, other than by individual circumstances. I hope this continues to be so, but maybe just maybe, it won't.
Just remember an insightful prepper wants to be proven wrong.
The [threat] is coming for us, we will all face ruin, and then you will believe me!!
vs There is a potential problem in the forseeable future, I suggest we stock up responsibly in the event of [threat] materialising.
Haighus wrote: Everyone, I think we should steer away from the politics of Brexit and if it will be a disaster- much as I would love to engage in it, that is banned territory. Lets stick with how to deal with any potential FUBARs, not how likely they are. I don't want the thread locked.
In World War One generals had two options, simply put, continue to send men over the trenches into machine gun fire to horrific loss of life, or admit to themselves that they had lost control of the situation and didn't know what they were doing.
Human pride and ego triumphed and men were still sent 'over the top'. Hence the phrase.
I'm pretty we had a big thread about this on Dakka a year or so ago... but suffice to say much of this is just the modern mythos of WWI. The politics behind WWI and reasons for fighting were obviously dumb and a failure of diplomacy, but what the generals did was usually logical and far more complex than simply "send men over the top".
Two points here.
I think it is totally OK to mention that Brexit might be a disaster. We need not describe why, and so far nobody has tried to. If it is potentially true, it's a social issue not just a political one. It can effect you and me in our daily lives. What we are discussing is prepping. Now nuclear prepping is a nice theory for discussion. Brexit prepping is a current high risk scenario. Its not just a theory, I am hoping that someone will benefit from what I am saying, or at least think through the options themselves. All I will say here is that high risk doesn't mean certainty and no party political or factional blame is atrributed, that isn't the point of the topic, and would get the topic shut down, which would not help me warn anyone.
As for World War One generals, yes there were some good ones, and Haig routinely sacked or gave out of the way postings to those who were both forthright and competent enough to oppose him. This is what happened to Allenby. He was a rising star on the Western front and knew what he was doing, and criticised the strategy, so Haig got rid of him. In doing so he was shipped off to Egypt, just to get him into a 'useless' position. This made him his own boss, and gave him an small army, and thus he was able to show what he could do. It was perhaps accidentally the only 'smart' thing Haig actually did.
Dixon summises that it was easier for generals to continue to send men to their deaths than to move outside the comfort of their own thinking. I mention this because delusion can still proliferate when the stakes are very high, as what stakes could be higher than the lives of multitudes. You can apply this to our current situation as and how you choose.
Well, we will have to start another thread to discuss WWI in more detail, but I do disagree that men were simply sent over the top when considerable innovation in military tactics occurred throughout WWI.
My concern about the thread was for some posters veering into discussing the benefits of Brexit itself (someone mentioned Greece for example), rather than prepping for potential bad outcomes (as you have been discussing). The latter is fine, the former could lead to a discussion that locks the thread. I don't want the thread to be locked.
Understood Haighus, I don't want it locked either. As you can see from the post you quoted. We are on the same page here.
My difficulty is that I cannot realistically talk about how long a target prepping window should be. If I said x months because of the Brexit consquences of so and so it wouldn't help thread longevity.
Thankfully my position is also well served by saying, prep for a reasonable time, then add to it if you can afford. If you over prep it matters not so long as you stock stores you will want to consume eventually anyway. Also means vary, if you have a comfortable income and can lay down enough supplies to last two or more months without your wallet noticing much, why not just do so?
Prepping is heavily cutting into a my hobby budget right now, as I am buying tins instead of Death Guard, and my income is limited. But if all is well from April I will only need to buy fresh products like bread and milk for the whole summer, and my hobby budget will be able to be increased. I might even be able to afford a Realm of Battle, or more Mechanicus terrain.
I will likely keep a months supply of tins from now on though, use and replace as necessary. Universal Credit and similar 'threats' are not going away. Thing is once the outlay is made, it's made. Prepping need not be a consuming obsession, and those who fuel that stigma shouldn't be the yardstick for everyone else who wants to be prepared.
Orlanth wrote: Understood Haighus, I don't want it locked either. As you can see from the post you quoted. We are on the same page here.
My difficulty is that I cannot realistically talk about how long a target prepping window should be. If I said x months because of the Brexit consquences of so and so it wouldn't help thread longevity.
Thankfully my position is also well served by saying, prep for a reasonable time, then add to it if you can afford. If you over prep it matters not so long as you stock stores you will want to consume eventually anyway. Also means vary, if you have a comfortable income and can lay down enough supplies to last two or more months without your wallet noticing much, why not just do so?
Prepping is heavily cutting into a my hobby budget right now, as I am buying tins instead of Death Guard, and my income is limited. But if all is well from April I will only need to buy fresh products like bread and milk for the whole summer, and my hobby budget will be able to be increased. I might even be able to afford a Realm of Battle, or more Mechanicus terrain.
I will likely keep a months supply of tins from now on though, use and replace as necessary. Universal Credit and similar 'threats' are not going away. Thing is once the outlay is made, it's made. Prepping need not be a consuming obsession, and those who fuel that stigma shouldn't be the yardstick for everyone else who wants to be prepared.
Absolutely- having a fortnight of long-lasting food available is eminently sensible. I would like to be able to do such a thing myself.
Unfortunately, I have the current misfortune of being semi-nomadic, and a large amount of food (especially heavy tins) is difficult for me to keep transporting around. The exit date falls right around one of my moving periods too, so it is awful timing for me. I'm not going to be able to settle till the summer at least.
Hey, at least you could make a lot of scenery out of the empty cans and packaging...?
The fallout of this however will not be worth the Schadenfreude.
Not in a hundred years.
I disagree. The only people feeling the pinch from this will be the people who voted for it, who deserve everything they get.
Sadly, that is not at all true. Brexit voting lines were not split by wealth or class, but by age and rural/urban. Older and rural voters/voters with less contact with immigrants were more likely to vote leave. Many of these were well off. They will be some of the least affected- rural folk have access to more food availability through local produce, and the lower access to shops means that rural folk already tend to stockpile resources more than urban folk- there is an element of basic prepping. The elderly are also more likely to stockpile- as pointed out, this was the norm for previous generations, and many of them won't live long enough to see many of the effects of any brexit outcome. The elderly also typically hold allotments in cities, so are the main urban group with some self-food production. However, the elderly might be affected most by any NHS impact, so there is that.
On the other hand, plenty of poor remain voters are going to be most affected by any Brexit outcome, and have very little ability to deal with it. Places like Sunderland.
From the perspective of the thread, urban poor are those most in need of basic prepping, but also one of the groups with the least means to do so. Most people living in a city can't just plant a veggie plot to supplement their diet for example.
The fallout of this however will not be worth the Schadenfreude.
Not in a hundred years.
I disagree. The only people feeling the pinch from this will be the people who voted for it, who deserve everything they get.
No, the ones that actually are accountable, cough the politicians that so avidly insisted that it will be a good idea to leave, with as much lying as possible, will not suffer.
You can't expect a populus to vote directly on such a matter when they don't do it regularly and for this, there should've been a propper information campaign, neutral and expansive.
Atleast that is how we vote directly here.
Also if the uk leaves there will be more influence for france and germany within the EU, and neither of those show leading capability or the will to lead / the ressources to do so.
In essesence this will hurt all the wrong people.
Edit: this argument is to be understood as a philosophical argument of the stateform / methodolgy of finding and legitimating policy, not to be interpreted as political in it's nature.
We are no longer discussing prudent preparations for a poor Brexit outcome, but just general planning for major disasters, in this case a large scale nuclear attack. In part because it is a fun thought exercise.
Probably none of us will ever need it. But if a terrorist or something does ever manage to detonate a nuke in the city you are in, maybe these fun hypotheticals could save someone's life. Who knows?
While improvised Nuclear bombs are possible, The detonation of a nuke by a terrorist is a very unlikely scenario, and would almost certainly be state sponsored. a Dirty Bomb or some sort of improvised chemical weapons is much more likely, and those scenarios are generally much easier to contain.
cuda1179 wrote: For added durability you could also pour concrete around it .
If you want your underground extension to be safe you will need to do this. A number of survivalists have bought shipping containers and buried them, then found that unless set in concerete they get crushed by the pressure of earth on their walls.
I would love to add a 8x16 extension under the house, for any purpose, space is at a premium here.
Ditto. I've been tempted to put a bunker type thing in the garden, low enough that I can still plant a lawn on top for the kids to run about, and big enough to use as a mancave and workshop.
I always found it pretty disappointing how UK houses don't come with basements, it just seems like a lot of wasted space.
If you do so, remember to form the roof like a A, or a half circle.
That said if you also want to use it propperly Isolation and a certain confyness should also be done.
Depending on the ammount of water you might need to also Plan a "Sickerleitung"
I don't know the word in english so here you go.
While improvised Nuclear bombs are possible, The detonation of a nuke by a terrorist is a very unlikely scenario, and would almost certainly be state sponsored. a Dirty Bomb or some sort of improvised chemical weapons is much more likely, and those scenarios are generally much easier to contain.
True, but then most of the major terrorist attacks in the West in the last two decades have been carried out by large, powerful organisations with some degree of state backing.
I am not going to rule it out, especially with the increased instability in the world at the moment. I think a terrorist nuke is more likely than full nuclear war, in part because of the plausible deniability afforded to states by acting through terrorists rather than directly. Still not likely, but more so.
While improvised Nuclear bombs are possible, The detonation of a nuke by a terrorist is a very unlikely scenario, and would almost certainly be state sponsored. a Dirty Bomb or some sort of improvised chemical weapons is much more likely, and those scenarios are generally much easier to contain.
True, but then most of the major terrorist attacks in the West in the last two decades have been carried out by large, powerful organisations with some degree of state backing.
I am not going to rule it out, especially with the increased instability in the world at the moment. I think a terrorist nuke is more likely than full nuclear war, in part because of the plausible deniability afforded to states by acting through terrorists rather than directly. Still not likely, but more so.
yeah I'd agree, but I'd still put it fairly low on the likelihood list, not zombie apocalypse low, but almost. You'd be better off learning how to react to a conventional IED attack
The scale of those are incomparable except perhaps in the largest examples though (something like the Arndale bombing maybe). But yeah, I take your point!
Although aside from running, what else can you do in a conventional bombing? Run into less-obvious escape routes to avoid secondary bombs?
There are, of course, the first responder aspects, if you are willing to risk getting stuck in. If you are trained in such things, then absolutely that is an option. It is likely where I'd end up, if I didn't feel like I was going to become an additional casualty.
That is probably a valuable point actually- having basic life support and first aid skills is definitely a useful part of prudent prepping. Disaster scenarios typically involve overwhelmed emergency services (see recent Manchester bombing), so some degree of self-sufficiency in coping with medical matters is very helpful.
Haighus wrote: The scale of those are incomparable except perhaps in the largest examples though (something like the Arndale bombing maybe). But yeah, I take your point!
Although aside from running, what else can you do in a conventional bombing? Run into less-obvious escape routes to avoid secondary bombs?
There are, of course, the first responder aspects, if you are willing to risk getting stuck in. If you are trained in such things, then absolutely that is an option. It is likely where I'd end up, if I didn't feel like I was going to become an additional casualty.
That is probably a valuable point actually- having basic life support and first aid skills is definitely a useful part of prudent prepping. Disaster scenarios typically involve overwhelmed emergency services (see recent Manchester bombing), so some degree of self-sufficiency in coping with medical matters is very helpful.
Yeah. Once the blast has happened, theres not much you can do, apart from avoiding any crushing masses of fleeing human bodies. I was thinking more along the lines of finding an armed device. things like knowing what info emergency services require. size, position, components etc. for example, a device containing a phone or radio parts presents a much bigger problem to EOD than a pipe with a battery.
First Aid wise, the biggest problem is triage. People dont know how to prioritise and group casualties for treatment. I heard that the majority of the Manchester bombing deaths could've been avoided if proper triage had been in place and those with the worst injuries were treated first. I'm lucky to have been trained as a combat medic, so I know that I'm looking for catastrophic hemorrhages as top priority. I dont really know how you'd transfer that knowledge to the general public though. its not really something you could cover in first aid at work for example. Same as knowing how to apply or affect a tourniquet, or the use of direct/indirect pressure on wounds.
Terrorist threads with nuclear or chemical components are not far fetched at all.
Al Quaeda did attempt to create a chemical weapons lab in Morocco a few years back. They failed, probably with side assist, but it is not a stretch that they might have succeeded.
In Japan a doomsday cult was able to obtain chemical weapons, some fundamentalist groups are far better supported and organised than that.
I take it as a given that Al Quaeda and associated organisations have an agenda for procuring WMD. What if they succeed?
Problem is there is no prepping possible for this sort of scenario, by the individual, you are caught unawares and breath in the nasty stuff or you are safe.
Orlanth wrote: Terrorist threads with nuclear or chemical components are not far fetched at all.
Al Quaeda did attempt to create a chemical weapons lab in Morocco a few years back. They failed, probably with side assist, but it is not a stretch that they might have succeeded.
In Japan a doomsday cult was able to obtain chemical weapons, some fundamentalist groups are far better supported and organised than that.
I take it as a given that Al Quaeda and associated organisations have an agenda for procuring WMD. What if they succeed?
Problem is there is no prepping possible for this sort of scenario, by the individual, you are caught unawares and breath in the nasty stuff or you are safe.
Thats not what I said. I said the detonation of a nuclear device by a terrorist, eg an improvised, yet full yield nuclear bomb (which is different to a radiological device, AKA dirty bomb). This scenario is possible yet highly unlikely. A dirty bomb, or chemical device is a totally different scenario, and you'll find I didn't disagree with you in that regard. There are things you can do if that happens though. distance and wind direction. get upwind, put some space between you and it, get in a car and turn the exterior vents off. If its inside, get outside. gases like chlorine dissipate rapidly and simply opening windows and doors can negate any hazard if the device initiates. Of cource this isnt always the case. in the Aum Shinrikyo case you mentioned, the sarin wouldve been better dealth with if the carriages were isolated and closed. it all comes down to human thought process. if you read the narrative around that event, theres all sorts of crazy things done in the moment. I believe one of the bags was kicked onto a platform by a passenger, who then carried on his way regardless.
Haighus wrote: The scale of those are incomparable except perhaps in the largest examples though (something like the Arndale bombing maybe). But yeah, I take your point!
Although aside from running, what else can you do in a conventional bombing? Run into less-obvious escape routes to avoid secondary bombs?
There are, of course, the first responder aspects, if you are willing to risk getting stuck in. If you are trained in such things, then absolutely that is an option. It is likely where I'd end up, if I didn't feel like I was going to become an additional casualty.
That is probably a valuable point actually- having basic life support and first aid skills is definitely a useful part of prudent prepping. Disaster scenarios typically involve overwhelmed emergency services (see recent Manchester bombing), so some degree of self-sufficiency in coping with medical matters is very helpful.
Yeah. Once the blast has happened, theres not much you can do, apart from avoiding any crushing masses of fleeing human bodies. I was thinking more along the lines of finding an armed device. things like knowing what info emergency services require. size, position, components etc. for example, a device containing a phone or radio parts presents a much bigger problem to EOD than a pipe with a battery.
First Aid wise, the biggest problem is triage. People dont know how to prioritise and group casualties for treatment. I heard that the majority of the Manchester bombing deaths could've been avoided if proper triage had been in place and those with the worst injuries were treated first. I'm lucky to have been trained as a combat medic, so I know that I'm looking for catastrophic hemorrhages as top priority. I dont really know how you'd transfer that knowledge to the general public though. its not really something you could cover in first aid at work for example. Same as knowing how to apply or affect a tourniquet, or the use of direct/indirect pressure on wounds.
All good points. Honestly, I think triage is just something that improves with experience. It is included within the basic life support algorithm: DRcABCDE, in that you should go through the assessment logically and prioritise the most serious dysfunction (so catastrophic haemorrhage followed by airway obstruction etc.). I think the difficult part is being able to quickly rule out which patients are lower priority and procede to those who need most care- discounting the patient walking around screaming as likely low initial priority, for example. This is especially complicated in mass casualty situations because of the overwhelming numbers, and you really need some experienced to direct the scene as early as possible.
You can definitely practice haemorrhage first aid though, although access to good models helps a lot.
Orlanth wrote:Terrorist threads with nuclear or chemical components are not far fetched at all.
Al Quaeda did attempt to create a chemical weapons lab in Morocco a few years back. They failed, probably with side assist, but it is not a stretch that they might have succeeded.
In Japan a doomsday cult was able to obtain chemical weapons, some fundamentalist groups are far better supported and organised than that.
I take it as a given that Al Quaeda and associated organisations have an agenda for procuring WMD. What if they succeed?
However for me the real nightmare scenario would be a if enough terrorists with conventional firearms and explosives were able to mass for an attack on a nuclear power plant. Go in with assault rifles, plant explosive charges in nasty places. Blow the charges and then defend the installation against clean up teams. Your fighters are already martyrs at this point due to radiation so there is no reason for them not to stand their ground. So special forces teams will have to fight against an entrenched opponent in high radiation before you can even begin to do something about the problem. You could cause a level 7 INES disaster by this method, Chernobyl sized, or bigger. I think twenty fighters are more than enough to pull this off properly, and most will not need specialist training, just 'muscle' terrorists.
I see chemical and radiation bomb attacks as being similar to large conventional attacks- they are still much lower in magnitude than a full nuclear device. Nuclear devices are far more difficult to build and deploy in secret, hence their low probability and need for state support. Of course, a terrorist chemical/radiation attack is relatively likely, but they are more complicated than simple bombs, and have more points of failure. The low number of bomb attacks in the UK in recent years is testament to the difficulty of planning and executing such an attack without being picked up by intelligence services.
I don't think such an attack on a nuclear plant is terribly feasible without significant state support. Consider that nuclear plants are routinely overbuilt to contain disasters as much as possible- they are large sights with good security, and relevant areas are generally encased in very thick concrete. The response to any attack is likely to be very rapid- there are almost certainly counterterrorism contingencies in place for every nuclear site in the country- and the quantities of explosives needed to crack the concrete used is goimg to be enormous. We are talking metres of concrete. There are WWII bunkers of equivalent thickness still standing because the quantities if explosives needed to demolish them were unfeasible with nearby settlements.
That means any such terrorist attack needs to stockpile a huge amount of explosives- already a risk of discovery, and difficult today. It then needs to be able to transport said explosives to inside the facility- I don't think 20 attackers carrying it is likely to be sufficient. This is on top of procuring sufficient military-grade firearms and eauipment (also very difficult with the UK- see recent terrorist plot foiled when attempting this exact thing). Even if you manage to amass such resources, you then have to wonder if it would even be more effective than deploying the explosives in multiple large attacks in London, with distributed marauder attacks using firearms.
There are just too many points of failure, and frankly not much benefit for such a risky plan over typical civilian targeting. Only an extremely well funded organisation could do it, and it would almost certainly be state backed (and basically be a proxy military attack).
A few years back I was looking for a .pdf of a long out of print gaming supplement from the 1980's.
Often old stuff like that is considered the print equivalent of abandonware and available on .pdf with minimal problems.
The product was so obscure it didn't even have that except for one site which had a .pdf under that name. Not quite a googlewhack because some sites linked to fans of the game, but close enough.
It was a gaming related name, so you should have a clue how it goes, not mentioning for reasons that will not become obvious.
The .pdf I opened was a how to guide for chemical weapons. Real deep web crap, though for some reason findable on google under that specific name.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Haighus, I edited that theory out as too off topic while you were typing.
Same as knowing how to apply or affect a tourniquet, or the use of direct/indirect pressure on wounds.
Well, in Germany that is part of any first aid course, including the one you have to pass to be eligible for a driver's license.
Thats good. thats the sort of knowledge that should be included in things done by the public, because one day they might just need it, and being able to pull it from the back of their mind could save lives.
The fallout of this however will not be worth the Schadenfreude.
Not in a hundred years.
I disagree. The only people feeling the pinch from this will be the people who voted for it, who deserve everything they get.
Sadly, that is not at all true. Brexit voting lines were not split by wealth or class, but by age and rural/urban. Older and rural voters/voters with less contact with immigrants were more likely to vote leave. Many of these were well off. They will be some of the least affected- rural folk have access to more food availability through local produce, and the lower access to shops means that rural folk already tend to stockpile resources more than urban folk- there is an element of basic prepping. The elderly are also more likely to stockpile- as pointed out, this was the norm for previous generations, and many of them won't live long enough to see many of the effects of any brexit outcome. The elderly also typically hold allotments in cities, so are the main urban group with some self-food production. However, the elderly might be affected most by any NHS impact, so there is that.
On the other hand, plenty of poor remain voters are going to be most affected by any Brexit outcome, and have very little ability to deal with it. Places like Sunderland.
From the perspective of the thread, urban poor are those most in need of basic prepping, but also one of the groups with the least means to do so. Most people living in a city can't just plant a veggie plot to supplement their diet for example.
The British people voted for it. They deserve everything they get.
The British people voted for it. They deserve everything they get.
Reap the whirlwind.
This is incredibly short-sighted. A huge proportion voted against it, and it also affects all of Europe (although less, proportionally, than it affects the UK), who dididn't vote on it at all.
There will probably be a global effect too, which may effect many different countries in foreseable and unforseable ways.
This does not only affect those who voted to leave by a long shot, and such a simplistic reduction of the issue helps no one.
I am not blaming Leave voters. I am blaming the electorate. Remain is just as culpable as Leave are for the current state of affairs and their supporters and voters will, deservingly, suffer because of their failure.
Or at least, those Remain supporters and voters who didn't see this [Expletive Deleted]-show coming a mile away and who didn't cheese it to the Colonies will.
You can't expect a populus to vote directly on such a matter when they don't do it regularly and for this, there should've been a propper information campaign, neutral and expansive.
Basically you have a voting base that generally has no clue how to vote on policy and is only trained to vote for people.
______________________________________________
That said, if you want to build a bunker, the dirt you dig up you can use topside and form it into a hill and make a stonegarden/herbalgarden out of it on top of it.
Because A: Looks good and B: easy to maintain and C: small animals will thank you.
Excommunicatus wrote: The British people voted for it. They deserve everything they get.
Reap the whirlwind.
48% didn't, and a lot of the 52% were lied to. We'll remember who laughed (when we get past the post-Brexit armageddon we're planning for here.) Yeah, whoops.
As for the prepping:
At worst, the UK mainland should be able to provide the basics for some time,
Electronics and such will be harder to get, or more expensive,
Lots of our resources are bought-in, like electricity, so grab batteries.
Our service industries (we have quite a large proportion of those) may suffer.
I doubt it will end up with rationing, but we managed before.
All of the 52% were lied to. So what? If you are going to vote based on obviously fantastical lies, or you cannot countermand obviously fantastical lies, you deserve what you get.
A vote is not illegitimate simply because the result is not unanimous, nor is it illegitimate because the result isn't close to unanimous. Ergo, the British electorate voted for it and they will, deservingly, have to reap the whirlwind.
Rather than a thread lock, the Moderators are more likely to hand out short suspensions to members who persist in raising political arguments against the rules of the forum.
nfe wrote: I see we're really chasing the thread lock.
Yeah, we should stop talking about this tangent. I apologise for rising to the bait, I am complicit. This is why we can't have nice things
Back on topic- someone mentioned possible powercuts. Aside from the obvious short term things, like candles and torches for light, is there any meaningful way to prepare for this for most of the UK? Personal generators are simply not an option for most like they are for many in the US, and are far from cheap. Most houses no longer have wood fires to use as an alternative for many electricity/gas powered tasks either.
I suppose a typical camping stove would provide a basic back up for short term use if necessary.
As for the prepping:
At worst, the UK mainland should be able to provide the basics for some time,
Electronics and such will be harder to get, or more expensive,
Lots of our resources are bought-in, like electricity, so grab batteries.
Batteries. OK.
Got a list of everyday consumer products that we do not manufacture in the UK that are likely to be effected by a No Deal Brexit?
Kilkrazy wrote: A camping stove and some gas canisters is a good standby and will provide a bit of heat as well as cooking and hot water.
You've got to be a bit careful that you use it proerly. They're not the same as a regular cooker.
I thought about that. Realised that I cannot prep for long term sustained power outages, not on my budget.
How long will you need it for though? You have water purification tablets and a lot of pre-cooked tinned food. Realistically, if power is completely down, you won't need to use the cooker for almost anything, although cold tinned foods are grim.
If No Deal is imminent I could stock on barbecue coals.
Actually come to think of it one of the people in my local area who I suspect may be a fellow prepper is doing exactly that. Its not barbeque weather yet someone is stocking up, i will keep my eyes open.
Kilkrazy wrote: A camping stove and some gas canisters is a good standby and will provide a bit of heat as well as cooking and hot water.
You've got to be a bit careful that you use it proerly. They're not the same as a regular cooker.
I thought about that. Realised that I cannot prep for long term sustained power outages, not on my budget.
I'm talking about one (or two) of those flat stoves which have a slide in gas cartridge, and a dozen cartridges. One cartridge will power the stove for 90 minutes. It would be enough to heat up tinned meals and boil water for tea for a week or two.
I don't think it's realistic to "prep" for longer periods of dislocation. Civil society would begin to fall apart after a couple of weeks of no power and no food deliveries.
Rather than trying to go it alone, which isn't possible forever, people ought to start cooperating with neighbours to organise some local restoration of order in the absence of cenral government initiative.
cuda1179 wrote: For added durability you could also pour concrete around it .
If you want your underground extension to be safe you will need to do this. A number of survivalists have bought shipping containers and buried them, then found that unless set in concerete they get crushed by the pressure of earth on their walls.
I would love to add a 8x16 extension under the house, for any purpose, space is at a premium here.
The bunker I found is designed to be buried with 3 feet of soil on top, So it looks like a decent candidate. Shipping containers are strong, but only on the corners where they are meant to be stacked.
Kilkrazy wrote: A camping stove and some gas canisters is a good standby and will provide a bit of heat as well as cooking and hot water.
You've got to be a bit careful that you use it proerly. They're not the same as a regular cooker.
I thought about that. Realised that I cannot prep for long term sustained power outages, not on my budget.
I'm talking about one (or two) of those flat stoves which have a slide in gas cartridge, and a dozen cartridges. One cartridge will power the stove for 90 minutes. It would be enough to heat up tinned meals and boil water for tea for a week or two.
I don't think it's realistic to "prep" for longer periods of dislocation. Civil society would begin to fall apart after a couple of weeks of no power and no food deliveries.
Rather than trying to go it alone, which isn't possible forever, people ought to start cooperating with neighbours to organise some local restoration of order in the absence of cenral government initiative.
I've seen Fist Of The North Star, I'm already planning to change my name to Raoh if things ever go THAT far south in the US.
Kilkrazy wrote: A camping stove and some gas canisters is a good standby and will provide a bit of heat as well as cooking and hot water.
You've got to be a bit careful that you use it proerly. They're not the same as a regular cooker.
I thought about that. Realised that I cannot prep for long term sustained power outages, not on my budget.
I'm talking about one (or two) of those flat stoves which have a slide in gas cartridge, and a dozen cartridges. One cartridge will power the stove for 90 minutes. It would be enough to heat up tinned meals and boil water for tea for a week or two.
Can you please provide a link to these stoves so I can research and budget. Also what about safe storage of cylinders.
I don't think it's realistic to "prep" for longer periods of dislocation. Civil society would begin to fall apart after a couple of weeks of no power and no food deliveries.
Well there are different levels of prepping. The water tablets, and soon to be powdered milk are a holdoff supply, small in volume and not expected to be used, and last long enough to be ignored in a box somewhere.
The tinned food is a major outlay, which i added to this weekend considerably, some will become a permanent store, some will be used this year if things go well, and also if things go badly but under different circumstances. So its a case either way of buy now use later. I dont have a maximum cap of storage other than volume, and i can make room for quite a bit.
Fuel is a preparation for crud-hits-fan levels of badness, as it involves power outages. I do not think that will last long. government can adapt to loss of power imports, we have our own gas and we have nuclear, and a fair amount of wind and tidal. The first thing to turn off or down at public lighting, the largest single usage of electricity. The UK is grossly overlit and while it makes driving at night safer, and walking home safer that is a sacrifice we can afford. cars after all have lights. Turning off most civic lighting would slash the power demand so that the UK would function otherwise normally. All it would take is the decision.
Otherwise outages can be managed by timed supplies, off at certain times of night and afternoon, this will allow people to cook etc. Again things would have to get really bad for this to happen, but if it does there are measures the government can take to make electricity supplies work. So any disruption will likely be short term even in a worst case scenario.
Rather than trying to go it alone, which isn't possible forever, people ought to start cooperating with neighbours to organise some local restoration of order in the absence of central government initiative.
Similar to my advice on Universal Credit prepping for those in danger of rollout. Universal Credit will shaft you for two months, previously up to four. For which you need to set aside two weeks food. This is because the food supply is to buy adaption time, not to entirely see you through a crisis, though of course more is better.
If crud happens there might be local cooperation, but I would be wary of distribution schemes, they could demand unfair contributions and rarely equitable in distribution themselves. Local cooperation is still mutually useful in a bad scenario.
In a disaster central government will be looking out for itself, it is what it has been doing so far anyway. I would not trust them to restore society except for self interest, except for law and order controls, they will likely be fairly efficient at that in a holistic way. Local and regional government might be better but again self interested.
All these are still worst case scenarios.
I suspect if I have to activate my prepped supplies it will be for a milder crisis, or for something unforeseen, and again to remind you its not an ego issue, an insightful prepper wants to be proven wrong, as in, that the prepping was 'wrong' to begin with. I would be delighted with that.
What is the worst case scenario?
Check the Dow Jones. There was been an unstable climb since the 2008 crash and the Dow Jones is far higher than in 2008, its been continually peaking.
If Brexit goes badly it may effect the UK a lot and the EU a fair amount. But both the EU and UK leadership are holdouts, so it could go very badly.
If this happens London could tank, which would be like Lehman Brothers x100. We wouldn't get a 2008 style crash, we would get a 1929 style crash as London is one of the two integral hubs to the global financial system, with New York. Everyone could be fethed.
Because of that there is reason to suggest there will be a deal, however both the UK and EU are being holdouts......
Total cost will be £27.99. There isn't much you can get in GW wargaming for that any more.
The gas canisters are as safe as aerosol spray cans.
You are saying one cannister is enough for 90 minutes cooking? OK. That is so reasonably priced that I should get that.
I can see myself in the summer after a sky-isnt-falling- in Brexit resolution, taking up camping to make use of my new cooker, tins and water purification tablets.
Tell me about this discount card please.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
AdmiralHalsey wrote: As someone who works in the financial sector, we currently believe there is no reason to expect a financial collapse of the LSE.
Seriously guys, please stop with the end of the world talk. The markets may well suffer a substantial dip, but this isn't Leman Brothers 2.0.
Maybe. However many pundits saw no problem with the sub-primes. Some of the people who predicted the 2008 collapse are saying we are due another dip and the markets are unstable, some also say the lessons of 2008 have not been learned.
Brexit probably won't of itself cause a market collapse, I don't believe it can, and London is integrally strong. But could it be the catalyst of the collapse of an already unstable market system? It only requires one interconnected corner to go under and start a cascade.
Remember I am forwarding this as worst case scenario, so a bit of doom and gloom is expected.
Go Outdoors have a discount card which costs £5 for a year. You can order it in advance, or just buy it at the till when you purchase something and you get the discount immediately.
The gas canister cooking time is based on the technical info supplied on the Go Outdoors site -- 150g of butane burned per hour. I haven't tried it in person.
I've got a small lightweight camping stove for walking, but a flat style one like this would be good for "car boot camping."
Kilkrazy wrote: Go Outdoors have a discount card which costs £5 for a year. You can order it in advance, or just buy it at the till when you purchase something and you get the discount immediately.
The gas canister cooking time is based on the technical info supplied on the Go Outdoors site -- 150g of butane burned per hour. I haven't tried it in person.
I've got a small lightweight camping stove for walking, but a flat style one like this would be good for "car boot camping."
Ok, signed up, but didn't need the £5 card. There is a deal for stove plus one pack of 4 canisters of fuel for £15. It was not requiring the card discount, none of the items were and this deal was better than the card exclusive. Bought that and some more fuel and some batteries, I was short of these anyway and it's a good price for Duracell. So I spent up to the £50 free delivery threshold. Total of 20 cannisters of fuel, probably way more than needed. Reckon one canister will last 2-3 cooks, say two days each, and thats not being frugal. I will have that instead of the last of the Mechanicus set I had planned to buy. I was planning to drop £160 on Killzone Sectror Mechanicus, it got cancelled on me twice from the sudden stock outage, two different sites. When I couldn't buy the bulk of the monies went into extra stores instead, now it all has.
Another box ticked, and didn't cost as much as I expected. I will store the canisters in the garage in a plastic box.
Well atleast you won't be having problems with Milk produce.
Your foreign minisiter just was in switzerland and finished a Contract. Also has allready began to further talk about other products and even about the service sector.
Bunker wise, drainage would be a big thing for us, since we've got a lot of clay up here. An arched roof might be necessary too. I'm planning on having something with less than a foot of soil/grass above it though; the intent is to provide more domestic space, rather than to survive anything, more akin to a sunken shed than a survival bunker.
Realistically, the cost of digging out the soil and building it will completely outweigh the benefits, so I'm more likely to just buy a bigger house and build a proper garage.
That is probably a valuable point actually- having basic life support and first aid skills is definitely a useful part of prudent prepping. Disaster scenarios typically involve overwhelmed emergency services (see recent Manchester bombing), so some degree of self-sufficiency in coping with medical matters is very helpful.
I hadn't actually considered that, I had planned on stocking up on things like plasters and paracetamol, but not anything more in depth. I do have a first aid box in the house and car for minor things, and I'm assuming the ambulance / accident & emergency services will be well enough insulated from short term issues.
nfe wrote: I see we're really chasing the thread lock.
Yeah, we should stop talking about this tangent. I apologise for rising to the bait, I am complicit. This is why we can't have nice things
Back on topic- someone mentioned possible powercuts. Aside from the obvious short term things, like candles and torches for light, is there any meaningful way to prepare for this for most of the UK? Personal generators are simply not an option for most like they are for many in the US, and are far from cheap. Most houses no longer have wood fires to use as an alternative for many electricity/gas powered tasks either.
I suppose a typical camping stove would provide a basic back up for short term use if necessary.
Solar panels on the roof would probably provide enough power to run most of your domestic needs during the day (unless you've got battery storage), but that's a pretty big investment for Brexit prepping. It's potentially well worth it in the longer term to keep your electricity bills now.
Not Online!!! wrote: Well atleast you won't be having problems with Milk produce.
Your foreign minisiter just was in switzerland and finished a Contract. Also has allready began to further talk about other products and even about the service sector.
There is a talk about a frictionless UK-Canada-Australia-New Zealand trade alliance. Not unlikely or unreasonable, but not assured either.
Deal with the US is somewhat more problematic, there will be a lot of holdouts.
Norway will likely also remain fairly favourable to the UK in trade terms. Though I will not describe the reasons here.
Solar panels on the roof would probably provide enough power to run most of your domestic needs during the day (unless you've got battery storage), but that's a pretty big investment for Brexit prepping. It's potentially well worth it in the longer term to keep your electricity bills now.
Solar panels are popular but problematic due to obscure UK laws.
If you have solar panels on your roof you are an 'energy provider' as the excess from solar panels goes into the national grid, so inspectors can ask for access to your home at any time and cannot be denied. Most people in the UK don't know this. You can offset this by having the power run externally, or placing the solar panels on garage roof or somewhere you don't mind inspectors visiting. They don't have mandatory access to your house if you are not producing electricity there.
Herzlos wrote: Solar panels on the roof would probably provide enough power to run most of your domestic needs during the day (unless you've got battery storage), but that's a pretty big investment for Brexit prepping. It's potentially well worth it in the longer term to keep your electricity bills now.
Depends on how many panels you have, ofc. I've only got experience with the small system at my mate's summer place, two panels and a couple heavy batteries. It's easily enough to run lights and radio and recharge a few phones or a laptop, but for anything heavier (power tools etc) he has to drag out a small petrol generator. And it's almost worthless if you don't get sunlight.
AdmiralHalsey wrote:As someone who works in the financial sector, we currently believe there is no reason to expect a financial collapse of the LSE.
Seriously guys, please stop with the end of the world talk. The markets may well suffer a substantial dip, but this isn't Leman Brothers 2.0.
As someone who has had to bailout banks and private corporations with my taxes time and time before, I don't trust what you or your colleagues think for a single second.
History is replete with blithe assurances preceding major economic disaster.
AdmiralHalsey wrote:As someone who works in the financial sector, we currently believe there is no reason to expect a financial collapse of the LSE.
Seriously guys, please stop with the end of the world talk. The markets may well suffer a substantial dip, but this isn't Leman Brothers 2.0.
As someone who has had to bailout banks and private corporations with my taxes time and time before, I don't trust what you or your colleagues think for a single second.
History is replete with blithe assurances preceding major economic disaster.
On that note Sub-prime credits become increasingly interesting again it seems.
its 2008 all over again, except Italy is so indebted they could sell the South tyrol back to austria and still be poor.
The point is not that AdmiralHalsey personally is incompetent, the point is that every single economic disaster is preceded by 'experts' saying everything will be fine.
Excommunicatus wrote: The point is not that AdmiralHalsey personally is incompetent, the point is that every single economic disaster is preceded by 'experts' saying everything will be fine.
I mean. We say things are fine a lot.
And they are, in general, fine, a lot.
If I said you wouldn't get stuck by lightning tomorrow, the odds are you would not in fact be struck by lightning. If you are, it's not because I was wrong on the odds of you being struck by lightning, it's a freak unpredictable accident.
Certainly, the stock market will suffer if Brexit happens. I am just adamant this is not going to be some world ending Leman Brothers 2.0 collapse. If it does, I will eat a considerable number of hats, because it would be the metaphorical out of nowhere bolt of lightning on a cloudy day. But you don't need to believe me, just wait and see.
Admiral Halsey, my trouble with this is we do not know which companies are secretly over extended or in trouble, and we do not know who has unsafe positions in those companies.
However warning are repeated often about market instability and a repeat of the mistakes that led to the 2008 crash.
If Brexit staggers one of them, it might topple, and if it topples it could cause a cascade.
We do not know, but also it is not something most people could prep for, unless they have large investments. If is frankly an irrelevance to my position.
AdmiralHalsey wrote: As someone who works in the financial sector, we currently believe there is no reason to expect a financial collapse of the LSE.
Seriously guys, please stop with the end of the world talk. The markets may well suffer a substantial dip, but this isn't Leman Brothers 2.0.
Its the media who are blowing it out of proportion. they spin everything to fit their narrative. for example, according to the media the whole Nissan thing is purely down to brexit, nothing at all to do with the fact that that vehicle in question only uses diesel engines, and the restrictions starting to be placed on those here will probably negatively affect production.
I also saw nothing in the media on the UKs recent £36 Billion PA trade deal with Switzerland.
Excommunicatus wrote: The point is not that AdmiralHalsey personally is incompetent, the point is that every single economic disaster is preceded by 'experts' saying everything will be fine.
I mean. We say things are fine a lot.
And they are, in general, fine, a lot.
If I said you wouldn't get stuck by lightning tomorrow, the odds are you would not in fact be struck by lightning. If you are, it's not because I was wrong on the odds of you being struck by lightning, it's a freak unpredictable accident.
Certainly, the stock market will suffer if Brexit happens. I am just adamant this is not going to be some world ending Leman Brothers 2.0 collapse. If it does, I will eat a considerable number of hats, because it would be the metaphorical out of nowhere bolt of lightning on a cloudy day. But you don't need to believe me, just wait and see.
Yeah, you say that, except there are already multiple economists and think tanks raising concerns that we're heading for another '08-style crash(or worse), and detailing exactly why they think that(combination of you "finance" types not learning any lesson from '08 except "if we really feth things up, the poor & disabled will be forced to cover our failures" and rushing right back into building unsustainable bubbles, all of the issues arising from climate change, and the present rash of democratic instability including Brexit). So it's hardly "out of nowhere" any more than the '08 crash was "out of nowhere" just because the few people raising concerns were dismissed as crackpots by the vast majority of finance sector talking heads in who's interest it was to ignore the problem as long as possible.
Kilkrazy wrote: Well, my pension fund lost £12,000 over the past year already, so I'm not exactly impressed with the recent performance of the stock market.
the stock market performance has a lot to do with wider world issues like the trade war between the US and China aswell though. Why not move your pension to a lower risk level?
AdmiralHalsey wrote: As someone who works in the financial sector, we currently believe there is no reason to expect a financial collapse of the LSE.
Seriously guys, please stop with the end of the world talk. The markets may well suffer a substantial dip, but this isn't Leman Brothers 2.0.
Its the media who are blowing it out of proportion. they spin everything to fit their narrative. for example, according to the media the whole Nissan thing is purely down to brexit, nothing at all to do with the fact that that vehicle in question only uses diesel engines, and the restrictions starting to be placed on those here will probably negatively affect production.
I also saw nothing in the media on the UKs recent £36 Billion PA trade deal with Switzerland.
Nissan also acted quickly and knew they could milk the situation.