Bolt cutters will be useful.
Bolt cutters will be useful.
Beanie babies and garbage sacks of gasoline.
A bad attitude, and general smart-assery. Though it seems that hoarding either is irrelevant because my supply seems to be endless.
Soap.
I admire the ambition some of you have. If it drags on more than a week or so I'm probably out.
I have lots of canned food and a hand operated can opener , I figure the power will be off for a day or 2 if we have a BIG earthquake.
Without insulin, I'll be dead in short order. I don't think I'd be hording anything. I'll gladly share a few bullets with a select few, however.
Either I'm alive and going to need to roam the wastelands for supplies, or I'm not. If I am, my supply of Honda XR100s and associated parts will be priceless. After watching people hoard TP a year ago, I'm not terribly optimistic about human nature, and don't feel like I need to hoard much of anything.
Current situation:
Homestead is 3 acres with 28 acres attached. 14 acres are currently swail and apparently a tick breeding center, the other 14 are commercially farmed. Wildlife includes plenty of deer in the swail plus free range chicken and a healthy turkey population. Soil is fertile and grows high yield without additional irrigation. There is a running creek on our side of the property line that could be dammed to flood the swail if necessary. A Taurus .40, the Mossberg 12 and the .22/250 can remove threats from near to far away in that order. The .22/250 is a little more expensive to feed than the 12 gauge but is far more accurate and dangerous than anything else here. It's a neat piece and would be best to keep around if something middle sized like a coyote decided it needed to have chicken dinners on us.
So really, it would be hoarding or infrastructure improvements and low maintenance comfort items here at the farm. A wind powered mill and generator would be good as well as a solar system and the necessary chargeable storage system required for life off the grid. A clean water stock tank with 12v lift pump would be great in case the well has problems. Ammunition supply would need to increase as well as canning and storing processes. All in all I'd say we could last 45-50 minutes in our current environment.
/threadjack/
Say this is a societal collapse and we lose electric and digital capabilities worldwide.
Does the enormous investment in digital currency that is currently growing exponentially become the causal point of a global meltdown? If nothing of value exists outside of our phones so once we lose our connection does the world's value become the sum of it's accessibility?
Looking at the big picture, even if I play all my cards right and beat the odds of surviving the initial collapse of society, do I really want to be the last one standing on this earth, only to observe everything that was lost? I think not. Therefore one gun and one bullet are all I really need.
In reply to EastCoastMojo (Forum Supporter) :
I was concerned about your recent gas shortage.
QuasiMofo (John Brown) said:/threadjack/
Say this is a societal collapse and we lose electric and digital capabilities worldwide.
Does the enormous investment in digital currency that is currently growing exponentially become the causal point of a global meltdown? If nothing of value exists outside of our phones so once we lose our connection does the world's value become the sum of it's accessibility?
All of your money outside what you hold in your wallet is digital. You ever try to get money out of the bank when they have no power?
If you can make liquor then you can make fuel. Both make good trade fodder. I'll hoard up on all the starches I can find.
EastCoastMojo (Forum Supporter) said:Looking at the big picture, even if I play all my cards right and beat the odds of surviving the initial collapse of society, do I really want to be the last one standing on this earth, only to observe everything that was lost? I think not. Therefore one gun and one bullet are all I really need.
This. I don't get this weird fantasy some have of living in post-apocalypse world like it's going to be enjoyable.
Hell, move to the middle of nowhere Idaho/Montana and start now.
I'll stick to hoarding car parts. It just seems to come naturally.
Between all the seed packs we have, the actual ton of ammo (like 20K+ rounds) I have and the house being defensible I would last a good bit. no winter here but not a lot of wood to boil water.
Honest answer is I am going down to the marina and taking the nicest bluewater still in the harbor and sitting off the coast with beer until everything cools down.
In reply to z31maniac :
It's the best option we know of in something that we are forced into. Some find ways to survive and thrive, some give up. It is what it is. Just because they don't share your defeatist attitude doesn't make them crazy or psycho.
EDIT: A lot of us already prepare for this a little already without thinking about it. We live in the midwest, rural-ish. We expect power outages throughout the year. Generator is handy, fuel, food, propane on hand.
Liquor and cigarettes. If prison is Amy indicator, those things will be real valuable when society doesn't have regular access.
bobzilla said:In reply to z31maniac :
It's the best option we know of in something that we are forced into. Some find ways to survive and thrive, some give up. It is what it is. Just because they don't share your defeatist attitude doesn't make them crazy or psycho
You realize every comment on this forum isn't a personal affront to your own choices, right? 
Also 10mm sockets. I have a bunch. Not sure where they are, but if the world ends I expect I'll have time to clean the garage and find them.
Add a couple of generators and lots of tools. After the shooting is done, everything is going to break down. Already have all that stuff in my garage. Both my dogs would be valuable for watching the property when I can't. The Aussie would actually go into protect mode. The Husky is gentle and non-protective but looks like a wolf and that sometimes scares people. Both dogs are big and strong enough to carry a pack. Guns. Ammo. Medical suppies, first aid kits, fire extinguishers, knives, and axe, a map, a compass, a Garmin GPS, Meals Ready to eat. All my camping gear and boy scout stuff. Jackets, warm clothes and blankets. Radios including my cheap Baufung Ham Radio, a couple of hand held CBs. Weather radios with AM bands. Solar powered chargers for all the electronics. You don't know who may or may not be on the air. I figure that internet and electricity would be the first part of the infrastructure to go down followed by cell phones. That's exactly what happened during the Texas snowstorm earlier this year.
If I have to bug out, the motorhome would be good. It will haul a lot of survival stuff and it has truck tires and good ground clearance. Attach the tow bar to bring the jeep too. Put the dirt bike on the rack. A mountain bike would be good transport if fuel is unavailable. A dog powered cart would be good transport too if there is no fuel, especially if I could pick up a few strays on the road to train and add to the team. Saxophones and guitar. You have to make your own entertainment when the networks all go down.
Yeah. I was an Eagle Scout.
.22lr shells and medical supplies.
bobzilla said:In reply to z31maniac :
It's the best option we know of in something that we are forced into. Some find ways to survive and thrive, some give up. It is what it is. Just because they don't share your defeatist attitude doesn't make them crazy or psycho.
EDIT: A lot of us already prepare for this a little already without thinking about it. We live in the midwest, rural-ish. We expect power outages throughout the year. Generator is handy, fuel, food, propane on hand.
My lack of ambition doesn't mean I won't go further into it than I'd care to. I have about two weeks of supplies in my work locker (canned goods, survival and medical stuff, shirts, ties and boots) to be ready for whatever goes wrong and like the previous 20 years of apocalypses (apocalypi?) I'll work too many hours with a smile and some goofy everything's gonna be ok attitude that I manage to dredge up to keep whatever poor bastards still show up working with me and any remaining customers cheery enough to not dismember us while we try to eek out some kind of normalcy until things get righted. Jodi would joke that I'd have done well in the band on the Titanic. She was safe in the compound and I'd stay and do whatever was there until it was over.
See 9/11, blackout, numerous blizzards, Irene, Sandy, Covid.....
Cows to trade for women.
I'm totally unprepared for any event like this. I have a couple of old shotguns and some 20+ year old shells (maybe), but other than my kitchen knives, I wouldn't be able to defend my home or hunt for food. Wife and I have a garden we setup last year for fun, but if what's growing there now is any indication of our skills, we'd starve in less than an hour.... :D
However, if I was hording stuff, medicine would be at the top of the list. If it all goes down, I'm heading straight to the nearest pharmacy and cleaning out out as best I can. Insulin for the wife, meds for everything else. Probably an optometrist would be next on the list. Yeah, totally not prepared to survive on my own, if my glasses broke, I'm basically blind.
I've been kicking around building a cyberdeck for fun. Making it a post apocalypse machine is one of my ideas. It would be a simple computer with a small screen, run off batteries with a solar panel and hand crank to keep it charged. Store survival info, drug info, maps and entertainment on it. Basically, a much information as I could cram onto a couple of huge solid state drives.
Then again, watching it unfold until I don't want to be a part of it anymore is more likely.
-Rob
Mndsm said:Liquor and cigarettes. If prison is Amy indicator, those things will be real valuable when society doesn't have regular access.
Not AMY!!!
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