Posted on 04/05/2012 4:52:18 PM PDT by Kartographer
I keep hearing statements about how expensive it is to prep. Although it is not cheap it doesn’t have to be that expensive either. You do not need to stock 20 years worth of food to be properly prepared. As a matter of fact I would advise against it. Stockpiling a large food and water supply means you have to stay put and defend it. That may not be your best option in a lot of scenarios which means you would lose that investment. Do you think you really have enough ammo to defend a 20 year food supply for 20 years? The cost of that alone would be staggering.
One big mistake in prepping that most people make including me is waste when you first start out. Either buying the wrong things (toys and gimmicks) or finding out later as you become more experienced that a lot of the things you bought in the beginning you really do not need.
(Excerpt) Read more at preparednessblogs.com ...
Survival requires hard decisions. And the right decision will not necessarily be easy to live with. You can live with a hard decision, or you can die.
It’s not just about protecting your space & supplies. It’s you life. Your family member’s lives. The term “Kill or Be Killed” is meant to be taken literally.
These attackers are going kill me, rape and worse for my wife, probably for the kids also. Do you think I am going to then rescue them with the supplies that are needed to keep my wife and kids alive? If you want to live, you will know what to do.
Our veneer of “civilization” is very thin. It will disappear very quickly.
/johnny
I have cases of tomato juice and salsa in glass for that reason.
I don't discount the role that "former" military personnel can play in an SHTF scenario. The military is a microcosm of society as a whole. If they can go over to the dark side and work for organizations like TSA, they can go bad in a worst case scenario. To presume all will go bad, or even that all former military possess a ton of deadly skills and a willingness to use them is a bad start.
BTW- is that tagline French?
A wise man prepares. A fool lives for the moment without a thought of tomorrow.
I believe those statements to be biblically sound.
Kinda my view as well. I wonder if the moral questions will be as clear when the things get iffy.
” I wonder if the moral questions will be as clear when the things get iffy. “
There is a lot of ‘gray area’ in the moral defensibility of actions in extremis..
F’rinstance - if I hang a looter, should I relieve him of items he’s looted from others, or would that make me a looter, once removed??
LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!
Being a cook in the military taught me more management, more logistics, and more intel management than I learned in my former spooky careers as military and later as military contractor.
Spec ops eats at the dining facility when they are home. ;)
I'd rather be a cook. You get a lot of the same skill sets, including knife skills (3 months worth in civilian culinary school in my case), life-saving skills, life taking skills, logistics, and SPs drive you to the barracks and tuck you in when you've had enough beer for the evening.
I'm more proud of being a cook than an Old Crow.
/johnny
Think about it. If they are trying to kill you, do you really want to give them another chance? You might want to spend some more time on the range if necessary so as to kill them with one shot, not just wound them.
” life taking skills, “
Hey - SOS ain’t *that* bad!!!
;)
The longer you are alive, the higher the odds are that you will make it in the long haul.
I am working on the premise that surviving several weeks will jack up my long term odds a huge amount. But I am shooting for preparations of 3-6 months on as many fronts as is realistically practical.
Food and medicine stores for the longer haul. Water for prep for long term is very tough. Gotta be realistic about that, unless I win the lottery.
Bugging out? Multiple storage areas and destinations? These are impractical for most of us. So we store what we can and plan to protect it as best we can.
I am old enough that the realistic attitude for me is to stand my ground. Either I hold my ground or I make those that take it pay a heavy price. I think I am sufficiently equipped to do one or the other.
One final thought. The really scary thing is that in the event of a SHTF, it is just as likely that the forces of our government will as much a threat to our individual survival as our fellow citizens.
They had to beat that out of me the second enlistment. A lot had changed in 18 years. But I was an NCO, and I had to behave. Mostly. ;)
And actually, the life taking skills I was talking about were the slaughter and prepping critters while taking a government paycheck.
/johnny
Darn- Some people have all the luck! All I did was jump out of airplanes, freeze my bum off in weird places in the world, and eat worms and Opla. :)
It's all in .pdf form ready to download.
” It’s ‘Chipped beef and gravy on toast’. “
I’ll deny it if you quote me, but I actually liked the stuff, especially after a long mid-watch... ;)
(Even better if the Cook’s Helper on the line has figured out how to cook over-easy eggs to go with it.. ;))
It's not that hard... Maybe it's because I grew up in a family that builds water and sewage treatment plants for over 100 years, but we have local surface water, a water table that in the rainy season comes up to 2 feet, and we get about 30" a year here.
And it's not hard to make it safe.
Remove the stuff from it. Whatever it takes. Filter through gravel and sand to remove big chunks, drip it through charcoal to remove the bad flavors, add chlorine or idodine or boil it to kill the bitty nasties that are left.
Add air to it to make it palatable.
/johnny
Any attackers that you don’t kill will know your capabilities the next time they come, which they surely will, and possibly with a lot more friends. That would be the friends that they have told about you and what you must have that is so worth defending.
I started prepping right after the stock market crash in '08. The tomato paste was one of the early items I bought sometime in '09, so they had been in storage for over 2 years. They were casualties of my learning process and I won't buy any more tomato products in cans. I had only used about a third of the box, so obviously I didn't use them up fast enough to warrant buying an entire case. What I'll do now is use up the canned tomato products I have and save the stuff I'd put in glass. Thanks for the tips FRiends!
Past this old guy’s bedtime..
bttt til morning... ;)
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