[DJ-Matt]

I couldn't even off my roosters when they got uppity, had to give them away to friends who'd make them into chicken dinner.

On the other hand, I did beat a possum to death with a 9 iron when I found him in the henhouse...

I was the ultimate white knight for my chickens.

[Thersites]

There is a surprising amount on information on survival and preppering, here some threads from the forum for anyone looking into more info.

RVF Preppers Club - A thread by started KorbenDallas that goes into prepping and is still good resource for anyone trying to get into or understanding peppering in general. As subsection for this thread is supplement thread on Body Armor.

Preparing for the worst: emergency relocation - Recent thread started couple months ago about emergency relocation. Everything going to hell in hand basket, the boys on the forum have already thought about the situations for you.

Additional information from internet, search for anything by Selco, Bosnian War Survivor, as he gives his practical knowledge based on his experiences. The blog from his website shtfschool.org has been wipe, but archive.org copy is still attainable. You can find some of his writing here from the Organic Prepper.

Another good site that been around for long time is Survival Blog, and for those looking into more sensible advice and experience with economic meltdown in place like Argentine, another good resource is http://www.themodernsurvivalist.com/ by Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre. He has book by the same name in print if you want a copy .

From the past couple of years reading all this survival, prepper, and other preparedness blogs your best bet is to slowly incorporate into these lessons into a mindset and behaviors of your everyday life. A good example of mindset adopt is being a greyman. As the site give a good definition of this concept

Quote:

Grey man - an individual who possesses the skills, ability and intent to blend into any situation or surrounding without standing out, concealing his or her true skills, ability, and intent from others.

This is concept that Leonard D Neubache drill into everyone head couple post before.

As for behavior, prime example for me is carrying my essential item on me all times my edc. EDC is acronym of everyday carry. Online, EDC is popular material pursuit of things you carry on you everyday. Items can range from cheap to experience depending on ratio of common sense and money you have. the key aspect to take away from this is having key carrying key items that you need to survive on you everyday. I will always have my knife on me of I need to cut something or someone if needed. Pen and notebook to write down miscellaneous information or key details to avoid ambush by rabid feminist. You get the idea. The most popular blog for EDC is http://everydaycarry.com/, a good resource for setting up you edc.

Hopeful this information helps.

[Leonard D Neubache]

(01-13-2019 11:11 AM)Oberrheiner Wrote:  

...
Any idea on what would make sense here ?
I can't seem to find anything between cheap chinese shit for millenials and full-on off-the-grid solar panel installations for 10 grand

What do you mean with christmas lights, wax candles or LED garlands ?

It may be the case that this cheap Chinese crap will not last a full year of use but for the price it will likely help you get through that awkward period of adaptation to the new normal or at least until some kind of order is restored.

As always, larger budgets give better options. I'm presuming low budget or low prioritization because as I said before unless you have good evidence to suggest something catastrophic is really really close you shouldn't be sacrificing your entire life to throw money at stuff that will probably just end up gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere.

(01-13-2019 12:42 PM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  

Preppers are the biggest armchair cucked quarterbacks. Also, they're an easy demographic to sell products to online. Hint hint to all my fellow ecom biz owners. Easy to sell to emotional > logical people, emotional men are no different than women.

I talked about this issue a while back at thread-56549.html

Long story short.

(06-20-2016 04:49 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

The survivalism doomsday preachers are incredibly successful at removing from the board a large number of nationalists that might otherwise push against globalist tyranny.

Again, this is why I advise people not to stop their real world lives and go all in on believing that the tyranny of the globalist elite is simply going to be snuffed out by some kind of collapse, which we're perpetually told is just around the corner.

Cattle Rustler is partially correct. There is a massive number of preppers who simply think they can buy their way out of whatever all encompassing disaster they've been convinced is imminent and inevitable. I wish I'd screencapped the many letters-to-the-editor I read over the years of guys "shedding their golden handcuffs" because the economy was about to completely collapse. Some of these letters are now ten years old so you can imagine how stupid some of these guys must feel. Many of them have probably sold their rural homestead at a massive loss for all the upgrades they made to it in order to survive the end of the world and have moved back to the city to start making the big bucks again.

Some people bought homesteads in the Appalachias on the presumption that their savings would pay the mortgage handily until the banking sector collapsed (any minute now) and they would own the house by default. Most of them have either been evicted by this point or are scrambling to find work in a location where all the odd jobs go to family first and friends of family second.

What these people have in common is that they thought they didn't have to get their hands dirty fighting the oppression of the elites and their useful idiots, and I can't be too critical because I was there for a long time (though I never over-leveraged myself on complete assumption of a timeline for a collapse of order).

Cattle Rustler is correct in that these people are easy marks for selling useless shit to. The ones that have much money anyway. That's why I describe survivalism as an industry now, not a movement.

The ones he's wrong about are the ones who prep because they want to fight the long, hard fight against the oppression of the elites. Sadly they are in the minority I suspect but they're putting their time and money and training into hardening themselves for a future conflict, not a comfy collapse of the old order as viewed from afar.

Those are the people worth listening to because they're not living in a fantasy world. Their world view is being proven correct day after day after day.

Don't plan for a comfy collapse as viewed from afar.

Plan for a swift but steady decline into third world status and everything it infers.

p.s. If you think you can buy a homestead like a life-raft, don't. The first year of owning one is filled with so many trips to the hardware/rural-supply stores they will become your second home. The second year is not much better. By the third you will officially have time to scratch your ass once in a while.

Homesteading is a non-collapse lifestyle choice. Not a viable post-collapse survival option.

[Kona]

(01-13-2019 12:42 PM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  

Preppers are the biggest armchair cucked quarterbacks. Also, they're an easy demographic to sell products to online. Hint hint to all my fellow ecom biz owners. Easy to sell to emotional > logical people, emotional men are no different than women.

I'm glad you said this.

We got a prepper in my hood. He's got goofy food buckets and batteries and water and all kinds of shit. Next time the Jews make the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, or whatever, I'm going straight to his house and shooting his ass.

Aloha!

[Leonard D Neubache]

It won't be hard.

He'll be listening to his HAM radio and furiously masturbating.

[Oberrheiner]

(01-14-2019 01:36 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

As always, larger budgets give better options. I'm presuming low budget or low prioritization because as I said before unless you have good evidence to suggest something catastrophic is really really close you shouldn't be sacrificing your entire life to throw money at stuff that will probably just end up gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere.

Sure, I get that.

However I read your advice about sand water filters, and when I calculate my hourly rate, the time it would take me to make one, and the price of a berkey .. I would say maybe just buy the damn berkey ?

[Leonard D Neubache]

Definitely. Time cost analysis is extremely important. I always assume poverty because low-to-zero cost solutions are available to everyone, and threads like this have a tendency to devolve into "buy this" lists.

Be careful about buying a solution without a backup, though. I had a Berkey and both filters I got it with detached from their mounts after one month of use light use. An annoyance in good times, but it would be a pretty disastrous if it happened after things got ugly.

If you've got a budget or a time cost analysis that makes buying a solution better than building one then go for it, but be aware of the pitfalls. It might seem like the guy who learns to build a sand filter is wasting his time but that's a skill he can use even if he has to run with nothing but the clothes on his back. If your Berkey fucks up like mine did (or the filters just clog over time) or you're forced to leave it behind then suddenly in retrospect learning how to build that sand filter might not seem like such a bad idea.

Risk vs time vs $ analysis like this is tricky. Obviously it's not worth the time investment to learn to manufacture a gun from scratch, but for a lot of people learning to use fishing line and tin cans is a very affordable alternative to buying fancy seismic sensors to detect intruders.

Everyone's analysis will be different but never forget, your high tech solutions can fail spectacularly, as my Berkey filters demonstrated.

[Oberrheiner]

True, it's much more complicated than just time vs money.

With the built filter you learn a skill, but how do validate that the produced water is clean ?
With the bought filter (berkey or otherwise) I would certainly expect the filter mounts to be fail-closed, if that's not the case for something as vital as water then the whole thing is useless.

Unfortunately I searched online for serious tests of such devices and found pretty much nothing, always the same stupid comparisons parroting the manufacturer's marketing/advertisement points and that's it

[DJ-Matt]

I can vouch for the Harbor Freight cheap chinese solar panels as being decent. Where I park my RV there is no electricity and I'm not in the mood to go out there every week with a generator and put a charge to the batteries. I replaced the RV's single tiny 12V battery with 2 large 6v golf cart batteries for 200 amp hours of power, so they need to be kept topped up in order to not sulfate and die an early death.

So far we're at 14 months and they're still working strong despite being blown over a few times. They aren't very rugged panels though since they are plastic cased, but aluminum ones are VERY expensive:



This kit is $150 with coupon.

I also have a much smaller "solar generator" kit with a foldable and durable panel that hooks into an all-in-one battery and charge controller, but it's a 20 watt panel.

[ChicagoFire]

Keep it coming Leonard, just repped you.

Nobody needs to buy useless state of the art nuke proof RV bunkers equipped with anti-air missiles. Society probably won't collapse even though we're collectively fuckups.

You can still train in martial arts to prepare but at worst you're at least getting exercise and making friends. Even just knowing how someone can enter your home accounts for staving trouble away while you call the cops. Being able to take some time off to have fun and smell the roses will help you should the next Ice Age hits, potentially wiping out humanity.

[Cuchulainn2016]

A few misconceptions about preparedness here!

To start, im in the UK, so any advice I give is primarily useful for those there.

I have a weekend house in the countryside, have being going to that area since I was a child, so I am almost (but not quite) a local. That is where I would head to when SHTF.

I keep the house stocked with 2-4 weeks of canned, long-life type foods (pastas, soups, etc.) and have about 6-12 months of fuel for the fire available.

Obviously not everyone can have a bug out place, but it is a good idea to have stocks of food/water on hand for ANY occurrences. For example, a few years ago, due to something (cant remember what, might have been floods) the local water system was fucked up. Bearing in mind I live in a first world city, emergency supplies of bottled water had to be delivered to the effected areas as shops ran out, and poor people couldn't afford to buy anyway.

My father, knowing people who matter, had a couple of pallets delivered to his garage, he could have been lord of the new world, except the water supply came back on!

This taught me that pretty much no-one had any idea how to survive beyond a day or 2 of extremely slight hardship.

Nowadays, I have made a couple of slight adjustments to improve my survivability, and they aren't that difficult to do.


1. Have a supply of food and water of a minimum of 2 weeks, that's 2 weeks of high energy exercise, not sitting in front of the tv, and get some filters, like a few lifestraws.

2. Have access to reliable and renewable transport. Simply put, get a mountain bike, or if you have a bit of spare cash, an older, simple off-road motorbike. If you are rich, an older Jeep, or Land Rover would be good.

3. Identify a place in the countryside you could relocate to, ideally a place you can spend weekends in making friends with the locals before SHTF.

4. Have a large medical kit. Become a first aider at work, and raid the first aid kits there for the out of date stock, trauma dressings, burn gel, antiseptics, that kind of thing.

Additionally, order some antibiotics and painkillers from an online pharmacy outside the Uk (in the UK you need a doctors permission to get these, you cant just buy them). Just google for one of the pharmacies homos use to get their anti-HIV drugs, they will have broad spectrum powerful antibiotics for sale as well (for the obvious reasons)

5. Get armed. Just a reminder, I live in the UK. A lot of people seem to think you cant own guns in the UK, but you can. And you can get a lot more than you think, its just the waiting period is a year or more for a licence to actually own firearms. My part of the UK allows handguns also. I have a .45 1911, a 9mm Sig, and a .22 walther. In addition to that, and these are legal anywhere in the Uk, I have a Remington 700 bolt action, and an AR15 pattern .22. My .22 rifle is identical looking to any 5.56 AR15 (standard mags, fullsize ejection port, aimpoint scope and a foregrip). Some feral youths from the local council estate with a sawn-off and a couple of kitchen knifes would shit themselves when they see it! You can also get a AR15 in 5.56mm (or any other calibre, like .300blackout) with a straight pull ejection. That's basically a fast bolt action.

Additionally, I have a bow and crossbow. Its well worth investing in a good bow, its a good workout using it too!

Also, use technology, and protect it against failure (emp/sunspots/grid failure). Get an old smartphone/tablet/kindle. Save a copy of Wikipedia, world maps, various textbooks (medical, agriculture, hunting etc) on them. Get some solar usb chargers to keep them running. Now get an old microwave, throw them in, close the door, and voila they are emp shielded.

Finally, have friends, male friends. Guys tend to have the weirdest, and most unlikely hobbies, which may be useful. I have a friend who is superfit from climbing mountains, and in his spare time makes wood furniture, sheds etc. And he also does metalwork, i.e. can forge swords.

Most importantly, don't fret about the end of the world. Just make some simple changes, or take up some useful hobbies that you enjoy, and you will be more prepared than 99.9% of people out there.

[sterling_archer]

(01-14-2019 04:54 PM)Cuchulainn2016 Wrote:  

Additionally, I have a bow and crossbow. Its well worth investing in a good bow, its a good workout using it too!

And it's even better if you make them yourself.

[roberto]

(01-14-2019 04:54 PM)Cuchulainn2016 Wrote:  

5. Get armed. Just a reminder, I live in the UK. A lot of people seem to think you cant own guns in the UK, but you can. And you can get a lot more than you think, its just the waiting period is a year or more for a licence to actually own firearms. My part of the UK allows handguns also. I have a .45 1911, a 9mm Sig, and a .22 walther. In addition to that, and these are legal anywhere in the Uk, I have a Remington 700 bolt action, and an AR15 pattern .22. My .22 rifle is identical looking to any 5.56 AR15 (standard mags, fullsize ejection port, aimpoint scope and a foregrip). Some feral youths from the local council estate with a sawn-off and a couple of kitchen knifes would shit themselves when they see it! You can also get a AR15 in 5.56mm (or any other calibre, like .300blackout) with a straight pull ejection. That's basically a fast bolt action.

I take it you live somewhere in the UK but at the edge of UK jurisdiction, like the Isle of Man? Not sure where in the UK a .45 pistol is legal.

Whilst your advise is generally good, I fear you are painting a far rosier picture than the rest of us see. Firearms licensing in the UK is handled by local police forces, specifically a Firearms Licencing Officer, or FLO. What firearms you can obtain are entirely at his or her whim.

For instance, our local FLO absoloutely hates 'tactical' rifles. So even a .22 rimfire AR15 lookalike would be a no go here. With firearms, you have to prove to the police that you are of good character, have a requirement for the rifle in question, and have somewhere to shoot it. Whilst you may well be able to obtain a bolt action .22rf after a 6 month membership at a target club, there's no way in hell (round here at least) you're getting a .243 without a landowner allowing you on his land for pest control. Often you are limited to just that land for use of your rifle. An 'open ticket' (where you can shoot on any land) is hard to come by. Obviously less of an issue if SHTF.

If you apply to the FLO for any rifle, without a verificable history of being involved in countryside pest control, it's virtually certain that you will be turned down. You paint the picture of being able to obtain pretty much anything so long as you wait a year, and for mainland UK at least, that just isn't the case.

Instead, I would reccomend anyone in the UK gains a shotgun certificate. With these, the police have to find a reason to turn you down. So unless you have previous convictions, you just apply and tell them you've joined a clay pigeon club.

[tomzestatlu]

As we speak about weapons, take in consideration, that in case when situation could make people really use their legal guns, government has list of all the guns in people´s hands.
My country is in EU and last few years there´s some law about be passed, that might forbid owning assault rifles, guns with bigger than 10 rounds mags, etc. The most of the people in the guns community reacted with saying, that they will just "lose" or "get stolen" their guns. That would mean the big part of guns at people´s hands going to illegality. Luckily, even the government members stood out against this EU law at the end.
But it´s just postponing the problem. Government knows you have got the weapons and can come for them anytime.

Big topic recently become creating armed volunteer militias as people are sure, that government will fail or already is failing at protecting them.

[roberto]

(01-15-2019 01:31 AM)sterling_archer Wrote:  

(01-14-2019 04:54 PM)Cuchulainn2016 Wrote:  

Additionally, I have a bow and crossbow. Its well worth investing in a good bow, its a good workout using it too!

And it's even better if you make them yourself.

Making arrows in particular would be a good skill to have.

[Cuchulainn2016]

Roberto -
That's worse than I thought, but as you say it may be down to your local area.

I know plenty of shooters in the UK and they just generally join a club and get a .22 to start for target shooting, then up the calibre and number of firearms later.

I live in northern ireland, and the restrictions are slightly less onerous here, you still have to jump through all the hoops,but you can own a greater variety of weapons.

The FLO's here are generally more concerned with the security of the weapons, so a secure and covert safe with a good security system that contacts the police automatically is what they want to see.

Shotguns would be great for home defense, but not as applicable in a societal collapse. Best for that would be a variety of .22 firearms.

Also, the day you use your shotgun to defend your home in the UK, is the day you lose your firearms and liberty, unless law and order has broken down completely.

[Leonard D Neubache]

A lot of the time in threads like these people will accidentally be debating across different scenarios.

There is a difference between advice that pertains to where we are now vs advice that pertains to a scenario where anarchy is the status quo. It falls mostly to the reader to sift that stuff out or else the thread will become an endless screed of lawyer-speak.

[sterling_archer]

(01-15-2019 05:05 AM)roberto Wrote:  

(01-15-2019 01:31 AM)sterling_archer Wrote:  

(01-14-2019 04:54 PM)Cuchulainn2016 Wrote:  

Additionally, I have a bow and crossbow. Its well worth investing in a good bow, its a good workout using it too!

And it's even better if you make them yourself.

Making arrows in particular would be a good skill to have.

I am doing that also. Feathers are actually the most elusive things for me. Ebay is hit or miss and there are no wild geese here. Wood and tips are easy to obtain.

[Leonard D Neubache]

Curious. Do the feathers have to have specific qualities?

When we do our seasonal routine of buying 4 chicks and ending up with 3 roosters we end up tossing entire bags of feathers in the rubbish bin.

[sterling_archer]

Yes, they do have. Wild turkey is awesome, together with wild geese. But you can also use domestic ones. Feathers need to be much bigger than your intended fletching, which is about 3" minimum in length for average arrow. So one could say you should pick 10" long feathers that have that "thick" and springy feel under your fingers.

For example, I ordered wild geese feathers on ebay from China that were supposed to be 10" long. But they came out shorter and very soft (thin and very non springy under finger). Even though I knew what would happen, I made a few arrows for the experiment, to see the process first hand. Results were like I said predictable in the way that aerodynamic properties of the arrow in flight were greatly reduced. But in the end, it's better than the bare shaft.

P.S.
Are you talking about chickens or are you using some generic term for bigger size poultry?

[Leonard D Neubache]

No, just plain old chickens.

There's lots of different types of course but now we mostly just stick to mid-sized reliable egg layers.

If you'd popped your head up a while back you'd be swimming in turkey feathers. At one stage we had 9 females go to roost in the bush expecting they'd all be eaten by native cats but 7 of them came back with between 10 and 12 chicks each.

Suffice to say I can't stand turkey anymore. I'd sooner eat pidgeons.

[sterling_archer]

Ah then, chicken is not "perfect" because of small feathers, BUT you could make very small fletchings if you experiment with bare shafting. It is a process in which bare shaft (that has string nock and arrowhead) is made to fit to the particular bow.
When the bare shafting process is done, fletchings are added just to give arrow additional aerodynamic properties. In actuality very good bare shafted arrow can have almost perfect flight at 10 yards, so without fletchings! Theoretically you could even hunt at small distances, but it is a dumb idea to try as it can lead to inhumane hunting conditions for animal if the arrow doesn't hit it properly.

[Nord619]

I'm so happy to find this thread. I have about 20 empty 5 litre plastic bottles in my university dorm to fill up with water in case shit goes south. I figured it would last a month and I could trade water for food if I needed to. All my friends and GF call me weird for doing it.

I figured water would become the most precious resource so I want to have enough to not die straight away. I heard some where that it's a good idea to horde has much eye ware if shit went south. Instead of looting TV's and gold chains go to your local Specsavers. You could trade contact lenses for food and water.

[Leonard D Neubache]

Thanks for reminding me. As I stated earlier I don't want this to devolve into a "buy this" thread but this is something cool I only learned about a little while ago.

https://www.amazon.com/WaterBOB-Emergenc...B001AXLUX2



For guys staying in place during a crisis event (particularly those in apartment buildings that wont have access to rainwater) this is an excellent and relatively cheap way to store a lot of water quickly in a very space efficient manner.

[Nord619]

(01-16-2019 10:44 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

Thanks for reminding me. As I stated earlier I don't want this to devolve into a "buy this" thread but this is something cool I only learned about a little while ago.

https://www.amazon.com/WaterBOB-Emergenc...B001AXLUX2



For guys staying in place during a crisis event (particularly those in apartment buildings that wont have access to rainwater) this is an excellent and relatively cheap way to store a lot of water quickly in a very space efficient manner.

Im buggered with my shower