catspa
New Member
SG, I hear Rawles has another book out, a friend has promised to loan it to me when he's done reading. I also enjoyed Lucifer's Hammer, by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, although the main characters benefit more from being lucky than being prepared. I'll have to check out the Forstchen one.
Georgia, I'm no Grandpa but I'd say it's a fact of modern life that cities have exceeded their carrying capacity of humans, and only by the daily maintenance of infrastructure and support services can they be kept livable. Think of New York City and last year's garbage strike, for example. Within a few days many neighborhoods were quickly becoming unbearable to live in. How would things have been if the power, water, and sewer failed at the same time?
So our urban members might decide their present surroundings are not optimum for survival, and make a plan to relocate to a more advantageous place for the duration of certain emergency conditions. Portability, navigation and transport will become very important to them. OTOH, members whose surroundings already contain some basic elements might decide to sit tight and ride out whatever occurs. This "hunker down or bug out?" decision will affect your planning significantly.
It's also worthwhile to think for a minute about what we really need to survive. A healthy human body must have air to breathe, shelter from the elements, clean water to drink, nutritious food to eat, and sleep to recharge the mental and physical batteries. These things are not difficult to obtain for most Americans under normal conditions. But it's not hard to imagine a circumstance in which one or more of these essential elements are in very short supply. That's why we think about putting some aside now, when it's easy to do so.
Each person's available skills and resources are different, so the nuts and bolts of what works for Grandpa might not work for you, but his mindset is useful. Also, he (or I, or any other prudent person) won't go too far into detail about our preparations on the internet - not because we don't like you, but because we can imagine situations where it could be a real problem if some things were known. As an example, in the time leading up to Y2K, my ex-wife and I had enough food set by for 6 months. That food would feed 360 people for one day, if they knew we had it and could take it away. Better they didn't know.
Parker
Georgia, I'm no Grandpa but I'd say it's a fact of modern life that cities have exceeded their carrying capacity of humans, and only by the daily maintenance of infrastructure and support services can they be kept livable. Think of New York City and last year's garbage strike, for example. Within a few days many neighborhoods were quickly becoming unbearable to live in. How would things have been if the power, water, and sewer failed at the same time?
So our urban members might decide their present surroundings are not optimum for survival, and make a plan to relocate to a more advantageous place for the duration of certain emergency conditions. Portability, navigation and transport will become very important to them. OTOH, members whose surroundings already contain some basic elements might decide to sit tight and ride out whatever occurs. This "hunker down or bug out?" decision will affect your planning significantly.
It's also worthwhile to think for a minute about what we really need to survive. A healthy human body must have air to breathe, shelter from the elements, clean water to drink, nutritious food to eat, and sleep to recharge the mental and physical batteries. These things are not difficult to obtain for most Americans under normal conditions. But it's not hard to imagine a circumstance in which one or more of these essential elements are in very short supply. That's why we think about putting some aside now, when it's easy to do so.
Each person's available skills and resources are different, so the nuts and bolts of what works for Grandpa might not work for you, but his mindset is useful. Also, he (or I, or any other prudent person) won't go too far into detail about our preparations on the internet - not because we don't like you, but because we can imagine situations where it could be a real problem if some things were known. As an example, in the time leading up to Y2K, my ex-wife and I had enough food set by for 6 months. That food would feed 360 people for one day, if they knew we had it and could take it away. Better they didn't know.
Parker
