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I find it fascinating that so many people (in other forums and in my "real" life) believe that a U.S. collapse could never happen. I'd like to point out that various empires throughout history never thought they would fail, either! The Roman Empire, The Ottoman Empire, etc. Ring any bells? I'm sure that right up until things collapsed and they were overrun by barbarians, marauders, etc., they figured everything would be just fine. Everything has a beginning and an end, including empires, including countries.
Having said that, though, I have zero interest in having a ring-side seat to any of this when it starts to happen. Let me be one of the first ones to die. I don't want to be the last person standing, and considering where I live, there's no way I could get away even if I wanted to. (I live in Los Angeles, which is ringed by various mountain ranges, and there are only so many routes out of here - which I'm sure would be clogged and unmoving if something truly awful happened.) I live in an apartment, so although I store water in case of an earthquake, I don't have enough space for several months' worth of food.
Of course, my attitude is completely at odds with everyone else's on here. I hope your preparation serves you well.
We are fortunate. Our country is large enough that a disaster in one area will not bring down the whole country. We have a variety of climates, and a large number of navigable rivers. While I was looking up some facts to support my position on another posting, I found that there were 1,828 recorded famines in China between 108BC and 1911 AD. I had no idea that it is rare that we don't have a famine somewhere each year!
My number one prep for is economic collapse. My number two is climatic collapse from drought, volcanic eruptions, etc. I prep the same for both, but I would live longer in an economic collapse since I would still be able to buy medicine.
My biggest fear in any kind of collapse - city people. I am not sure that they will be able to cope when money turns back into paper, and their skills become useless.
I am prepping for a short-lived, intense period of disruption immediately after the collapse (6 months to a year), then a longer struggle to survive after the 'herd has been thinned'.
Katrina showed us some of that.
The media attention was on New Orleans but many people in other areas didn't wait for the government. You almost wouldn't have known by the media that Mississippi was also hit hard because the people there were more self-sufficient.
I think a lot of it is how much some will depend on the government, it seems like those people that obediently went to the convention center would still be waiting for the government to come save them if it hadn't arrived.
And if people have to wait in line for 12 hours to buy bread, a lot of them will do that. They wait that long to be the first to buy concert tickets already, or to buy a newly released game player. Waiting in long lines won't be a major problem for a lot of people, they have nothing much else to do with their time anyway.
As a nation, we're most dependent on foreign oil, so I worry more about that - what happens if the oil supplies are cut off. Then how will I get to work -- but I have my bike for that but it's kind of a long distance ride. If oil supplies are cut off, then shipments won't make. All kinds of shipments.
Some people would die if they don't have heat in the winter because they don't know what else to do. Maybe food supplies would be dramatically decreased but there would be some items because after all the USA produces most of the food for the world. It might be more a matter of living like people lived in the 1930s, no fresh fruit in the winter, more home gardens. No shoes to buy even if you could, a whole lot less material items available to buy.
I find it fascinating that so many people (in other forums and in my "real" life) believe that a U.S. collapse could never happen. I'd like to point out that various empires throughout history never thought they would fail, either! The Roman Empire, The Ottoman Empire, etc. Ring any bells? I'm sure that right up until things collapsed and they were overrun by barbarians, marauders, etc., they figured everything would be just fine. Everything has a beginning and an end, including empires, including countries.
Having said that, though, I have zero interest in having a ring-side seat to any of this when it starts to happen. Let me be one of the first ones to die. I don't want to be the last person standing, and considering where I live, there's no way I could get away even if I wanted to. (I live in Los Angeles, which is ringed by various mountain ranges, and there are only so many routes out of here - which I'm sure would be clogged and unmoving if something truly awful happened.) I live in an apartment, so although I store water in case of an earthquake, I don't have enough space for several months' worth of food.
Of course, my attitude is completely at odds with everyone else's on here. I hope your preparation serves you well.
Nice of you to pop in and then duck back under the sand. Your right too; many people think of so called dollars as stable when the reality is these are worth about 2 cents based on silver. Could be deemed by order in the morning worthless, by Govt.
But what the hell, at your age what ever that is i can tell you have never once held a real dollar in your hand. Wouldn't know if you did. Not being insulting, just telling you the truth.
Your right again; if the dollar goes or LA goes your not gonna make it..... A choice you made..
Less wars this country is as close to getting gone just like the Romans, and from no possitive direction thanks to the left, with their special interests.
Don't worry a bit about being the last one standing either, you won't be close to that. Not even a chance to get lonely.
Again I am not judging or finding fault, and in fact pretty much agree with everything you said, and am simply repeating it, but with harsher terms so maybe you will wake up.
Maybe it's that I just can't stand apathy.
There is one thing you are wrong about, and that is no one 'here' wants this sort of thing any faster than you do.
I will be 61 in November, and i know i am on the short end of the stick, but I am in no hurry to be gone, and if things do 'go south' i stand a better chance of being here long after you are gone... I don't like that idea a bit.
But I live rural, I know how to garden, hunt, and fish. I can start fire with sticks and have many old fashion rural living skills and you have what? None?
Now if you were to ask me that's just sad....... mac
On the contrary, Mac, I am totally in favor of the sacrificial lambs who say - "I'll just stay where I am and die". Good for you! Stay right there and keep the rioting marauders occupied. Self-immolation is a choice, and a choice that I fully support - for others. After all, the more that choose to stay in the cities, choose to let life (and death) happen to them, the fewer starving, disease-ridden/carrying, eternally-dependent folk the rest of us will have to see wandering down our roads, begging or stealing or even trying to breed more like them. They won't be trying to hunt the deer, antelope, and turkey in my neighborhood, or depleting my surpluses, or causing me to waste ammunition. Instead, they will attract the other city-dwellers around them, and be a momentary diversion of violence for the mindless. Those moments will add up, and keep city-dwellers even further occupied; like crabs in a bucket they will pull each other down. Meanwhile, we 'crabs' who didn't snatch at the government's dangling chicken wings, or the unsatisfactory gizzards of the cities' brightly-lit and populous attractions, because we have our own supplies and are well fed and content, can quietly observe it all - from far away, 'underwater' and unmolested.
I'm sure you are familiar with the phrase, "cannon fodder"? I respect their choices, because they further disseminate any violence, any meager food supplies that the government can hand out, any scraps that are there to be fought over, any illnesses that come about from close quarters/starvation/violence - any and everything bad that will happen will be concentrated within the areas of the highest populations for quite some time. Those who throw themselves on their own, the mobs', or the governments' swords - from the well-fed, well-defended, and prosperous comfortable distance of what I have built with my own hands, I salute you!
I do not really prepare for anything. I have no clue what is going to happen anyway. Sure, I have read what others think is going to happen but who really knows? I don't live in a place where people are going to break my door in if power is off for a week so I don't worry about that. I have about two years of food, not to be prepared, but because I'm so poor I have to buy it while on sale. I'm still eating spam I paid $1.50 for in 2007 (with a date of '09 on the can and it's still good). There is plenty of water around me, I can make a fire, hunt, trap, fish, and hide .... I feel I am as prepared as anyone could be without doing much.
Sure, an asteroid or other things would put us all in a bind.
This is pretty much the direction I come from, too. I just like having a full pantry because it makes the budget easier. I like eating my own produce, livestock, etc. because I know their origins.
My proximity to populated areas (or rather, the lack of) is what lead me to a self-sufficient lifestyle years ago and pride in that self-sufficiency keeps me going now.
I'm not particularly worried about Yellowstone, asteroids, 2012, or even economic collapse...
If for some reason I had to live in an apartment in LA I'd have some gold and silver stashed under a rock, some unregistered guns under that same rock, a decent car with good cruising range, and I would have already cut a deal with a helicopter pilot to get me over the Coast Range if there were little warning of a problem. I'd make sure the helicopter could land very close to my door. Anyone who tried to take it from me would eat lead.
Financial dislocations don't happen overnight. There'll be plenty of warning for that. Riots won't affect the whole place at once. My area of choice near LA would be the southern end of the Central Valley. That's still Old California, Conservative Republican California. I'd be welcome with some gold and silver. If things are so bad that the Mexicans leave for Mexico I'd get a job picking fruits and vegetables. That's what the Okies did; that's what I could do. Remember that the Okies prospered. They're proud to be called Okies and they should be.
If someone is determined to survive he almost certainly will.
I just bought the coin below. It has .1107 ounces of gold and cost $208. I could have spent the money in bars or at fast food restaurants or at a concert or... But I didn't so I could buy the coin. Think about that the next time you plan to get a carry out instead of fixing your own dinner.
This is an enlargement; the coin actually has a diameter of about .75". It's an Austrian ducat, a restrike dated 1915. I got a good price.
You just caused me to go measure a 25 cent piece, modern junk... Roughly 7/8ths inch.... had i just been asked i would have said .75...... A coin is good as it was always a coin....
I have a 1/3 troy oz ring of gold, but in rose gold, yellow and silver and dealers won't touch it. These rings were popular in the late 70's but are nearly worthless as cash now. I suspect this could happen to Black Hills gold, other than it is better known. Offers i get are 27 to 40 bux and I liked the ring better than that just as a trinket..
I;'ld cast a round ball of it before i sold it for that.
My ideas are similar to Chris C's, ie., as much self-sufficiency as can be managed -- in my case, without devolving to something where the lack of creature comforts outweighs in pound-for-pound misery the pleasures of providing for myself as best I may.
I've been homeless for a period, lived in the back seat of my car in winter, slept at night by piling things around myself on a bench seat that was too short for my frame, bent up at night and trying not to move so as not to open a hole for a draft. Showered at the college. Chewed ramen slowly in order to make it seem like more. Sold plasma to afford my ramen and enough gas to move my vehicle and avoid vagrancy charges. Served in the Guard at the time, so once a month got a small paycheck there to fill in the gaps, but was too proud to admit to them that I needed help (younger and stupid, and determined to handle it on my own).
This portion of my life only lasted a few weeks before a friend offered to let me stay in her barn while I looked for a new job and new means of survival after my life fell apart.
I fixed up a spot in her barn, moved in an old wood stove that had sat unused outside for years, insulated some walls and laid in some carpet I found in a dumpster. The barn was already wired for electricity, so eventually I moved in a desk so I could try to do my school work. She had an old bed frame and an old box spring, I found a used mattress somewhere -- and voila, I had a room in a barn where I lived for a year while I found work, saved my money and got back on my feet. Paid $50 per week to cover my power usage and use of the family bathroom in the house. Peed in a milk jug when it was late and cold outside and I didn't want to go outside or cross the yard and enter the house just to use the bathroom.
When I was young I grew up on a farm with a father who was... well, not sure what to make of him. He was knowledgeable, tough and determined, read all the latest articles and considered himself "forward-thinking" yet he had an uncanny knack for turning 1 day's work into 2 or 3. Things with him just always seemed harder and more primitive than they needed to be, and I always resented that I had ideas and no opportunity to utilize them.
When I had my own shot at some property years later than all that spoken of above, I wanted a small place; out from the city enough to enjoy, near enough to have ready access. I wanted a small enough place to afford, but large enough for my son to grow up with animals and elbow-room.
But as time has passed and I see no end to the rise of prices for virtually everything, when I see relied-upon goods being speculated into unattainability, when I go to the grocery and have to settle for mediocre produce at exhorbitant prices... it galls me.
So what I want is to make my home and land as efficient as possible, remove as much of the price I must pay the "outside world" as possible. I eventually inherited the old tractor from when I grew up; while the first few years have been utter hell (my spouse is NOT on board with... well, with much of anything, she's city-bred and born to the upper portion of the middle class), I am finally reaching a stage where things are coming together, piece by laborious piece.
When Hurricane Ike's remnants blew through here in 2008, it made things tough on the locals. When the ice storm disabled our area at the beginning of 2009 and people were without power, with just my propane cookstove and a fireplace I was in luxury compared to many. My in-laws, well-to-doers, refused my offer of hospitality, insisting they preferred to either find a hotel or just find any other relative. I found it ludicrous but it taught me a lot about how silly people can really be. Snowbound and ice bound, I sat by my fire and read books to entertain myself for several days until the power returned along with travel.
I see the world climate changing. I know these things cycle, things come and go and it's the order of things. But what I see is those who have taking advantage of situations to squeeze the last pennies from those who have not as conditions become more difficult physically and politically, and it infuriates me.
I cannot possibly prepare for every last thing, and should I list a dozen things for which I hope to prepare, quickly there would be an outcry from those who "know better" insisting I was a fool for not preparing for eleventy-seven different potential disasters that were really gonna happen.
It is interesting to read through this thread end to end, because certain things become apparent such as the ones most likely to prep have lived through hard times before, and know they can happen again.
Perhaps instead of just a mental exercise in "what if", prepping is a conditioned response to having already been a survivior, and experience allows us to understand what we need to do to keep going if the hard times come back
I know that those who lived through the Great Depression of the 1930's saw the world very differently than the boomers that came after them, and the current generations are so far removed from that kind of adversity they cannot even conceptualize it.
I guess one of us is in for a rude awakening someday
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