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THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

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  • With regular labor I d say gall stones are worse. With back labor, not a chance in hell!
    Overprepare, then go with the flow.
    [Regina Brett]
  • Quick thought for the day. Just been reading an online newspaper article of the paper testing contactless cards to see if the details could be stolen by someone nearby. Result tended to equal that around 2"-4" away a thief could pick them up. People have much greater protection keeping their cards in purses within leather handbags (plastic or material bags give a lot less protection).

    One point made was that these contactless cards have a strip right round the outside edge and that breaking this strip means they will no longer operate as contactless ones and have to be used in the standard way (ie putting them in a machine and putting in pin number). The newspaper suggested chopping off the top right-hand corner to render the "contactless" function useless. I can't see that this would be a problem to paying in the normal way (ie inserting in machine) provided one put in the card untrimmed edge first.

    Me - when my bank sent me a new card and this time it was contactless - I was promptly on the phone telling them I'd chopped the card up and needed a new card please and, this time, it was to be a standard "contact" one (as it's predecessor had been). They were told my new card would remain a standard one - if I had to swop bank to make sure of the fact. They did promptly send out a new standard one - I'm still with the same bank:)
  • GreyQueen
    GreyQueen Posts: 13,008
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    :) Morning all.

    Just reading a ZH article about power outages and came across a very handy tip in the comments section which I'm gonna steal and thought you might like to know about.

    Take a soft drinks bottle, the 300 m kind with an hourglass shape. Fill it half full, stand it in your freezer and leave upright until frozen. Then turn it upside down so the ice is in the top of the hourglass.

    Leave it like that as a silent watchman. If you ever see the ice in the bottom section, you know your freezer has thawed and re-frozen. Which might indicate a power outage or a dodgy freezer. HTH.
    Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
    John Ruskin
    Veni, vidi, eradici
    (I came, I saw, I kondo'd)
  • clever idea if you're away from home for any length of time GQ, thanks. We had a two-hour power cut yesterday evening - that'll be the start of winter then! We sat and chatted by the stove, with the kelly kettle boiling away on it's side in it, and candles everywhere :-) very cosy!
  • mardatha
    mardatha Posts: 15,612 Forumite
    It would def be handy yes GQ. I really regret the impulse buy of my big American f/f. It was half price because of a long scratch on the side, which in my kitchen is hidden by the wall... so I got it. Never again! It loses cold really fast in power cuts and I don't trust it for meat. Only prob we have is that the HA gave us new double glazed PVC doors now that are much narrower than the previous ones and we canny get the bloody thing out! The RV is going to have to atack it and dismember it to get it out of the damn kitchen. I wish like hell I'd got a more economical one to run, that stays cold.
  • jk0
    jk0 Posts: 3,479
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    I think dismembering a fridge freezer would be pretty fatal, wouldn't it? :)
    Maybe leave it for the next occupant.

    I have a BTL flat with a large armchair I inherited from previous owner 6 years ago. I can't get it out of the lounge door! It will have to be cut up when it gets too scruffy.
  • ivyleaf
    ivyleaf Posts: 6,431
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    jk0 wrote: »
    I think dismembering a fridge freezer would be pretty fatal, wouldn't it? :)
    Maybe leave it for the next occupant.

    I have a BTL flat with a large armchair I inherited from previous owner 6 years ago. I can't get it out of the lounge door! It will have to be cut up when it gets too scruffy.

    Our first home in Germany when OH was in the army had a big old sofa in the living room, bought secondhand by the previous occupant. It was a real eyesore, but boy, was it comfortable! You'd think "I'll just sit here for a few minutes" and then you'd wake up two hours later :D
  • daz378
    daz378 Posts: 1,000
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    Mar...sorry to hear of your painful condition hope things improve.....just watched a docudrama called blackout uk no power for a week.... on the 3rd day a prepper lights up a barba Q in his garden and wonders why he suddenly gets a crowd investigating ... op sec...... someone said Russia putting a base in Cuba would the USA stand for that? i doubt it
    also just watched a fly on the wall documentary on Barking council housing dept all the people being knocked back ... made me appreciate my tiny council flat.......take care
  • GreyQueen
    GreyQueen Posts: 13,008
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    :) I've watched that documentary before, daz, and thought that the BBQ incident was a classic example of what not to do. It would be better to eat cold tinned food than have to odour of cooking waft around when others are going hungry. That character and his family had a home invasion and were robbed of their food preps, if memory serves. Which then caused him to go our foraging in a looted shop in the blackout, where he ended up fighting with and (probably) killing someone.

    Lesson one. don't advertise. Lesson two; have your food preps in several places, with some findable and the others not so easily found, in case your home is looted.

    The Bosnian blogger Serco wrote about how rich homes, even ones very well protected by walls and gates etc, were no match for looters and were indeed the first ones targetted in the crisis. And that people who were prepared were targetted by their neighbours who stole their preps and also turned on them because they hadn't warned them of what was coming, and thus were culpable in their neighbours' sufferings when SHTF.

    Illogical, but people often are.
    Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.
    John Ruskin
    Veni, vidi, eradici
    (I came, I saw, I kondo'd)
  • mardatha
    mardatha Posts: 15,612 Forumite
    I hadn't heard about Russian and Cuba - but it def makes sense. Cuba has nothing to thank America for, and it might explain why Obama has suddenly started to talk to them again. Didn't lift the embargo though which might have helped them...
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