Preparedness for when

greenbee

I saw this and thought of you lot...http://www.wdm.org.uk/stop-bankers-betting-food/barclays-profiting-hunger

Confuzzled

cod3 wrote: »

I have been vegetarian for 37 years, not because I am fussy, but for moral reasons. This thread is about preparing for disasters.

My question was simply, what scenario are we talking about here that I might feel the need to eat meat as I can't honestly think of one? And where do we draw the line when it comes to morality when there is a catastrophic event? Is cannibalism off the menu? Or is that just being fussy too?

i don't think she meant to be condescending about being veggie in that way though i can see how it might be taken that way

i think she meant that when people are starving you eat what you can eat or you starve. indeed if you have to start sorting yourself out it may include insects, fish and whatever animal you can hunt/snare etc. hopefully lifelong vegetarians would be at least somewhat adept at foraging and that would go a long way, however when beans and pulses and cheese and dairy are no longer easily available to balance out amino acids and help to create complete proteins i'm afraid at least insects may be necessary to provide the extra protein needed.

in this dire, everything totally hitting the fan scenario sheer hard graft will be required daily so protein requirements will be even higher than before.

even in a scenario where it's not all hiding out in the woods/cave etc canteens set up to feed the thousands will not likely cater to vegetarians. they will very likely be forced to slop out food that is available and that's it. so in this case ANYONE that is selective or has moral or religious reasons for abstaining or avoiding certain foods will have to make a choice of eat it, starve or find another food source which may not be possible.

this will of course be incredibly difficult, anyone with food allergies will suffer greatly and could possibly die from anaphylactic shock, stomachs not used to eating meat for many years may take a lot of uncomfortable adjusting. all i can say is that for me personally, i would make my peace with my god or myself if i COULD eat the food but had previously chosen not too and make promises to amend my ways as soon as it was feasible to do so but that's just my point of view.

personally i think everyone is far better off if they do NOT get caught up in these kind of camps anyway and might do better for themselves on their own where they could make their own choices. large camps where you aren't in control, are surrounded by loads of people who are angry, hungry and possibly full of communicable diseases makes my skin crawl just thinking of it, but again that's my point of view! i may be more inclined to head that way if i couldn't find enough sources of food, animal/insect protein based, fruit veg and nuts etc you just don't really know til you're literally being forced to make those decisions

even if it doesn't come down to even as bad as these two scenarios, if hyperinflation makes eating a luxury then morals and religious values may have to be put aside until it's a basic human right to eat and no longer a luxury, and even in that case you gotta eat what you can get if you are capable of eating it without extreme illness or death.

the key here though is to genuinely think about what choices you may have to make and be honest with yourself now whilst you have choices. those who don't even make the slightest mental preparations aren't only a danger to themself, they endanger anyone that has the misfortune to be around them (not saying you are one of those people, just making a general point) those who won't even indulge in a little what if, if only to tuck those thoughts away at the back of their minds are the ones that will bring down morale, do stupid, rash stuff and put everyone in danger to have their own selfish way in a true disaster.

as for cannibalism.... eek, yes it's crossed my mind in a horrified please i hope i never ever have to cross that line sort of way. i personally do not blame those people that were trapped in the andes for eating their dead, they genuinely had no other options and they were already dead. what it must have done to their psyche's during and after is unfathomable and i genuinely feel for them.

as for killing specifically to eat... i personally feel i would say enough was enough and off myself if it got that bad, i DO draw the line there. personally, i think that resorting to cannibalism in a post apocalyptic scenario would be an incredibly slippery slope even if you only ate those that died naturally (and no 'little accidents') With the andes situation, they knew they had a chance of getting back to civilisation, what do you do if you if you don't have a civilisation to go back to?

i do hope we don't go too far down the line on this particular discussion as it's vile and unsettling and i would hope truly the very end of the line for everyone. besides, even heston couldn't make me want to do eat that and let's be honest, if it's a zombie apocalypse, would you even consider it?

valk_scot

As above....

I don't think there were many folk that clung to say their vegetarian principles in WW2, for example. Not many vegetarians in the first place of course but as they weren't catered to on the ration and there were few of the alternate foodstuffs that are availible now they probably had a very hard time of it. And allergies and intolerances? Not so many around in these days of mostly unprocessed and unrefined foodstuffs and even if you did, they weren't recognised or allowed for in normal catering terms.

And as my mum used to say, meat was meat, you ate it even though you weren't actually sure what animal it had come from. My late FIL and his brother were teenagers during WW2, they had a nice little earner trapping feral pigeons and selling them round the back doors for meat.

valk_scot

Confuzzled wrote: »

i do hope we don't go too far down the line on this particular discussion as it's vile and unsettling and i would hope truly the very end of the line for everyone. besides, even heston couldn't make me want to do eat that and let's be honest, if it's a zombie apocalypse, would you even consider it?

If it really was a Zombie Apocalypse there wouldn't be any dead people lying around to eat, surely? They'd all be up on their feet intent on eating (or whatever zombies do) you!

jeanniefaethecarse

charlies-aunt
How do you actually use fire bricks/how do they work? I've heard of them, but never known what to do with them. We have two open grate coal fires that use up a lot of coal over an evening so that could be an answer for us.

westcoastscot

I have fire bricks in my stove in the summer - because its on 24/7 - and in the summer we have it to heat the water etc but don't really need the heat in the room, I have one each side at the front - it cuts down the amount of coal we need to use and concentrates it at the back of the stove to heat the boiler. I take them out around now as we burn wood and coal over the winter and want the full size.

When we had the open fire I had them at each side narrowing at the back and more open at the front, so the heat would project out to us, and still save on coal in a bigger fire.

hth
WCS

betony

SpikyHedgehog wrote: »

Betony, can you use the flowers of chicory like the dandelion flowers?
.

Yes, I believe you can.

I can't post links yet, but try www pfaf org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Cichorium+intybus

Btw, this site is brilliant for foragers, and all the plant information pages can be downloaded in PDF form.

GreyQueen

Excellent post, confuzzled.

I deeply and sincerely hope that none of us, present on this thread or the wider world, ever has to make ugly and distressing choices about what to eat when it contradicts their moral values, religious teachings or personal ick factor.

F'instance, I know fine well that earthworms are an excellent and nutritious food but quite a lot of S will have hit the fan before I try that one out in the real world...........*shudder*

Brief aside on the subject of Quorn; I know several people personally who vomit within minutes of injesting the stuff, even if they have no idea that they're eating it. Mixture of relations and friends. I don't have a problem with it myself, but it's something to bear in mind if you are about to serve it to someone who has never tried it before.

Not all foods can be stomached by all people. Some people in the camps in the Far East in WW2 died because they couldn't stomach rice, even when the alternative was starvation, it was simply inedible. We all have out little foibles. Mine is coconut which makes me very unwell very quickly.

OK, TMI.

Many famines aren't caused by a complete absence of food in an individual country or region, they are caused by an absence of affordable food. That is, affordable by the poorer people. Money in quantity can see you fed in most parts of the world, even in famines.

About 30 years ago, I was an 0 Level economics pupil and remember being shocked and scared by the realisation that the whole financial system is a confidence trick, a house of cards, a conceit which works because most people believe in it and stable goverments are prepared to back the currency.

I can take a small piece of brownish foil-embedded and watermarked paper into a supermarket and they and I agree in the fiction that this promissary note can be exchanged for groceries (or whatever) to the value of £10. Galloping inflation will rob that £10 of much of its purchasing power but a tin of beans has the same amount of calories whether I pay 25p or £1 for it.

Holding some of your wealth in what the preppers call "tangibles" such as long-lasting foodstuffs or consumables which you will consume eventually and/ or can possibly swop if the currency either hyper-inflates or becomes temporaily unusable, such as might occur if the whole euro currency experiment folds, isn't the action of a bunch of wee dafties with too much time on their hands.

There are still people alive who have experienced the hyper-inflation of pre-WW2 Germany where the same amount of money could buy you a bottle of champagne one evening and be only good for a box of matches the following morning. Those poor souls in Zimbabwe have seen more recent hyper-inflation. I know some Zimbabweans who have fled back to the country that their parents or grandparents emigrated from (here) with two suitcases as all they had to show for their lives.

Right, going to have a bite of lunch before heading to my allotment to attend to the important matter of growing my own foodstuffs, keeping my soil in good heart and murthering as many of those gigantic slugs as possible to protect next year's harvest.........they've had a lot of this year's harvest already and as they live about 5 years, I need to thin the field or next year will be even more grievous.

SpikyHedgehog

Fruball wrote: »

Don't forget that fleece doesn't need hemming as it doesn't fray so you just cut your lengths of fleece blanket, cutting off any hemming already there, then cut 1inch slits about 1cm apart at each end to make tassles

Simples - I made 5 out of a £2.99 fleece the year before last and they were much longer than the ones I normally buy for the kids which cost considerably more

(If you felt really creative you could easily make a 2 scarves, 2 hats and 2 pairs of welly liners from one blanket . A simple hat would be a rectangle of fabric sewn up the long edge, then cut long tassles round the top end and tie with a strip of fleece - too easy!)

Brilliant, Fruball, I was wondering what to do with the fleece blanket DS1 put over his hamster's cage 1 night to keep her quiet - which it did, as she dragged a corner into the cage& chewed off... (She's ok though, I was worried incase she'd eaten any as she'd not have been able to digest it.) Luckily for DS1 it was only a small cheap wilkies 1, & not 1 of the big thick ones I'd got from a CS.

vanoonoo wrote: »

now, I keep reading on "propper" preppers forums about paracord - I even saw how to make a bracelet out of it. please tell me why its so useful and why I need to have some about my person at all times? does it come in purple?

Love the prioritisation, checking it comes in purple :-) & relieved to find out it does! DS1 has an explorer scout woggle made of paracord, not by him though. He needs these skills!

Dippypud wrote: »

Had to laugh yesterday...

there were reports of an 'escaped' lion in Essex, which is not that far away,(we were saved by the river).

but DS said, "we're all right 'till the clocks change again"

thanks, I think:D

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/essex-lion-hunt-called-off-as-police-search-finds-no-evidence-of-big-cat-8082371.html

so stange reports, things like not being allowed out of your house all though unusual are not unheard of...:D

Dippypud, what happened about the lion in the end? I heard about it on the radio, being over the border in Suffolk ;-) .

charlies-aunt

jeanniefaethecarse wrote: »

charlies-aunt
How do you actually use fire bricks/how do they work? I've heard of them, but never known what to do with them. We have two open grate coal fires that use up a lot of coal over an evening so that could be an answer for us.

Nothing simpler really - just place them vertically against either the sides and/or back plate of the fire basket - I use four bricks, one each side and two at the back. This is the most effective for us but if you have a oblong log burning basket - you could use two each side to make the fire space into a square. They are a very humble, unexciting household article but you get a nice cheerful fire with no discernable difference in heat generated but use substantially less coal and kindling.

Once in place, its best to leave them in situ as although they are very durable, they can crack if disturbed - this won't stop them working and they are heat retaining in them selves so will contnue to heat the room even after the fire has died right down.