Preparedness for when

Perplexed_Pineapple

twiglet98 wrote: »

PP where do you store this amount of flour? I have one open bag of each type in the kitchen cupboard and keep the unopened bags in the freezer, but I don't have room in either freezer for that many bags.

If it goes in the freezer for 48 hours (or however long it needs to minimise weevils), what would you transfer it to for long-term storage, in or out of its original bags?

We use quite a lot of flour (make pretty much all our own bread) so 20kg isn't that much, we get through it in a few months. The shelf life given ie the best-before date is about 8 months. I just store it as it comes in a cool dry cupboard and keep it rotating to use within the use-by date. I'm aiming to have about a year's worth in stock, which means I'm taking a chance on some spoilage if we do need to make it last that long or longer. If I decide to take it to the next level I'd look at getting some kit to vacuum seal in plastic bags - Mylar seems to be the stuff that is recommended. Apparently vacuum sealed can be good for 2-5 years according to the reading I've done. I'm not aiming to cope with the apocalypse, just to have a bit in reserve in case of personal economic difficulties. Like a lot of people, my paycheck comes indirectly from the state. If we got into economic dififculties as seen in Greece, I might not get paid (as plenty of Greek public sector workers have experienced) and I like to know we could still feed the family while sorting something else out.
Random thought, why do we get a paycheck but carry a cheque book?
GQ, that's a good idea about the peppercorns.

GreyQueen

Perplexed_Pineapple wrote: »

Random thought, why do we get a paycheck but carry a cheque book?
GQ, that's a good idea about the peppercorns.

I think it's because paycheck is an Americanism which has crept into the language to replace the obsolete paypacket, and their version of cheque is check.

Pepper is very useful stuff, particularly if we end up dining on veggies a lot.

twiglet98

Thanks PP, I don't get through vast amounts of flour and an open bag lasts me a while, as the rest of the family don't like my attempts at bread, won't eat pastry, and complain about the calories when they cram themselves full of cake! When the last moves out and I have the house to myself, I'll be baking a lot more... as long as I can afford to use the electric oven, anyway.

GQ the Becky story is oh, so real. I keep about 50 litres of water in plastic bottles, mainly the 3 litre ones that once held orange squash, and empty them into the water butts when I change the water (I refill 1/3 of them with fresh tap water on the 1st of each month). My lot are all in their 20s and think I'm bonkers for stockpiling tins, jars and packets. I get 3 months supply of dog and cat food when its on offer, same with teabags, coffee and instant hot chocolate, canned fish, beans and tomatoes, washing powder and Fairy liquid.... and loo rolls, of course. Whenever a jar of honey or similar is finished, the next one is waiting in storage and will be replaced at the best possible price over the next few weeks, never having to be replaced at full price because I've run out and MUST buy it this week. There are all sorts of storage areas utilised, under the bed, under the stairs, behind the revolving shelf unit in the corner kitchen cupboard, and in the back hallway that is used only for feeding the cats and isn't a walkway. Eldest DD is shortly moving to her first home with her BF and scoffs at my preps. Watch this space, I bet she changes tune within 12 months!!

mardatha

Anybody who carries on using a waterless toilet for solid waste needs their heads looked. Use a polybag in the garden shed or in the house then dispose of it

GreyQueen

Thanks, twiglet.

I work in a local authority call centre. People call us whenever their leccy or their water goes off, literally incredulous that these services aren't provided by the council. People get very very frightened if the power is down for more than a few minutes, never mind the water being off.

Becky Normal is a composite of a lot of people I know. I imagine her as a woman of about 30-34, two kids in primary school, absolutely conventional with a strong normalcy bias.

She will have probably lived her whole life in an environment of washing machines, fridge-freezers, dishwashers, cars and uninterrupted utility supply. Becky has never lived without a car or a phone or central heating. She hasn't camped at all and never wanted to rough it. She may have heard the word prepper in the context of the recent spate of TV programmes but she won't have watched them or, if she did, it was only to laugh..........

She may have heard the phrase Winter of Discontent but she won't have seen it in RL and on the nightly telly news as I and other people of middle-age and older have. She's never seen panic-buying for real in a supermarket or had the experience of some items being unobtainable.

She's Everywoman. There are millions of Becky Normals in every western country and they're going to be toast if things get really bad.

Because I work in a call centre, I understand how the big computerised telephony systems work. There are a finite amount of call-handlers and now matter how fast they work, they can only talk to one person at a time. Excessive call volume will see callers being invited to leave a message or given an automated answer that there call cannot be taken and please try again later - click and you're disconnected.

Local authorities and other services have been hollowed out by year after year of funds being cut from central government. At any given time, things are teetering on a knife-edge and some so-called departments are just 1-3 people.

Imagine a severe storm sending street trees across several roads, flooding, subsidence, perhaps wilful destruction of infrastructure from terrorism, such as the national grid or water treatment plants being targetted. Modern life is very sophisticated but the flip side of that is that there is very little resilience.

I have to say that the sheeple who imagine that someone called "They" are going to be capable of baling them out of a crisis will have a very rude awakening if a crisis comes calling.

Mar, we have people who do this in our properties. You end up with a WC so rammed that even DynoRod can't clear it..........

lobbyludd

lol! if water was out longer than a few hours, the water company and council would be transporting bottled water in, like they have in the UK every time the water has gone off for an appreciable amount of time (from personal experience).

Unless it was a very big SHTF scenario where the army couldn't be mobilised to get people water supplies and charities/councils couldn't get through, in which case you'd have to have your own lake.

that's not to say I don't keep water in the house, I have 50litres that is rotated, but mainly in case of short cut-off's, because I don't want to have to rush out in the middle of the night and I can't abide queueing. But in real life, "Becky" would ring some friends, some family, go to the school, check with neighbours. Someone would suggest she walk to the nearest river to get water to flush her toilet so that it wasn't unsanitary, the kids would be just fine not washing for a day or more, including their hands (camping, mine are ferral for weeks on end the only water near their bodies that from streams when they are building forts in them, with no ill effects).

She would not be some scared snivelling wreck within less than 24hrs because the water has gone off and her husband is away. Like most people in most "crises", she would cope and adapt because that is what humans are supremely adept at doing.

I'm all for prepping for whatever you want, and do, but people are resourceful, even those who don't prep. a bigger worry than "becky" would be frail little old men and women who have outlived family and friends, and can't physically adapt.

twiglet98

Bottled water gets distributed within cities and bigger towns pretty quickly - not quite so quickly in small rural villages. Plenty of incomers, as young Becky may be, don't have people they'd call for support BEFORE they panicked and went through the motions of driving to the supermarket in the rash assumption they'd find everything there to make it all ok.

Intelligent resourcefulness, for some, kicks in later, through necessity and not always through innate common sense.

I'd hate to waste that much diesel on an unscheduled round trip to an emptying supermarket anyway! I agree the old and frail are a major concern, as are the infant children of those who never should have bred.

lobbyludd

No - I wouldn't want to waste that much petrol doing it either, and perhaps my view on a water outage is coloured by living through it in a city rather than a rural area, but as a child I remember it happening in a village and bottled water came within 24hrs. The state, and other agencies did step in, when we think of people toughing it out in war-time, whilst a lot was due to their own efforts, the survival of the country intact was also due to a massive state architecture that intervened extensively. So I don't think it is necessarily lacking in common sense to think that this would happen again if the architecture is intact. Especially if you have lived through these situations and experience has demonstrated that is exactly what happens.

I think my main point is that in my experience "Becky" would be in the minority (might be a large minority, but definately a minority): whilst GQ may get ridiculous enquiries and panic stricken individuals, (and that perhaps therefore colours your view of "normal"?) that does not reflect what the majority of people do in a crisis - which is cope, adapt, use or forge networks, find resources, gather information, and get through it.

If that wasn't in our very basic nature as human beings, we wouldn't be here.

(tbh I really don't like the term sheeple, nor references to people who should never have bred) but I do love this thread, and find it very useful for things I hadn't thought of, fun and intellectually stimulating .

GreyQueen

If crisises behave politely and come along rarely, and only ever one at a time, they can be entirely manageable.

RL often doesn't oblige. If you've seen the news recently as well as in the past few years, you'll know that there is a lot less of The Army than there used to be, and those numbers are declining.

And The Army out in Afghanistan, or stationed o noverseas bases aren't going to be a lot of help here in the UK in a fast-arising crisis. Even if they're called back in a hurry, it'll still take time to get them back into the country and sent where they're needed. And the Army stationed in the UK are not evenly distributed across the country, they tend to be based heavily in certain areas and lightly or not at all in others.

My job involves talking to several thousand of my fellow citizens each year. Year after year. I can assure you that very many people do go to pieces in fairly minor upsets to normalcy and blow up into aggression or degenerate into hysteria. You'd be astonished and what I and my colleagues hear every day.

The majority of these panicking people aren't the senior citizenry, who have some perspective and have had a harder earlier life, but those born from the mid-seventies onwards. The children of early nineties particularly worry me, and some of those have young children of their own now.

There are plenty of people in their twenties and thirties who are utterly clueless and some of them are already parents to several children.

********************
Try this as a mental exercise; Heavy snow and blizzard conditions + power cables down + no heat no light + medical emergencies.

Now imagine that it's not just the remoter parts of the country like the Isle of Arran but across the heavily-populated south of England and affecting tens of millions. Even our lads in the Army are subject to the normal laws of physics and rely of fuel to get them where they need to be. And can a few thousand squaddies make much difference to the outcome for millions?

I've been around long enough to have seen standpipes on the streets and a few other things which make me less than complacent about relying on others to keep me in food and water in the earliest days of a crisis.

But we can agree to differ; I buy water at 17p a bottle and refill them from the tap. Not exactly betting the farm on the outcome of it possibly being unneccessary.

And if I'm wasting my time, that's my decision. If I'm not, there will be a few more bottles of water in the shop for the panickers, which means my prepping is a win-win situation for us all.

ETA: The council here won't be transporting bottled water. We have contracted out services. Will we get our waste contractor to transport bottled water in the bin lorries? Not happening. Our landscaping contractor to use it's small lorries? Possibly viable, but they are few and very small, ditto the highways contractor lorries. There's a doublehandful of fleet cars and that is it as far as council vehicles goes.

ClootiesMum

There are more Beckys out there than I care to imagine.

During the bad snows earlier this year in Wales there were reports of peolpe living in rural villages running out of food & wood within a few days. To me it's just commonsense that if you chose to live in a rural area & enjoy the ruralness then you have stocks to last you a couple of weeks - especially if the weathermen have warned that here is heavy snow forecast.

I know here are genuine exceptions, but many of those who were left to struggle struck me as Brian & Becky Normal.

As an aside, I was talking aout this thread n work (yes, they hink I'm mad) and when the Greek bank crisis was in place and people couldn't get money out the banks I suggested that if it happened n the UK how would we cope? use credit cards was the answer *****sigh******