Preparedness for when

Cheapskate

Gosh, what a lot of well prepared preppers you are! I had heard all the scaremongering about power cuts a long time ago, but was interested in what everyone's opinions were. I thought we lived fairly simply, but our hot water is provided by gas, which I'm sure wouldn't last if there was no electricity to pump it. We have a bottled gas BBQ, so as long as we have a bottle, we could could cook.

We're reasonably organised to cope without power for short spells, so as long as my depleted food/grocery stocks improve shortly we'll manage!

DH and I received a satnav a few years ago from a well-meaning rellie, but we've only used it a few times - the voice it's programmed with gets right up my nose! Ye olde AA road map is more valuable than jewels in the right hands (i.e. mine and not DH's!), and I have been amazed when people whom I'm visiting in my own town simply give me their postcode, and then are amazed in turn when I say I can find it on the street planner.

A xo

Butterfly_Brain

I was thinking of the power cuts and we are lucky to live in an older property with a chimney so at least we know that we can open up the fires and install a wood-burning stove ......money permitting if needs be.
DH has told me to get at least 6 more paraffin lamps and we will start putting some paraffin or bio-ethanol in the shed. We have over 500 candles that I have accrued over the years, but they wont last long in a SHTF situation. I remember the profiteers in the 70's asking for £5 for a box of candles (A lot of money in those days when the average wage was £25 a week) and people were paying it. But most of us had open fires or parkrays so heating wasn't a problem, but it will be for those in new housing.
We have a camping stove and gas and a camping heater as well. DH has built an outdoor kitchen (Still waiting for him to put a canopy over though) so I can use the dutch oven, griddle and kelly kettle if I need to, we also have insulated jugs that we can fill and the water will stay hot for up to 12 hours. I know that you can cook vegetables using a cool box by pouring boiling water on top of the veg and putting the lid on. Same principle as a hay box cooker really and I suppose you could utilise the cool box as a modern version of one.
Don't open freezers and cover with newspapers and a blanket for extra insulation.
We all have hot water bottles and I have plenty of extra blankets and sleeping bags to put on the beds if need be.
I have a hand operated sewing machine, hand operated food processor (Aldi) can openers, egg whisk and my hand blender is a rechargeable one that can make four lots of soup on one charge. DH has been looking around for a hand drill but he thinks that his Dad may still have one, he has a lot of my Dad's tools that are from 1940's but well made and still useful.
Also extra water, because the filtration pumps will need power and if that fails there will be water shortages.

It is scary to think how many will have not prepared and will be caught out, they think that the PTB will sort things out straight away...............but we all know that they won't be.

GreyQueen

I'm the first in! Was wide awake so decided to get up and interwebulate for a while before going to the lottie. 7roland8, thank you for the compliment. Dad is the family historian and I plan to turn his bare-bones info into something more reader-friendly when he's finished.

BB, yes, my parents can recall the profiteering on such things as candles. It also happpend to Noo Yawkers in SuperStorm Sandy. Stuff which can be had quite cheaply now will become like gold-dust in a crisis, or a series of disruptions. I continue to add to the candle-stash as I see them, paying up to £1 for a pillar candle (my preferred style) when I see them in chazzers or bootsales.

My "preptastic wants list" atm contains such things as cellular blankets. These may seem a bit quaint to the under forties but they are very warm and useful, can be used under a sheet or layered between other bed coverings where the cellular structure helps trap heat. They're being released from the linen cupboards of the land as the oldies pass and their descendants don't appreicate their values, so turn up secondhand from time to time.

Another goody to find would be flanelette sheets. I have a flanelette (aka brushed cotton) duvet cover in use these last two winters and I cannot tell you how lovely and snuggly it is compared with my smooth cotton covers.

I was giving thought to really deep prepping, such as what would happen if we had a Last Light situation and the world changed for good. Lots of things rely on imports and complicated industrial processes. Think about the wonder which is the rubber boot, and the rubber seals for the storage jars and the rubber hot water bottles.

If you couldn't replace these after they'd perished, we'd live in a world where you were using things knowing that they were archaic and about to go away forever.

There are alternatives and maybe acquire a stoneware HWB now, to put by for the future? Would a warming pan be going a bit too far (yes, probably, but maybe you could pass it off as a decorative object insude certain rustic homes). A trick I've heard is to have something like wheat in a little cloth bag and warm it on the top of a stove and use that to take the worst of the chill off the bed.

There's surviving, and there's living with a modicum of comfort. Any fool can be uncomfortable, as the camping adage has it.

I was thinking of Nan's wash-house the other day. Nan rents a council bungalow built in the early 1950s, on the very edge of a village. Nothing but fields beyond. When it was built, they all had an additional outside WC across from the back door, a coal shed beside the back door, both opening into a small covered passage. The coatshed has long since been remodelled into a kitchen upgrade and the WC and plumbing long gone from the outside loo (functions as a shed, now).

But the wash-house is a joy. Brick built under a concrete slab roof, back to back with next door's wash-house. It had a "copper" built into the corner, a concrete structure with a flue. I think the copper bit may well have been galv but it was taken away in my childhood. My parents' first rented cottage had no running water bar a cold kitchen tap but it also had a copper in the corner of the room.

From the POV of a SHTF (or post-SHTF) situation, consider the advantages of a functional copper. You have the capacity to heat a large volume of water by burning almost anything under it. Mum and Dad say that there wasn't so much rubbish around in the old days, you burned card and wood and even old shoes to heat the water. Yes, you had to bail it in and bail it out again, but you had a virtually cost-free way of heating water.

And you could wash clothes and even larger things like blankets and sheets in them. I think receptacles for transporting water and doing the wash in will be very useful and well worth acquiring now whilst they are unregarded. I was eyeing up an oval galv receptacle t'other day. Needless to say, if you do acquire stuff like this, make sure it's fit for purpose and doesn't leak. Plastics are so ubiquitous that we don't really think about how they age and degrade because it's so easy and cheap to get another watering can/ washing up bowl/ whatever.

[Deleted User]

GQ you can still buy galvanised bath tubs from some hardware shops, I know of one that stocks a variety of sizes and although I don't think they would be suitable for the actual heating of the water, I'm sure they would be a very functional vessle to actually do the wash in. Next time I'm over that way I'll pop in and price them, Cheers Lyn xxx.

pineapple

I think the recent scare stories about power cuts are a tad too coincidental coming at the same time as a push for fracking. But hey what use is a tin foil hat if you can't take it out and give it a polish now and then ....:rotfl:

[Deleted User]

You polish your hat????????? How very civilised PINEAPPLE but you'll be visible for miles around on a sunny day!!!!! Hope you're good at ducking, Cheers Lyn xxx.

mardatha

She's disguised as a colander MrsL

pineapple

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

You polish your hat????????? How very civilised PINEAPPLE but you'll be visible for miles around on a sunny day!!!!! Hope you're good at ducking, Cheers Lyn xxx.

I'll festoon it with twigs and leaves aka Dad's Army!
Seriously (I don't think it would happen but) if ever we got to a stage where everything went out everywhere I think there would be unimaginable suffering and die back - more so in heavily populated industrialised centres. Disease, conflict, starvation - you name it... For one thing, ones knowledge of 'erbals would only go so far if you accidentally severed a limb, you needed a heart op or your appendix exploded. :eek:
Imo those best placed to survive would be less developed, remoter tribal people and the like. Plus communities like the Amish.
Personally if we ever got to that, I think I'd prefer to pop a painless pill. But I'll continue to prep for less drastic outcomes

Perplexed_Pineapple

Butterfly_Brain wrote: »

We have over 500 candles that I have accrued over the years,

Respect!
While thinking about keeping warm, don't forget about improving thermal insulation, not just yourself (invaluable advice on cellular blankets GQ, we have some inherited from family no longer with us). I'm just putting some more glasswool insulation in the loft, many older properties are really badly insulated, and even in newer properties there is often room for improvement. The aim is to need additional heating for as little time as possible - in the horrible spring we had when many people had gas heating on into April, ours went off in February. There are frequently good deals on insulation from the energy companies, and often grants available. (This I'm putting in now was a freebie left over from a neighbour's building work.)

[Deleted User]

Tres chic PINEAPPLE, I can see you becoming a trend setter at Ascot, bit like Mrs Gertrude Shilling, Oh sigh!!!!!!!