Preparedness for when

pineapple

GreyQueen wrote: »

Re living off the land; I very much doubt the viability of this unless 99% of the rest of the population disappeared. Simply too many of us. I've read estimated population for the British Isles in the Paleolithic was 15, 000, and that people were hunting and foraging over 20 miles a day in pursuit of their calories.

The easiest pickings would come, initially, from sheep, farm crops, other people's lotties and gardens. Indeed - sheep and allotment theft already happen. I'd like to say I wouldn't be part of such nefarious activities. But who can say, for definite, what they would do if they or their kids were starving? Apart from individual acts of desperation, I imagine organised rustling would become quite big business - an upscaling of what already happens in fact. And farmers in particular would become quite aggressive in defence of their property. Knowing my local farmer - you wouldn't cross him in a hurry.

GreyQueen

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

GQ can you remember the name of that book? as its sounds interesting, and the type of book I would keep, and read a few times

not for me, but there is some small oaks trees around, so I am going to collect the acorns for our pigs...

Can't remember it and have just combed thru the books read list at the back of my diaries going back to 2009 and cannot find it.

I'll bump into it in the library again and recognise it by the cover ( I have a mainly visual memory) and let you know then.

Right, the day is wasting - going lottiewards right now. GQ xx

pineapple, we have allotment looting already, one bloke had a whole row to tatties dug up one night. If people were desperate, they'd consider anything fair game, and farmers who wanted to hold onto their stock would be doing it with guns and dogs. Considering the amount of theft in a world with a functional state and a social security system, can you think about what would happen if neither of those things existed?

Keep your OPSEC, and perhaps don't store your lottie produce in your lottie shed.

COOLTRIKERCHICK

has anyone actually worked out how much space every person in Britain would have if the amount of land in Britain was divided by the number of people??

why I am asking is if SHTF and people had to get out of the cities and towns etc, and started bugging out, hiding/living in the country side etc, well you wouldn't really be hiding, as prob someone else will be only a matter of feet away from you.

And as pineapple said, everyone will be targeting the obvious places to fin food, and to hide/shelter

mardatha

Scotland would have to be separate CTC, cos we are much more empty and would mess up the figures. But also much harder to live off the land here, and some areas close to impossible. Somewhere there are figures of pop per sq mile (or km or whatever hell it is now).
We had huge skeins of geese going over south last week, the old folk here say that means cold weather in a fortnight. So if the geese are right then it will get colder here next week.
Am actually wondering if people's health would improve if we all did have to live more off the land and more simply. Maybe soup and home made bread and less junk would see an improvement??
edited to add - we have a growing prob of sheep rustling here.

craigywv

mardatha wrote: »

Scotland would have to be separate CTC, cos we are much more empty and would mess up the figures. But also much harder to live off the land here, and some areas close to impossible. Somewhere there are figures of pop per sq mile (or km or whatever hell it is now).
We had huge skeins of geese going over south last week, the old folk here say that means cold weather in a fortnight. So if the geese are right then it will get colder here next week.
Am actually wondering if people's health would improve if we all did have to live more off the land and more simply. Maybe soup and home made bread and less junk would see an improvement??
edited to add - we have a growing prob of sheep rustling here.

so do we MAR it only came onto the news in past few weeks the number of cattle/sheep that has been stolen both north and south of the border,one farmer whos land lies over both borders said he living in fear for his cattle as he getting it from both sides of the border. most being done in broad daylight.

mardatha

Farmers here set up a FarmWatch thing, any strange cars or vans they take the number and description. But in nearly 25 yrs in this village I think I've seen the polis only twice. Probly farmers will know to accidentally fire the shotgun or oops who let the dogs out

COOLTRIKERCHICK

good point, maybe it might be worth working it out country by country..

It was on our news in wales a few months back about sheep rustling... Just goes to show that this traceability of food, in our food chain is a load of poo, because all these stolen livestock end up being slaughtered, and that is a hell of a lot of paperwork to fiddle;)




EDIT.. ok the size of wales is 20.762km2 and the population is 3'063456

can anyone work the amount of land per person in plain English please

mardatha

On Wiki it tells you. For Scotland it says:
Scotland has a population of 5,295,000 (first results of 2011 Census).
Covering an area of 78,782 square kilometres (30,418 sq mi), Scotland has a population density of 67.2 /km2 (174 /sq mi). Around 70% of the country's population live in the Central Lowlands.
The Highlands of Scotland and the island group of Eilean Siar have the lowest population densities at 9 /km2 (23 /sq mi).
Ooooh just found that my area has 24 bodies per sq km. I don't know how to convert that to miles.

thriftwizard

There are a number of two-legged foxes about down here - there's always been a spot of poultry-rustling & valuable, show-quality birds (and anything pugnacious) needs to be well locked up at night. But now they're nicking ex-batts & hybrids, which means people are getting desperate; these birds can be bought easily for less than a pound each, at day-old or at the end of their economic laying cycle, and there's no eating on them. That's not what they're useful to us for.

One or two other things that make me think there's a LOT of quiet desperation already going on in our apparently-prosperous corner of this green & pleasant land; one of the local apple trees on public land was completely stripped of its crop one night recently. It's a dark red apple with pink-tinged flesh (possible a Tom Putt) but there they were one night, utterly gone the next morning! Slap bang in the middle of town, and no-one saw or heard a thing. What a risk to take, and what a lot of hard work, for apples, a good few of which won't have been saleable. And they are free for the taking anyway, if you ask permission! It all speaks to me of people who don't know what they're doing, grabbing things they think are edible or saleable & more than likely just wasting them when they realise they're not.

And one of our neighbours generally shares a sack of spuds with us every couple of weeks; there are fewer of them but they are veggies so go through (even) more per head. But now they are buying them off me spud by spud, and counting out pennies to do so. I don't mind at all, but am worried for them.

Going out foraging this afternoon, before cleaning out my chicken shed; I wonder if there'll be more people out there scrumping than there have been for the last 10 years or so?

mardatha

Wow that's a bit of an eye-opener thiftwiz.