Preparedness for when

daz378

because of the problem with contactless payments... they are now selling metal wallets

sorryImoved

Just a thought. It's all very well to stock up on canned goods and dried beans and fruits but lets look back at WWII. What everyone really missed was butter, meat and chocolates or sweets. There are canned butter, freeze dried and canned meats, coffee, tea and items like cocoa powder that we should have supplies of. The trade value of these items make them valuable. If shortages occur please make sure that some of your supplies are items that you can sell or trade to keep your family fed. What other foods were hard to come by then?

VJsmum

http://www.mymysterycastle.com/photo-gallery/

We once visited this house in Arizona - amazing (sorry, didnt intend to turn this into a "places I've visited" diary

GreyQueen

armyknife wrote: »

Till one get a serious illness and suddenly all that hi-tech, cutting edge medical science and modern medicines looks rather handy.

I'm not knocking you or the programme, but it's a past time, how we got to where we are and it's not everything we need for life.

For instance probably one in three or four of us wouldn't have made it 16 years old.

Morning all.

Intersting and valid point, armyknife.

The Tudor period is generally accepted as being 1485-1603.

Interestingly, my Dad's researches into our (extended) family history has got back as far as the start of the 1600s. Realistically, we can't get back much further as the record-keeping for commoners like ourselves just isn't there.

In terms of health, life expectancy is used as a way of showing how far we've advanced from the Bad Old Days. If you pay attention, you'll hear a lot of nonsense about there being incredibly low life expectancies (30-40 years only) as little as 100 years ago. This is caused by ignorance, as in factoring infant deaths to the average, thus killing off the majority of people before early middle age.

In the early 1600s, tail end of the Tudor period, my relatives were dying in their early eighties and early nineties. In the twenty-first century, my relatives are also dying in their early eighties and early nineties.

So, in terms of health, if you factor out infant and child mortality due to communicable diseases now conquered or innoculated against, remove those female ancestors who died at, or shortly after childbirth, and you have a net gain in life expectancy of exactly zilch.

If you look at old records inc newspaper reports, you'll see a lot of people dying in accidents with horses and carts. Sometimes by being extremely drunk and being run over by their own cart, sometimes caused by accidents, such as the head injury from a horse-kick which killed one of my great-grandads at work in 1937. Very fit man, probably wired to live another 15-20 years but died after a few days in a coma aged 67. Perhaps modern medicine could have saved him whereas late-1930s medicine couldn't.

Most of the improvements in health aren't specifically attributable to medicine but can be squarely laid at the door of proper plumbing, sewage disposal and understanding about germs.

Given that even in the modern world, there seem to be plenty of people too lazy and ignorant to wash their hands after using the lavatory, can you imagine what would happen if, post SHTF, sanitation broke down? And break down it would.

You wouldn't need to wait for howling hordes of looters on motorcycles to come attack your homestead, or slow starvation as you ate your way through your stocks, you'd be in far more peril from water-borne diseases.

mardatha

armyknife wrote: »

Till one get a serious illness and suddenly all that hi-tech, cutting edge medical science and modern medicines looks rather handy.
I'm not knocking you or the programme, but it's a past time, how we got to where we are and it's not everything we need for life.
For instance probably one in three or four of us wouldn't have made it 16 years old.

I know pet, that's why it's so enjoyable. Because we aren't in it, just interested spectators

mardatha

One interesting thing I came across in another forum was this --
QUOTE
Going back further horses did even less damage than small tractors.!!!!!!. Modern farming is not kind to the soil if done when it is too wet and there are less and less people involved who understand this and more accountant type managers who push on regardless of conditions.For my daughters higher geography 10 years ago i was able to show her gully erosion in neighbouring fields after late autumn potato harvesting and take photos as evidence.
UNQUOTE
This was posted by a farmer up north. Wonder if one day we might have to be more self sufficient in the UK and suddenly find it not working like it did in wartime?

GreyQueen

Soil impaction is a big problem, Mar, one which isn't often talked about outside alternative/ permaculture circles. Tractors and other ag equipment are just enormous these days.

Before my lottie was mine, it was derelict for several years. Just rough grass. The lowest part was used as a carpark by the old boy who had the plot next door (he even continued to do this when I had a shed up and had started cultivation, until I Had Words. Polite but firm words, btw).

As a result, the soil down there was very compact and took a lot of freeing up. And even today, there are still a few people using a single heavy horse, in traces, to drag tree trunks out of hilly forested areas where tractors cannot go, or would cause too much damage.

AnimalTribe

Hi
I’ve been reading this thread for a while on and off. I’ve found it very interesting and informative. I started reading at post 1, but still haven’t gotten through to the end. I hope it’s OK if I join anyway (even if I’m not up-to-date on the discussion).
I am mainly preparing for winter and for a probable reduction in income.
Apologies in advance if posts come out wrongly, but I've never posted to a forum before.

the_cake

Welcome AnimalTribe! The more the merrier - we all help each other by pooling ideas and having a laugh along the way (where possible) ...

pineapple

sorryImoved wrote: »

Just a thought. It's all very well to stock up on canned goods and dried beans and fruits but lets look back at WWII. What everyone really missed was butter, meat and chocolates or sweets.

Are you kidding me? Store chocolate and sweets?
Yes it makes sense but I just don't have the willpower