Preparedness for when

maryb

I am always astonished that fleas and lice don't bother people much these days when you look at how dirty trains, tubes and buses are. I think if TSHTF so that people couldn't use hoovers on a regular basis we would pretty soon all be scratching

EEEW just thinking about it makes me itchy

Actually, of course, lice are a regular problem if you have children. But they are relatively easy to deal with if you have a fine tooth comb and use it regularly. My two used to have said comb raked through hair with conditioner on every bath time regardless and we never had a problem despite regular letters home about an occurrence in the class. Fleas now.... shudders!

Karmacat

GreyQueen wrote: »

Say you buy 10 bottles of 2 litre still water in the supermarket today. 17p each so outlay £1.70. You put them somewhere out of the light and not standing on a concrete floor. You keep them out of the light so they don't grow algae and off the concrete because you know concrete can degrade plastic when in physical contact.

You are now a prepper because you have covered a short-term loss of the most vital resource for the survival of a human bean. And you're probably better prepared than any 9 in 10 randomly-selected individuals.

Say that you also keep up with the laundry, wash the dishes before bed, and fill the kettle. You wake up with no water supply. It happens randomly. You aren't in a kitchen pickle and you still get to have your cuppa. Preptastic. You really wouldn't want to meet me without my morning caffeine fix.

Prepping is commonsense, really, and a lot of it relates to good housekeeping, good husbandry, gardening, make-do-and-mending. All very much with the purview of us Old-Stylers.

nuatha wrote: »

And that's one of the best descriptions of prepping I've seen.

I thought so too. Absolutely brilliant, thank you GQ.

[Deleted User]

DawnW wrote: »

and anyone can keep a bit of stored food in reserve for small shtf scenarios such as being poorly and not able to get to the shops for a few days, or bad weather disrupting supplies.

Agreed.

About £20 should cover it, if you choose carefully, and buy from a low cost store, such as Aldi or Lidl.

Also, keep an eye open for special offers, such as BOGOF, and large discount temporary offers.

One of my current favourites is ASDA Bubble and Squeak, instant mash, at 60p a packet, or 2 packets for 80p.

One packet will fill you up and, because it's instant, it doesn't use much energy to prepare.

This is the secret to coping without mains energy. Stock foods that can be prepared with little or no cooking.

A small bottled gas stove or similar, the kind you use for camping, is great so that you can still have a cuppa if there is a power cut, too. These things aren't hard, or expensive

Agreed again.

A trip to B&M Bargains will get you a stove and 4 gas canisters (about 5 hours and 15 minutes on full power - see my next post) for £13.

jk0

This might tickle you guys:

http://www.landlordzone.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?61472-My-landlord-says-that-garden-vegetables-belong-to-him

(Note the date of posting.)

[Deleted User]

All this talk of gas stoves, got me wondering, how much water can you actually boil, using one gas cannister, on a B&M Bargains stove?

This is what I did.

Firstly, I weighed a gas cannister. It weighed 289g.

Next, I put it in the stove, lit it on full power, and ran it for exactly 5 minutes.

Then I weighed it again. It weighed 275g.

So, that's 14g for 5 minutes (300 seconds) of burning.

I then placed exactly 1 Litre of tap water, into a 2 Litre B&M, whistling aluminium camping kettle.


I placed the kettle on the stove, turned the stove on at full power, and timed it until it whistled.

This took 6 minutes and 20 seconds. That, if my maths is correct, is 380 seconds.

I calculate that to be (to 2 decimal places) 17.73g of gas.

A full cannister contains 220g of gas.

Therefore, one cannister should last for 12.41 - 1 Litre kettles full.

Allowing for a fall in pressure toward empty, let's call it 11.

NB I chose 1 Litre of water, on the grounds it should be enough to prepare a Pot Noodle/Cup Soup/packet of instant mash, with enough left to make a brew.

EDIT: Updated my figures, as I just realised I was using the wrong stove, of my two.

Re-ran the test, and these figures are now for the Outdoor Essentials, 2.3Kw stove, from B&M Bargains.

Si_Clist

maryb wrote: »

Actually, of course, lice are a regular problem if you have children. But they are relatively easy to deal with if you have a fine tooth comb and use it regularly. My two used to have said comb raked through hair with conditioner on every bath time regardless and we never had a problem despite regular letters home about an occurrence in the class.

Do they still have Nitty Norah The Head Explorer visiting all the schools? Or was that infringing the pupils' civil liberties or somesuch thing ...?

Frugalsod

I am looking at wood burning stoves for a bad SHTF situation, plus camping, as wood for burning would be far more prevalent than gas cylinders but I am also planning on getting a Jetboil stove as they are small compact and there may be times when you cannot get wood or do not want any smoke. A lot of the small gas stoves take around 5-6 minutes to boil from what I have seen of youtube reviews of stoves whether it is gas or wood that is burned. Some can take as long as 10 minutes to boil.

Longer term I am also looking at combining with a wonder bag or a solar cooker. The more options you have the better you are.

[Deleted User]

Depends how much water you are boiling, Frugalsod.

As in my earlier post, my Outdoor Essentials stove, from B&M Bargains, took 6 minutes and 20 seconds to boil 1 Litre, but that was in an aluminium kettle, and indoors.

Using an open topped vessel (eg. a pan or mess tin) outdoors, is obviously going to take longer.

Also, boiling speed isn't always the first priority.

For backpacking, size, weight and fuel efficiency are going to be paramount.

The Outdoor Essentials stove would be a definite non-starter, for size alone.

This stove may not have all the features (although it does come with built in ignition), but it is very small (just 2.36" x 2.99" x 1.57"), very light, and powerful.



On the downside, the cartridges are rather on the heavy side.

Ultimately, like so many things in life, it's a case of "you pays your money and you takes your choice".

elona

Mardatha

I feel itchy now :eek:

I agree with you that flu can be much more dangerous than people realise especially a new variant.

I am still feeling smug from when next door had water turned off for a repair and ours went off as well. The look on DH's face when I calmly went to garage, filled kettle from two litre bottle of water stored there and made a cup of tea was priceless.

My prepping is clothes related at the moment as I have lost a stone and want to lose a lot more. As I am nearly a dress size down I have been looking for offers on trousers and tops.

Managed to get a pair of black trousers and a pair of navy ones on sale and four tops from the market in York that were originally big brand names for £3 each so very pleased.

maryb

Si_Clist wrote: »

Do they still have Nitty Norah The Head Explorer visiting all the schools? Or was that infringing the pupils' civil liberties or somesuch thing ...?

Terribly bad for the little darlings' self esteem, you know. I think they phased them out a long time ago. There was a time in the 1960s when even low wage families were for the most part sufficiently well housed and social pressure to be respectable was so strong that vermin wasn't the problem it had been in the 1930s. And new insecticides seemed the answer for those rare cases that did crop up. Trouble is, those insecticides no longer work as well as they used to.

I never liked the idea of dousing my girls's heads in organophosphates (or something equally nasty) anyway. Fine tooth comb and regular attention was my approach, prevention being better than cure. Short hair or tight plaits also helps. And good handwashing habits to prevent threadworms. In fact, good old fashioned cleanliness goes a long way

But it's a myth used to console middle class parents that lice like clean hair. They're not fussy, clean or dirty.