Preparedness for when

Butterfly_Brain

This is worrying if you live in a fracking area

http://www.wellsjournal.co.uk/Insurance-shock-Wells-home-owners/story-20659325-detail/story.html

[Deleted User]

Mrs MH lots of strong black plastic sacks, some cat litter some sawdust/wood shavings, a couple of buckets and a secure leakfree plastic barrel to store full bags in outdoors should deal with the problem. Some moist toilet tissues, anti bac hand gel and disinfectant to keep the smell down too.

GreyQueen

mrsmortenharket wrote: »

Me too.

I've got some water, but will get some more. And will also get food that can be eaten straight from the tin as it is or just gently warmed up.

Erm, what to do about toileting if there was no water?

Calories do fall out of biscuits if they're broken GreyQueen! This is what I always tell myself. My weighing scales don't listen though...!

I'm glad you have confirmed the Biscuit Hypothesis, Mrs MH.

Re matters of the toiletry nature, not the nicest of subjects but it will quickly become an Isshew.

Basically you need to separate the liquids from the solids. Pee can be collected in bottles and taken away to be poured away discreetly. A funnel is a big assist to us ladies and if you haven't come across a She-Wee, then you must google one without delay.

Re the solids, not so easy and needs to be handled carefully (eww!) to avoid a health crisis. If you have a garden, you could look at digging a hole to bury the solids, perhaps semi-premantantly with a little privy-shed with a plank with a hole in it. Something like ashes or sawdust to chuck a scoop down afterwards to cut odour and flies.

Indoors, better to work with a non-flushing WC rather than ram it with the number twos and the work out you can't get it away.

One technique is to bail the water out until there is just enough to preserve the airlock on the bend (to stop stinks coming back up). Then line the WC pan with several layers of plastic bags (rubble sacks are good for this) and put in a quantity of cat litter. Do your solids, and pooper-scooper into doggy poo bags and seal somewhere like a lidded bucket until you can get them off-site.

Don't forget to have plenty of hand-sanitiser gel to keep your hands as clean as possible.

Not a terribly nice subject and apologies for anyone having their tea right now, but worth thinking of and assembling the bits, perhaps in a large lidded bucket ready to deploy in earnest when necessary.

You can also make temp loos with huge buckets with plastic WC seats balanced on them. Lots of stuff on the internet about this.

I've considered that if I had a home with a garden, I'd've bodged up a privy shed already. Mum grew up with this method in the countryside in the 40s and 50s. The shed was moved over the newly-dug privy hole and the old one filled in behind it.

She recalls that garden as growing fantastic gooseberries, btw.

jk0

mrsmortenharket wrote: »

Me too.

I've got some water, but will get some more. And will also get food that can be eaten straight from the tin as it is or just gently warmed up.

Erm, what to do about toileting if there was no water?

...!

Garden water butt & bucket to decant into WC tank.

I still intend to put some water butts higher up so that they can use gravity to fill up the downstairs loo cistern. However that job will only get done when all my other jobs are done. (Never basically.)

anika

:rotfl::rotfl: you all make me laugh so much!! I am almost looking forward to the day when I can say...I know how to do it! I have visions of me going into the loft room, opening the window in dead of night and hurling my little black sack as far as it will go, like one of those highland shot putters!! Well I did what BB suggested and have made a start with bottled water, tinned potatoes and tomatoes and a few basics, and found how much you can get for a small amount of money, it really mounts up without really trying!

Some of your posts are sending me back to my days spent listening to my nan and how they coped, not only during the war, but in their early lives and they were pretty much the same. There was nothing around then. Gosh we have been so spoiled.

Sorry for my warped sense of humour GQ I only hope I have it when and if the time comes:(

I have little to contribute but am really hooked on your posts, keep at it. :T:T. I am learning slowly.

charlies-aunt

If the SHTF, we'll be "sitting pretty" as long as we have water to flush with as we aren't on mains drainage - modern life hasn't arrived in our neck of the woods yet the bathroom and kitchen drains feed into a soak-away pit which retains the solids and siphons off the liquid into a large land drain.

GreyQueen

anika, I'm already encountering people whose idea of appropriate waste management is to hurl their child's soiled disposable nappies out the window and into their back garden, or out the window of their tower flat and into the communal grassy areas below. Dirty beggars.

And this is with functioning waste collection services! We shall soon be back to the days of the chamber pot and yelling Gardiloo! as we empty the slops out of the windows.

It is truly amazing how a little-but-often attitude to adding supplies into the preps quickly builds a useful storecupboard. My monthly housekeeping spends, which includes running an inventory in excess of 12 months' supply of many items, comes in around the £40-£60 mark, and I am certainly not living on bread and gruel.

Today, I'm having chili con carne (mince was half price in Liddly weekend before last) and steamed potatoes and carrots.

One surprising outcome of prepping is that it has made me tidier and better organised. Have an incredibly small flat and it isn't possible to dedicate a cupboard or a room to storage so stuff is in some surprising places, kept track of by an inventory in a notebook with the entries in pencil. The result is that I know what I have and where I have it, where and when I bought it and what I paid for it.*

And nothing shows 'on the outside' to a casual visitor; I've tried to look at my home from the outsider's POV and keep things as normal looking as possible. You can be a nutjob as long as it doesn't compromise your long-term prospects of survival by getting you Talked About as the person with all the (insert item of choice).

* Those Campo Largo red kidney beans from Liddly were 16p in 2012 and the same things are now 25p (presently reduced to 23p). And they say inflation is..............? :rotfl:

[Deleted User]

GreyQueen wrote: »

I think most people could recognise a dandelion

Or a nettle.

Or a field mushroom.

[Deleted User]

D&#8517 wrote: »

now I have sawfly on me gooseberries..

Have you seen your doctor?

Frugalsod

Butterfly_Brain wrote: »

This is worrying if you live in a fracking area

http://www.wellsjournal.co.uk/Insurance-shock-Wells-home-owners/story-20659325-detail/story.html

That is the least of the problems with fracking. Fracking in the US uses lots of water and many towns in Texas now have to use trucks to bring their water in because the aquifers are drained dry. Then towns in Pennsylvania have had their roads churned to mush by the 80 000 lb trucks. Leaving them with huge bills to rebuild the roads. Also many areas reporting medical problems from the toxic chemicals dumped in the spill pools being carried in the air towards the citizens causing a myriad of health problems. Now that last one might not be a problem in the UK as the companies are unlikely to get a complete exemption from any health and safety laws like they have in the US. Though the wells have an appalling decrease in productivity falling by 70% after the first year. So they need to drill wells constantly to keep up production, using more water. So hose pipe bans will become the norm even in the North West.