Preparedness for when

Butterfly_Brain

pineapple wrote: »

Yesterday I knocked over a lamp and the CFL bulb broke. I dimly remembered you had to be careful with disposal but then (a bit late in the day and after the family dog had run round the area) I read the official advice.
While the mercury content is tiny and the risk minimal the following is advised
Turn off any central heating (wonder if you have to 'turn off' the real fire too? :huh:)
Open doors and windows and vacate for 10-15 minutes
On return don nuclear bio suit and gloves
Clean up solid floors with damp cloth.
Clean carpeted area with sticky tape.
Do not use a dustpan and brush or a vacuum.
Bag all items and take to the designated council refuse area.

I only lied about the bio suit - the rest is true!
We have had no choice but to allow these things into our homes. :mad: Progress?

That is why we have changed all our bulbs over to LED pineapple, more expensive, but much safer

2tonsils

Thinking about the GMO's that may well be taking over in the future....as preppers it might be worth keeping stocks of non GMO seeds for food and herbs. I think they could probably be frozen if the preservation of them is a problem, or we could buy ones that had a long sell by date on them. What do you think?

Things felt a bit better here in Greece when we arrived back in February. People seemed a bit more optimistic about the future and a bit more able to cope. They were very pleased to see us back again and even more pleased when we started doing work on the house again.

Then the elections came along a couple of weeks ago with a few shocks for the system. Yesterday the government suddenly announced that parliament was shutting early for the summer break....and closed immediately. The Troika are not pleased as it means the things they wanted discussed and done may not get done at all.

There is also going to be a government reshuffle, but the man responsible for collecting taxes here resigned today...much to the horror of the IMF and EU....who will not pay the next installment of the bail out now. (It was due next week).. Meanwhile the leader of the Syriza party will not get his wish to call an early election after the shambles of the local and EU elections.

This week I have had two friends tell me they have worked for a month and have not been paid. They are torn between continuing in the hope of being paid eventually or looking for another job so they can pay their bills and feed their families.

Reports say that arrivals in Corfu have gone up, but locals and business owners are all asking where the people are. You can still park in Corfu town....a true gauge of how busy it is. When busy they are all tripple parked and the police are out in force giving out tickets at 100 euros a time.

Prices seem to be much the same but our electric bill has gone down, as did the water bill for last year. The property tax has been removed from the electric bill as many people couldn't pay and got cut off in the winter. It is now going onto personal tax bills and will be in six installments for this year. I am wondering if they have done that because the tax office can take money directly from your bank account if you owe taxes....or take your property and sell it to raise money to pay them. Am I suspicious? Of course I am!
Other than that , we will wait and see what comes next.......

jk0

I had an odd thing happen this morning:

The RCD in the consumer unit tripped, so all the sockets went off. (This is the same RCD that didn't trip at all when I got a shock from my worn extension lead a few years ago.. bloody thing.)

Now, fortunately this only happened about an hour before I got up, so nothing was spoilt or defrosted.

However, I have been musing about if this happened soon after I went to bed, or even was on holiday.

Has anyone considered putting their fridge/freezer on a circuit that doesn't trip?

2tonsils

Just a quick message... I wondered if you were all aware of the weather warnings for the UK for this weekend?. Some of my sources are amateur forecasters but they have been telling me about this weekend's weather for the Uk for a while now. The Express have gone overboard of course, but I do think you might need to be prepared. If the worst doesn't happen you can just enjoy your tea and chocolate and chuckle to yourself...


http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/480038/Shock-UK-weather-warning-Tornadoes-hail-thunderstorms-and-lightning-to-ravage-Britain?fb_action_ids=10204038312703952&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_ref=s%3DshowShareBarUI%3Ap%3Dfacebook-like&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%5B887962821218600%5D&action_type_map=%5B%22og.recommends%22%5D&action_ref_map=%5B%22s%3DshowShareBarUI%3Ap%3Dfacebook-like%22%5D

RAS

2tonsils wrote: »

Thinking about the GMO's that may well be taking over in the future....as preppers it might be worth keeping stocks of non GMO seeds for food and herbs. I think they could probably be frozen if the preservation of them is a problem, or we could buy ones that had a long sell by date on them. What do you think?

With my seed savers hat on.........

1. There are certain foods which are self pollinating and would be easy to save and keep free from GMO - French beans, most tomatoes and lettuce in particular. There are also good disease resistant tubers like Sarpo potatoes.

2. There are some seeds that are largely self pollinating and could be OK like peas and a few that are supposedly easy to protect and hand pollinate like the curcubits.

3. Then there are the wind pollinated crops like maize, beets, wheat, barley, rice and oats which it would be almost impossible protect from cross-fertilisation by random GMO genes. Note that most staples are in this category. Beet pollen has been found in the middle of the Channel so the isolation distances are substantial.

Now think about seed that GMO companies most want to sell?

With respect to keeping seed live I can report that I have grown out quite a few old seeds this year.

I had lots of old packets of commercial and home saved seed so though I would see how much I could get to grow out and bin failures.

Tomatoes - 12 varieties tried and 9 germinated although a couple only produced one plant. This included sealed foil pack commercial seed from 2003 but mainly home saved seed that is as old or even older.

French beans - still on with this but four of the five lots of very old seed germinated and the fifth might yet. Soaked for two hours in cold water. Laid on wet kitchen towel and covered with wet towel, sealed in a small box. Washed every few days to prevent slime developing. Took from 7 - 12 days to germinate. One variety was 100% germination from seed at least 7 years old.

Runner beans as above but cannot remember when I saved the seed.

Curcubits. Set 3-8 seeds of 12 varieties set with hope of getting 2 plants from some. Complete failure of one variety and one less than brilliant plant from another which now seems to be coming away. Otherwise 2-5 plants from each variety. Some of the seed was 2011 but most was 2009 - all bar one were opened packs.

On the other hand I find maize seed does not last beyond 2 years.

Drying down further and freezing seed does enable you to save bulk supplies but that relies on the appropriate power supplies.

2tonsils

Here is a more dramatic one.... I love weather extremes! http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/480038/Shock-UK-weather-warning-Tornadoes-hail-thunderstorms-and-lightning-to-ravage-Britain?fb_action_ids=10204038312703952&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_ref=s%3DshowShareBarUI%3Ap%3Dfacebook-like&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%5B887962821218600%5D&action_type_map=%5B%22og.recommends%22%5D&action_ref_map=%5B%22s%3DshowShareBarUI%3Ap%3Dfacebook-like%22%5D

Frugalsod

2tonsils wrote: »

Here is a more dramatic one.... I love weather extremes! http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/480038/Shock-UK-weather-warning-Tornadoes-hail-thunderstorms-and-lightning-to-ravage-Britain?fb_action_ids=10204038312703952&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_ref=s%3DshowShareBarUI%3Ap%3Dfacebook-like&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%5B887962821218600%5D&action_type_map=%5B%22og.recommends%22%5D&action_ref_map=%5B%22s%3DshowShareBarUI%3Ap%3Dfacebook-like%22%5D

Just the sort of weather we should expect as a result of climate change.

Though I think that it hailstorms could impact food prices later in the year if it devastates crops. So maybe bulk buy now?

Frugalsod

I did find this today and thought that some here might be prepping for these events.

http://gearmoose.com/the-10-best-apocalypse-survival-vehicles/

maryb

nuatha wrote: »

You're always welcome to ask questions.
First things first, the estimate is that 15,000 UK computers are affected - I know its getting a huge amount of publicity but its not a lot of affected systems.
Gameover Zeus relies on an email attachment or driveby download to infect your computer. It doesn't infect your data files or BIOS therefore a format, reinstall and reinstate documents would work.

There are links to removal tools on http://www.getsafeonline.org/nca/

What I do is setup a computer with all the software I plan to use on that system and then create a disc image of the system. Instead of reinstalling windows and then all the other software, I restore the disc image its a lot faster - and therefore I take fewer shortcuts. I then backup the documents partition regularly.

Hopefully this helps, if anything isn't clear, please feel free to ask.

Been busy today so only just logged on - sorry not to have replied before. That's really helpful, thank you so much

2tonsils

all very well, those vehicles, but my little 50 cc scooter and 800cc car will go a lot further when the petrol is in short supply...after that, I am fit enough to walk....or run.....