Preparedness for when

elaine241

Hello All

Just catching up as usual! Prepping wise I'm in cold winter seige mentality and have bought new duvets, mattress protectors and dug out all the blankets and fleeces.
I'm swapping repairing a friends drainage ( we run a groudworks company) with her making warm blinds for my kitchen. I cant sew very well but I'm going to have a go at the equivalent of Canadian window quilts for some of my less public windows.
Re preps I really need to do an inventory as all summer I have been squirrelling stuff away without keeping track.
Reading what people think as essential re preps and things omitted (herbs &spices) I must say for myself booze especially wine and lots of it is essential!!! Ok not neccessary for survival but for myself at the end of a busy day "surviving" or stressfull day re news or local SHTF, disappearing in several large glasses would be one way of coping or forgetting! Some may prefer home grown "weed" as a way of relaxing but home made wine or sloe vodka etc would be my choice of poison! ( or both if really bad!!!LOL) I think people who are trying to survive would need some form of escape to forget whats going on around them otherwise they would never relax and would probably over a longer period suffer mental and physical problems due to lack of sleep or periods of relaxation. Ok some may relax via reading, music etc but its wine all the way for me!!:rotfl:

[Deleted User]

marmiterulesok wrote: »

I hope that she's forgiven you now.

The time I'm going to really need her forgiveness, is when she gets back from her week of imprisonment, aka the cattery.

How do you go about using bleach to sterilise water? It sounds rather dangerous...

On the contrary, bleach is one of the safest substances for purifying water.

Although it causes burns, if consumed neat, it isn't actually poisonous.

Also, unlike many other substances, it decomposes into water and a salt.

To purify water, add unscented bleach, at the rate of 1/4 teaspoon (1.25ml) per gallon, or 1.5 teaspoons (7.5ml) per 25 litres.

For cloudy water, double the dose.

After about 30 minutes, smell it.

If you can detect a faint smell of bleach, job done.

If you can't smell the bleach, repeat the treatment.

Another handy product for water purification (which also has a number of other survival uses) is Potassium permanganate crystals.

fuddle

Cool posts Lavandula Rosemary you've a calm and sensible approach to prepping. If you come across as an a r s e sometimes, well, you're in good company. I've had a few of those moments myself.

[Deleted User]

marmiterulesok wrote: »

and noticed that there were a few comments about how some/a lot of suggestions were purely common sense, implying that the book didn't have much to say. What do you think?

Having read both his books (both Wilderness and Urban), cover to cover, I can tell you they are mines of information.

This guy spent 26 years with the Regiment, so what he doesn't know about survival, isn't worth knowing.

nuatha

elaine241 wrote: »

Reading what people think as essential re preps and things omitted (herbs &spices) I must say for myself booze especially wine and lots of it is essential!!! Ok not neccessary for survival but for myself at the end of a busy day "surviving" or stressfull day re news or local SHTF, disappearing in several large glasses would be one way of coping or forgetting! Some may prefer home grown "weed" as a way of relaxing but home made wine or sloe vodka etc would be my choice of poison! ( or both if really bad!!!LOL) I think people who are trying to survive would need some form of escape to forget whats going on around them otherwise they would never relax and would probably over a longer period suffer mental and physical problems due to lack of sleep or periods of relaxation. Ok some may relax via reading, music etc but its wine all the way for me!!:rotfl:

The only reason I don't consider booze as part of the preps is that we tend to have a surplus. Apart from having a friend who's a serious brew-witch (I haven't finished last years mead gift but had another 24 litres delivered last month) alongside some of the best country wines I've ever tasted. I've had a number of contracts that bonus delivered as bottles of spirits or cases of wine. The tipplearium is embarrassingly well stocked.
That a lot of this has happened at a time when I'm less able to drink (far too many hospital dashes over the last few years, thankfully this has now eased) has added to the build up.

Originally Posted by marmiterulesok View Post
and noticed that there were a few comments about how some/a lot of suggestions were purely common sense, implying that the book didn't have much to say. What do you think?

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

Having read both his books (both Wilderness and Urban), cover to cover, I can tell you they are mines of information.

This guy spent 26 years with the Regiment, so what he doesn't know about survival, isn't worth knowing.

His SAS service is almost irrelevant, though its genuine and shows throughout his books and courses. A lot of what he says is common sense and some of it is blindingly obvious - once he's pointed it out to you.
The only books I rate above them are Seymour's Self Sufficiency and Mabey's Food For Free. Which are different aspects of prepping/survivalism

There's been an explosion of books in this field, some are a complete waste of time, some are brilliant and there'll be better books out there than the four referenced here, but these have been around long enough to garner fairly widespread respect, they are at least worth checking out of the library. What I'd watch out for are US based books, its a very different country and set of cultures.

Nellie_the_Viking

[QUOTE=ivyleaf;6677257
My OH bought us both a pair of Yak-Trax "Professional" a couple of winters ago, but we didn't use them at all - I was physically unable to get mine onto my boots although they were theoretically the right size, (though my rather feeble muscles due to M.E. currently worse than GQ's didn't help, of course).

Add to that that you need to be sitting down and "cross one leg over the other knee" to put them on anyway, plus of course they need to be removed before going indoors or you'll slip up,how on earth are you supposed to manage when going in and out of shops etc? They ended up back in their boxes.
[/QUOTE]



I've had a pair of Yax-Trak Professionals for years and I promise that practice makes perfect at putting them on.....without having to cross one leg over the other.


They've seen me through several winter trips in arctic Norway, and Germany where I've skittered up and down hills in them like a mountain goat, but most came into their own on a visit to my sister when our uphill route back to her house proved to be sheet ice. We wore one each and "slid" our way up the hill. They've also seen me safely to the supermarket in the years when the pavements have iced up for long periods.


I find that if you jump up and down a bit on the grills/mats on the entry to shops you get off enough water and ice to make it safe to wear them into the shop without having to take them off. You get weird looks, but I'll settle for weird looks to stay on my feet on the ice. I love my Yak-Trax, and along with my charged head torch and spare batteries are one of the easiest to locate items I own.

GreyQueen

Tipplearium! I love it! Consider it stolen.

I own and rate Seymour's Self-Sufficiency and also Food For Free by Mabey. I recall that in the 80s you couldn't go into any household with the slightest tendancies towards greenery/ hippiedom/ alternative lifestyles and not see Food For Free.

The best place to store knowledge is between your ears, allied to practised hands, but books are a great starting point, and a resource for the less commonly-needed bits of info.

I agree about the US books. I figure I don't need to know how to ID poison oak, poison sumac and poison ivy (or was that the rock star?). And a lot of stuff about guns will be of limited application to someone who hasn't got one and isn't likely to get one.

I did pause today and notice that a flowerbed near here (well, scruffy bit of ground nearby which is nominally a flowerbed, without any flowers), has grown a crop of weeds all of the same type.

I recognise that beggar - deadly nightshade. Not good. It turns up occasionally on the allotment and is uprooted in double time. I recall be shown this as a young kid learning to garden with Dad and told never to eat its berries and to always treat it with caution.

nuatha

GreyQueen wrote: »

Tipplearium! I love it! Consider it stolen.

Consider it a gift
It was coined when a group of us bugged out at the millennial new year, the supplies included an huge quantity of alcohol (all safely disposed of before returning to civilisation 5 days into the new century.

I own and rate Seymour's Self-Sufficiency and also Food For Free by Mabey. I recall that in the 80s you couldn't go into any household with the slightest tendancies towards greenery/ hippiedom/ alternative lifestyles and not see Food For Free.

The best place to store knowledge is between your ears, allied to practised hands, but books are a great starting point, and a resource for the less commonly-needed bits of info.

I fully agree.
One of the joys of the Seymour is that it contains enough basics about just about everything to prompt recall of whatever else I know on the subject. Though wherever possible I'd try to put the between the ears stuff into practise and teach my hands the same knowledge.

I did pause today and notice that a flowerbed near here (well, scruffy bit of ground nearby which is nominally a flowerbed, without any flowers), has grown a crop of weeds all of the same type.

I recognise that beggar - deadly nightshade. Not good. It turns up occasionally on the allotment and is uprooted in double time. I recall be shown this as a young kid learning to garden with Dad and told never to eat its berries and to always treat it with caution.

There are uses though being able to identify it will save lives, though it has been used to the opposite effect on invading Danes.

Butterfly_Brain

I picked up a copy of !!!!!! Sawbridge's curing and smoking book and his preserving book plus an old Marguerite Patten every day cookbook in the chazzer today........... all three for £1:j:j:j

I too have the excellent John Seymour complete book of self sufficiency and two of Richard Mabey's books

Perplexed_Pineapple

Preps carrying on here in a quiet way. Have added some 25L water cans to the supplies. Of course booze is another way of storing water with built in preservatives :rotfl:
Thinking about hygiene and toilet doors and so on, I don't think there is any point being too obsessive about this stuff, as others have said toilets are regularly cleaned and other less obvious places are probably worse. What I don't think anybody has said yet, is that personal habits are at least as important. There are very few germs that will cause a problem on unbroken healthy skin (ebola is an exception). Most of these diseases, including flu which as mentioned is still very dangerous. are caught when the bugs on your hands come into contact with eyes, nose or mouth. So more important than not touching the toilet doors, IMO, is developing good habits of not rubbing eyes or mouth and washing hands well before eating. This might be obvious to some of us, but just watching people in the street you can see that a lot of people are not too careful in this respect.
Plans for tomorrow include sowing some broad beans to overwinter. We haven't done this before, there is so much to learn and if personal or global SHTF this sort of knowledge and experience may be the difference between going hungry and being comfortably full of beans. In both a literal and colloquial sense