Preparedness for when

GreyQueen

What does RTU'd mean, please?

Softstuff, it's a fascinating book, I've read it more than once and even given it as a present to people who are equally fascinated. Highly commended. Books by Jared Diamond are very interesting, too.

The reason that the cookware will survive the ages is the stability of stainless steel. And cats are very able survivors as they go feral in one generation (a vet once exp the very narrow window you have to socialise a kitten in its first weeks) and are prolific breeders and most of them are skilled hunters.

One old cat who used to woo my Nan with his prey could take pheasant, partridge, pigeons, rats, moles, a weasel, squirrels and, memorably, the fatty rind off someone's boiled bacon joint. And this was a 10 year + animal with a tumour on his haunch. Gawd knows what he'd take on in his prime; cows, possibly.:rotfl:

[Deleted User]

GreyQueen wrote: »

What does RTU'd mean, please?

Returned To Unit.

All member of the Regiment, come from other units, known as a "Parent Unit".

If they leave the Regiment, whether of their own accord or not (or need to 'disappear' for a while), they return to their Parent Unit.

moneyistooshorttomention

Bedsit Bob

What are beasting and chasing? (I probably ought to know this coming from an ex-military family - but my father studiously never mentioned any details about it to me..). My knowledge of the Armed Forces could be summed-up with my fathers comments about how the different ranks got treated and some of the best people not getting "top rank" because they didn't come from the right background (ie him) and my mothers comments about the wives' conduct and way of dressing being assessed:eek: and having to dress differently at functions according to your husbands rank:eek:.

Hence limited knowledge - which stopped dead when I reached teenage and he left them...(you know...that's the first time the thought ever struck me as to whether they also wanted to know about what their children were like as people once they reached the age of starting to make their own decisions...duh!:think:.....).

GreyQueen

I think it's important to have the essentials in as few places as possible, already consolidated and to hand for a rapid move. In a crisis such as a fire, or building collapse, there will be only seconds, it may well be pitch dark, and you will be terrified, and this isn't the time to start gathering things up.

I have my glasses on the bedside shelf. Also on there, but not around them, is the case for them. In the BOB (beside bed) is the second pair of glasses of the same prescription. In the emergency bag in the lottie shed is another pair of glasses, the previous prescription, which would suffice in an emergency. Every glasses case has a strip of electical tape on it with the date or the prescription for those lenses and 'current prescription' or 'previous prescription'. The eye prescription itself is in the small folder of essential info in the BOB. If I am away from home overnight, this folder comes with me in the daily bag, as does cash from the BOB.

Meds are in quantity in the BOB, in the family home, in the shed bag, and in the workplace locker and the handbag and the daily work bag. All are in date. My mobile is in the handbag, which is on the sofa if I'm awake or on the bedpost if asleep. The charger lives permanantly in a pocket of the daily bag. The prescription for my meds lives permanantly in my wallet. Crucial medical info, include NHS and hospital numbers, is worn 24/7/365 on a medical warning bracelet. It also has NOK, blood type, GP and hospital consultant details, allergy details (none) and religion (none).

Cash is in multiple portable places, in quantity, and off-site, too.

Important docs in the BOB include present passport, NHS card, NINO card (I have it in memory anyway) and various other things. Important docs at the parental home include copies of these, plus copies of receipts and warranties of valuables, plus my previous (officically cancelled) passport.

My Will is with the same solicitor as my parents' Will, which they know, and a copy is in my filebox here.Valuable jewellery is nil. I'm disinterested in it and have just one string of beads and 3 strings of faux pearls from my late Grandma. None of which I'd fret about leaving behind.

Pooter is backed up to a USB stick, which is taped inside a small tin, inside another container in the BOB. Keys to the flat live in the handbag at all times. Keyring also includes keys to allotment shed, bike shed, and parental home. Spare keys to flat are with SG (friend and neighbour from the far side of the block, I also have a set of her keys) and with the parents'. I'm insured for both their vehicles, although I'd have to get over to their place to get them (and I know exactly where the keys to those two cars are hidden).

Nothing is fool-proof but, having thought a few things out, I feel that I'd be better equipped to manage than many. My workplace is a 5 min walk from my flat, or half that at a run. Due to the nature of my job, I would be one of the first to know of an emergency anywhere in the city and my colleagues know where I live. Hell, you'd see any smoke from Shoebox Towers our windows and hear the emergency vehicles.

I have my favourite car/ van hire place programmed into my phone (they're 10 mins' walk from here) and would rush to secure accomodation in one of the several cheap and cheerful chain hotels nearby if my block became uninhabitable. I know from watching my employer have to hustle to book out many dozens of hotel rooms at a time for displaced tenants from emergencies, that there can quickly be an insufficiency of accomodation to be had. They would have a duty to put me somewhere, as a displaced tenant, but that could mean being accomodated several tens of miles away, which would make working in the city, with no personal transport, very awkward.

I'd suggest that everyone imagine what would happen if they and many of their neighbours were deprived of home, all at once, and how you'd go about securing a bed for the night - speed will be of the essence. A few mins now, gathering that info, and putting it into your phone plus hardcopy, could save you a lot of trouble later.

[Deleted User]

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

What are beasting and chasing?

Beasting is shouting and intimidating you, to get you to move faster, or not give up.

Chasing is obviously tied to it, ie. they chase you along, pushing you on, past your normal limits.

Due to the nature of many of the operations undertaken by the Regiment (ie. small groups, and the need to continue alone, if compromised), a high level of self motivation and resilience (both physical and mental) is vital, hence little or no encouragement during Selection.

You either make it on your own, or you fall by the wayside.

jk0

Crikey GQ, you are organised.

On the subject of the insurance companies, back in 2008 when we were concerned about banks going bust I mentioned to my mother that I thought insurance firms would be the first to go bust. Reason being that for many years anyone taking over a 90% mortgage was required to also buy an insurance policy that would pay off the mortgage in the event the house was worth less than the mortgage.

One week later, AIG was the first institution's S to hit the F.

[Deleted User]

I know there are many levels of disaster and some are just personal and some are just local but some are indiscriminately across the nation. For most of the scenarios I can imagine than after the cessation of the emergency and the clean up that follows the insurance companies usually pay out, in their own time though. My bigest imagined emergency though is one where there is no societal recovery, where the situation is so widespread and devastating that the insurance companies and banks can no longer function to come to the aid of those with demolished or severely damages properties and any recovery is down to the individual or a local group of survivors. That's where those old time skills would be imperative and without them life probably wouldn't be in the long term. I think we're so used to seeing fiction on the TV where all is well in the end, most disaster films and books end with the hero/heroine overcoming all the odds and saving his/her family and living happily ever after even if in somewhat different circumstances but life really ISN'T like that and if the cavalry was caught up in the disaster and looking to help themselves and their families, they certainly wouldn't be coming to the rescue any time soon. The only one you can rely on is YOU!

mardatha

Yes MrsL - and if we all realise that and start to live that way NOW then things will be a lot easier in the long run

GreyQueen

The trouble with films is that they have to provide a satisfying story arc in 90-180 minutes, or thereabouts They have to engage you emotionally with the lead character(s) and to provide a resolution which is not going to leave you feeling so low that you go home and take a load of pills and whiskey. Fiction is a similar thing.

Even in non-emergency situations, RL isn't like that. A common outcome is that you don't ever know what happened to X or Y person. That extended families lose touch because the one member who was the organiser, emotionally and practically with all the contact details, dies or becomes mentally incapacitated. No one else has the links or the will to take on the role and the extended family falls apart.

In the aftermath of wars or natural disasters (and the two are not mutually exclusive) it's pretty common that you lose people you love. Parents and offspring, siblings, become separated. And often people will never know what happened to their loved ones, whether they have survived elsewhere, or have died. That not-knowingness would be a realistic post-TEOTWAWKI situation and brutally hard to cope with.

In the jet age, and with the internet, it isn't uncommon to have close relatives on several continents and even in different hemispheres. People have always travelled, but with the understanding that you'd never see The Old Country again, in most cases, and that any communication pre-telegraph, would be by letters which would take weeks or months to find you, if they found you at all.

On a daily basis, as I observe people of the Mobile Age obsessively communicating with their personal networks dozens of times a day, I speculate about what would be the psychological consequences for them of being taken out of the comms loop by, for example, an EMP, or widespread powercuts. It's about more than the practical nuisances, it's about the mentality which can't seem to be separate from their network for more than 30 mins without stressing horribly.

Karmacat

Oh my ... I was so tired yesterday, after all the kerfuffle, and I've only now caught up with the thread. And I was nodding in agreement, and my jaw was dropping at various lightbulb moments, throughout the last 3 pages.

Thank you all! What I *did* do yesterday was have a think about my 5 minute and 15 minute bug out scenarios (things like, the police tell you there's that sort of time line and then you'll be taken to the local community hall etc). My one minute, and my twelve hour, are both good, but those intermediate times are seriously in need of some revision.

And what I've read this morning means I have yet more work to put in - but all of it is going to make me and mine safer.