Preparedness for when

nuatha

When I was 7 or 8 it seemed that the village I lived in had an earthquake. It hadn’t, some old mine workings had collapsed. Several cars were well below road level, at least two houses lost part of their ground floors.
In my late teens I spent a week and a half walking to work in the next town (4 miles) as the roads were impassable due to snow and ice (and the grit depots had similar problems,) what gritting was being done was the major A roads only.
Another hard winter left a nearby town without mains water for 10 days over the Christmas and New Year.
Heavy rains a few weeks ago left large parts of the North East with flooded homes and roads and many people stranded. As for a local authority rehousing you, if they can they may well do so, but having found over a 1000 hotel beds, one local authority managed to use 12 of them, getting people to the rest was an impossibility.
I can’t personally remember electricity being down for more than 48 hours, but I’ve a close friend whose street was without gas for three weeks (in a major city).

To me they are just challenges that life throws in your direction from time to time, none of them insurmountable, but each made a lot easier for some simple advance preparation and thought. There’s certainly worse disasters that can and do happen in the UK and there is no way any one can prepare for every eventuality – but a little preparedness and some lateral thinking can get you through a lot of unexpected situations.

The SHTF means different things to different people, but in many cases similar solutions can be applied whatever the cause. If World War III was thought to be immenient or the US Government felt under sufficient threat the GPS satellite network would become unavailable – either encrypted or switched off. If the power cable for your satnav breaks then you have exactly the same immediate issue, if that’s your only means of navigation then you have a problem. (Equally the recent news coverage of walkers in the Cairngorms relying on smartphone satnav and needing to be rescued)

There’s some really good advice on this thread, thank you.

mardatha

It's a much-needed thread and thank you to all who shared info and advice. I'm trying to think up another scenario I need tea and sweeties because thinking is tiring. Watch this space LOL I'm trying I'm onnit!

Mad-Frog

I have edited my post as I think it was a bit harsh and if anyone took offence then I apologise. I agree people prepare for different scenarios in different ways each to their own and that.

For those that are buying thinking about gallons of water supplies, have you thought about a water butt if applicable? Quite cheap and would supply water when boiled for a minute for washing people, clothes and cooking?

valk_scot

mardatha wrote: »

It's a much-needed thread and thank you to all who shared info and advice. I'm trying to think up another scenario I need tea and sweeties because thinking is tiring. Watch this space LOL I'm trying I'm onnit!

vanoonoo is still sitting in Madrid airport, remember. (Virtually anyway!) I want to know what she did in the end!

Anyhow I was trying to count up on my fingers how many times I've been in what one could count as an emergency situation, or at least a bit of a crisis. Quite a few, actually!

For example back in the 60's I lived in Ankara in Turkey with my parents and things like water being cut off and power cuts were as regular as clockwork, almost. During the summer my mum kept the bath full of water permenantly, we used the shower in the other bathroom when the water was on. I remember once my mum waking me up at 5am, she'd heard on the grapevine the water was going off at 6am for the rest of the day and wanted me to wash my hair! Drinking water (tap water wasn't safe to drink back then) was delivered by a bloke with a horse and cart normally, we had two three foot high earthenware ali-baba type pots that held enough drinking water for a week. I grew up thinking all water tasted of mud and with that odd flat boiled taste. In the winter the snows on the Anatolian plateau could stop food deliveries to the shops for days so we had a hall cupboard filled with tinned and packet stuff...no proper freezer back then. My dad had snow chains on the car by October and we never went anywhere in winter without a shovel, food, water and several hairy blankets in the car.

Back in the UK in the 70's we had the Three Day Week. It made a right old mess of a lot of things including my schooling...I was sitting my O levels in 1974 on reduced school hours and my parents were trying to cope with reduced working hours/wages, shortages of fuel and reduced supplies of food, gloomy half lit streets, few things running in the evening including a reduced bus service. My dad was ill in hospital part of that year, my mum (who couldn't drive) used to borrow a neighbours bike and cycle to the hospital to see him because she couldn't get her usual bus. Hardly a long time ago!

More recently we've had severe flooding in my town. We live on top of a hill so not directly affected but the knock on effect on schools, transport and other services was severe for some weeks. We've had the gas leak I mentioned, bomb scares at the school ditto and at least two winters when the snows were so severe we couldn't get our cars out to go anywhere and, once again, deliveries of food etc to the shops were affected. And we've had the sort of storms where we've been told not to go outdoors unless essential but to sit tight in the house while the electricity wires and telephone lines went down. The water went off for four days due to a burst mains a few years back. There's been at least one long petrol strike too. And a couple of times I've been in the situation where I've had £x to last me to the end of the month and had to work round not being able to afford to take the car out or get the bus, or shop for anything than the utter essentials.

I don't think I live in a particular disaster area, just an ordinary sort of small town outside a big city with a very average sort of climate for the UK and no natural hazards. Yet most years there's been some sort of event where I've needed extra stores or cold weather cloithes and blankets or alternative forms of personal transport rather than the cars. It's been useful to have the camping gear, bikes, extra food in the larder, the kids' sledges to tow shopping up from the shops, a good store of medicines and first aid items, a second cheap phone to tuck into the emergency bag. I've been stuck out somewhere with hungry or thirsty or filthy kids often enough to know the value of a few snacks and drinks and spare clothes in the car and we've been in situations where I've been extemely glad I could feed the family for a couple of weeks without going near a shop.

So to all that say that it won't happen to them so there's no particular need to make any special preparations...oh yes? You just wait. Or have I just been unusually disaster-prone, do you think?

Fruball

I've struck gold!

Went to a friend's house today and spotted a few tell tale signs of a prepper!!! Turns out her husband started prepping recently and they have sackloads of rice in the loft, solar showers, solar panel to power one socket (useful for my kindle in a SHTF scenario!!!) and..... get this..... a crossbow!!!

We had a really interesting conversation about possible disasters and I am going to ramp up my prepping as a result.

So good to know others locally so we can share skills/supplies in a shtf situation

vanoonoo

I did make it out of madrid and have never dared go back to spain since! it was pretty horrific for about three hours, I was on a business trip so no chance of local travel rep as such, however I was working for a travel company and Iberia had given me a comp flight so they had a lot of info about me on their booking system - so I did exactly as mentioned above and went to check in to explain. a lovely iberia employee who was fluent in both spanish and english contacted the hotel I stayed at as they were the ones who had booked the taxi and so the hotel worked on getting in touch with the driver, the iberia man took me to the airport police where I was made to feel very silly and had to sign soooooo many documents that I didnt understand so that they could raise a travel authority for me to be able to board the flight and potentially try to get thru passport control in this country. it was a sunday evening and no embassies were open and i think it may have been a local holiday the next day or something like that so no chance of an emergency passport quickly. the biggest problem for the airline was if i got to the uk and border control wouldnt accept i was british, iberia would have to bring me back to spain and take responsibility for me. whilst this was all going on I was wondering what I would even do when I got back to the uk as I didnt have any money, no keys, no train ticket, my car was in car park at a train station about 10 miles from my home and I wouldnt have been able to get into the house even if I did make it back - I was really feeling alone at that point! I was single at the time so no one was at home to help out! I figured I'd have to call a relative to get them to vouch for me being british and hopefully collect me from the airport and take me back to their house whilst I figured out everything else later in the week (there was no guarantee I would be able to leave that day or even the next) but I couldnt remember any phone numbers in my frazzled state!

fortunately... and to this day I cannot believe this happened - the taxi driver turned up at the airport with my bag about three hours later, he'd rummaged thru and found my ticket so knew I was flying with iberia so went to their check in desk who contacted my iberia man who dragged me out of the police "cell" and back to the desk. That taxi driver got a massive kiss and cuddle from me and the iberia man got an employee award for customer service later that year, I was so relieved, I'd missed the original flight but the airline were brilliant and got me out on the next flight that same night. the taxi driver wouldnt take any money from me as a tip or compensation and hilariously, the airline later sent me a voucher for free flights in the future as they hadnt been able to board me on my original flight (it was overbooked so they "bumped" me when they realised I wouldnt be able to board).

so that's one of my dramatic stories that has made me think about being prepared.

now, I have a file that I have emailed to myself on gmail and hotmail that has a scan of my passport and a few emergency phone numbers and important info like credit card customer service details so that if I lost everything else but could still get online I could at least have a few bits of info to hand. nothing too sensitive, not credit card numbers or passwords but enought that if I needed to contact people I could.

but even tho I am home now, feel free to send sweeties and a torch!

Fruball

vanoonoo wrote: »

I did make it out of madrid and have never dared go back to spain since! it was pretty horrific for about three hours, I was on a business trip so no chance of local travel rep as such, however I was working for a travel company and Iberia had given me a comp flight so they had a lot of info about me on their booking system - so I did exactly as mentioned above and went to check in to explain. a lovely iberia employee who was fluent in both spanish and english contacted the hotel I stayed at as they were the ones who had booked the taxi and so the hotel worked on getting in touch with the driver, the iberia man took me to the airport police where I was made to feel very silly and had to sign soooooo many documents that I didnt understand so that they could raise a travel authority for me to be able to board the flight and potentially try to get thru passport control in this country. it was a sunday evening and no embassies were open and i think it may have been a local holiday the next day or something like that so no chance of an emergency passport quickly. the biggest problem for the airline was if i got to the uk and border control wouldnt accept i was british, iberia would have to bring me back to spain and take responsibility for me. whilst this was all going on I was wondering what I would even do when I got back to the uk as I didnt have any money, no keys, no train ticket, my car was in car park at a train station about 10 miles from my home and I wouldnt have been able to get into the house even if I did make it back - I was really feeling alone at that point! I was single at the time so no one was at home to help out! I figured I'd have to call a relative to get them to vouch for me being british and hopefully collect me from the airport and take me back to their house whilst I figured out everything else later in the week (there was no guarantee I would be able to leave that day or even the next) but I couldnt remember any phone numbers in my frazzled state!

fortunately... and to this day I cannot believe this happened - the taxi driver turned up at the airport with my bag about three hours later, he'd rummaged thru and found my ticket so knew I was flying with iberia so went to their check in desk who contacted my iberia man who dragged me out of the police "cell" and back to the desk. That taxi driver got a massive kiss and cuddle from me and the iberia man got an employee award for customer service later that year, I was so relieved, I'd missed the original flight but the airline were brilliant and got me out on the next flight that same night. the taxi driver wouldnt take any money from me as a tip or compensation and hilariously, the airline later sent me a voucher for free flights in the future as they hadnt been able to board me on my original flight (it was overbooked so they "bumped" me when they realised I wouldnt be able to board).

so that's one of my dramatic stories that has made me think about being prepared.

now, I have a file that I have emailed to myself on gmail and hotmail that has a scan of my passport and a few emergency phone numbers and important info like credit card customer service details so that if I lost everything else but could still get online I could at least have a few bits of info to hand. nothing too sensitive, not credit card numbers or passwords but enought that if I needed to contact people I could.

but even tho I am home now, feel free to send sweeties and a torch!

:eek:

Having scanned documents emailed to yourself is a fab idea! I always take photocopies of my passport on holiday, along with photocopied Driving licence etc which are kept separately to the rest of my stuff, but having it all on email is truly inspired.

Thanks for sharing your horrific story - It has helped me and no doubt others too

krlyr

Fruball wrote: »

I've struck gold!

Went to a friend's house today and spotted a few tell tale signs of a prepper!!! Turns out her husband started prepping recently and they have sackloads of rice in the loft, solar showers, solar panel to power one socket (useful for my kindle in a SHTF scenario!!!) and..... get this..... a crossbow!!!

We had a really interesting conversation about possible disasters and I am going to ramp up my prepping as a result.

So good to know others locally so we can share skills/supplies in a shtf situation

Just practice your arrow-dodging skills - they may not be quite so neighbourly in an emergency if you're there threatening to eat through their rice stash :rotfl:

bossymoo

Must have been stressful!
X

Fruball

krlyr wrote: »

Just practice your arrow-dodging skills - they may not be quite so neighbourly in an emergency if you're there threatening to eat through their rice stash :rotfl:

:rotfl: Not at all - they have things I don't have, and I have lots of things they don't have so we can swap and trade!

Atm they only have rice stored - I have plenty that will go well with rice in exchange for charging my kindle lol!!!

Anyone storing things like rice and pasta - don't forget to store salt - unsalted rice is going to be pretty unpalatable after a while of eating not much else!