Prepping for Brexit thread

Karmacat

If you've never thought about doing it, I can understand how it feels weird. But your water is *already* suss - so it only makes sense to take those preps a step further.

As for food, I don't know how much you're thinking of getting, but I always think of why I started: a bad flu plus a viral thing put me out of action for weeks, with no help anywhere. I was so ill that the effort of doing an online food order was almost too much. So, I know thats already happened, and I've taken care with my food stocks that if it happens again, I can cope, and not have to use my energies to do online stuff.

Have a think about what you consider realistic - its very unlikely to be the end of the world! If the lorries get snarled up at the docks, things will slow considerably but not actually stop. Four weeks? Eight weeks? And might you also be getting in stores for someone else too? I can't remember your family situation, I'm sorry - but it's something to consider.

Buffythedebtslayer

I have a few recommendations from the FB group, so M and S tomorrow, and then a quick stock take of the cupboards to see what else we could eat/would eat.


Then Tuesday/Wednesday/ Thursday - Morris&ns, S'bury's, Tesco.....to get the rest....

Really must go to bed, but at least I feel I have a plan.

XXX

GreyQueen

The thing about any kind of prep is the potential fear of foolishness.


Let's say you have a fear of a kitchen fire and have a fire extinguisher or a fire blanket in there. You may never ever have a kitchen fire and the money spent on these articles would have been a 100% waste. But, if push had come to shove, deploying one of them could reduce what might have gutted your kitchen/ cost you your home, into a trembleworthy but relatively minor upset. And people who knew about it would praise you highly for your good sense in having prepared for this eventuality.



As MrsLW, and all the preppers say, only store what you eat and eat what you store. We sometimes joke about Armageddon Cupboards here. It's different mindset, isn't it, thinking about maintaining stores. You then remove stored stocks, oldest first, and bring them into use, and re-stock the store.


Commerce has a bad habit of using disruptions in supply as an excuse to hike prices, sometimes to ridiculous levels. Also, we shoppers have a habit of going crazy when we and/or any LOs we're responsible for, are threatened with hunger. It would only take a few posts online/ newspaper articles about scarcity, to trigger a panic. Think of how threats of snow see shops stripped of milk and bread, f'rinstance. Extrapolate that to fears of the trucks not running and be suitably worried.



Due to the Just In Time (JIT) business model of inventory, most of the things you plan to buy in the stores on Wednesday are presently in either a regional distribution centre or on a truck heading towards 'your' supermarket. They may not have left the factory or packhouse yet. Might even been at the docks in a shipping container.


It wouldn't take an awful lot to break that chain and there won't be a stockroom out the back to refill the emptying shelves from. Most stores only have a smallish area where pallets are broken down, then the stuff is out on the shelves in modest amounts. Supermarkets sell such a wide range that, even in a decent size store, there may be only a dozen or so examples of each product to be had. The scanners on the tills are telling HQ what Tiddelupmty Road Sainsberry needs to have delivered tomorrow.


If you shop discreetly, wisely and well, the worst thing you've done is brought forward the shelf-stable aspect of your grocery shopping by a few months.;)

DawnW

Very sensible comment GQ.

GreyQueen

Thank you.


One thing which has also occurred to me is that we live in a very fast world. It won't be a case of something appearing on the newstands in the morning paper which causes us to have concerns and possibly changes people's actions.


With the internet, social media, viral forms of news spread in a matter of minutes. Let's say that one of your local groups tells you that X store is out of Y product but it is now in Z store but diminishing fast. Someone posts photos of empty shelves...... you can see how a panic could be fomented in a matter of a couple of hours, or less.


If people are going to panic in stores I, like McCavity, don't want to be there.

cuddlymarm

We were in Florida a few years back and a hurricane was coming. It was chaos, big queues at the petrol stations, people buying everything they could see. We were told you needed enough food and water for 3 days, which is what we got but considering Americans have big kitchens you would have thought they would have already had at least some stuff in. It was warm and the fresh stuff wouldn’t keep long at all with a power cut but that didn’t stop people getting loads in.
The one frightening aspect was the amount of people killed by wrongly using generators, keeping them inside ( because they were scared they would be stolen) and dying of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Panic leads to common sense going straight of the window.

Our lack of information is what will cause problems. You can’t prepare for what’s coming if you haven’t a clue what it is. So I’ve just got a bit extra of what I normally use and will make do with that and then if there are big queues at the SMs we’ll be ok.

DawnW

Buffythedebtslayer wrote: »

hello,

I was wondering, if a person, whilst off sick with the flu took to reading all she could about Brexit, joined a preppers group on FB and begun to worry but has been too ill to do anything what would you recommend she does - like what should she buy? prepare for in your view?

Especially when no one in real life has said anything of the sort..

Asking for a friend obviously............

Buffy XX

I follow one of the FB prepping groups, and although it is a very well moderated and friendly group, some of the measures discussed (food canning, water purification, dehydrating, stockpiling foods that you don't normally buy etc), which might not be alarming to the preppers on here, are a bit scary for new people who would as a rule shop daily and hold virtually nothing in their cupboards, and those who don't have the money to go out and buy expensive equipment they may never use, or even do big supermarket shops. My advice for beginners is to buy extras, as and when you can afford it, of shelf stable things you will use anyway, not forgetting toiletries and things like antihistamine cream and painkillers. That way, if there are problems, you can stay away from the shops for a few days. Also, as food etc is likely to go up in price instead of down (not sure about anyone else, but I have already seen price rises), you will have saved some money too.

Some people on said group are reporting nasty reactions in the real world from people whom they have well-meaningly advised to get a bit extra in, in case of issues. Some well intentioned members have even done media interviews etc :eek:, to encourage others to look out for themselves a bit, and made themselves a bit of a target imho There is a lot of nastiness about, sadly, as well as little official information. This business has not brought out the best in some of us, sadly, and there is some really unpleasant stuff in the tabloids and circulating on social media


I have always been a bit of a prepper, partly because I was brought up with the belief that one should keep a decent store cupboard, but also due to rural living and shortage of money, but I have always found it best to keep this information to myself and close family. I don't mean not helping neighbours / others out in tough times, as I have often done that, but no way would I bring it up as a topic of general conversation, even in normal times.

[Deleted User]

I'm just someone who likes a little control in life and my attitude to prepping changed years ago from that slightly foolish feeling to an understanding that when the chips really are down no one is going to put me and mine first in sorting out the aftermath! In a mild way this happened with the birth of my second daughter when my Stepmother had agreed to come and help for a week as I had a 5 year old to get in and out of school and Stepmother decided on the day she was due to come to go off and stay with her sister instead, phone call out of the blue at 8 in the morning and there I was completely unprepared with a 1 day old and no extras in the store cupboard. We managed, I called in a few favours from friends but it brought home abundantly that even people who you know love you can let you down when you need them most. I became a prepper and have remained ever since (DD is now35).

If you buy in extra stocks and equipment what you are actually doing is getting things at better prices than you'd have to pay in an emergency panic buying even If you can bring yourself to view it from that perspective it seems a little less like being foolish. Prices only go upwards don't they? I would always say only buy what you know you'll use, the siren voice cheap buy one get one free offers languish at the back of the cupboard for years and ultimately get discarded ( well probably NOT in a real situation) which is such a waste. At worse you'll have a cupboard full of food and something to cook it on.....at best you'll still have the same which could be regarded as a wise investment and IF you need then for real, you'll be streets ahead of the game!

mardatha

Some of the reaction in some of the groups is a bit OTT. I mean, all that we're doing is stocking up a store cupboard - it's not as if we're saying take yer trusty ole rifle and yer Davy Crockett hat and git out in them woods and kill yerself a barr..

whole forum will now be singing Davy Crockett all day.. :rotfl::rotfl:

[Deleted User]

Down here that would be Boar not Barr! too many of them in the Forest of Dean by all accounts and delicious made into snosages! I feel that man (and woman) COULD live by sausage alone if they had to!