Disaster prepping is mainstream again | Hacker News Reader

Disaster prepping is mainstream again

nationalgeographic.com

History channel shows and the like give preppers a bad name, but prepping, as highlighted in this article, doesn't need to involve guns and bunkers. In fact, your own government probably wants you to be prepping (at least the US does):

https://www.ready.gov/

If you find yourself worrying about things like earthquakes and fires, there's an extra benefit to prepping: you can rest easy knowing you've done what you can.

If you live in (most parts of) California, you should be prepared for an earthquake, including a few days without water, at minimum. Wildfires and power outages are another risk that it is absolutely rational to prepare for, in many locations.

The UK Government certainly does:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/preparing-for-eme...

As does the Scottish Government:

https://ready.scot/how-scotland-prepares

And that's not even covering the Covid-19 pandemic where there was a lot of community based help groups checking that older people were OK etc.

Edit: Mind you some UK gov self help schemes were less well received:

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1500124311

When we moved into our house, we put together a little box of canned good, a sterno stove, small medical kit, etc. We rediscovered it this year, and I ended up eating a bunch of 3-year-expired canned goods :D

(We did re-stock it. Never having to use it is a good thing.)

We have a small pack too, mainly focused on some calories for a few days and ways to clean water (lifestraw and a stove for boiling).

We buy an extra couple weeks worth of dry goods of things we are already using/eating, then cycle through it. Doesn't work for everything, but in the event of a disaster I'd be happy to have it :)

That’s the right way to do it, stock up on high quality canned and dry foods that you enjoy and then just cycle through the supply. One day you don’t feel like a fancy dinner so you crack open a few cans of chili and some nice mixed veggies, or boil up some noodles or whatever and just replace them every other month or so. Power goes out and you’re still living large instead of eating five year old MREs.

I’ve never prepped so asking out of sheer curiosity.

I wonder if there’s value in simulating disaster-living. It’s one thing to be ready with supplies and another to actually live through it, albeit for lesser time. Would it help discover a few more unknowns? Maybe some supply that you would only realize you need when you experience it?

Think of it a life-version of chaos monkey or similar to a fire drill?

Back in the day, we called this "going camping for the weekend"

Camping for a couple of weeks would be more relevant.

A weekend is a pretty decent test though. If you flip the main breaker on your panel and use the water service shut off valve, you'll know in 24 hours how well you can cope. After 48, you'll know exactly what needs to be addressed. Provided you're in a house with access to those kinds of shut-offs

No it’s not. I know I can survive 48 hours without water (let alone food or power). I can just sit around and do nothing. Not so with two weeks.

Have you thought how your toilet will look like after 48 hours without water?

The trick is to actually prep with stuff you normally eat and use.

A simple way to do this is to just shut off the main breaker in your fuse box, instant power outage. Leave it off for whatever amount of time you want to practice for. Same thing goes for the main water shut off. You could leave those two off all weekend and quickly find out what you need. Another good and simple practice run is if you normally drive to get to a local store to plan and execute a route for walking there and back. Vice versa for if you normally walk everywhere, figure out what it would take to drive to a more remote location. Planning and knowing the ground truth of alternate routes is very important in a disaster scenario. For food preparedness you can do something I call the Bean Day exercise, simply don't go to the grocery store for an extended period of time and eat only what you have in your fridge, freezer and pantry. You'll have to get creative to reach the end, you'll realize how quickly you work your way through your stock, and you might discover a whole new set of go-to foods and dishes.

Huge value. We rented a small farm cottage for a year and the power there was unreliable, the water supply ran out regularly, and the road flooded a couple of times a year. It really helped us develop core preparedness habits out of learned experience.

Even recently we had a power cut at our place and discovered storing our power-out gear in the garage wasn't very useful with an electric main door and a blocked off side door. If it had been an extended outage I would have needed to break windows to get essential gear.

In my experience you'll find more isolated communities take preparedness more seriously because they experience grid frailty regularly and so build backup options into their daily lives. The least prepared live in denser urban areas where issues are far less likely. Problem is that when they do occur, and on a long enough timescale it's inevitable, general preparedness is low and so the shock and risk is greatly increased.

You should probably put calendar reminders to start eating from the supply in time and re-stock before things expire.

If shit hits the fan you probably don't want to be stuck with a supply that's already expired.

The types of things you should be packing, in a real emergency, will still be perfectly edible.

After watching Steve1989MREInfo[1] eat decades old canned food dozens of times, I have stopped following expiry dates to the T.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA

A simpler solution is to stock your shelves from back to front so the oldest items are always the first you grab. Don't buy things that you don't eat on a regular basis because:

a) they'll sit in the back of the pantry and expire b) if you do have to eat them you'll be miserable if you don't like them c) you won't know how to properly prepare them and you'll probably be missing some other key ingredients

And a non-simple solution is to write an iPhone app that scans QR codes that you print onto stickers that put on all your food so you can keep track of the expiration/purchase dates...

I know because that's the route I took haha. I won't pretend it was the BEST use of my time but it was fun and I can easily see how much I have of everything and where in my house it's located.

Presumably you have solar chargers and lots of batteries too

The easiest thing is to buy staples to use them FIFO. That way, you're not stuck with 100 lbs of honey, flour, or such.

Don't you mean LIFO?

No - it’s fifo

yes it is, I commented before coffee :)

Also check if your city has a CERT (or in SF, NERT) organization! It's a citizen-trained response team initiative that usually falls under law enforcement. The idea is in an earthquake you can have a couple thousand purpose-trained citizens running around shutting off gas valves, checking on neighbors, assisting emergency services with communication (through HAM radio for example), and doing other basic tasks that let the fire department focus on cutting people out of collapsed buildings or putting out fires.

By the way, regarding "gun and bunker" preppers, this is a sharp divide in the prepper community. Practically every thread in /r/preppers and similar forums and subreddits eventually devolves into what essentially amounts to an ideological battle between communists and libertarians, or, "we believe people are inherently good" vs "we believe people are inherently evil" to take a non-political-compass take. FWIW, the "inherently good" people have more evidence on their side, based on how communities have responded to disaster in the pass. A great book on the subject is "A Paradise Built in Hell" by Rebecca Solnit[1]. She takes a look at primary sources from a set of disasters throughout history, and how people helped eachother with no expectation of reward. She also turns up some cases of totally selfless ultimate sacrifices for strangers. It's really interesting.

EDIT: A great fictional illustration of this rift in the prepper community is 'The Masque of the Red Death', a short story in the book "Radicalized" by Cory Doctorow. It follows the story of the ultimate prepper fantasy, a rich options trader who builds a "Fort Doom" in scrubland, equipped with a year or so of food, water, purification equipment, sanitation equipment, and of course a veritable armory. It compares this character against the general community of IIRC Portland, who are reacting to a government-ending pandemic through mutual aide instead. A really fun exploratory take.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6444492-a-paradise-built... S

Years ago, I lived outside a metro area deep in the woods, and the metro response team told us we would be low-priority in the event of a natural disaster. Makes sense: why burn resources to help a few thousand people when a few hundred thousand are suffering. The metro response team told us to prepare for 30 days without support, especially electricity (we were ALL on well water) or accessible roads.

We formed a dozen smaller neighborhood teams that met regularly to identify elderly people who would need check-ins, medical needs, resources people were willing to share. This was in addition to family prep: water, first aid, food, batteries, etc. We even did an emergency rations taste-off (they all suck, btw) and bought a community cargo container that we filled with community supplies (I had left the hood by that point).

It was surprising that about 10% of the people in each area refused to participate. Most were pissed that we even had their names on a spreadsheet, even though they were older and might need assistance. They felt we were intruding on their privacy and they didn't need our help. However, we included them in the calculations for emergency resources in case they decided to come around after a disaster happened.

TL;DR: city recommended rural folks be prepared for a max 30 days on your own.

Living in Florida, I've gone weeks without power. It's so disappointing to get up, go to work, come back, and still not have power. And it's 90 degrees and 100% humid, and if you open the windows bugs will get in. It's just up to you and whatever neighbors are nearby to clean things up so the utility crews can try to rebuild.

One hurricane knocked the cable out for months and I got so desperate that I signed up for AOL...

The "prepping" in the article isn't "being prepared", which is what ready.gov suggests, it's dumping massive resources into paranoid fantasies of surviving alone for a few months.

What are the odds of an earthquake or hurricane temporarily decimating local infrastructure? Can you name any times that's happened in recent memory? I have to reach as far back into the ancient annals as... 2017.

Yeah, and people mostly either evacuate or have outside help in a matter of days.

I live in Northern California for the past 25 years (that's a quarter of a century). In that entire time, I have not seen a single earthquake that required me to be prepared for (I still do have an emergency kit and we're all prepared). In fact earthquakes of similar sizes happen all over the US.

Instead, the following things have far more direct impact on me and my family: driving in traffic, walking on the street, electronics fires in my garage, the food I eat, the amount of exercise I get. I'm sure there will be a Big One at some point in the next 30 years, but in terms of risk, the basic prepping procedures handle a wider range of common problems than earthquakes.

Not to impugn on your cred or anything, but 25 years may as well be the blink of an eye when you're talking about geological phenomenon.

> 'What are you worried about, I've lived here 25 years and that mountain never did shit.' -probably some Roman citizen in Pompeii, 79 BC

Lives are ~75 years long, should I actually invest any effort into large-scale problems that occur at scales longer than my life when there are risks that are far higher around which I can make direct changes?

Depends on how much effort it takes. Statistically, my house will never burn down within my lifetime, but the $20 it takes to buy a fire extinguisher is worth it. It also doesn't take much effort to do the types of things mentioned on https://www.ready.gov/kit

Likewise, I have all-electic heating and no gas service to my home, but a carbon monoxide detector only costs a few dollars so I still have one even though the risk is very low (most fires would probably trip the smoke detectors first I think.)

If it happens during your lifetime, it will likely only be once. So 'it never happened to me before' is not a very good way to reason about this sort of risk.

That's kind of an amusing way to put it: "Why would I prepare for a once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe? It never happened to me before."

Please recall that when the last "big one" happened in the Bay Area, the outcome was very few deaths (63 people died), but decades of economic problems. 500 people die in car accidents in the bay area every year. It would seem that fatalities from earthquakes aren't a good model for making rational decisions about what is likely to affect you in your lifetime.

You wear your seat belt, right? That's obviously a risk you already take seriously, so I'd not take it for a bound on tolerance for risk.

Cars pretty much define my bounds on tolerance for risk.

We also have a much better understanding of geological phenomenon and money likely gets you a faster evac than a gun and some gold bars. But again, pointless argument on my part since everything boils down to the point I made below.

I too live in NorCal and am appalled by the glib headline on this NG article. We are encouraged to have emergency supplies ready in the event of catastrophe, the whole 'preppers are idiots' but a few aren't is really unhelpful and short sighted. I'm not a prepper and my emergency kit isn't in good shape but it should be...

Not the best example since there was a severe earthquake in Pompeii in 62 AD. They were still rebuilding in 79 AD when the town was destroyed by Vesuvius.

If they had taken the matter seriously, they'd not have rebuilt there. We know some Romans recognized the mountain as a volcano years before the eruption, but if there were any warnings associated with this recognition, they seem to have gone unheeded.

(Also, earth quakes are/were pretty common throughout Italy. This perhaps contributed to complacency.)

This is spot on for the entire prepping conversation - is the time worth the benefit given the likelyhood of event.

All other arguments for/against prepping derive from that.

Prepping is just insurance. I buy life insurance so my family is taken care of in the unlikely event that I die. I have some stored food, water, etc. in the unlikely event that there's a temporary disruption in my ability to get those things.

I wouldn't say dying is an unlikely event, even if you're young and healthy.

Insurance is you betting you will die and the insurance company betting you will not die. In order for the insurance company to make money, they have to be right more than you.

For a software developer, 2 weeks worth of food isn't too bad on a budget, but could literally be a life saver in some situations, or even just soften the blow if I lost a job.

I live remotely and have no driving license. The reason i am prepping is the case when my partner (the one with the driving license) gets sick.

Its banal for a city dweller but necessary out here.

I can beat that. Here 45 years, same.

I do agree about your risk assessment. For water, those who have water heaters (rather than tankless systems) have a ready supply of drinkable water. Assuming that it isn't damaged/inaccessible after the earthquake. But, it is also possible a separate storage of water could be inaccessible after an earthquake.

We had a twenty year old water heater that finally called it quits this past spring. My wife and I discussed paying the extra cost to "upgrade" to a tankless water heater. In the end our frugal nature won and we put in another cheaper tank heater.

Then in August we were hit by a Derecho (an inland hurricane). The entire city was without power for more than 10 days (some much longer) and temperatures in the upper nineties. The one saving grace was I still had a working water heater since it's gas powered.

> should I actually invest any effort into large-scale problems that occur at scales longer than my life when there are risks that are far higher around which I can make direct changes?

Yes.

The relevant number is not p, the likelihood of the event.

It is something like:

EV = p * consequences

If the consequences are high enough (eg, death), then it is still rational to prepare for low probability events. Especially when the prep cost is low.

... and what we've established is that not a lot of people die in big earthquakes, but there's a lot of economic impact. I think people overweight the consequences because earthquakes are big and exciting.

I suppose that's fair. But I think it's less the "big and exciting" part and more the "imagining myself trapped and dying of thirst" or some such that motivates the "consequences" part of the equation.

Where in northern California? If you're not near the coast, you probably will never experience an earthquake. As the recent quake in Massachusetts shows, however, earthquakes can happen almost anywhere.

Also, fun fact, the chances of a 'Cascadia megaquake', or a full rip of the Cascadia subduction zone, is about 1 in 6 over the next 50 years. That will produce a 9.0 extending from the Mendocino triple junction off the coast of Cape Mendocino, CA to Canada. It's the same type of earthquake that destroyed Fukushima. You'll have to be pretty far inland to avoid the shaking from that.

I find many times that scientists report ominious sounding things like this, but the underlying data doesn't support it. I think they're just prone to hyperbole and overselling their results because it's what brings in funding.

You should look into the supporting data before making comments like this. The evidence for the timeline of past Cascadia zone megaquakes is actually quite solid. We can even corroborate the records from North American samples with samples from Japan when the resulting tsunamis caused damage there.

This is a good introduction if you want to know more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ7Qc3bsxjI

For anyone interested in the underlying data, I believe this is the most quoted piece by the popularizers:

https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/pp1661F

...that has the full-fault events at ~500 year intervals, and the partial-fault events at ~240 year intervals. Last full fault event was January 26th, 1700.

There's very little wrong with prepping guns. The details are sensitive and debatable, but a "well-regulated Militia" is in the Constitution. The fear of guns that "responsible people" increasingly have means that irresponsible people are becoming a larger share of gun owners. A "prep" that has guns and separately locked ammo in a locked safe is a responsible prep.

With the upcoming administration, the likelihood of a ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds is a possibility. Both Joe and Kamala want gun registration, which is a no-no. The government has no business knowing who owns what. They work for us, not the other way around. And no, I'm not a right-wing gun nut. Quite the opposite, actually. I dislike the current administration. Our rights are inalienable, not granted by government. The second something is granted, it's no longer a right, but a granted privilege. I don't do granted privileges. Needless to say, no one I know who is a gun owner plans on registering anything. Most of the people I know who are gun owners bought them in face-to-face buys and there is zero record of them owning anything, as it should be. I dislike both the Dems and the Reps as far as rights go. I'd be happier with a tiny government that exists to protect the borders, ensure free trade, and prevent monopoly. The Founders were correct.

It's refreshing to read that on hackernews.

Your point of view is extremely US-centered. I would be shocked, for example, to hear an European to hold such a view.

You haven't met many Finns, have you? Or Czechs. I know many Europeans who would love to have a 2nd Amendment. I've lived in Europe before, so I've had time to actually speak and interact with locals in several EU countries. I met heaps of Germans with all manner of firearms. It doesn't come up much in conversation in the EU, but the sentiment is alive and well and with more people than you might think.

> I met heaps of Germans with all manner of firearms.

This would seem to contradict the "gun control is the end of gun rights" argument you're trying to make.

And to a man, they loathe the need. However, you would be shocked at the number of "unregistered" firearms in Germany and all over Europe. Guns from the war, guns from abroad, all make their way into Europe. NY State mandated the registration of all AR and AK rifles a couple of years back. State police in NY show that less than 100 people have bothered to do so. Those people know better. Registration can lead to confiscation. Janet Reno, the erstwhile AG, actually said that the purpose of registration is eventual confiscation. No, thank you.

> State police in NY show that less than 100 people have bothered to do so.

So much for the "law abiding gun owners" meme, eh?

edit: While the registration law is indeed believed to be widely broken, the number of registrants was 20k+ people, five years ago. Nowhere near 100. https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/New-York-SAFE-Act-gu...

edit #2: Reno didn't say that, it's a hoax. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/janet-reno-on-gun-control-...

>Your point of view is extremely US-centered. I would be shocked, for example, to hear an European to hold such a view.

Which Europeans believe that you work for the government, not the government works for you?

Do you think you shouldn’t need to register your vehicle too? Or obtain a drivers license?

I don't need to register the vehicle if I don't drive it on public property. I don't need to submit my information to the government to buy the vehicle. And I don't need a drivers license on private property either.

Fair enough. So should gun registration be required for it to be carried in public then? So you can buy and keep guns on your private property, but to "operate" it in public you're required to register it. And here in the context of a firearm, operate is carry, not necessarily discharge.

I'd say probably not no.

* I don't see how that wouldn't solve any problem with actual gun crime. Cars are required to be registered since they are meaningfully "operated" in public peacefully, guns aren't. For cars this is different because you can see the license plate, whether or not the registration is current, everybody has one... Nobody that wants to remain in good legal standing would drive an unregistered (unlicensed, uninsured...) car on a public road. Outside of concealed carry and a couple political protests, nobody is carrying guns around in public except criminals. Non-criminals shoot their guns on private property like ranges, and transport them in their vehicles on public roads. The latter has never been a problem. And lastly, criminals aren't going to follow silly restrictions like "get your gun registered before you carry it in public to go murder somebody."

* People are paranoid (probably rightfully so) about a gun registration database. This would not only confirm their fears, it wouldn't be useful for combatting crime making the paranoia worse.

If you take a look at CA's gun laws, almost all of them are laughably stupid to the point that they restrict cosmetic features, and where they don't, they don't meaningfully stop somebody from committing a violent offense with a gun. If you understand how guns work you understand this simply: the gun laws in places like CA are meant to stifle gun culture not prevent crime (since they are laughably ineffective) or they are written by people who are very, very, ignorant of how guns actually work. In the latter case, it has the former effect.

One of the government's fundamental purposes is to protect and maintain your enshrined rights.

For example the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In other words, an inalienable right which is taken away from anyone who is shot and killed or disabled by another person.

There's a very strong argument that the right to life trumps the right to kill.

The USA is a legendary place for amount of gun crime. Probably if you didn't keep shooting each other so much, nobody would care about registering the guns, and you'd be happy.

But collectively you do shoot each other rather a lot. Strikingly more than a lot of other countries.

A little more than 60% of gun deaths in the US are suicides. FWIW.

(this isn't an argument, just adding some context to our awful numbers.)

> Both Joe and Kamala want gun registration

Actually the majority of the country does.

As a father of small kids, the danger of owning a gun are manifold: kids finding guns and playing with them; burglars who use your guns against you; “accidents” due to mishandling; the risk of marital arguments becoming fatal... the dangers can outweigh benefits.

As a former soldier I respect firearms enough not to buy them unless I can safeguard them. And many people can’t or won’t.

The first two problems would be easily prevented by keeping your firearms in a safe. If you're worried about arguments with your spouse becoming fatal, please talk to a counselor ASAP.

As for negligent discharges, which are probably the most legitimate concern, you should always follow the four rules of gun safety:

1. Treat all guns as if they are always loaded.

2. Never let the muzzle point at anything that you are not willing to destroy.

3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target and you have made the decision to shoot.

4. Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

In my experience, these are hammered into civilian students who take firearm training classes, but soldiers in the military often haven't heard of the four rules and generally are far more casual with their guns than civilians.

It's easy to dismiss the concerns out of hand and spout basic handling rules that soldiers do get, btw and are drilled into them.

The wisdom is realizing that all of this goes out the window when the shit hits the fan. Also unless you're training your entire family on weapon use, they will be untrained folks around dangerous weapons.

There is a reason barracks do not allow weapons and all that stuff is under guard in a proper armory.

Your flippant response sounds more like a religious defense than practical consideration of real situations. There's a reason a large number of firearm deaths are one of the above categories I listed.

You do not need to teach young children how to use a gun if you instead teach them to never, under any circumstances, to touch the gun. This is not hard to do, though many irresponsible people neglect to do so. And none of this goes out the window even in fantasy "shit hits the fan" scenarios; the rules for how to handle (or, to not handle) guns remain the same. The rules keep you safe when you follow them dogmatically. As soon as you start making 'common sense' exceptions to the rules, that is when you put yourself in danger. A lot of people have gotten hurt after thinking "I know I shouldn't point the gun at myself, but I KNOW I just unloaded it so logically there is no danger..."

(And anecdotally, I've personally witnessed no correlation whatsoever between military service and taking gun safety seriously. YMMV.)

Great points. I agree that military service and gun safety are orthogonal.

If one can't make these dogmatic safeguards, a firearm may pose more of a danger than what it protects against.

Sometimes the best way to solve a complicated problem is to avoid the source of complication in the first place.

If abstinence education was effective, there would be few unwanted children in red states.

A shit hits the fan scenario is when you're black out drunk or something where you're in a bad mental state, not society collapsing. Following rules does not help in a situation where you're unable to follow rules

If 'gun abstention' weren't effective, there would be a whole lot more kids with gunshot wounds in red states. The fact of the matter is that telling kids not to touch guns generally does work.

I don't doubt that you've considered your experience and knowledge in coming to the decision to not own a gun. My response wasn't flippant, and I'm sorry it came across that way.

I grew up around (unlocked) guns and knew better than to even think about touching one of them while I was a child. I am aware that many children aren't taught proper respect for firearms, which is part of why I recommended keeping them locked up. (The guns, not the children...)

My comment about soldiers is based on my personal interactions with them. I know they go through gun safety handling, but in practice they frequently have very poor muzzle discipline ("But it's unloaded!": I don't care). I've also talked to a few soldiers who had never heard of the four rules of gun safety, either by name or after hearing them listed out, so I don't think all soldiers have had gun safety drilled into them as strongly as you may have.

I don't live in barracks, but my understanding of military life as a whole is that the military has to support the lowest common denominator in their troops. If you have children, you probably aren't a hotheaded 20 year old anymore, and it seems like that should factor into your decision making process, no?

The other two points (being shot by a spouse or burglar using your own gun), frankly sound silly to me. You listed four categories, but only two of them are responsible for a large number of firearm deaths. It's extremely rare for a burglar to take and use a victim's gun against the victim, and also pretty rare for a spouse to murder the other.

And just to reiterate what I said in my first post, if you're even a little worried you might lose control and kill your spouse, or your spouse might kill you, you need to see a counselor right now regardless of whether you have guns or not. (Alternatively, if you do get along with your spouse, then I'm not sure why you factored that into your decision to not own a gun?)

I am making this post in good faith, and I hope you'll respond.

For me the danger of all these externalities outweighs the potential gains.

The biggest danger of all is the perception that you are somehow in control of things that you can mitigate but do not actually control.

While you may be correct that spousal conflicts are not the biggest cause of deaths, a quick search showed that suicide is 5x more likely if that suicidal person has access to a gun.

Whether you get along with your spouse today is not guaranteed tomorrow. Counseling? Yes it helps. Guns? Statistically not.

> For me the danger of all these externalities outweighs the potential gains.

Fair enough, I'm not here to tell you how to live your life.

I know a lot of veterans struggle with depression and PTSD, so I don't blame you for taking that aspect seriously.

Regarding getting along with one's spouse, maybe that's just something I won't understand without getting married.

Empirically, gun accidents are very rare. They are scary, but it's often the less-scary stuff that gets you.

Obviously you should be careful, and of you're not, I'm sure the odds are a lot worse. But empirically, it seems most people handle guns somewhat safely. Perhaps because they are scary.

That being said, if you don't feel comfortable being safe with a gun, don't get one. Or maybe you just don't want one more thing to worry about.

interestingly first time gun ownership is off the charts. I guess a lot of people who would normally balk at owning a gun have reconsidered.

People stockpiling guns at home for the unlikely event that they will need to use them to defend their lives/property qualifies for a "well-regulated Militia"? That's news to me.

There is disaster preparedness and then there is prepping, the two don't match each other. Most self-proclaimed preppers advocate atrocious "us or them" social darwinist ideologies and have policies that could get them and others killed. For example, many of them think it's a good idea to go camping in the woods in case of a natural disaster, which almost never makes any sense. They also frequently talk about shooting strangers instead of helping them and stockpile ammunition instead of antibiotics. They also should worry more about dental care and less about other people.

I'm sure there are exceptions, but as rule of thumb I'd stay away from any US prepper as far as I could in case of a genuine emergency like a Yellowstone outbreak or a worldwide pandemic.

Your description sounds like the plot of the movie Red Dawn... which is probably not a coincidence.

back in that day, half the audience considered a Cuban/Nicaraguan invasion to be a real thing to worry about.

I've studied the US "prepper" culture intensively for a novel I've written, watched hundreds of videos by preppers for research and read Lundin, Dartnell, and Seymour's books among others. It's not a prejudice, it's my verdict.

I'm not suggesting you're biased. I'm suggesting that there are too many people taking movies too seriously.

Oh yes, I agree. The reason is also that in the US part of the right-wing pro gun / militia / anti-federal government culture on the countryside overlaps with the prepper community. Some of them are also fanatic Christians who literally believe a day of judgment will come soon. There are some survivalists and naturalists among them (like Lundin), but they are in a minority.

Maybe that was called prepping back the day. Nowadays, prepping was pretty much taken over by guns and bunker types. Which is bad, because general readiness is a good thing. German authorities certainly recommend a very level of stuff like food and medicine to be kept at home.

Prepper culture definitely still includes the amassing of food and water storage, as well as paraphernalia like CB radios. It’s just that there are perhaps some loud believers in the need for ammo thrown in there, and why not?

One consideration is old ammo is somewhere between useless and dangerous. You might get 10 years from date of purchase out of it, but large ammo stockpiles are of limited use in a collapse of society situation and need to be constantly updated.

Long term bow, atal, and sling are much better for hunting.

Whoever told you this was probably trying to sell more ammunition; modern ammunition is good for decades at least. In the present, use of old ammunition (a few decades or more) is discouraged because the old formulations of primer compound produce corrosive hygroscopic metal salts that will rust your gun badly if you're not dilligent with cleaning. Very cheap old surplus ammunition from overseas is something to be wary of, but that's mostly because of bad QC that made that ammunition unreliable or dangerous from the day it was made.

As for atal or sling, unless you've been practicing with these since you were a child, I think you'll sooner starve to death than score yourself a single meal. The cultures which used those tools had people practicing with them for years before they were useful with them. A sling is easy to make, I encourage you to try it out. I used a pair of shoelaces I bought at the grocery store for $2. It is not easy to even get the projectile flying in the general direction you intended, so if you try this make sure you're far from any buildings or bystanders...

(But really, I recommend buying some canned food. It is unlikely any infrastructure collapse would last more than a few weeks. Any scenario where you have to hunt for food at all, let alone for years, seems exceedingly unlikely.)

I doubt that people are stockpiling ammo for a short term disruption. The point at which tens of thousands of rounds becomes useful isn’t a few weeks disruption in food distribution.

To justify my stance, in a long term survival situation slings are for low risk low reward hunting. With even moderate practice they become very high calories per resources and time invested while your doing something else. Aka, if you’re collecting firewood and see a squirrel, vs specifically looking for squirrels. That’s still true if you’re missing 95% of the time.

Plenty of active bow hunters are around to tell you how long that takes to learn. Unfortunately, manufacturing arrows and replacement bows takes significant effort. Atal are generally worse than bows, but vastly easier to manufacture and maintain.

As to ammo it’s very much possible to find good ammo that’s 50 years old. Depending on specific ammo to still be good in 50 years is a very different thing when you can’t depend on climate control. That’s not a concern at 70+ but a 25 year old presumably has a longer time horizon.

People stockpiling guns may have fantasies about a thousand years of anarchy after an apocalyptic 'SHTF', but their belief that this is likely doesn't actually make it likely.

I completely agree. However, the accuracy of their predictions is independent of how their preparing for that risk. It’s often said to prepare food and water etc for short term disruptions, but having sufficient water is vastly more important than having sufficient food.

Bow, atal, and sling are all inferior to traps for hunting. Populated areas have pigeons and squirrels, not sheep.

Enemy humans are a very different problem. Humans are smart, and sometimes they hunt you.

This is not true. 50 year old ammo will shoot indistinguishably from new ammo if both have been stored correctly. Prolonged exposure to water or high humidity can damage cartridges by preventing the powder from burning, but that doesn't make it more dangerous, only useless (at worst).

A large ammo stockpiles can make a house fire significantly more dangerous more so if you can’t depend on quick access to modern medical treatment.

Controlling humidity after a long term collapse is much more difficult. Less so in arid areas, but their hardly ideal without modern infrastructure.

Again, wrong. Ammo is not dangerous in a fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SlOXowwC4c

As for humidity, I think you would be surprised. Much of Appalachia and the East Coast have high humidity levels (typically 70-90% during summer IIRC) and I've never found ammo damaged by humidity there. I've shot 25 year old ammo that was put in an ammo can and dumped in a hiding spot near a pond (so, very high humidity) and had no issues shooting with it. Even if the ammo is stored in the manufacturer's cardboard box, I wouldn't worry about humidity damage unless average levels are over 85 or 90%. Water damage is a different matter, but I don't have any experience with that.

That video is on Sporting Ammunition which is relatively low energy and shotgun shells which are reasonably safe in a fire. A rifle round cooking off is significantly more dangerous though without a barrel it’s below a normal handgun round, still the difference from that video is still shocking.

Edit: It's mostly true that ammo in a fire will just pop and maybe just throw a little brass a short distance.

BUT from that fire I'm witness to the fact that ammo can also "fire" with enough force to go through steel 50 cal ammo boxes and continue through such things as walls and cans. There were bullet holes through the shop's paneled and insulated tin walls. https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/ammo-in-a-fire...

I will admit I may be overstating the humidity issues, my personal experience was 15 year old ammo in Florida shed which had issues but clearly YMMV.

Do you have a source for that? I don't really understand why shotgun rounds would be less dangerous, particularly if rifle rounds are more dangerous. More powder = more dangerous would make sense to me, but that doesn't sound like what you're saying.

Some parts of Florida are more humid than Appalachia, so maybe the difference between 75% and 95% humidity has a greater effect than 55% to 75%.

I was told the rifle rounds where more dangerous, but not why. My suspicion is the plastic tube around a shotgun shell loses strength before the round is hot enough to go off ~200C. Though it’s probably more complicated.

As to humidity, I don’t know it might be just extreme humidity or it could be humidity + temperature, or perhaps we had a bad case of ammo to start with.

> CB radios

Boy would I love to get ahold of some handheld radios designed for 'prepper' use.

1. use cognitive radio techniques to find and frequency-hop to whitespace radio frequencies that are conducive to best propagation over the 0-10 mile range on unlicensed radio bands

2. use ad hoc mesh networking to support sending datagrams like text messages (preferably E2EE via say Signal Protocol) or GPS coordinates up to, say, 7 hops away

3. support a 'emergency mode' where the radio power limits are relaxed and the frequencies for use by point A are relaxed to cover any radio band not actively reserved by law enforcement / military / first responders. In theory the cognitive radio techniques of frequency hopping and waiting to transmit until confirming radio dead air would prevent radio interference with whatever commercial TF / broadcast radio / CB radio / MURS/FRS/Business band radio signal, but to keep the FCC and HAMs hearts from stopping, things like the military bands could be blocked off just to provide that last 0.00001% guarantee of safety against interference.

All of the 3 _seem_ possible to productize using SBCs and SDRs, but I don't know where to start, I think I gotta finish my 8-bit breadboard computer YT series by Ben Eater before I even tried to tinker with this.

A friend of mine is building a physical product based on the ESP32 platform that is exactly along those lines. I would be happy to put you in touch with him if it interests you, just email me pc.peterso AT (capital G’s mail service).com

What does it mean for prepping to be 'taken over'? Preparing yourself is an activity an individual performs, it's not some sort of club that could be taken over. Some loon deciding to waste his money buying 50 rifles shouldn't be a factor for you deciding to put a flashlight in the nightstand beside your bed, or having a few gallons of fresh water stashed away in a closet.

Actually it does need to involve guns, or else everything you’ve spent all that time prepping will be stolen from you in the event of a major catastrophe.

Take this with a grain of salt, as there’s no way to verify it’s real, but supposedly someone who lived through the Bosnian War posted about their experiences on a prepping forum, and the stories are pretty disturbing: https://prephole.com/surviving-a-year-of-shtf-in-90s-bosnia-...

"prepping" is a specific term for preparing for the collapse of society, it is not a generic term for preparation. Preparing for a natural disaster is not prepping.

Natural disasters generally do represent temporary collapses of society.

Perhaps surprisingly, not so much.

Often during an acute natural disaster people help each other out and are more mutually supportive than normal. People usually find ways to get the basics up and running, such as shelter and food, pretty fast.

Relying on your neighbors to be prepared and able to help you out does seem to be a very popular way to 'prepare', but I don't think it's an approach to encourage...

Relying on them, no.

But in practice natural disasters are rarely a "collapse of society" sort of thing. It's more that you should have supplies and shelter, and a way to communicate. In the middle of difficulties where people work together, I'd say that's "society" in action.

"Collapse of society" tends to be more descriptive of human-driven disasters such as war and civil war, where people start turning against each other and there's high levels of mutual distrust and violence.

Being prepared has nothing to do with it. Nobody was prepared for the Anchorage earthquake of 1964, but within minutes people had self-organized into firefighting and excavation teams, set up emergency response relays with a hodgepodge of walkie-talkies, police radio, and AM broadcasters, and within hours there was a centralized volunteer dispatch and food bank.

Relying on your neighbors in a disaster doesn't mean hiding out in their anti-zombie bunker. It means knowing that the entire community will respond together to overcome the emergency.

Being prepared doesn't have to mean being a loon hiding in a bunker. Elsewhere in this thread I have recommended having some canned food, water, and a flashlight. These are very easy ways to prepare for a wide variety of unlikely scenarios.

We all live in a society. If folks need help in an exceptional time and you do not help them, folks will remember that you spent the time locked in your bunker instead of helping the neighbor whose supplies were flooded. Someone is always going to be forced to rely on others: A wheelchair cannot easily go over downed limbs, for example, and the user won't necessarily be able to flee a fire without help.

Additionally, if you want folks to be prepared, they need both the means to prepare and the space to do it - which basically means having a robust safety net and/or minimum pay laws.

It's sort of a spectrum, though, isn't it? I mean, we had a sorta/kinda "collapse" in April for a few weeks. There were genuine shortages of some stuff.

And more topically: let's be honest, right now the US is on a crazy train heading straight for riots and a general strike come December 14th. Are nationwide giant protests against a stolen government a "collapse of society" too? A little, yeah.

Natural disasters and societal collapse are totally separate things.

They're similar, but similar in the same way a paper cut is to a life threatening laceration. It's a spectrum to be sure, but you need dramatically different strategies to deal with them.

If a snowstorm blocks the roads and takes out your power for a week, what is that if not a local collapse of society? Utilities, emergency responders, access to grocery stores... these are things we take for granted that can and have been temporarily disrupted by natural disasters.

People lived that way in the 19th century. A social collapse is the protracted loss of law and order.

Take a look at this, you'll see the extend that a harsh winter can have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ic...

"16,000 Canadian Forces personnel deployed, 12,000 in Quebec and 4,000 in Ontario at the height of the crisis."

Many people were left without electricity, heating and even food. Alarms were disabled, police couldn't reach some neighborhoods and there was a lot of crime. Law and order were put on hold, until the army got to us.

Law and order were put on hold, until the army got to us.

I'm Canadian, grew up in the area, was living in BC during the ice storm, and returned soon thereafter.

No one I know would describe it this way. I've never heard the ice storm described this way.

Yes, many people were without services for extended periods of time. Yes, the Army was required to clear roads, removed downed trees, and was in play to help calm the public.

Yet "Law and order" on hold, paints a picture I do not believe as accurate. I sounds as if hoodlums and criminals were running rampant in the streets. Can you find any news articles, any info collaborating this, or some variation?

Certainly, I know of many people with snowmobiles, which made trips to get supplies and so forth for neighbours. I also know stories of people sharing, helping their neighbours.

I've been without power for 2 weeks where I live, due to a massive windstorm, and living in a very rural location.

Where I grew up, in the mid/late 1970s, our entire county's substation blew up, when covered with one of the largest snowfalls of the century (snow was literally to the top of telephone poles, I recall my father having to climb out of a second story window, and dig a path so we could get out of the back door and start digging out...).

The storm was already big, but it was coupled with lake effect snow in my area. Needless to say, it took weeks to get power back, clear the roads of 10+ feet of snow, which fell over a few days.

In none of these cases, did everything break down. People just stuck together.

NOTE: I fully agree that eventually, things will break down. If people have no food, and there is no food available, people will ensure they have food.

But none of these events seem quite like this.

Even a city apartment often has more than a week of something to eat. Even if it's old lima beans. :P

I lost power for a few days during that ice storm. And a number of years later, another storm only knocked me out for about a day but there were people without power for 2-3 weeks. People stayed with relatives and friends, presumably there were emergency shelters, etc. But there was no armed gangs roaming the street in the Northeast and I doubt there were in Canada either.

> Can you find any news articles, any info collaborating this, or some variation?

The book A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit examines several disasters over several decades:

* https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-b...

* http://rebeccasolnit.net/book/a-paradise-built-in-hell/

The general findings seem to be that communities tend to come together. The 'societal collapse' scenarios are generally urban myths.

I have to agree with Cory Doctorow: when shit hits the fan, it's solidarity what happens. "The fact that we remain here today, after so many disasters in our species’ history, is a reminder that we are a species of self-rescuing princesses—characters who save one another in crisis, rather than turning on ourselves"[0]. It certainly has been the case in my city of 20-something million, total collapse due to earthquake, overwhelming self organizing and mutual help. People will probably turn on the rich and powerful, though, and the narrative of law and order breakdown if no police/government is likely coming from them

[0] https://slate.com/technology/2020/10/cory-docotorow-sci-fi-i...

Here is what I found online on the topic. https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/crimino/2003-v36-n1-crimino... (French, translated via DeepL)

In short, increases of crimes and then declines of crimes once the army is deployed.

> "Analyses indicate that there is a direct effect of increased public enforcement on the number of infractions reported in the affected areas."

> "The Montérégie region: [...] a relative increase of about 50%, while it is only 15% in Montreal."

> "For the Montreal region, we observe that the deployment of police forces has resulted in a significant decrease in property crime and crimes against persons. In addition, the deployment of military personnel has also led to a decrease in property crimes."

They explain the increases in criminality with: "In other words, while the door-to-door operation would reduce property crime, it would at the same time increase the visibility of certain offences such as burglary".

I am not certain if their conclusion is accurate. But whether or not, this explains the rumors of people breaking into people's homes/cabins during that initial period and how the presence of the army calmed people's fears.

Never was it gangs roaming in the street (knowing the organized crime scene of Montreal, getting caught looting by the leading criminal elements during such an emergency would result in sever punishment) but small criminals working in the shadow.

The article also agrees with one of your points: "The work of Quarantelli (1960; 2001) shows that one of the main characteristics of human behaviour in times of disaster is not to flee, but to stay and persist as long as possible in daily activities (preserving their environmental reference)."

And they had the tools to deal with it. I can't make a fire with my spare wood in my city apartment. A society where a large portion of the population dies is a societal collapse.

I think the number of people who actually perform prepping is vastly larger than the number of people consuming media trying to redefine the term, so that campaign will be an uphill climb.

That's not true. It's a generic term that represents any type of preparedness.

"prepping" is a generic term for disaster preparations. I'm not sure why you think its appropriate to advocate for a narrow usage of the term, but none of my prepper friends would agree with you.

I think "prepping" can be generically any act of preparing ("I'm prepping for the new deployment," "I'm prepping for my trip to Mexico", "I'm prepping for the show tonight").

I have heard the term "prepper" used pretty much exclusively for people who prepare for societal collapse, though.

Support your assertion.

There may be a media push to constrain the meaning, but that has not been the common American English usage for the 20th Century at least. Prepping for an exam. Prepping a turkey. Common usage.

Odd that an attempt is made to distort the meaning of “prepping” in a forum called Hacker News. I remember about 20 years ago when there was an attempt by the media to limit the term “hacking” to unethical IT practices, instead of the whole range of creative ad-hoc system and product fixes. The community was annoyed...

If you're preparing for a natural disaster that prevents society from functioning normally for some time, then you're a prepper.

Prepping, means preparing for situations where you will no longer be able to rely on society to provide the services it normally does, regardless of the reasons.

Sweden wants you to prep, they sent a letter to every household in the country.

I prepped for Covid in late February or early March, I was pessimistic in my assumptions, but not by much.

Prepping is important, but you also have to be reasonable when you plan, and you have to be aware of what you can't adapt for (e.g I realized that I had to assume water would still be available, because I couldn't store 14+ days of water in my apartment).

Most of the people who are normally labeled preppers don't have a reasonable assumption of what they prep for. So they try to prepare for the end of the world, not because it is realistically going to happen, but because they need to control things.

Just moved out of CA. Went through Loma Prieta, Camp Fire, and numerous power outages. The other likely natural disaster is a megaflood like 1861-2.

Finnish authorities do the same: https://72hours.fi/

People are expected to be able to manage on their own for at least 72 hours in case of systemic/societal disruptions. It's quite sane advice really, even though a lot of people actually seem opposed to the idea for some reason.

Nowadays, it's common to live in small places (apartments or studios); I'm thinking that the shelves and fridge space is a limitation.

Yeah, I get that, and it is a pretty good of how disconnected people and authorities can be at times. If people aren't able to prepare for things they're expected to prepare for, then people's living conditions need to be improved until they can prepare.

There's going to be people who chose to live in such places despite recommendations, of course, but that's a matter of personal choice.

If I had a dollar for every disaster prepper I've seen in the USA that has many thousands of rounds of ammunition, and none of the following:

a) water purification equipment with supplies/filter changes good for 6+ months of continuous use

b) a stockpile of the most common antibiotics and medical supplies (essentially what you could get spending $700 on a comprehensive first aid kit plus $300-400 of drugs that will require periodic replacement as they expire).

c) knowledge or tools and supplies related to implementing off grid photovoltaic or wind power systems, but lots of gasoline or diesel generators.

d) $400 goose down sleeping bags, 4-season camping equipment, but they do have lots of tactical clothing and accessories, plate carriers, dropleg holsters and such

They're prepping for different disasters than you want them to prep for.

When there's a disaster and there's no police to call having guns and ammo you can trade off is likely far better than gold bars, solar panels, etc because everyone without guns and ammo is gonna be wanting enough to keep themselves safe.

The people whose preparation supplies seem to be 85% tactical/weaponry related and 15% everything else, whether they will acknowledge it or not, seem to be preparing to become the people who would take others' food and supplies by force in the event of a real nuclear war level catastrophe.

They are simply preparing for those "people who would take others' food and supplies by force" in any type of event.

>seem to be preparing to become the people who would take others' food and supplies by force in the event of a real nuclear war level catastrophe

Or simply preparing to defend against those sorts of people.

The thing is, "those sorts of people" don't really exist. There have been PLENTY of disasters resulting in short or long term societal collapse all over the world in the last century, and none of them resulted in widespread banditry.

Didn't ISIS do that in Iraq and Syria? Kidnapping is also a common way for armed people to get money from others in insecure countries, possibly more than they could get by directly stealing their possessions.

ISIS didn't arise spontaneously after an earthquake. It was intentionally built over a period of 10 years by a coalition of political parties and religious movements as a continuation of the insurgent war against occupiers, with the eventual goal of establishing a new society with new laws: their mission was inherently social and cooperative (by means of military conquest).

That's hardly the prepper expectation of "there will be a solar flare and then the whole world will instantly be filled by roving gangs of psychopaths, like in The Walking Dead"

Not necessarily. The guns and ammunition are more valuable. You could trade them (or your time in protecting them) for the other things without stealing.

Besides, I think it's a moot point because I know a lot of preppers and they're all very aware of concerns like safe drinking water and food.

In the US at least, stockpiling antibiotics is a little tricky - kind of hard to find a doctor who will just write you a prescription for cipro "just in case."

Pretty easy if you're willing to smuggle drugs across the border, though. You'll get away with a trip to South or East Asia and returning with a stockpile.

It's not smuggling when the drug isn't controlled.

Or any medications for that matter. I've gone down this path. The best I could do was to get the doctor to double-up my prescriptions for a while, which gave me a 3 month buffer. That is why I am trying to learn how to make my prescriptions. Super dangerous, but I don't want to rely on fragile economies. I just watched a country lose its mind and take all the toilet paper.

You can buy anti biotics over the counter in Mexico.

How about all the other medications? I stay clear of anti-biotics anyway.

>I stay clear of anti-biotics anyway.

You certainly shouldn't pop them for no good reason. But antibiotics can absolutely be life saving in the event of an infection.

For sure, some people need it. Anti-biotics are abused heavily here in the U.S. which in itself is a major health risk, when the person might legitimately need them. People are even eating anti-biotics without knowing it. What beef producers are allowed to do with anti-biotics and plastic waste is obscene.

The meat industry certainly overuses antibiotics, but the claim that "people are even eating antibiotics without knowing it" doesn't seem to be accurate.

https://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/food.html

> Food animals should not have any antibiotics in their body when they are slaughtered or processed for food. Antibiotic residues are small amounts of leftover antibiotics or pieces of antibiotics that are not completely absorbed after an animal is given antibiotics. USDA, with FDA and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), administers the U.S. National Residue Program (NRP) to prevent residues that pose a potential threat to human health from entering the food supply.

I don't disagree, but I think part of the reason they can say that is that it has not been exhaustively studied. There are various articles on nih.gov [1] that summarize the problem and what would be required to properly study this. There is also a big monetary advantage to using antibiotics in animals which makes me skeptical of any documentation. Perhaps I am too skeptical.

[1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK216502/

That used to be true about 8 years ago, but not anymore. You need a prescription for any antibiotic.

You're learning to "make your own prescriptions"? Do you mean forging them or becoming a nurse practitioner?

I understood it as manufacturing/extracting the right molecule.

Some of the more mundane anti-biotics are pretty simple, as far as organic chemistry goes, I take bupropion[1] and the synthesis section doesn't look /too/ complicated. My o-chem has about 10 years of rust on it though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bupropion

You don't need a prescription to buy antibiotics that are sold for pets, like fish. And you can buy antibiotics that are sold for pets that happen to be the same as the antibiotics manufactured for humans.

>And you can buy antibiotics that are sold for pets that happen to be the same as the antibiotics manufactured for human

Yes, but there's a quality control aspect there that makes one a touch uncomfortable. My fish getting a little something extra in their amoxicillin is something I stress far less about then if I'm the one taking the pill.

That was my first thought too, but if I think I might go septic soon, I'm gonna take that risk. Additionally, I believe if the imprint codes match on a commercial product, you can be reasonably sure it was forced to go through all the same process: https://www.drugs.com/article/imprint-codes.html. I'm not a doctor, obviously. Sharing my possibly flawed understanding, not giving advice.

If the apocalypse was happening outside my bunker a little extra amoxicillin would be the least of my worries.

It's easy to find a pet store, though.

https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2019/11/26/veterinary-anti...

It’s not hard to buy medication from India online.

You can buy pet antibiotics online from canada. It's the same shit as human antibiotics.

I thought people often bought aquarium antibiotics over the counter to stockpile? I guess dosage could be a little more tricky, though.

I've had doctors prescribe me antibiotics "just in case" when I was going to be traveling.

It's probably not something you could ask for too often, but I don't think it'd be that hard to do.

Depends on the destination. For trips to Africa, India or East Asia, that's not hard over here neither.

Anecdotally, my doctor suggested a script for cipro for a trip to Thailand - and we ended up using it.

About 5 yrs ago a pharmacist in Bangkok sold me amoxicillin no questions asked. In the country side or in Laos or Cambodia it's even easier. Same for India and probably most of Africa. An extra 10$ goes a long way.

The thing with guns and ammunition is that you can use those to get the goose down from people like me.

If it's any consolation, the type of person to do that is the type to have their house burned down around them because the solo king-of-the-castle, all plunder survival strategy has a very limited lifespan.

Only in the most simplistic case.

In less simplistic cases, people will gather and organize and decisions will get made over how resources will be allocated and distributed. The people who stockpile other resources are unlikely to be in a better bargaining position than those with the guns. And it might not require any shooting.

Not that any of this is likely--I just don't think it's limited to Rambo / Scarface types.

Haha, you're right. Any notion of private property will be subsumed by the needs of the collective. We already saw that in the early days of this pandemic where it was unacceptable to keep your masks if you had them.

Stockpiling goose down will mean that the tribe will decide that the old man gets the goose down. And the doctor.

Maybe, or maybe not. If they have guns and you don't, it'll be up to them to decide.

And if one tribe has guns, and the other doesn't, guess who gets more of the goose down and who is tasked with locating more goose down?

Here, try this comment a little up in the thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25060550

Might help you answer that.

You make a good point that I grafted the "lone holdout" connotation onto your plain statement about being armed. All other things being equal then yes the armed contingent can have the stuff belonging to the unarmed contingent

Exactly this. People severely underestimate the power in communities when this happens. If word gets out that you stocked up weapons and you’re on the prowl for food, it’s going to be a 50-to-1 situation against your favor.

In this situation, I’m hoping to barter my computer skills

As someone with myopia, I'm just hoping to barter my ability to die rapidly without corrective lenses.

Not sure if this is serious or bad sarcasm? Hope you get some good glasses :)

Haha! I use contacts but I do have backup glasses. I do know that my societal position is what it is because society has been made safe and able.

>I've seen in the USA that has many thousands of rounds of ammunition, and none of the following:

[...]

>c) lots of gasoline or diesel generators but no knowledge or tools and supplies related to implementing off grid photovoltaic or wind power systems

>d) lots of tactical clothing and accessories, plate carriers, dropleg holsters and such but no $400 goose down sleeping bags, 4-season camping equipment.

This is confusingly worded. On first reading it sounds like they don't have "lots of gasoline [...]", but as you read on further it sounds like you actually meant they do have "lots of gasoline [...]".

you're absolutely right, I'm not fully awake... the order there has been edited to be reversed now.

I have never seen a prepper video on Youtube that doesn't mention a, b, and c.

>a) water purification equipment with supplies/filter changes good for 6+ months of continuous use

It's easy enough to make a particulate filter yourself out of sand and charcoal. Then just boil the water to kill any microbes

You can also render water relatively safe to drink using small amounts of bleach. I've done it a few times whilr camping. EPA.gov has instructions for it, you only need a few drops of bleach per gallon (roughly 3.75L) of water. One large bottle of bleach is enough to purify water for months at least.

https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/emergenc...

In Peace Corps we used a filter bucket and added bleach. Took very little bleach, though I don't recall how often we had to change the filter. It was essentially this: https://www.outbackwater.com/outback-5-gallon-gravity-powere...

It's probably a bit safer (easier to control) to use iodine which I carry for camping, even if only as backup. Once it's done it's thing, you can then put in some Vitamin C to neutralize most of the funny taste.

I don't think Iodine is safe to use for long periods.

Thru-hikers use it for six months at a time. It's safe enough for emergency use for someone with no preexisting thyroid issues.

But you don't know if you have pre-existing thyroid issues. Prolonged use should include monitoring thyroid function.

see https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/travel/backcountry...

Water that has been disinfected with iodine is NOT recommended for pregnant women, people with thyroid problems, those with known hypersensitivity to iodine, or continuous use for more than a few weeks at a time.

Ok, so if clean water is unavailable for more than a few weeks, hop on down to the clinic and trade some ammo for a thyroid checkup? If you're planning for the end of the world, then yes you'll want a backup water plan. For realistic emergency scenarios iodine is a practical water treatment option.

Even easier to buy a few camping water filters and skip the boiling.

You’ve haven’t used those much then. Pumping water in the backcountry is a giant PITA. Even the clearest mountain stream ends up clogging the filters after a few liters and require you to back flush them. We despise using them and will often just boil unpurified water for our dinners.

Sawyer filters tend to be our favorite. Although if you only want to do a Nalgene amount of water and don’t mind some grit, then Steripens are a good option too.

Whole heartedly agree. A gravity system is highly recommended if people go the water filter route.

Second voice for the Gravity filter. Only way to go if you want liters of water at a time.

My experience is quite different from yours with regards to clogging.

I used a Sawyer Squeeze daily for 4 months and probably only backflushed it 2 or 3 times. It definitely slowed down, but nowhere close to the amount of time it takes to boil water and wait for it to cool down.

The Katadyn Befree is my favorite right now because it's lighter with a considerably faster flow than the Squeeze. Some reviews from thru-hikers say it clogs faster than the Squeeze but I haven't had any issues so far. (Haven't thru-hiked with it yet though...)

You don't even need that. You can filter through a piece of cloth and boil. It may not taste great but it's safe.

I realized recently that at some point as the Rugged Individualists have become more shrill, that many of them have crossed the line from Libertarian into Anarchist and I don't think they know they have.

What's funny-sad is that I'm pretty sure they (used to) hate anarchists, and now they've become Them.

Guns instead of supplies is a very anarchist mentality. Guns make sense (at least in a self-consistent way) when you have something worth taking. If you have the guns but nothing to take, then you have a very different plan for an actual emergency. Whether you acknowledge it or not is a different story.

If you have guns and nothing to take you have a commodity that is very valuable among the people who have things to take but no guns.

I think you're being uncharitable to preppers. Most of the ones I know are into camping, and as such, have basically all of A) and D). Many of them are into SAR/EMT stuff and so have B). C) is just normal to have in many rural areas of the US.

Perhaps a naive question, but where does one acquire antibiotics without a prescription? Whenever I've needed an antibiotic, I've seen a doctor and that doctor's prescription seemed necessary to purchase the antibiotics at a pharmacy.

Pet store. It will not have passed the quality controll for human consumption, but it's maybe better than nothing

A lot depends on what failure modes you're preparing for and protecting against.

At the time of the original virus shutdown in the US, I saw a ton of essentially panic buying of things (like canned goods and rice) and bottled water that seemed to be aimed at a complete infrastructure breakdown. Yet, I'm guessing that most of the people preparing to hole up for months lacked many of the other things they'd need if they actually lost electricity and water for an expended period of time.

While of course they would need many other things as well, if you actually believe that there's going to be widespread societal breakdown, you probably do want a gun and ammo in addition to food, large quantities of water, and so forth.

I think what those people were trying to hedge against was a short term loss of basic infrastructure like water or power. It wasn't meant to last for 2 months, it was meant to last for a few days.

I definitely know people who were posting online about how they had 6 months supply of dry and canned goods socked away. A few days makes sense in any case; I actually lost power for 2-3 days this summer just because of a storm. But I could easily cover that with just what I normally have in the house.

To be fair to those people, at the beginning of the pandemic there was a lot of uncertainty around COVID-19 transmission rates. Buying a few weeks of food was a good way to hedge against the potential case where COVID-19 was so virulent that even going to a grocery store presented a high risk of transmission. Of course, we now know that even in a hotspot grocery shopping using basic precautions is fairly safe. But it was not clear at the time.

My wife and I prep, but as a former member of the military with a great deal of "field experience", I agree with your assessment of most preppers.

We own revolvers, no ARs, no Glocks. No need for that. Even the FBI shows than in drastic situations like home invasions, the average number of shots fired is 3. The zombies are not coming. We are not going to end up in a Walking Dead situation. I know enough preppers and have listened to enough to know a lot of what they write is coded and has meaning. Zombies are not real, even though they use this term in their writings. They are referring to inner-city people or city dwellers (or even the unprepared) who may attack during a protracted emergency like a hurricane that removes power for weeks and people start looting to survive. I based my preps on water purification, medical (wife has doctor after her name), and calories. As a guy who has carried a 65# ruck for hours on end for days, I can assure you, you don't need as much as you think. While the military does have a supply chain for soldiers in the field, there have been times when that wasn't a reality for a week or more and you had to make do with what was in your ruck.

The military sends troops into harm's way with 180 rounds of ammunition for rifles, and 45 rounds of ammunition for handguns. That's it.

I focused on water purification, caloric intake, regulating body temperature, medical, and have two solar chargers. Have two of everything (two is one, one is none). I'm not worried about a protracted battle with anyone. Smart preppers will avoid any fight because it's just plain dumb as hell to get into it with anyone when there is no medical help around. To the people that have amassed thousands of rounds of ammunition, I laugh. Why? Military experience. I often ask these people when they brag about their "warehouse full of preps", "How many gunfights do you reasonably expect to survive?" What if someone launched flaming arrows into your home in a protracted situation? How will you carry your stash? Do you have children? Any babies? If so, your job is to protect your family by fleeing. Not trying to pretend you're a warrior. Discretion is ALWAYS the better part of valor.

Good preps: - Light tent for your family. Waterproof. In warm regions, two light tarps. - Water purification tablets for a year. Takes up no space. Also water purification straws, pref. the 25,000 gallon variety. Again, light and no space. - Revolver with 200 rounds of quality ammunition. One for each adult. - High-quality light rucksack with waterproof cover. - Two folding solar panels. - Two full medical kits. - Steel canteens and canteen cups for cooking and water purification. - 1000' of 550 paracord. - Two fixed blade knives and two folding knives. - Light thermal technical clothing. - Hand warmers and space blankets. - Lighters and matches along with ferro rod for fire. - Compass x2 (learn how to use it. Most people fail land navigation, even basics, because they think using a compass is easy. Get grid maps for your area and learn the difference between grid, true, and magnetic north (declination). Learn the declination for your area and program your compass with the correct settings. At even a mile, the wrong declination will send you off by hundreds of yards. - Safety goggles, shemaghs, and expanding toilet paper wipes (light, 250 take up the space of a can of soda) - Pack according to your weight, height, and abilities. Children should carry their own clothes and water and nothing more. Adults should limit it to 35#. - Firearms should always be out of sight.

So with the exception of the gun, that is basically reasonable camping gear. Maybe even the gun, if camping is to happen in, say, the Canadian wilderness.

Given how fast outside help is reaching disaster zones, that would be more than enough. Of course, exceptions proof the rules.

How many hundreds of hours have you spent finding reliable versions of all of those products? Most people just don't have the time.

Magnetic declination cancels out. Pretend magnetic north is true north. Walk a mile north, then walk a mile south. The error cancels out perfectly, returning you to your origin.

Outside of national parks, the land is usually either featureless or full of roads. Navigating by topological features is thus more of a hobby than a survival need.

“expanding toilet paper wipes (light, 250 take up the space of a can of soda)”

Most of the items listed are familiar to me except for this. I’ve been sterling the short ends of big commercials toilet paper rolls (no center tube so toilet paper all the way to the middle), but this sounds better.

Also, revolver for the reliability?

> The military sends troops into harm's way with 180 rounds of ammunition for rifles, and 45 rounds of ammunition for handguns. That's it.

I am reminded of the apocryphal tale:

> Shortly before World War I, the German Kaiser was the guest of the Swiss government to observe military maneuvers. The Kaiser asked a Swiss militiaman: 'You are 500,000 and you shoot well, but if we attack with 1,000,000 men what will you do?' The soldier replied: 'We will shoot twice and go home.'

Having a stock of ammo is sometimes more about making it through droughts of ammo availability and still being about to out and train/practice regularly. Supposedly over the last few months there's been limited ammo availability?

Map and compass seems excessive for most. Even if you live in a very rural area you probably know the surrounding 5 miles by heart (I do at least). More critical imho is making sure your gas tank is always half full (or charged) and that you've downloaded maps on your phone.

Any particular knives you recommend?

How many preppers have you seen, as opposed to videos about preppers?

Are the guns & ammo not enough so you can acquire the other stuff from your neighbors?

(Putting it more seriously, doesn’t a lot of prepperdom assume there will be warlords and pillaging and all that? And better to pillage than be pillaged?)

Hijacking this with a quick tip: don't hoard doxycycline. It'll wreck your kidneys if it's expired. https://boards.straightdope.com/t/expired-doxycycline-what-e...

Aren’t we talking about dying from a bacterial infection here in a SHTF situation?

Wow I haven't seen straighdope in a while!

Do you have that stuff?

Also, basic skills: If we experience a true societal collapse, then simple things like basic wood-working skills and tool maintenance are critical. You won't get far in the post-apocalyptic, zombie-ridden wasteland if you don't even know how to sharpen a knife properly.

True "prepping" (beyond the basics for realistic disasters like utility outages and hurricanes) has always seemed to me like a deeply depressing obsession. Spending so much of your real-world time and money grimly preparing for a far-flung end-of-the-world scenario so that, in the very best case, you can... what, eke out a survival for a little while longer? In terms of maximizing the amount of happiness in one's life, it feels like a terrible waste of resources and energy. If you actually want to increase your number of years on this planet, go on a diet. Go to the gym.

Now: I think (looking at this from the outside) that for some people it's really just a hobby. They may not admit it as such, but I think some people just truly enjoy running through scenarios and stocking things up for the sake of the process. If so, I can't judge them for that. I spend plenty of money on useless things at renaissance fairs because I enjoy the roleplaying aspect. If prepping is just someone's preferred flavor of expensive roleplaying, then have at it. But for people who genuinely spend all waking hours trying to guard against a single, narrowly unlikely catastrophe, I have nothing but pity.

I think that perspective is limited to an extreme percentile. Most preppers plan for realistically possible catastrophes.

There's probably some ambiguity in the term. I tend to assume that the title of "prepper" (as opposed to just, "a prudent adult") is reserved for people who spend a significant portion of their time and money on this stuff

That's true, we didn't characterize the term very well.

I don't think the realistic people go bragging about it. One it's just something you do, not something you need approval for. Two, now everyone knows you have supplies, and they'll be knocking on your door with or without a weapon if the shit really does hit the fan.

It only takes a couple freeloaders for your supplies to go from weeks to days, and you'd rather get to make that choice yourself.

One of the funnier "Preppers" episodes I've seen was a rational prepper who was interviewed by the show.

It was along the lines of "We're Honey Farmers. Every few centuries, an earthquake shakes the East Coast and may destroy the highways. We have a plan to survive for 30 days isolated from the rest of the country".

They had a large stockpile of honey, water, etc. etc. They explained how their system would work without power. Their scenario was based on Hurricane Katrina (and how long it took for aid to arrive: over a month). Overall, a rational set of people.

They got low-scores from the show's hosts because they didn't have enough guns to survive, apparently. Now, some form of self-defense seems needed after a disaster, but we've never seen roaming gangs of bandits running across the countryside stealing food from those who have it (which is apparently the main thing those "Preppers" want to prepare for)

How absurd. "Let's go raid the honey farm" said no one ever.

I'll never understand the fantasies about armed bands roaming the suburbs. Must come from tv shows and video games, because there's never been an actual natural disaster in the US where that sort of behavior was wide spread. And we've had a lot of natural disasters

"Let's go raid the honey farm" would be said. It's fairly energy dense, antiseptic and perfect for long term storage.

You don't need a raid if you have guns and they don't. You probably don't even have to do any shooting.

You might just be hungry, or in a group with others who are hungry, and heard there was a farm in a general area.

I guess my point was more that disasters happen all the time and I can't remember the last time I heard about a farm being raided.

If you're only concerned about the disasters that happen all the time, then you're not in the same mindset as your typical prepper.

The point is that the idea that disasters are immediately followed by violent banditry is entirely a fabrication of hollywood.

In real life, when disaster strikes people band together. Humans are fundamentally social animals, we have been for our entire 150,000 year history. Our lizard-brain instinct is to seek help and help others.

We are also quite tribal, and there are numerous instances throughout that history of an "us vs. them" mentality causing people to do terrible things.

I don't expect roving gangs. I do expect people to be coerced into handing over resources by other people who think they're helping others and/or serving a greater good.

Natural disasters are not so bad. Historically-speaking, artificial disasters are much more worrisome.

The main thing that protects your farm is simply distance. Nobody in a city knows how to travel by foot or navigate.

The media reports during Katrina probably contributed to this fear.

Even today, I'm sure most people believe it was lawless anarchy and that the superdome turned into a massive gang rape. That was a gross exaggeration.

Well... that may depend on one’s proximity to The Hundred Acre Wood or other natural habitats of Heffalumps and Woozles.

> I'll never understand the fantasies about armed bands roaming the suburbs.

I wonder how much of it is rooted in racism and irrational fear of "urban gangs". Where I am in europe it seems like the extreme right likes to entertain societal collapse fantasies using the suburban immigrant delinquents as threir main focus point. No idea how that translates in the US though

> we've never seen roaming gangs of bandits

In the last 2 months we've seen roaming gangs of bandits looting stores and burning down buildings. (Causing over $2B in damages - the most expensive riot insurance payout ever, more than the King riots)

You can't say it out loud because it's politically incorrect but true.

I have some karma points to burn :)

I think it's effectively LARP for a lot of people, although I'd expect actual LARPers to last longer in the apocalypse (I mean, they can at least sew and fix holes in their shoes).

i have had the "zombie apocalypse? well, i've got steel armor, a spear, and a bicycle" conversation a few times.

It goes both ways. I can see what you're saying, but on the other hand I look at the sheer panic some communities experienced at the fear of running out of toilet paper and the anxiety people have over what might come next, and I just can't relate because I haven't missed the slightest beat in 2020. From simply going camping regularly, being involved in community emergency plans, and always buying in bulk to ensure I have a buffer, I think things could get several orders of magnitude worse before I'm even slightly inconvenienced.

Local 911 stops responding to calls because they're overwhelmed during riots? Not to worry - that wilderness EMT course and the kit I built after it should cover most things life threatening things reasonably well. Grocery store is cleaned out or shut down for weeks? I'll just go check the basement shelves. Local school can't open without enough PPE? Oh I can supply a bunch of teachers with N95 masks for weeks and still have plenty for myself. All the utilities could shut down, and I could keep my family and several neighbors comfortable and safe for quite some time.

I was a little less carefree than most people before this, but boy I'm relatively carefree now. There's been some real hardship for people in this pandemic that few could prepare for, but I was surprised how few people were prepared to have to stay in their home for a couple of weeks in areas that are routinely hit by natural disasters that might place a similar burden on them at any time. Now's a good time to evaluate if you can deal with other things that might happen: an ounce of preparation.

I certainly think of it as a hobby I may want to take up because of recent events. Like, "supposing supply lines X Y and Z run out, will I be ready"? Self sufficiency is just kind of a cool thing.

And this year we had a tiny taste of how our economy is not invincible. So I wouldn't say bad outcomes are impossible.

BTW I tie free software, self-hosting, open data etc into the "self sufficiency" thing as well.

I agree with this. I go for the middle ground options that give me the most bang for buck. Planning for a total breakdown of society and investing any major amount of time into it is a depressing concept for me as well. I can see how its a lot of fun for many people but I'd rather build for an optimistic future rather than a bleak one.

I meal prep out to a buffer of about a week. These are extremely high quality meals that I eat regularly. Beyond this, I have about 2 additional weeks worth of dried, frozen and canned foods sitting around that are sub-par but get the job done. None of this requires any extra ongoing maintenance aside from the occasional 5lb bag of rice or can of beans at the grocery store.

I also have a way to distill water in reasonable quantities and a power source that can run my entire house for as long as I can locate fuel. I have a rotating 48 hour supply on-site and burn older generator fuel in my car so I don't have to waste anything or worry about it going bad. I also have a very small generator that can run critical loads (fridge/freezer) for a much longer timeframe if I have trouble finding quantities of fuel that can support the larger unit.

Anything that causes disruption beyond a month, I don't bother planning for. After the 3rd week of apocalypse I figure I am going to try to venture out into the hellscape and start working with others to put the pieces back together.

Being able to defend yourself is also very important, but going overboard is ridiculous and can even make you a target if you are open about it. A good shotgun and/or handgun are all you really need if you aren't planning to go out and assault other people. Ample ammo is always good, but you can only effectively use 1 weapon at a time unless you have friends/family/neighbors who can also use them on your behalf.

I absolutely agree that for most people it is a hobby. Unlike some other hobbies, though, this one comes with an ideological bent that can be dangerous for impressionable people.

No one is going to liquidate their 401k to get new golf clubs or model trains.

I once read in recent German pamphlet "If every German is prepared, Germany is prepared" and it stuck with me.

Even if you don't see basic prepping as necessity, it's way better when after disaster firest responders can care for elderly and disabled, not for you.

Just FYI, it's spelled "pamphlet", because for whatever historical reason english has at least 3 spellings for the "f" sound - f, ph, and sometimes gh.

Thank you, I updated it

There’s a great article that popped up years ago on here, something like “the realistic survivalist guide”.

The main take away was “enough cash in the bank to survive no job for a year because that’s the most likely disaster you’ll face” after that I think it was water, always half a tank of gas, and everything else a distant runner up.

I’m remembering from years ago so may have butchered it.

I think the typical natural disaster kit is what is all that would be 'realistic'.

After that in the ultra crazy apocalyptic scenario, my preppier neighbor down the road... I'll just take his stuff, the odds of him being able to stand guard 24/7 or not befriend the wrong people aren't super high.

Granted I'd prefer a more cooperative approach but the preppers expecting some sort of mad max situation, not sure they're any better off than the folks who can just take their stuff.

Very few of us expect an actual Mad Max-style scenario. Most preppers simply prepare for anything, as you simply don't know what the future holds. Personally, I found keeping a supply of N95's at home to be very handy in the current pandemic. We've also kept the store-runs to a minimum simply by living off some of the supplies we have at home, as well as our own produce.

I suspect most preppers agree that if shit hits the fan and zombies start walking the streets, cooperation is key for survival and rebuilding, and that simple things like getting to know your neighbours can be quite critical for survival in such scenarios. After all, sitting in a bunker with a ton of canned food is pretty pointless unless your kids have someone to procreate with.

Doomsday prepping for less crazy folk https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/

Looks like it’s been renamed recently. Great guide in my opinion.

My favourite article on prepping is https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/

Honestly, I still thought it sounded far fetched until people at the start of lockdown bought a years supply of toilet paper at a time. At which point I resolved to (responsibly) ensure we have a reasonable supply of staples at home.

Just skimming through it for the first time in a while I had to laugh at this:

> Pandemic - It's been a while since the highly developed world experienced a devastating outbreak, but it may be premature to flat out dismiss the risk. In 1918, an unusual strain of flu managed to kill 75 million people. Few years later, a mysterious sleeping sickness - probably also of viral origin - swept the globe, crippling millions, some for life. We aren't necessarily better prepared for similar events today.

I definitely get the feeling that a non-negligible percentage of people are going to come out of this with a "I think I'm going to keep 3-6 months of staples on hand for the rest of my life, just in case." mindset.

I don't think I'm hoarding by any reasonable measure but I'm definitely keeping an extra buffer for a lot of the staples, whether food or cleaning supplies, than I tended to do previously. There's no real downside; I'm going to use them sooner or later.

I tend to have a pretty good supply of things like TP, cleaning supplies, and standard dry staples like rice, in the house. I have the space and it's cheaper/easier to buy relatively large sizes. When things started to get a bit crazy, I stocked more in than usual (including some meats etc. for the freezer). And filled up a big water container.

But, really, my "prepping" was mostly around avoiding stores as much as possible and being able to handle broken supply chains and potential short-term disruption to utilities. I was actually without power for a couple days in June but that was because of a wind storm.

We've been hit by half a dozen hurricanes over the past two decades where we lost power for 5+ days. These were relatively minor storms compared to what could happen in a worst case scenario.

The focus of my preparations are around providing for my family if we had a severe hurricane hit. This involves making sure we have enough food, water, and fuel to be self sufficient for a few weeks. It involves being able to charge devices and have light without power. Sadly, it also involves having at least some ability to defend ourselves as that is the world we live in.

It is a fun hobby to have. While some people go overboard, I think we'd be better off if more people prepared for real scenarios like this as it takes some of the burden off the system and leaves capacity for those who couldn't or didn't prepare enough.

I'd be happy for there to be a nationwide government-promoted disaster-preparedness initiative, especially if that included not building susceptible homes areas prone to flooding or forest fires.

Perhaps I'm not understanding what "initiative" could mean, but there is a website: https://www.ready.gov/ and as a "prepper" I find it to be very realistic and helpful.

Though I agree that self-sufficiency and disaster preparedness is lacking in the USA. The infrastructure of our cities is such that self-sufficiency and community preparedness are the best paths towards surviving a disaster. For example, Houston (my home city) can't have an effective hurricane evacuation. There's simply too many people with too few paths out, and this a city that if you zoom out looks like a spider's web of freeways.

Is there somewhere on the site that has something of a supplies list to build a kit? Water, first aid and food is all I know, are there other things I should think about? Are there foods that work best for stock piling up to a year?

https://www.ready.gov/kit

Ah, somehow I overlooked that side link. Thanks for that :)

Someone else linked the actual kit, but specifically this is what they recommend regarding food:

    Ready-to-eat canned meats, fruits, vegetables and a can opener

    Protein or fruit bars

    Dry cereal or granola

    Peanut butter

    Dried fruit

    Canned juices

    Non-perishable pasteurized milk

    High-energy foods

    Food for infants

    Comfort/stress foods

There's high crossover between foods good for backpacking, and foods good for prepping. If you have hella money laying around, you could blitz out on some dehydrated meals, I think those are delicious. But they can come out to like, 9$ a serving or more. Packaged ramen is great for carbs and stores relatively compactly. Protein powder keeps well, but is only a supplement, not a meal.

On a budget, or if you just don't want to splurge thousands on your food prep that should be recycled usually yearly, I'd say stash dried rice, dried beans, maybe some bagged tuna (I like it more than canned for storage reasons), and some dried fruit so ya don't get scurvy.

Here's a great discussion of that:

https://johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-s-hyperinflation-def...

Great info that stands independent of the author's politics and book-shilling.

Civil Defense used to be a thing, but it was oriented towards nuclear war.

Considering some of the major events that we've had. I would hardly call this prepping. We've had major fires, lots of civil unrest (2 major riots in Chicago and some minor conflicts), and the pandemic (which might I add is still going on) which has stressed supply chains. (Minor news articles are saying that we're starting to see limits and stresses on retail.. Christmas is going to be insane)

Prepping is a good idea imo and it doesn't mean crazy gun hoarding or racism it just means trying to be as self sufficient and robust as possible imo. And sharing info so others can do likewise

Even the CDC recommends you keep an emergency go bag with some food, water, important documents and other basics. You should also keep your home stocked with a few days of food and water, decent medical supplies you are able to use, and whatever else you need for your situation.

Zombies is unlikely, bad weather or a forest fire however...

I had a family member who was within 2 miles of forest fire - no ready bag, no extra supplies, nothing. "Well, I can just stop by the store if I need to evacuate right?"

I shot two big game animals in the past month and went to buy an upright freezer. The normal/large sizes, such as 13-21 cubic feet, are all sold out and backordered for several months. I have some chest freezers so it's not an issue, but I want the organization friendly upright style. It seems like americans are stocking up on meat as well as part of their prepping activities.

I'd think a contributing factor is production delays due to Coronavirus related supply-chain impacts and that it isn't just limited to freezers. Anecdotally, a HomeDepot sales person told me recently that Bosch dishwashers are backordered until February due to a interruption in bolt manufacturing.

At least in Canada, all appliances are sold out. It has been an excellent year for the appliance industry.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/10/10/appliance-cri...

I don't think prepping is silly, but I can't understand why this pandemic would increase people's perceived value of prepping. The whole world shut down, and there were basically no serious shortages.

I think for some it reinforced the perceived (whether it's real or not I'm not convinced) fragility of the system.

I actually think this showed a robustness to our system overall.

Most people could benefit from basic disaster preparation. This could be some extra food/fuel, to having a bag in case you need to evacuate, etc.

There were some local shortage of some things, and long lines to get into grocery stores in some cities. I've made a point to keep some extra dry goods and oil on hand just in case we couldn't get to the grocery store. It's been pretty helpful twice already. I'm not doing anything more serious than that though.

How does that constitute evidence that serious shortages couldn't happen?

The whole world did not shut down. It voluntarily reduced non-essential in-person activities as a preemptive measure. It was the easiest possible test, and the shelves were still empty of toilet paper and grains for a month.

TP in consumer packaging. I was able to get 4 rolls/week from my local catering company (who quickly transitioned to delivering a mix of prepped meals and basic raw ingredients, including TP that was packaged for commercial use).

Against the ToS from their TP vendor? Who knows? But, there was TP out there, just not on shelves at the local grocer.

Yes, the disruption did not exhaust easy work-arounds, but that's because the disruption was completely trivial by disaster standards, not because the system was robust.

Except for toilet paper, one of the most basic products out there. That definitely made people realize that yes, even in modern civilization, it can happen.

> The whole world shut down

White collar work shut down.

All the people that actually make the supply chain function got labeled "essential" and got to go to work anyway.

And got paid as such. Just kidding, of course they did not.

The whole world didn't really shut down but there were (and are) signs that significant disruptions can occur. The grocery shortages were one sign but also think about the people who work at utilities and are responsible for keeping power/water going.

Those companies typically have done some serious preparation such as segregating workers into different shifts or even having them live on site but the pandemic reminded (some) people that our modern living standards are held up by millions of people working for utilities, farms, waste disposal companies, etc. If a significant number of those people are unable to work you do need to be prepared to survive without power, running water, and fresh produce for a good amount of time. Typically middle/upper class Americans haven't had to contend with that fact but the pandemic has made it more clear that they won't always be able to just pop down to the store for whatever they need at a whim.

Honestly waste disposal is one of the more frightening ones. I shudder at the thought of my area if the waste disposal companies stopped for any length of time. Those people who are willing to work in that job should be treated as heroes and paid much better than those of us who sit in front of computers typing relatively useless code all day.

> The whole world shut down

It didn't. The essential people/work still had to show up for work. Butchers, farmers, supermarket workers, truckers, cops, medical workers, etc.

The less essential workers either had to close shop ( barbers, restaurants, etc ) or WFM ( software developers, sales people, etc ).

> and there were basically no serious shortages.

Because the whole world didn't shut down. Just the non-essential stuff were shut down.

When I went to stores over the past 6 weeks, there were several times where whole sections were missing. I recall one trip where the only chicken products available was party wings. Other times, other staples were missing. There were always substitute goods available (other than TP, I think bidets sold out, too), but with a little imagination, it could have been a lot worse.

I imagine people who experinced delays in their staple foods (or TP) that impacted them negatively are going to build a larger buffer for the future.

I've always wondered how many of these "luxury prepper communities" would wind up with the hired security taking the place for themselves in a genuine catastrophe.

The day before my tech company called WFH we had a happy hour, this was first week in march. I was already pissed about coming into work but this was a going away for someone and it was still pretty contained in SEA (maybe), but we were also outside.

We had one table of the younger devs and one of the mangers / olds. The older table was just all talking about essentially getting ready for being quarantined in your house for up to 3 months. Two folks from the younger table sauntered over. Mainly just talking about having the backpacking supplies version of prepping.

I remember mentioning that the idea of what defines a crazy prepper was probbably going to change in the next 6 months.

I live in North Dakota, and call it winter preparation. Given the possibility of storms and power outages, anything less than seven days of prep is ill advised. I used to do three days, but that went out the window a couple of winters ago.

I’m late to this thread and it makes me sad because this is such a fun subject. People stockpile weapons but rarely stockpile knowledge for these situations. For example, can you propagate food bearing plants without seeds (they’re mostly hybrids now)? How about basic water sanitation and waterborne illness treatment? A little bit of knowledge is vastly superior to stockpiles of weapons.

True, but I suspect the stereotypical image of a prepper holedup in a bunker surrounded by guns and ammo is more myth than representative of people with a preparedness mindset. If they exist outside of caricature, they are a fringe minority element at best.

A lot of people use prepping to gain a sense of control overy life's uncertainty. Knowing you've laid in provisions for unlikely-but-possible (by your own determination) events can quiet much anxiety.

Ironically the myth of preppers all being paranoid grey beards holed up in bunkers exists for exactly the same purpose, just lazier. Just convince yourself that prepping is the realm of crazies and any anxiety you might have about uncertainties in life can be comfortably locked away with those crazy people in your head. For added effect share a laugh about it with other sane people around you, and you can all rest easy in the knowledge that nothing bad is ever going to happen and there's no need to worry.

As is often the case, somewhere in the middle lies truth.

I am planning on a proper ‘Show HN’, but I’ve been working on something for quite a time that has prepper use-cases.

Most people have phones. Technically, they don’t need a third party to talk to each other. It seemed like there should be a communication option that took advantage of that.

Thus, Tin-Can: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tin-can/id1435356247

In short, TC is a one-to-many messaging app that has no central service. Proximate phones use BLE to sync.

My mom is headed to high ground in FL atm due to Eta.. I think it’d be useful if phones could all do this natively.

FWIW, I just got it on iOS, and updates like replies are forthcoming. But feedback is appreciated if you try it out. I’ll do a show HN once a few features are completed and bugs squashed.

> I think it’d be useful if phones could all do this natively.

Most phones (meaning those running Android and iOS) can do this already. On iOS, it's called AirDrop[1] and on Android it's called Nearby Share[2].

Both work without an internet connection or centralized server.

1. https://www.lifewire.com/airdrop-with-without-wifi-connectio...

2. https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/4/21353020/android-nearby-sh...

They enable a messaging network?

It's not really a substitute for SMS, but you can send messages in the form of notes, photos, and audio recordings.

There are other apps, like FireChat and Bridgefy, available in the app stores that handle actual P2P messaging.

I don't do apps on my phone. I just don't.

That app I actually want. Let us know when you get it going. (I need it on Android, not Apple.)

Thanks. :) It works. Just limited to a single stream of posts atm. But will do.

Sounds like Briar[1] might be what you want?

1: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.briarproje...

The one thing I miss the most about living in America is the existence of warehouse stores like Costco and Sam's Club. It's a lot harder to prep in Europe since you're not getting any bulk discount. Even if someone gets the urge, the logistics just aren't there.

I grew up in a geologically active region. The rule of thumb was to have enough stuff to survive 3 days, so food, potable water, medical supplies, batteries, flashlights etc. Always having at least 3 days of absolute essentials is going to hold you over for 99.9% of all problems to give time for help to find you. It should be doable in Europe too.

Of course its possible. It's just a slightly higher bar to meet, which filters out a lot of people who might enjoy prepping for hobbyist reasons.

Where in Europe? Cash and carry stores operated by Metro AG are not exactly the same, but quite similar. It may depend on the country, but it's not required to be a business customer everywhere, and where it is it shouldn't be too hard to find someone who runs a company and is a member, borrow their card / join them for a trip.

I haven't seen any in Finland at least.

I used to be Mormon. From what I recall they sell their bulk supplies to the community in bishop storehouses. Not sure if that is US only or everywhere. Given they own 2% of Florida and several other massive ranches and farms, as well as take emergency preparation as an article of faith, you may find some luck there.

Utah has some good resources and is actively pushing preparedness to its citizens.

http://bereadyutah.gov

https://twitter.com/BeReadyUtah

I wonder how much the focus preparedness in that state is due to the Mormon majority and their emphasis of the topic.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topi...

Sadly so many of the guides and sites look old fashioned (or crazy low quality). I started working on a site for normal people that takes info about your location and family and suggest risks and gives recommendations and a way to digitally track your preparedness for a given set of disasters and does things like reminds you when to replace items. I did customer research before covid and found most people weren’t interested or thought of prepping as crazy. Good to see the change of heart

To me, it's a risk management problem but a lot of people just find it as a fun hobby too.

Right out of college my best friend got a job at a datacenter. He was showing me the generators and how they have 30 days of fuel on site. I asked him why 30 and not 40 (and so on), he said he asked his boss the same question and the reply was if this datacenter doesn't have power and can't get fuel after 30 days then there are bigger problems in society than accessing websites.

Even that amount of fuel on-site is extreme, I'm guessing it was a pretty small Datacenter as being able to have that much fuel implies relatively low power draw. Tier 4 Datacenter spec is to be able to survive 96 hours of provider power loss.

I've seen this picture before, and asked what sense those white cameras make in case of the need of hiding in a bunker because that would be the first things a sharpshooter takes out, or just someone with a laserpointer. Couldn't they use something less obvious? Are they just decoys?

What am I not getting here?

Every person who prepares is one less person straining rescue resources.

If they happen to share or help with rescue (which they often do because they have the skills), then they dramatically reduce the chances of desperation or panic.

Seen from the other side of the pond prepping looks really odd.

Yeah, we Europeans have never seen war or natural disaster so why prepare.

Deeply encoded in the American myth is the idea that every individual or family is an island. That we can (and some would say, should) operate without a society around us.

If you look at the country through that lens, it explains a whole lot of our policy and culture, much of which is otherwise nonsensical.

Only people who don't understand tail risk think disentangling infrastructural dependencies is "nonsensical".

Depends on where you are and what level of prepping you're doing. Basically all of the US west coast is very plausibly in the zone that could lose power and water from an earthquake for days/weeks. Most of the south east coastal US is hammered by ever bigger hurricanes every year. We just had a record forestfire summer in the mountain west and flooding on the plains. Europe is a pretty boring (adverse weather and geological activity)-wise so it might seem overblown from there.

Good points. And there is also Tornado Alley:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Alley

Excerpt:

Although the official boundaries of Tornado Alley are not clearly defined, the main alley extends from northern Texas, through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and South Dakota. States such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota and Ohio are sometimes included in Tornado Alley.[4] Research suggests that tornadoes are becoming more frequent in the northern parts of Tornado Alley where it reaches the Canadian prairies.

Insurance looks really odd until the unlikely occurs. Then it looks very wise.

That's your perspective.

Believe it or not there is even a decent amount of gun owners on this side too.

Be prepared. - scouts motto.

Anyone who's been through several natural disasters or lives in the northern midwest already should take reasonable preparedness in stride.

I'd like to see more discussion of natural vs. artificial disasters, or how the former could cause the latter.

Would it be good to have some books around to pass the time as well when there is no longer access to electricity?

Within the past 9 months I've seen stores with almost bare shelves, no meat, no dairy, no paper goods. Entire neighborhoods near me have burned down due to forest fire. There were riots and looting within a couple miles. Power outages. Now we are looking at a hateful leftist government that could do things like implement communist price controls or unrestricted immigration. Price controls will create further shortages as that is basic economics. Job loss will mean no income for extended periods of ime.

The people who don't prep are also anti-gun and have always lived in the city. They live in a bubble. They need a concept of how vast the country is and that there are people that live an hour or more from food, gas, EMS, police. If you live in a rural area people WILL try to raid your barn, garage, vehicles, trailers, etc. It is a matter of time.

Have you actually seen any of it, or did you just watch it on entertainment news? And what leftist government? If Bernie Sanders ran for government in my country, we’d need to move our current scale to the right to even reach into how conservative he is compared to us, and we’re mainly social democrats, still really far from actual communists.

I don’t think prepping is actually that stupid. But the the thing is. Society never actually collapses the way American preppers think it will. Even in places like Syria or Liberia where you have really terrible situations, you’re just not going to make it on your own. People always gather in communities, gangs, whatever, and eventually the more stable of them tend to win. At least that’s how it’s been throughout the entirety of human history.

The traditional American prepper is just building a stockpile of stuff that’s going to get robbed, and would be much better of having learned some useful trade. So that even in the worst case of all the shitty cases, ISIS would have needed you, to keep the water running. Much more realistically, you’ll simply want to build and secure your local town and food production with the people from your local town, and being the paranoid loner with lots of guns and no useful skills isn’t who you want to be.

Have you been raided before? In the US raids are rare even during crisis times.

I wish you luck in whatever country you may be in, the US in exceedingly fortunate in the Biden has led crises management before instead of Trump who apparently wanted to let Covid run wild in states with higher Democrat voter percentages.

My rural experience has been that "raids" are typically people looking for cash or things to sell for drugs. But also neighbors help each other, churches and communities come together.

Society can always fall apart, but until it does I hope for the best and stay prepared for many potential emergencies.

Edit: I know it is poor form to ask for voting explanations, but I'm genuinely curious what folks felt was off topic and/or disagreeable in my response. I value feedback, which is hard to glean from a vote tally.

I live suburbs but family members that live rural generally keep a loaded gun ready for people who appear on their property at 2am. Areas that dont freeze in the winter in the PNW currently have encampments all throughout forested areas and empty homes will get squatters. Additionally if a large property is not policed, drug and/or squatter RVs will set up in the property. People that dont have dogs or alarms probably sleep right through visits. The feelings about prepping are often the same about guns. "Nobody ever needs an assault rifle!" Yeah, some people actually do need a rifle just like they need to prep as well.

Must be inhospitable land where I am. We do keep a rifle handy, but that is typically for the occasional coyote.

> could do things like implement communist price controls or unrestricted immigration

I wish people would stop imagining nonsense like that. They did it with Trump too - he was supposed to start a nuclear war with North Korea or something ridiculous that never happened. Judge people by their actions, not some exaggerated fantasy of the future.

When you went to buy toilet paper in April, and all the stores said limit 1 per customer instead of making TP $100, that is exactly price controls. Why did they limit 1 per customer? Out of some flawed communist ideals that the authorities should determine who should get how much TP and at what price. Needless to say TP was gone for months. If it were $100, people that really needed it would have been able to get it. Now replace TP with insulin or other life saving drugs. Some would say it would be cruel to bump the price 1000%. However, if the price is held down, it will be hoarded just like TP. If the price is held down and quantity limited, those that really need it, like hospitals, and actual sick could not get the quantity they need at any price.

No doubt leftists will try this like Venezuelan price controls on food that did nothing but create a food shortages.

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