There are levels of ‘Prepping’ - There’s lunatics, and there’s common sense.
I have a what amounts to a Bug Out Bag. It’s everything I’d need to support me in a strange house or no-service motel for a week. Say, if my house burned down, or flooded out, or I found myself snowed in somewhere that wasn’t home. That’s something people forget - anything that would allow you to ‘bug out’ will serve you in much more plausible mundane disasters. TEOTWAWKI sets the upper limit on what you might want - I set my mark rather lower.
For that matter, one of my online correspondants was quite smug after 9/11 that whilst he was caught away from home when travel went to hell, that his luggage was essentially ‘bug out’ packed. Things like a weeks worth of meds, emergency phone cards, and an extensive contacts list made his life less painful.
There’s also the “EDC” - Every Day Carry - Bag. I have one of these, too - Basically if I’m stranded for 36 hours, the bag has everything I need to get by at a minimum level for 36 hours. “Stranded” means everything from “Big storm, roads closed” to “I slid into a ditch, no one’s spotted me yet, and my phone is dead.” Mostly, it’s emergency meds supply, cell-phone recharger, lights, noisemakers, some energy bars, bottles of water and some purification tables, a bit of paracord, a small first aid & trauma kit, mylar ‘space blankets,’ that kind of stuff - Light enough that I can pick it up and walk around with it and forget I’m carrying it. Not a professional kit, just Boy Scout ‘be preparred’ stuff.
Yeah, you generally feed a solar still by using waste water or chopping up vegetation-containing water and letting it evaporate. You obviously wouldn’t use a still in a wet temperate zone, and it wouldn’t be useable in freezing or cloudy conditions, so it is basically a technique limited to desert or ocean survival that produces just barely enough water to keep a single person hydrated. As I said earlier, unless you are stuck in place, you are better off looking for a fresh water source. It’s actually pretty difficult to find yourself someplace that doesn’t have some kind of accessible water supply if you know where to look for it; even in areas with brackish water there are usually acquifer-fed springs or natural rainwater catchments if you look hard enough, or you can extract water directly from vegetation. I’ve built and used a solar still, but the space you would make for the clear tarp and Mylar liner in a bug out bag would be better reserved for a 4 liter wineskin and a good hand-pumped water filter and/or treatment chemicals.
Right now, none. But when again the worm turns and there’s another Obama or Hillary in the white house and the shelves are bare it will be a sellers market. Hence, investment.
Even *if that happens - the Democrats flip the balance the other way and are in control of all 3 houses - a process that won’t be able to happen for 4-10 years at a minimum - the liberals have their gun sights aimed at the military grade ammo first. They are going to want to restrict “black rifles”, or knockoffs of standard military rifles that only fire semiautomatic but are otherwise identical, and larger weapons like 0.50 calibers first. It would take *years *of gradually tightening the noose before they ever got to restricting 0.22 LR.
The second question I ask is when evaluating any business opportunity, draw a diagram, on paper or in your head. You are buying ammo. You are selling the same ammo. What value have you added to the transaction?
In the long run, for any economic transaction, value adding is the most likely explanation for whether you make any money on a transaction. It’s the same logic when you analyze a chemical reaction that releases energy. If there’s no negative delta H, you can’t expect it to release energy over the long run.
*more like a sternly wagging finger that wags extra hard after each mass shooting
Not if, when. There will be another democrat president with at least one branch in the majority. The pendulum is always swinging. Consider when Obama was elected to his second term. Ammo flew off the shelves because “he’s coming for our guns and ammo”. If I had stocked up in advance I could have at least doubled my investment had I cared to. I did look at 22 at online auction sites and found it to be going at 2 to 3 times the prices I would have found in the store before the artificial shortage happened.
If you’re looking for a short term investment, ammunition isn’t it. But if you’ve got storage space you can certainly make a profit if you’re willing to wait for the next anti-gun president to take office.
At a bare minimum you should wait until post primaries when the odds are good for a democratic president to be elected who is openly calling for gun control. Every month or year your money is “invested” in the ammo instead of the stock or bond market or something is returns you are not getting.
One wonders how many more times the ammo hoarders can be goaded into paying 2 or 3x for stuff that’s only scarce because their panic buying temporarily makes it so.
One would hope that, unlike Lucy & Linus and the football, they eventually learn that it’s a trap, not a real opportunity.
Not that I have Expertise with survival or being a Prepper (and hunting even in rural Bavaria is a not-realistic Situation anyway) - but in any End-of-the-world Scenario I would want a weapon that is as low-key as possible to make refills as easy as possible. Which for me means bows - although arrows are today often plastic or metal, you can still make them from Wood, and while modern bows with cable pull pack more Punch, you can still make a bow from a Piece of Wood, a knife and a string - or a sling with rocks, like the ancient romans.
In both cases, as non-prepper, I would have a steep curve of practising to hit anything, making hunting as Food resource unlikely for a second reason.
The third is that, even if you use snares, you Need experience on how to take an animal apart (and which parts you shouldn’t eat) to make hunting useful. So a Million of City dwellers can’t just disperse over the countryside and survive, even apart from the density being too high for hunting.
I think it actually Shows how important Groups are to survival, despite the “A strong man lives best alone” (or however that Mantra is worded) Motto. From the earliest ancestors, humans and humanoids live in Groups, because 10 People searching for Food and sharing have better chances than 10 single ones not-sharing. Even then, there will be starvation years when the weather is not helpful.
So instead of one lone guy Standing guard over his own canned Food with a gun (and succumbing to sleep after a week, or Shooting at shadows from sleep deprivation), the better Chance is 20 or more People in a town or village grouping together, pooling resources and skills. Commandeer a garden or plot of grass and try growing as many different plants as possible (to prepare for different weather) when the canned Food runs out. Not as cool as Lone Macho Guy With Gun, but more realistically.
That’s what I would think, too: if you are stranded in a desert area without water (but at least a Container), I would stay at the still for a week or more, accumulating water and making short trips in each direction, before trying several days to find a real river or Exit. Then, before my water runs out after several days, I dig a new solar still and rest for another week or so. Not sure-proof, but better Chance.
Is the bug-out bag a Prepper speciality and different from the Emergency kit the US govt. advises People to prepare for Tornadoes, Flooding, Earthquakes etc.?
Because when I look at the requirements, that’s not a backpack a normal Person can carry: at least 1 l of drinking water per Person per day for 14 days, yes, reasonable, but with Food and else, we’re over 20 Kilos, who can carry that easily?
I would assume the prepper plans to drive away with it in their gas guzzling truck. And they are going to promptly hit that eternal traffic jam that all the zombie movies have and be trapped.
The messed up thing about “preppers” is they aren’t preparing for the actual crises they are most likely going to face.
They are probably not doing tons of cardio and getting yearly cardiac examinations, since the most common cause of death is heart failure. I bet they don’t generally have the baby aspirin handy.
They are probably not prepping to be cryogenically frozen when they inevitably have a medical condition that current methods cannot treat. (I know the odds of it working are dim, but it’s better than zero)
As for major hurricanes or other infrastructure failure - I bet the 90% case of what you need is to hoard bottled water. After all, 3 days without water kills you a lot sooner than the 3 weeks without food. And pallets of bottled water are cheap and have no expiration date.
People have a tendency to think of 22 rimfire as not a serious combat round. It is quite lethal, though. It may not have the range or sheer power of most centerfire rounds, but it’s very accurate, and is not contemptable if you’re even a halfway decent shot. Mind you, many “survival situation folks” yammer on about various centerfire calibes, but realistically, a combo gun in 22lr & 20 or 12 guage is the realistic survival gun - The shotgun is a very capable combat choice, and you’re NOT likely to be engaged in sustained combat anyway. 12ga ammunition is very nearly as ubiquitous as 22lr.
Fact.
If it really IS TEOTWAWKI, you want to be inconspicuous and stealthy - anyone who struts out is going to get ambushed and killed. Being Not Seen is much more important than having the uber survival rifle. Oh, and brush up on those medical skills. 'Cause dying of a simple scratch ‘going bad’ on you is going to be embarasing.
The Savage Arms Model 24 is a good example of what I’m talking about. It’s been discontinued, but is readily available on teh secondary market, and there are plenty of other similar such firearms out there. NOT sexy, and that’s to the good, if you’re actually serious about living off the land.
Not true. I’m holding a bottle of Kirkland “purified water with minerals added for taste” bought last week and it has an oddly specific best if used by date of 03 OCT 18 2348; the timezone is unspecified so I’m sticking with UTC :D. I also have pouches of Coast Guard emergency water with expiration dates of about five years after packing, presumably because the packaging has been chosen for long-term storage and thus leaches less plastic into the water.
That’s what always makes me wonder about Zombie movies - yes they are escapist Fantasy - aside from gunning down People instead of looking at a medical solution, People think chainsaws, flame throwers and guns are the best weapons, but all of those
make noise, which draws more Zombies
Need fuel/ ammo, which can quickly run out against a whole Horde.
An axe doesn’T Need to be reloaded, though it is heavy. A crossbow has a lot of power, but can rewound with a stirrup.
That’s also why predator animals often avoid fights - they know that even if they win, any injury is dangerous.
Which goes again back to forming Groups - 20 or 50 People, somebody will be at least a Nurse, and somebody will have a first-aid pack in their backpack.
Of course, the main Problem is that either the End of the world causes a mass extinction of 90% of the worlds Population - leaving you with a bunch of decomposing dead bodies? - or, if it’s just an EMP that kills civilisation, leaving the Population intact, a brutal battle of survival. Because we’re currently Long past sustainable local farming in many Areas.
Not that a Population of 7 milliard. People can’t be fed with agriculture - but you Need machines for harvest and Transport from warmer to cooler climates, and those presumably won’t work.
Well - if I do happen to get stranded in the desert (I’m not planning on it) without water, I’m in Trouble anyway. The choice wouldn’t be between 4 Liters and 1/3 Liter, it would be between 0 Liters and 1/3 Liters, which is better than nothing. Esp. if I know rescue is coming.