You know, this post when taken in tandem with your first post to the thread is gold. Do you have any tips for the rest of us so that we, too, can have dual citizenship and financially stable family pre-positioned overseas? I, for one, have seen the wisdom of your way. Just tell us what you did to secure this for yourself and I’ll get started today.
This. I tend to view preppers as WW3 reenactors.
Talking with local CERT members and local officials, the official line is be prepared to be self-sufficient for a minimum of two weeks if there is a significant event (they are mostly talking an earthquake). Unofficially, they will tell you four weeks minimum.
Fantasy or not, I doubt most families can be self-sufficient (no utilities, no external food, no vehicle fuel, no assistance from police/fire, no ability to move to a different location, etc.) for more than a day or two, at any given time.
For those who think they can travel to a different locale, at what point prior to an event do you make the decision to go, and know you can travel and get there before it all breaks loose? I look to the current event in the Northeast and watch on the local news where folks are being interviewed that have to be in New York or Boston in the next day or two for business. They all think things will get back to normal rather quickly. They seem to forget the airlines have no aircraft in the affected area; they’ve been flown out and are on standby at different airports. The aircraft they think is at the local airport to take them to New York and Boston isn’t there, either. The disruption of airline schedules is one thing trying to accommodate people with bounced reservations. It’s quite another when the aircraft are not available to take them from point A to point B without considerable repositioning of aircraft (all which takes time and availability of fuel, crews, and access back to the affected area).
I’m not supporting the wacky preppers by any means. I just think many people do not realize when there is a significant event, our interdependency of utilities, transportation, communications, etc., are all not as robust as people believe. The cascade to failure when the chain links start to break will vary in speed, damage, location, etc., just as the re-establishment of those links will be hop-scotch as well.
Wow, getting a little personal, huh?
I feel like I’ve planned appropriate precautions for the situations my family is likely encounter. I’ve had “go bags” before, when I lived in larger houses in remote and potentially dangerous areas. But for our situation now, it wouldn’t be helpful. We are prepared to deal with likely emergencies, and we have a solid “what do we do if everything really goes to hell” plan.
I don’t consider people making normal precautions for probable events (like planning for an earthquake in California) to be “preppers.” Preppers are people who stockpile extreme amounts of food, gold, guns, etc. in preparation for total social collapse.
Make that “preenactors.”
I don’t so much scoff at preppers as be amused by them.
I watch shows about them, and cruise websites, not so much to be a prepper but to get ideas for my own, rather modest preparations. I try to keep sufficient stuff on hand for us to get by for 3 days to a week on our own which is what is most likely to be needed. Some of the prepper ideas do come in handy, such as when our septic line froze during a blizzard and we had to improvise toilet facilities (answer: contractor trash bag, cheap kitty-litter, and a 5 gallon bucket. Next time, a seat for said bucket would be nice given that balancing on the damn thing wasn’t a lot of fun.)
Fact is, any emergency lasting more than a couple weeks will require you to cooperate with those around you to get by, pool resources, and so forth. Anything resulting in permanent TEOTWAWKI requires not food stores and guns but the means to produce your own food and defend against people with guns - but such a thing is unlikely. It would be like prepping for the Yellowstone Supervolcano, no one can say for sure what would be needed because such an emergency has never happened on that scale in our history.
Being able to get by on your own for a week is a sensible precaution. Being able to evacuate if needed is a sensible precaution. Stockpiling 5 or 10 years of food is a bit… well, nuts.
Try to marry a foreigner.
Obviously not a viable plan for everyone. But if we are talking about the people who are investing in acres of land, large weapons caches, off-the-grid power supplies, and other extreme preparations, it seems kind of silly that they would miss or ignore this one rather simple, extremely effective, historically-proven-to-work way of getting extra options in the case of social collapse.
I live near Seattle. What if there’s an earthquake? Yeah, that’s a stupid question, it’s not “if” there will be an earthquake, it’s there will be an earthquake, the only question is when and how big it will be. And 8 years ago there was a major windstorm and our house was without power for 9 days while crews from all over the country reconstructed the power grid.
I guess I’m not sure what we’re supposed to be preparing for, since I’m already prepared for those things.
There are all sorts of bad things that could happen. What if I lose my job? What if our house catches fire? What if the economy goes bust and I lose my job and everyone else loses their job? What there’s a major earthquake, or tsunami, or fire, or hurricane, or landslide? What if suddenly everyone in the world turned into a sociopath and forgot how to live in a society?
Thing is, if my house doesn’t have power or water for a couple weeks, I’m not terrified. I won’t like it, but I’m not going to die because we don’t have power. OK, all the frozen food we have will be ruined after a week. We’ll be cold if it happens in the winter. So? What if the roads are blocked and I can’t get to work?
Some of these things that people are describing as major emergencies just aren’t. OK, you don’t have power or phones or internet or heat for a week. So? Yes, there are vulnerable elderly people who need heat. Take them to a place with heat. Grandma will be uncomfortable and annoyed that she’s not at her own home? Yeah, that’s rough Grandma.
If you really can’t afford to spend a few weeks unable to go to work due to the disaster then yeah, you’re going to have some trouble. But any kind of disaster like a medical or family emergency would screw you in that case.
I guess I know there are people that literally have a bottle of ketchup and a few soy sauce packets in their refrigerator. If they were stuck in their house for weeks with absolutely no way to leave then they’d be in trouble. Maybe getting a few cases of canned soup and putting it in the closet would make sense for them. If that’s “prepping” then I’m all for it.
On the other hand, worrying about the collapse of the global economic system doesn’t make much sense, because there’s not much you’re going to be able to do about it. Having a few cases of canned food isn’t going to do much good in that case, because the problem won’t be over in a few months, it’s going to last for years or decades. And the answer then is that you won’t be able to prepare, you’re going to have to improvise. The skills you use to make a living today might be worthless tomorrow, you have to be prepared to abandon your home if the political situation changes so that it’s dangerous for your sort of person to stay, your money and investments can disappear with the stroke of a pen.
Much more likely of course is an intermediate sort of disaster, like Rwanda or Yugoslavia or Cambodia, where your country goes to hell. Let’s just say that if America turns into Rwanda there probably won’t be many places in the world where life goes on as normal. And if you’re really worried about America turning into Rwanda rather than stocking up on beans and ammo you’d be better off trying to create and preserve existing social structures. Make friends with your neighbor today so you don’t have to shoot him when he comes over with his machete-wielding gang tomorrow.
If things go to hell, I don’t plan on holing up or running away. Instead, I’ll justkeep calm and carry on. And if enough people like me simply *decide *that society is not going to collapse, then by God, it won’t.
I am married to a foreigner. I have in-laws in Ukraine and cousins in England and Italy. Your “plan” is still a non-starter.
Yeah…redefine what you think the word prepper describes. A couple weeks ago it was dumb even to have a bag ready…now it turns out that you only meant those whacko survivalist types all along! Then you came into this thread offering your sage advice on the value of overseas family and dual citizenship as if that was of any value to anybody who isn’t you. Probably is a good idea to shift the discussion parameters a bit now from your POV.
But how would being a prepper appreciably help in any of those situations? E.g. is there a cadre of preppers in Cambodia that is better off than the average Cambodian? My argument against the more hard-core preppers is that they are preparing in a “macho” way; stock-piling weapons, cans of beans, and gold.
If one really wants to prep for disaster than they need to move to an isolated location before the disaster where few will know where they are. Otherwise they’ll eventually be overwhelmed but others.
I know a prepper or two who really hasn’t thought things through. For example, buying a rural property and stocking it… But this property is in the other side of Washington DC from where they live. If the shit hits the fan the way they think, there’s going to be no way to get there but helicopter as the Beltway/95/66 become the worlds largest parking lot.
Their entire plan depends on them knowing of a disaster affecting the DC area before the bulk of DC residents, but they have no special source of knowledge.
In light of this, all their preparations are a bit comical.
A stash of canned food, etc., buys time to improvise. To see how things are shaking out. To put into effect the strategies and practices.
I don’t see why either of these should preclude the other. Aren’t you and your friendly neighbor both better off if at least one of you has beans? (Substitute any other eminently practical thing for “beans,” as well.)
Maybe it’s just my cognitive bias but I don’t see having a bunch of canned goods in the pantry as “prepping”, it’s more like “day to day normal life”. Yes, if you really have an empty pantry and getting a couple cases of beans is something way outside your normal routine, but because you read about prepping for disaster you go out and buy those cases, then I guess prepping did some good. And if you’re at home when the big one hits and the grocery stores are empty for a couple of weeks then you’ll be glad you got those cases of canned ravioli and creamed corn and put them in the garage.
Another thing is having a financial cushion in case you’re out of work for a while, or you need money to buy unexpected items during a disaster. That might seem like prepping if you normally live paycheck to paycheck, but I’d just call it normal prudent living.
Other things like buying a rural property out in the middle of nowhere to go to when things get bad don’t make much sense. Yes, if you live in a rural area and know your neighbors and have a self-sufficient lifestyle then fine. But expecting to drive out to the country and set up shop is nonsense. If things are bad you’re just another migrant, if you don’t know how to live on a small farm you’d be better off in a refugee camp. And if things really get bad then a piece of paper from the Before Times that says you own such-and-such parcel of property won’t mean squat to the local powers that be.
I agree that a distinction needs to be made between “being prepared for a possible localized outage” and “preparing a bunker for when the magnetic poles switch and cause the END TIMES!!1!eleven!”
I’ve gone through CERT training with 2 other people from our neighborhood. We’ve talked with our neighbors, we have a plan if there is a fire, a tornado, a blizzard, a medical emergency. In my house we have supplies for getting by for 2-4 weeks, I assume most of my neighbors have something similar.
If the whole of society collapses, we’re fucked.
How about ayeti goal zero battery pack with panels? $1800, about what you would pay for one of the extremely good gen sets, doesn’t suck up fuel, and depending on what one wants to or needs to run, enough to get by. Charge it constantly during day and go on reserve overnight. And a lot quieter [and less of a CO hazard] than a gas generator.
Actually, given that your neighborhood seems to have actually given a thought to emergency response and you and your neighbors apparently know and speak to each other you’re actually ahead of a lot of other folks.
It’s not a great book (although I got it cheap off Amazon when it was on sale) but One Second After has a number of scenes where people who thought they were important hot stuff in our current world discovered when TEOTWAWKI came their skills weren’t worth crap. You want to prep practical survival skills - advanced first aid, how to fix stuff, can food, hunt, fish, etc. - become worth a lot more than, say, a marketing degree or an MBA.
There are some downsides to spreading such fears.
Link to CNN blurb on Utah family who killed themselves because they feared apocalypse:
There are some downsides to spreading such fears.
Link to CNN blurb on Utah family who killed themselves because they feared apocalypse:
From the article, I can’t be sure whether they feared a religious or a secular apocalypse, so maybe I’m off-base here, but it seems like constantly thinking about societal collapse and neighbors turning on neighbors can’t be good for mental health.