Did the lockdown change your Prepper perspective?

a reply to: Edumakated

Iirc you're in mortgage finance? When having the initial conversation with my realtor, whom later became the head of realtors for the city and surrounding area of conglomerate, I revealed my notion that it was about to fall. His response was that there was zero indication that was happening. It still may not, but were far from the end of this thing.

a reply to: argentus

Ha.

I just keep hundreds of lighters. No joke. Bucket full of them.

Scripto 8 (well now 7) packs of lighters are 2 bucks at walmart. I pick a couple packs up every time I go. They add up after awhile.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

it is not the supply chains that worry me. It is the addicts. There are millions of them in the US and when the money is dried up and there are no drugs things could start getting weird. Throw in those people who lost their jobs and cannot get their pharma and you have another real big issue. No Oxys, Xanax or Depakote could lead to some craziness also. How about those who cannot afford that liquor or cigarettes?

If it is going to get bad I would expect it in the next week or weekend. The natives are getting restless and when there is no money or drugs imagine what that meth head who begs for change will do?

This if anything made me realize even though I think I am ready for the BIG one I was not and have some things to shore up once this blows over.

In a couple of ways it changed my perspective.

First off I'm flat out disgusted with folks who reveal their weapons and ammo situation. First rule I ever learned was that info is nobody business. Plus the old axiom those that are full of ## talk, those that mean business don't.

Altho I have always had a spare room/pantry loaded up just incase of unexpected financial issues, I totally missed the mark on a few things that I should really have taken care of.

Immodium
Extra hairspray/deodorant
Getting a couple of bags of the stuff that kills fleas & ticks in the yard
another couple cans of seafoam or mechanic's helper
Wood screws, thought I had the longer ones, but NOPE!

Just random stuff that makes life easier. Everyone is wound up over MRE's an freeze dried food, but there is much more to take into consideration.

originally posted by: argentus
Your keychain is probably a bar of flint.

Yeah, you go me on that one for sure.

Something I bought just for the hell of it and ended up adoring was this brass fire piston
I actually gotta say I like them for short term EDC more than damn near anything else. I can start a fire with one after it gets wet and with cold, wet hands, which is important to me. A flint and steel isn't a great choice when you can't feel your hands. Up here fire is actually vital, even in the summer. Fall into a glacial stream and get soaked and if you can't get a fire and dry your clothes before the temps drop down when the sun goes low enough at night and hypothermia becomes the primary concern.

And, as you no doubt already knew, I've got kids that have been taught and are regularly tested on fire starting as well. although I allow them to use magnesium to give them a better chance of success.

a reply to: Hypntick

As with athletes in training, we can't always be at peak performance. Since 2008, we've had several solar panels, a wind genny and lots of batteries. The AGM storage batteries are on their last legs, and we thought about getting them replaced in November. Waiting a couple of months would have been financially advantageous. I knew better. I [expletive] KNEW better, but, trying to be sensible, we waited.

You can never be 100% on top of your game. We were making 80% of our power, and now its more like 30%. I have no reason to believe that our power will fail, but still it pains me to be vulnerable. I know one thing: If we have to scale back, the refrigerator ain't the most important thing. Nope. We can live without that and have. We can live without hot water and have. It's the computer and the internet. We could, of course, live without them. It's the psychological thang. Being cut off. The unknown. dum-dum-duuuuuuuuum!! Makes me think about a satellite phone, but of course, I can't really justify the cost.

There was a dystopian movie long ago, about people in a sub, who got a message of nuclear exchange. They were cut off. I think Gregory Peck was in it. The movie was a study in the psychology of people cut off from the knowledge of what is or has occurred around them, and how, in the end, they adapt to a world that has changed. Good movie. Timely.

a reply to: Caver78

Extra hairspray/deodorant

So as society is falling to pieces, you will be okay because your hair looks good?

I love it. Lmao

a reply to: matafuchs

I somehow don't think the drug dealers are observing Stay at home laws, nor do I think the majority of their customer base depended on much beyond welfare checks and pawn shops to buy their drugs from them. At least here in Alaska most of the drug dealers seem to get arrested while sitting on mountains of stolen merchandise and a lot of the local breakins involve the drugged out animals having lists of what their dealer wants them to steal in exchange for that fix.

If they pick the houses where people are prepared as their break-in targets, this is entirely a self correcting problem.

I know a guy with a medical degree who’s really into the survival stuff.

We call him Dr. Prepper

originally posted by: Caver78
First off I'm flat out disgusted with folks who reveal their weapons and ammo situation. First rule I ever learned was that info is nobody business. Plus the old axiom those that are full of ## talk, those that mean business don't.

Quoted for absolute truth!

originally posted by: Wide-Eyes
a reply to: Caver78

Extra hairspray/deodorant

So as society is falling to pieces, you will be okay because your hair looks good?

I love it. Lmao

Yeah. For years I've said if society ever starts collapsing, the first thing I'm gonna do is stop wearing deodorant. I haven't used any for a week. But, then I live alone.

It's been surprising how much the price of PPE has shot up , at now over 5 times the price apiece for facemasks , could have made a killing by buying them up to sell on. It was surprising there was still plenty of stock at a late stage , instinct said buy some more while most others are still green , hedgebetting said other things were also needed .

I have always liked the idea of prepping, but other than some extra cans of tuna and some rice I generally don’t prep. The main reason is at 53 years old I would just as soon chose to die if a nuclear war or giant asteroid catastrophe hit.

My perspective has changed due to the Chinese Virus. I always expected a big catastrophe, but I see this kind of mild situation like with the pandemic should be prepped for even if I don’t plan to survive the bigger catastrophe.

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: JinMI
a reply to: Edumakated

The wife and I highly suspected something to happen last year. The housing market in our area exploded and we used the opportunity to cash out and move out of town. Just for simple economic purposes we try to stay 2 to 4 weeks up on supplies.

Needless to say, our lifestyle hasn't changed much because of the epidemic.

Even still there are things that have to be considered.

You will need to go to town for something.

Knowing your neighbors for better or worse can be amazingly beneficial.

You simply cant plan for everything, just hope you have enough legs up.

Piece of mind is arguably the most important tool in survival and upheaval.

A few cents to add to your sense

One thing I didn't mention is listening to your gut or instincts. I had talked with my financial planner maybe two or three weeks before market crashed and was kicking around selling quite a bit of securities to just pay our house off entirely. I felt we had a good run with the market and it was near top.

I ignored my instincts.

I listened to my gut and a little dumb luck and used some to buy a new home. A simple process locked up for who knows how long now. The seller is a germophobe with a compromised immune system. My lawyers like talk about bad combo going on. The guy won't even open his door.

We have been prepped for many years now, but we never had a chance to test our supplies. We usually stock to the max we set when there are great sales, but we had a few months without any good sales, and of course there was Christmas and Thanksgiving that lowered our stocks a bit too.

So we wound up spending about five hundred bucks to bring everything up to where it should be plus we bought two months worth of ice cream. And we are discovering what things we had forgot to stock. Who would think we would be stuck in our house with snow all over the ground, nothing to do but cook. We had rib steaks yesterday, hot dogs tonight, and tomorrow it is a huge chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and veggies, fish fry Friday, ham for Easter. this shelter in place is taxing on us older people. I wonder if we should have strawberry shortcake or pie tomorrow.

We will be part of the covid death results, the quarantine will make us gain weight and we will wind up having a heart attack. The governor mark our deaths as COVID related in Michigan.

For someone who was watching this unfold, we were woefully unprepared. Mostly a money issues and life BCV19 as much as anything, but we have the basics and could still get to our plan B bugout if needed. To me the clock is ticking though from where this goes from a minor inconvenience to something worse. Think it can be avoided but if a couple of factors happen it could cascade quickly.

a reply to: Edumakated

Good observations. Yes it can go south quick, fast, and in hurry.

Sometimes prepping is less the missile silo full of beans and bullets and more of a mind set. I truly believe survival is far more dependent on what's between your ears, in your heart, and the make up of your spirit than anything else.

Granted, extra TP is always a plus.

originally posted by: FredT
Not really other than it reinforced 3 things

1) The Feds are utterly useless at best and obstructive mostly with their BS

2) The average citizen is woefully unprepared for anything but business as usual

3) our preparations were spot on

Ain't that the truth On all counts

There wasn't a single prep I wished I didn't have when the S-sorta-HTF. Because of geography, I have been fortunate enough to see this as a practice run or SHTF-lite. Personally, I didn't count on my local government's resources running out or the community running out of TP and the sort. Have actually been considering using the drones I had leftover from the border mission to fly TP, N95s and other supplies to people but it hasn't gotten bad enough here to where nobody will leave their home

I will say that whatever combination of news/person to person I have been using worked wonders, as my neighbors lamented in the 5-6 week advance notice before "shelves emptying people panicking" really came down. In the future, besides preparing with more supplies and restocking what I already used/donated, I will focus on gathering the information as early as humanly possible. That way, I can focus resources into one area instead of a wide variety of preps (civil war, nuclear war, terror attack, pandemic, local scale riot, natural disaster, invasion, etc)

I have quite a few firearms and did donate a handful of long guns, plates along with a couple hundred rounds of ammo to our county sheriff, who were seemingly woefully unprepared in terms of PPE and firepower. None even had hard plate carriers or L3 plates

I am impressed with our community, we have all stuck together and had each other's backs just as I had hoped would happen. Now what if it was more severe or imminently life threatening? I think by training together we can form a even more cohesive bond, especially now those without the means to supply up know we have them covered on emergency supplies we just need them healthy & alive and willing to train

FYI, cheap used Motorolas and a repeater work wonders for emergency communications

No! My state isn't in lock-down. Not much prepping needed for this anyway. When I can't buy a 6 pack of beer anymore then I'll start worrying.

This is just enough to scare the rest of the non-preppers sheatless and make them realize it could be 10X worse the next go around.

a reply to: argentus

I found that important too

Have a few of those UPS 1500 batteries and some Gas gennys, but at the end of the day if power goes off its only a matter of days or weeks if we're lucky here. Agree that not being cut off from information and communication is key, but neither is being cut off from the outside world so to speak

Sad thing is a few neighbors and we have a fortified location we operate together, but we too were waiting until the Summer to finish her up (including a few major installations)