The Prepper Thread

It can grow just fine in temperate climates.

Based on my personal experience, it grows throughout the American Midwest, which experiences rather significant seasonal variations.

Anyone here have the ability to survive for more than a week in your local wilderness?

In my particular location, you really only need rudimentary knowledge of survival skills to get by up here. I'm near a river, there's a lack of large predators, it's largely wooded, there's a LOT of wildlife, and it very rarely gets below freezing. In the summer there's a lot of edible plants as well.

Basically, if you know how to start a fire, make a basic shelter, and know the first thing about hunting/trapping/fishing (made easier by the fact the deer are so stupid you can walk up to them without them running away), and can recognize edible fruits, you can survive up here.

Leaving aside medical situations, of course. I personally couldn't go that long without my medication before dying.

edited 24th Feb '13 3:36:08 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

Not much wilderness over here.

Survive alone? Most likely not. The local wilderness (and much of the local civililization) is populated with people who particularly don't like me due to my affiliations.

Most people don't like bronies even in the city.

I'm sure I could win a couple of them over with some Pinkie Pie songs

You'd probably just win over some return fire.

Perfect. I can collect the spent lead to create fishing weights!

Well, since there seem to be some relatively smart people here, I'll present myself as a scenario. I sure I'm pretty typical for a middle class American. I live in a highly suburban environment- about 12 miles from the nearest major city center. There are no large wilderness areas within realistic hiking distance. My house is a typical brick two floor house, with a fireplace and a basement. The fireplace is a very poor design- most of the heat in the winter gets radiated outside the house. I have 17 trees on the property, so in the event of a power failure during cold weather, we could survive here for a week or so, but it would be very cold and uncomfortable. During the summer, without air conditioning, my house become a sauna, entirely unlivable if the outside temperature is high enough (I know this from personal experience). The nearest grocery store is less than half a mile away, but it serves a local area that probably includes thousands of people, so I wouldn't expect their supplies to last all that long. I have two cars, one is an SUV the size of a small pickup, but neither of them have four wheel drive. I do not own any firearms. We do not have storage for supplies of food, water, fuel, etc. for more than a week or so.

If we could make it to a wilderness area, I might have the skills to survive on my own, but I have a wife and two young children along who would be completely helpless. I'm not sure I could provide for all of us. Getting out of here might be a problem as well if the major highways were closed or blocked. If people are evacuating, I would expect the routes out of town to be pretty jammed.

I half expect some sort of solar storm situation next year. If TSHTF, advice?

The simplest response is this: find a bug out location with all the resources you require (water, shelter, etc.) that you can get to in an emergency and work to improve your skills. Stockpile the items you'll need to survive for the beginning stages (when you should lay low), the length of time it will take you to reach your location and a good period after that. If you can't improve your own skills to the point where you can provide for your family alone, consider forming or joining a group. It doesn't need to be a bunch of right-wing militia fanatics, but a group of like-minded folks who will work together to survive.

It's never too late to start preparing but the gear you don't store now won't be there later. You can start easy by just buying a few extra cans of food at the store every time you go and putting them up somewhere safe. Water storage can be more difficult, but if you buy a few of those 5 gallon water containers and use them on a rotating basis you'll have a good start. Guns and ammunition are the natural choice for defense.

Some preppers would say that living in a populated area means you should be more defense minded than if you lived elsewhere. I tend to agree, if only so you have the option to scavenge from neighbors should things get rough.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13312741810A17150500&page=0

there was a lousy Discovery Channel show last year that was only a few episodes long showing rich folks buying bunkers.

Doomsday Bunkers.

worth watching just for the youtube comments alone!

i suggest getting mres if possible, they're nutritious, tasty and can be had fairly cheaply, most soldiers where i live just throw them away unopened i did have an outdated omelet one once though... blech! wasn't spoiled but kinda separated to it's base components

Depends where you are. MR Es can be bought around here for like $80 a case, which isn't a whole lot but not exactly easy to swallow (pun intended).

Doomsday Bunkers... I watched an episode of that once. Couldn't understand how you'd get a full show out of it.

It's MTV's Cribs for survivalists. People will watch if there's an audience for it. Even if it's a single season or something.

I have run into suggestions that maybe MR Es may not be the best choice for a civilian. What with the canning and jarring of so many decent foodstuffs for you to pick from, it's difficult to justify having foods that you might not eat that may just get pushed aside until you've got nothing else, and then it's possible for some stuff to go bad by then.

Remember, that you will have to eat what you store. I always thought it was a mistake for some guys to buy tons of creamed corn because it's cheap and plentiful. Yes, in a dire situation, you'll have plenty of food, but geez, you better really like creamed corn because you're gonna wind up eating a lot of it, or else it just makes a tough time more miserable.

In the case of MR Es, after two weeks of nothing but, I know plenty of guys who would kill for a little more variety. So even if you do like that stuff, you might want to make sure you have spices to keep it fresh.

edited 25th Feb '13 4:53:54 PM by DevilTakeMe

My grandfather's company did some work for a fellow that builds those things. He puts them in remote spots in the Appalachians for rich/insane people from Europe and Asia who think that if there's a nuclear holocaust that there would be some conceivable way for them to fly safely and secretly across an ocean to get to them. Some of the bigger ones are even leased ala timeshares

edited 25th Feb '13 5:03:57 PM by carbon-mantis

Have a place in mind that you can retreat to, such as a friends house that is in a better position, make the agreement beforehand that in the event of a disaster, you can rally there.

I like MR Es well enough. They have the advantage over other foodstuffs in that you have a rather large meal in a single package ready to be cooked up on the spot. I can rarely eat everything that comes in one, so I can see splitting one up amongst several people. The real disadvantage, for civilians, is that they're designed to be eaten by soldiers in battlefield conditions who need a lot of calories when fighting. If you don't need to use that many calories then you're basically eating junk food.

^

Or you spread it out amongst a day, MRE's are meant to be used in a way to where if you're not in fighting conditions and using that energy, you can spread one out for an entire days worth of food.

A lot of civilians aren't very good at dealing with hunger though, and would probably devour the parts they wanted in one meal, eat the scraps in a second meal, and then be uber hungry at the end of the day and want to crack open another.

The great thing about MR Es is that they are specially designed to prevent overeating!

That is to say, 90% of them are disgusting.

But yes, MR Es are mainly designed for people on the move with high caloric requirements, such as the typical 20 year old infantrymen hoofing a 70 pound pack out in the elements whlie on the move and engaging an enemy. An MRE has something like 3,000 calories on average. All of the food in it is packaged seperately, so you can easily portion it out throughout the day with a bit of planning, and they did have the forethought to package Tobasco or ground red peppers to help with the blandness of much of the menu.

The big advantage to the MRE is that it packs easily. An entire meal takes up as much space as a paperback copy of Lord of the Rings. If you're not moving that much (say, if you're basically just walking or driving to get from Point A to Point B), it's plenty of nutrition if you don't get carried away. Three days of food should pack easily enough in your bugout bag with these things, with room for a few other thigns like trail mix and granola bars.

One thing to consider is that an MRE produces an impressive amount of waste material when you're done, due to all the sub-divided packaging (big bag, with a slightly smaller bag inside, with several smaller packets or cardboard boxes, those boxes containing smaller bags...) That might not matter to you if you aren't concerned with dealing with garbage, but it's worth pointing out.

After Hurricane Katrina, the MR Es got a lot of press because it was one of the first times that a large number of people got to "experience" them. A lot of journalistic reaction along the lines of "we make our troops eat this stuff?!"*

I would say for bugout rations, MR Es are probably a good choice. The vegetarian ones tend to be a bit better for whatever reason. If you plan to stay in place for a while, consider just stocking up on a variety of pre-packaged civie food (canned food, ferinstance). It'll last just as long, and it'll taste better.

I wouldn't say most of them are disgusting. The majority of them are perfectly palatable, not delicious, but not disgusting either.

Well, OK, let me caveat: When you don't have better options, MR Es are pretty good. If you know there is better food around, you tend to feel a bit pickier about it.

I remember seeing a thing on TV back in the 90's about a company that sold pre-fab bunkers. Mind you, it looked kind of like a camper trailer made sweet sweet love to a submarine. The idea was you'd buy this, bury it wholesale, and make sure you had ventilation and what not going into the bunker. Dunno how effective it would be against nuclear fallout, but it'd probably work super for tornadoes as long as it wasn't on a flood plane.

As long as you have a decent air filtration and circulation system, it's a roll of the dice after that. Not a whole lot you really can do to protect you from nuclear fallout, just gotta make sure it's hermetically sealed.

I bought a case of MR Es once and they tasted perfectly fine. Well, two of the meals I can say were not edible due to the not-quite-meat patty the main entre consisted of. The Mediterranean Chicken was quite delicious, though.

I hear a lot of people just buy a shipping container and bury it. It's supposed to be just as good when properly set up and cheaper than a full-blown bunker.

That's what one of my buddies who lives outside of vegas did. He has like 5 conex boxes that are built into one-another and are buried a few feet underground.

His civilian job is he's the head of maintenance for MGM in vegas, so he paid some of his guys on the side to come in and help him do the entire ventilation and filtration system, as well as the wiring.

i'm quite fond of the compressed oatmeal bars

i'd place mres just below pizza + hot wings as my fave food.

what are people eating that makes them think mres taste so bad?