Read this first.

Thank you lonewolf....thanks for hosting the site....already picked up on a few prepping ideas...

 

Hi, my name is Ron. I am from Richards Bay, South Africa.

 

Hi Rob. My name is Ron. I am from Richards Bay. If the shtf we are in trouble here in Zululand.

 

Hi Vicki Thirdpig here in the Upper Peninsula. I've been living on my 80 acres since 2001 and love it here. I'm also a Military Vet and appreciate your service! I'm currently building a small log getaway cabin back in the bush, but the recent 18 inches of snow has slowed me down. I'll continue my indoor gear repair and fabricating for a while.

 

Hello all,
My name is coffee. I am a lady. I currently live in Central Virginia. I have been a prepper since late 1999, before Y2K. It seems I am the only one in my small family that believes in prepping or being self- sufficient, it sure makes for a lonely life. I look forward to making some new friends here who know how to have a conversation about whats going on in the world and what we should be doing to get ready.

 

Coffee I think you will fit right in here . I am sure it would be tough prepping when the other family members don't recognize the need . Do you have a way to secure your prepping items or does the other family members simply respect and leave your stuff alone ?

 

Are you kidding, you wouldn't believe this: I have bought and given so much stuff to most all of them, only to see it disappeared later down the road, and they have no idea what happened to it. Or hears one for you...the dried beans ran out of date, and the survival can of garden seeds, must be around somewhere. I finally bought a beautiful shed, over $3k, and put it in their back yard, and have been putting survival supplies in it for almost 2 years now. Now this is love for my son and grandkids. Or maybe I am just a sucker for family...ALONE.

 

Welcome Coffee. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink...BUT at least when they get thirsty you know that they will have some idea where to go to find water. I think to some extent all of us older preppers/survivalists experience things like this with the younger generation. They have lived a very sheltered life. My parents went to war. I grew up knowing that I might be called on to go fight and die for my country. I saw the results of war as older brothers of friends and members of my family came home from Vietnam and Korea.

We KNOW that we are mortal and that we have looked that in the eye. Some stuck their head in the sand and tried to ignore it and some ran from it. Most of us dealt with it. This affected both men and women. To some extent going and fighting was no easier than watching people you loved going and maybe never coming home or coming home with their souls so damaged that they never really came back.

We have given our kids and grandkids a safety and security that we never had. Our Parents and Grandparents never had it either. They just don’t feel that bad things can happen to THEM and don’t have the experiences to KNOW that it CAN happen. They have little interest in preparing for something silly than can’t ever happen to them. All we can do is lead the horse to water and hope that they will sort of remember where it was if they ever need it.We did the best that we could to give them something that we never had. It may be a two edged sword.

 

Hey Y'all. Pre-Y2k survivalist that has been sitting on the sidelines for the past few years, looking to get back into it. Lots to catch up on.

 

Thanks. Cheers from the other side of the pond.

 

welcome aboard

 

Thanks for the welcomes. I'm in the US, in the state of...ah... Confusion mostly

 

Hello all, savvybuilder from undisclosed Washington State, been a closet prepper for many years. New to the forums but enjoying reading many of the educational posts. Cheers.

 

Thank you @TMT Tactical. I suppose the Arizona valley answer to the current polar vortex is to put on a long sleeved shirt.

 

Daniel, How do I change my name being displayed n messages?

 

Hi! My name is Joe and my family and I live in a rural area of Northeast Florida. My wife and I are both crippled with hip implants, so we'll always bug in if SHTF. I'm curious what people are saying and doing about this. If a big SHTF problem pops up I think the roads will be parking lots with no one going anywhere. So unless you can hike to your bug out location, you better get ready to bug in.

The last time something like this actually happened was when hurricane Hugo came by. We were all going to drive somewhere away from the coast, and return later, but all the roads became parking lots. The saddest thing was an extended family in about five vehicles came by and begged to use our bathroom toilets. We let them in and they were so gracious and thankful. The wives and children had been on the road for five hours with no bathroom breaks - and just from an area south of Jacksonville, that shouldn't have taken more than 45 minutes. This is what will really happen - so are you going to start shooting people who beg for use of your toilets?

We even offered to let them crash at our house, but they just knew they could get on the road and find a motel room somewhere. Oh well, I'm sure they spent the night in their cars and, thankfully, the hurricane missed us.

 

Hi,

Greetings from the City of the Forest Hills, partially on the edges of the Brazilian outskirts, unsurprisingly somewhat drowned into the forest — now straight to the reason, I got to the point of a borderline paranoia, if that's even a thing. Got sick of having to deal with never-ending urban and natural dangers that ruined my day so many times. Started caring, stuck an umbrella and a kitchen cleaver in my backpack, went out with some extra weight around. But it wasn't enough... I never had enough gear to deal with every single gravel that befell upon my way. I added more stuff, and more and more and more...

I am able to worry less now you know. But only after I spend at least one hour checking and verifying if every single piece of equipment is indeed inside my bag and working properly before leaving, the bag that now weights almost ten kilos (even though it really doesn't seem to). I hope to find some kind of eye-opening information based off of other people's ways here. I can only hope... and search.

 

Welcome from Missouri. Good to have you with us.

 

Edited to add: I accidentally hit "send" before I was finished writing my post... will post it in a bit.


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Welcome to here, Doraglier. I can totally relate to what you are saying, and would like to share some things with you that I believe has kept me alive in some pretty bad situations. (As the saying goes, your mileage and circumstances may vary.)

I grew up in New Orleans (which bore the title of "The Murder Capital of the World" for years) and also spent 17 years in the swamps and bayou country south of there. I managed to escape my share of seriously bad situations over the years. I won't divulge the nature of them in this post because they are irrelevant to the lessons.

In some places, you can't help but think everything and everyone wants a piece of you... I learned that having a sense of relaxed awareness will serve you much better than being hypervigilant. Fear can be a gift, but improperly used, it can paralyze us to the point that we can't function well without "props" which can give us a false sense of security and lead to us being caught off-guard.

Case in point: The knock-out game. I have seen videos captured by security cameras that clearly showed how even a group of armed men can be easily overcome. One incident, in particular, comes to mind: In broad daylight, and not in a horrible neighborhood, a small group of UNARMED young thugs appeared out of seemingly nowhere and quickly bashed in the armed men’s heads from behind, which knocked them unconscious, then they inflicted heavy blows to the temples and face for pure meanness. The result was horrifying and deadly. It happened so quickly that the victims never saw what hit them.

Here are some things I learned from experience and also from some of the videos I have seen:

Lesson 1: Things can happen fast and furious when you least expect it, and a gun (or whatever you are carrying) may not always save you. But a well-tuned relaxed situational awareness probably will. The thugs looked “normal” by anyone’s standards, but they were walking behind the victims, and with lightning speed, knocked their victims unconscious, robbed them as they lay on the ground dying, and fled before anyone could stop them. The whole incident happened incredibly fast, which was one of the common threads among other similar videos.

Lesson 2: There is a fine line between having a relaxed situational awareness and being paranoid. Hypervigilance is hard to hide and can mark a paranoid person as vulnerable by thugs who are quick to pick up on this. Don’t be that person. On the other hand, the victims described above may have been too relaxed, and their guard was down because they were chatting and laughing moments before the incident happened. The same thing can--and does--happen to people in parking lots as they go to a movie theater, restaurant or grocery store, which brings me to Lesson three.

Lesson 3: Thugs like to seek out places where people usually let their guard down. Tourists are especially vulnerable as special targets. Try to blend in grey-man style, especially when visiting a new-to-you area. Don’t carry all of your protection in a bag; you may not have time to fish it out when you need it. If possible, have it in your hands or on your person. Even a small canister of pepper/mace spray is better than nothing. It may buy you time to get the upper hand in a fight for your life, or else run. It has served me well on a few occasions, but I was lucky. Unfortunately, some individuals, including those who are hopped up on certain drugs or have a mental illness, are able to physically override most pepper sprays. Supposedly certain brands can be used successfully, no matter what state of mind the assailant is in. One is Sabre CS Tear Gas/Red Pepper Personal Defense spray (available from Amazon.com or www.sabrered.com), which is good for situations where other forms of self-defense are prohibited. It is not recommended for indoor use which could also put you in harm's way. For indoor use, the Sabre Red Pepper Gel is a better choice.

Here is a run-down of the pros and cons of various sprays: https://www.asecurelife.com/best-pepper-sprays/

Whatever your favored means of defense, be ready, but also be sure of your intended target. It would be a shame if if hypervigilance played into a case of mistaken intentions. Especially if all the shady-looking guy wanted was directions or something...

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Hi I am Michael, a 25-year-old fresh college grad in the US. You could say I am a general or practical prepper, a person who preps for more common things such as normal natural phenomenon like tornadoes, earthquakes, flooding, etc.

 

Welcome to here! You are in large company here, Michael. Like yourself, many of us are interested in preparing for the most likely events as you mentioned. But as you can see, some of us have also ramped it up to more advanced disaster preparations.

Historical records show that just one or a few bumps in society's beltway are enough to send us all into a long-lasting tailspin. Speaking for myself, I don't wanna be caught chasing my tailfeathers if and when a severe SHTF situation happens.


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Hi-
Sekelbos-from Africa
Experienced Hunter & Camper
[Some would call it 'survival' ]
I'm here to learn and share....

 

Hey all i am the Georgia Woodsmen of course i'm from Georgia, i have a group on Facebook ( Southeast Bushcraft Basecamp.) and i also have a YouTube channel called Georgia Woodsmen.
I have traveled the united states and Germany some, been learning some wild editable plants and medical, Also do some trapping for the meat and fur both don't like to let anything go to waist.
Let's see i love to hunt, fish, and do bushcraft or as i like to say woodcraft I am Irish and American Indian, mostly Irish lol.
I go in the woods as often as i can sometimes once a month sometime two or three times that is were i feel more at home.
I found the group in a search engine while looking for info on a snapsack and thought i could learn some more here. so thank you for letting me join y'all, hope i can be of some help to everyone. Georgia Woodsmen.

 

Welcome Georgia Woodsman

 

Spell here. I am best suited to provide administrative and strategic support from anywhere needed. Otherwise I am a jack of all trades. Little bit of know-how here and there, and the job is done.

 

Good morning Spell,

Welcome to MSF.com

 

Thank you. Looking forward to sharing and getting some ideas on here.

 

hi guys ,new to here,from australia,jack of all trades too,but hope to learn more and even help others where i can

 

Welcome Howler.