Survival and economic self-reliance

Discussion in 'General Q&A' started by CarlosTL, Jul 8, 2016.

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  1. CarlosTL

    CarlosTL New Member
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    I do not think farming and learning agriculture is a good practice for catastrophe scenario and here is why:

    Agriculture is linked to land, and is dependent on property rights and rule of law. Either alone or in a small group, you will be too vulnerable to looters and herds of robbers/mobs/desperate people etc. Historically, agriculture was only practiced in places where there was a strong presence of a central authority, which I think is likely to lack in any catastrophe scenario.

    Becoming economically self-reliant, will ultimately involve learning a skill that makes oneself indispensable to others, thus making one's life precious in the eyes of any group even if it is an enemy, which IMO is the best protection one can get. I am thinking of skills such as medical training, mastering chemical techniques, metal working, and the like.
     
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  2. Keith H.

    Keith H. Moderator Staff Member
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    I do not think this is correct. What about the early colonial settlement of the New World/America? Settlers were in constant danger from attack by Indians & later the English colonists were in danger from attach by the French & Indians. There was no central authority or power, no military presence for the most part. People looked after themselves, groups formed militias. Some of course did not survive, but those that were properly prepared & vigilant did survive.
    Homesteading & growing your own food, being self-reliant & self-sufficient is in my opinion the best way to prepare for any survival situation that can one can practically be expected to survive.
    Keith.
    [​IMG]
     
  3. cluckeyo

    cluckeyo Well-Known Member
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    I think it would depend on the catastrophe. In certain scenarios you might have looters to worry about. Like a total collapse of authority. But that is not the only situation that could occur. We could fall on very, very tough times that have nothing to do with that. Such as another great Depression. Survival situations come in all shapes and sizes.
     
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  4. lonewolf

    lonewolf Societal Collapse Survivalist. Staff Member
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    those that cant or don't grow their own food aren't going to survive for very long.
     
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  5. Duncan

    Duncan Master Survivalist
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    Being able to provide for your own food, water, and shelter: three of the four most important survival traits anyone can have when-and-if Hard Times come.
     
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  6. poltiregist

    poltiregist Legendary Survivalist
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    Carlos tl was last seen over three years ago but his statement that preppers shouldn't concern themselves with growing a garden just illustrates how some vision an S.H.T.F. situation . Some simply can't mentally grasp the enormity and severity of a truly apocalyptic occurrence . He does make a good point though . Sheeple will be studying your garden for potential food . This makes a good argument for a group effort to post guards on a garden , " preferably family " . Get too large a group and they will be more likely to do as the first year of settlement of the James Town colony did . Some of their own group greedily gathered most of the food before it was ready and the entire group faced starvation . To give Carlos credit though I will say , where he lives the mass invasion and greedy behavor of neighbors may be an accurate assessment .
     
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2019
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  7. lonewolf

    lonewolf Societal Collapse Survivalist. Staff Member
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    without a garden of some kind survival is a time limited thing.
     
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  8. Duncan

    Duncan Master Survivalist
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    One of the things most pseudo-preppers fail to realize is that for many folks, losing your electricity permanently will kill you. No, you won't die without your laptop or cook-stove, nor do need electrical lights.

    What you really need is potable water. The water coming out of your faucet is -- most likely -- pumped there by huge electrically-driven pumps. No electricity, no pumps; no pumps, no water.

    Of course, I have my own well, so I'm okay, right? Not so fast, dog-breath! My pump runs off my electricity, courtesy of the fine folks of Idaho Power. Again, no grid electricity, no Duncan and Dawn! I have some backup: I've tested my well-pump running on 120 volts from my little Honda E2000 genset. But, how long before I run out of gasoline?

    Wind-power is not all that effective in my immediate area; PV would cost a sh¡t-pot of money for either the deep-cycle batteries or the elevated 3000-gal tank for gravity feed. My only cost-effective approach would be a hand-pump to be used in parallel with my existing submersible AC pump, and that'd be about US$1000.

    For you folks that live in a rainy climate (Southern Idaho is only about 12 in/30 cm a year), have a shallow well, or a stream or lake nearby: good on ya! But if you don't...

    ... not making plans for enough water to drink, cook, bathe, and water your garden with can end up being as deadly as not having a garden or a firearm.
     
  9. poltiregist

    poltiregist Legendary Survivalist
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    Right on target Duncan . Preppers may or may not have came to a never ending water solution but look around your community , How many of them will survive a month if the electric was gone ? A gas generator is only a short term solution .
     
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  10. Pragmatist

    Pragmatist Master Survivalist
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    Good morning Duncan and Poltiregist,

    Ref the water availability;

    I firmly believe the above-described situations requires those preppers to factor in an evacuation plan that is also rehearsed. This is a realistic approach. Remaining at a site without the ability to obtain water is a death sentence.
     
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  11. lonewolf

    lonewolf Societal Collapse Survivalist. Staff Member
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    how many in my community will survive without power? not many, that's what i'm banking on!!
    remove the sheeple and remove a lot of the problems that they incur.
     
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  12. GateCrasher

    GateCrasher Expert Member
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    Water is the reason there's so few preppers that are prepared to shelter in place at their home for more than ~week. It's at the top of the list of needs, but hard (and often expensive) to cross it off the list as "done". Worse for the city-dwellers, but even with a well is someone really prepared if that's their one and only source? Redundancy further increases the difficulty and cost.

    Personally I'm not an adherent to the "if it won't last forever it's not worth having" preparedness philosophy, so kudos on your planning and choice of genset Duncan. At full load, your EU2000 will run about 3 hours on a gallon of gas. A conservative estimate for most wells and well pumps (around here anyway) is 10 gallons a minute. 1800 gallons of potable water for each gallon of gasoline is nothing to scoff at, and betting you have more than a gallon of gas stored for it :)
     
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  13. lonewolf

    lonewolf Societal Collapse Survivalist. Staff Member
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    when wife was a child she lived in an off grid cottage and well water was pumped up BY HAND.
     
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  14. randyt

    randyt Master Survivalist
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    getting water out of hole in the ground is not all that difficult. Getting lot and lots of water is the challenge. A couple fellas can pull a 125 foot drop pipe and submersible pump by hand fairly easily. Three guys can pull a 150 footer. A well bucket can be made easily to pull water from a well, depending on well dia. Also a long length of cheap pipe like 3/4 inch pex can be used to pull water from a well. Put a check or foot valve on the end and drop the pex down the well, make sure it's long enough, you don't want to lose it down the well. Push pex down a foot and pull up a foot, pretty soon water will be coming out the top of the pex.

    I would forgo all that and drop down a cylinder, drop pipe and sucker rod and hook up hand pump
     
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  15. randyt

    randyt Master Survivalist
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    Here is a link to the system Duncan mentioned. It works in a well with a submersible pump. The drop pipe slips down along side of the pitless adapter. The handpump will function as well as the submersible pump.

    It's a bit pricey in my opinion. I would put one together from odds and ends and save a bunch. But the prepackaged unit is quick and easy.

    https://www.bisonpumps.com/
     
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  16. Duncan

    Duncan Master Survivalist
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    Gentlemen, one adjunct to my comment on water supply and your excellent responses:

    Many people (present company excluded) tend to think of prepping as an evacuation plan and a BOB/BOV. They realize that, following a major incident such as an infrastructure breakdown, anyone who sets off blindly just to "get the **** out of town" is not a prepper, but a refugee. Look at the headlines over the past century: families pushing hand-carts full of their possessions down a packed road hoping that the next bunch of soldiers they see will help them as opposed to shooting them.

    For me, that brings back memories of these same refugees getting off a rail-car in front of a gate that says ARBEIT MACH FREI.

    Here's the bad news: if you leave your home with your BOB, your family, a BOV, a map, and an idea of where you're going, you are still a refugee, albeit a prepared one. Sure, you have a better chance of getting to where you're going; and if you've done the up-front logistics work, you have a better chance of arriving where friends and family are waiting. But...

    I am allergic to being a refugee, whether I travel in my Nissan XTerra or a Wehrmacht cattle-car. If Hard Times come and you can't make your home into a long-term self-sufficient homestead now or aren't able to move to a self-sufficient homestead-in-waiting now, things are going to get very interesting very quickly.
     
  17. poltiregist

    poltiregist Legendary Survivalist
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    Excellent another great post Duncan . That logical thought process is why I don't bother with a bug out bag . I am prepped , locked and loaded with no intention of running off to reenact some survivalist movie .
     
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  18. lonewolf

    lonewolf Societal Collapse Survivalist. Staff Member
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    being someone who has a BOL already prepared or even just scouted and located is one thing, but being a refugee just wandering about hoping to find food, water and shelter is something else, which is why I don't not give any credence to the "golden horde" theory.
    any who try will be a long time dead.
     
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  19. Pragmatist

    Pragmatist Master Survivalist
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    Good afternoon Duncan,

    Forest fires and mosquito-borne epidemic parasites are monitored here hourly 24/7.

    With mandatory evacuations, diseases arrive.

    It's more a requirement than an option to "Go west, ..." (Horace Greeley), that is relocate. Einstein and Freud relocated. Others didn't.
     
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  20. CountryGuy

    CountryGuy Master Survivalist
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    Duncan, how deep is your water in the well case? The static height?

    RandyT stole my thunder on Bison but for a little more info on them the company makes hand pumps for both deep and shallow wells and depending on what you have they have units that can even be plumbed inline to allow you to pressure up a pressure tank and effectively have "modern" pressure at the tap or to have a pump at the sink like your great or great great grandma might have had. I believe all of their units are full stainless steel units and the washers/ o-rings are buna rubber but I believe can be replaced with leather if need be when they wear out years down the road, assuming you don't just buy a few seal kits ahead.
    https://www.bisonpumps.com/
     
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  21. Old Geezer

    Old Geezer Legendary Survivalist
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  22. Duncan

    Duncan Master Survivalist
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    My well has a static water level of 119 feet with the existing pump at 160 feet. After I bought our house, I contacted the well-driller (the well is 32 years old) and the pump person who installed the new submersible pump in 2000. Based on what little they were able to tell me, and by finding about the relative stability of the water table in my area, I'm guesstimating that the drawdown is 12 feet at 10 gal/min. Adding 15 feet for pipe friction, I figure the total dynamic head to be 150 feet at 10 gal/min.

    Figuring the requirements for a PV array, figuring a 50% efficiency for the pump and a 15% engineering safety factor, I'd need (let me crank out my MS-Excel) 170 array watts. I'd have to add 20 or so more feet to pump it up to an elevated tank for a no-battery system, or else sink a lot of money into deep-cycle batteries. And either way I'd have to pay for an inverter or else put in a DC submersible pump. Simply too much money!!

    My big concern for the Bison is getting folks to help me install it, and ensuring that I will have room to run both pipes down the casing. Obviously, I want to have the Bison as a backup when-and-if Idaho Power leaves me (literally and figuratively) in the dark.

    An even bigger concern is finding a local (within 150 miles) dealer whose brain I can pick and who will let me actually examine the pump. I don't want to have to go to Spokane or SLC for my shopping!
     
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  23. GateCrasher

    GateCrasher Expert Member
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    Motors/pumps are power hungry, their startup amperage requirements makes them even worse in terms of the size of the inverter you need to run them. Depending on the pump, startup current can be 2-3X the rated running current. In some cases a hard start capacitor could be installed to help provide the startup current, so might be able to save money by purchasing a smaller wattage inverter than would otherwise be necessary. Motors usually aren't picky about the quality of the AC sine wave either, so a pure sine wave inverter isn't required and a cheaper modified sine wave one should work. And your pump is 120v, a 240v model would make it even more expensive to run off solar and batteries. Am I talking you into it yet? jk

    Looks like Idaho has publicly searchable information on private water wells, filled out by the well drillers and submitted to the state. Mine does something similar. It might have more details on your well and pump, just in case you hadn't found this already. https://idwr.idaho.gov/Apps/appsWell/WCInfoSearchExternal/
     
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  24. CountryGuy

    CountryGuy Master Survivalist
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    Well maybe you don't need a second pipe down the hole, with the inline versions they have, as I recall from prior investigation you can plumb a loop in line and add some valves, so when grid is up and going a valve is closed to isolate the in-home hand pump and then when grid goes down close the main loop, open the valve to access the hand pump and get working on your muscles. The foot valve already in place at the bottom of your existing pump prevents drain back and loss of prime. I believe Bison offers some of the support and technical answers you might have.
     
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  25. Morgan101

    Morgan101 Legendary Survivalist
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    Poltiregist: You might want to rethink that concept. Being forced to leave your home is not always your choice. Flood, fire, tornado or earthquake damage, toxic chemical spill. There are number of reasons you may be forced to leave even when you know you have every intention of going back.

    My Plan A is definitely to bug in. I will not leave unless I am forced. When the flood waters started getting close, and the Fire Department came through the neighborhood warning everybody, I was happy that we were prepared, and could leave in a moments notice.

    I guess I have the exact opposite problem with water. I have far to much. If I lose power, and my sump pump doesn't run I could very well have an indoor swimming pool. We really don't know. We have never lost power for a prolonged period. In theory the basement floor is designed so that if the sump pump fails the water coming up through the well will be channeled into the floor drain. We have never tested the theory, but it brings up another issue that is just as life threatening. Mold.

    You would be astonished at how quickly mold will develop in a damp environment, and my wife is extremely allergic to mold. Within hours she will have difficulty breathing. You had better be prepared to evacuate when necessary. You never know.
     
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  26. lonewolf

    lonewolf Societal Collapse Survivalist. Staff Member
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    if someone intends to bug in, say in a medium sized city, then something happens say fire or flood, then they decide to bug out, just where are they going to go?? they hadn't planned for it, so just where the heck do they go??
    just wandering about like a refugee hoping to find food, water and shelter is a mugs game, they will be dead pretty soon by exposure, disease or violence from others.
    this has always puzzled me .
     
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  27. Pragmatist

    Pragmatist Master Survivalist
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    Good morning Lonewolf,

    You inherently answered the question you posed.

    It's about planning; in our case the governing word is "prepping".

    Where one resides or is currently located at some point of time away from home, allows for realistic attempts to survive a dire situation if planning done.

    Wandering around is a pending corpse with a short time line. The word "refugee" is being used with different definitions. A refugee can be well-prepared in knowledge and garments + a kit with food/water and some accessories.
     
  28. CountryGuy

    CountryGuy Master Survivalist
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    Well how about reality. How about the fact that millions of people around this world experience their own SHTF/ TEOTWAWKI everyday. Whether it's in the form of losing a job, a terminal disease diagnosis, a flood, their home burning to the ground, a family member being killed in an accident, a civil war, etc.

    So for the one who's home is burning around them, should they say "Nope, I don't care these flames are searing the meat from my bones, I'm a bug in guy and I'm not leaving!" Or do they grab their BOB that has key items and info to them and di di mau out of there to live another day? I mean Survive means to continue to live and Survival is existing in a state continuing to live. So if you die, your not surviving. So again it's not an all or nothing situation, you will either do what you must do to survive something or you become fertilizer. I mean planning to only bug in and ignoring the potential need to leave isn't survival planning as you have backed yourself into a single plan. Same as the person that says they're bugging out to be a road warrior gypsy.

    I mean great, you might have the best plan and set up there is to bug in but as the saying goes, shit happens. What do you do when you have gone all in on bugging in, no BOB's for you, no sir. Great till you wake in the middle of the night choking in smoke filled darkness as you try to escape from you home to end up standing outside in your night cloths on a January night watching your home, supplies, equipment and near every item you rely on burn to the ground due to a chimney fire.
     
  29. poltiregist

    poltiregist Legendary Survivalist
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    Now those are some full fledged no bull sh-- preppers . Just proves it can be done . Noted the goat they have "likely a milk goat " .
     
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  30. Duncan

    Duncan Master Survivalist
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    Gate Crasher, you are a treasure trove of information! I never even thought of needing a capacitor to kick start the pump motor, nor of the searchable database in my state. I will start my "re-researching" and hopefully will have a better option available for backup. Thanks again!!
     
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  31. TexDanm

    TexDanm Shadow Dancer
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    My favorite plan that a lot of uninformed makebelieve preppers have is the one where they are going to run off into the woods and live off the land. Yeah, you and another half-million amateur Daniel Boones. They will be shooting at anything that moves and setting the world on fire with their huge bonfires at night trying to keep their fears of monsters at bay.

    If you live in a big city you are going to HAVE to bail out. Big cities and nearly all modern homes are not in any way designed to work without utilities. Since this is just a price that you have to pay for living there you need to make preparations for a much better bug out plan than just grabbing a bag and running.

    Even if you can't afford to buy a place to bug out to you can make it so that when you get to your new location that you will have more than just the clothes on your back and a few grabbed things as you took off. I'm a big proponent of having a mini-warehouse in your intended location. You can then have at least a better chance of making t there if you can look better than just another refugee. If you have special skills you might have the tools of your trade stored there. Trade goods and a means of protecting them might be a good idea.

    After the fall a big selection of seeds and gardening books and tools might be your ticket into acceptance into a local group. Without power or fuel manual labor is going to once again be a very viable trade. My Dad used to talk about people during the depression that could chop and split wood that did that for food for their family. Chopping and splitting firewood without a chain saw and log splitter may be a valuable trade in itself in a lot of areas. field workers are going to be needed again. I have an old foot-powered sewing machine. One of my Daughters is a great seamstress.

    Thinking ahead and outside the current box is what all of the survival/prepper philosophies have at their root. think now and make preparations more ways than just stacking up THINGS.
     
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  32. lonewolf

    lonewolf Societal Collapse Survivalist. Staff Member
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    I have heard British preppers say they will grab a bag at the last moment and go and live in the woods, that statement alone is just hilarious, for a start how many modern British women do you think will put up with this? in the summer for a few weeks maybe a month, but once the cold weather creeps in they are going to want to head for the nearest Premier Inn or other such establishment.
    most of these so called preppers are urban dwellers and have no concept of how the countryside and nature works, they think it JUST IS and will always be the same, which is quite ludicrous.
    even in the mild south west of England they wont last very long, its cold and its very wet, most places you cant walk 5 feet off a path, you'll be up to your groin in muddy dirty cold water and you certainly wont be pitching a tent on it. all the wood is wet, there are no plants growing and most of the animals are hibernating and those that aren't are well hidden.
     
  33. poltiregist

    poltiregist Legendary Survivalist
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    To be driven away from your survival retreat is close to being a slow death sentence for you and family . Most folks don't even have a survival retreat to begin with . People with a well thought out and established survival retreat will be about the only people that would survive a power grid down scenario that lasted a year or more . That one year is being optimistic because even the governments admit an E.M.P. attack would collapse a nations power structure for a minimum of one year . Cyber attacks are already probing power grids . An attacking nation would find it easy after the first attack to repeatedly attack their victim until they had achieved the desired die off . Some of the economically failed a-- hole countries would love to have a prosperous nation with all the buildings and industries intact that they could simply clean the bones out and move in .
     
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2019
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  34. TexDanm

    TexDanm Shadow Dancer
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    Are the forests in Great Brittian wet? I ask because when I read your post I thought that at least they won't be attacked by four-legged predators or as likely as the American fools to set their woods on fire. While it is indeed attractive the thought of going back to nature I will avoid the big woods like the plague. The thought of running around in the woods surrounded by idiots with guns and no idea of what they are doing just isn't attractive. At least in Great Brittian, they won't be as well-armed.
     
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  35. lonewolf

    lonewolf Societal Collapse Survivalist. Staff Member
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    no the forests of Britain aren't continually wet, but they will be in the winter.
    we have a saying here: "chances are when SHTF it will be cold, wet, dark and......Winter!"
     
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  36. GateCrasher

    GateCrasher Expert Member
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    Here's my thoughts on the whole bug in / bug out debate, it's really a pretty simple problem to solve if you just think about it logically.

    First, for the majority of people in most disasters the best plan would be for them to bug in, but for the other people in the other types of disasters then they should definitely plan to bug out. But even if it's one of the disasters where they should bug in, remember there could be some unforeseen cascade failure/snowball effect problem that forces them to have to bug out later too. And for those people in those disasters where the best choice is for them to bug out, some may find they aren't able to and would reluctantly be forced to bug in. Then there's a few types of disasters where it makes the most sense for everybody to bug out for a little awhile first, then return home later and bug in for the long term. But we shouldn't forget that for some people in other types of disasters, the best plan would be for some of their group to bug out right away, while the rest of the group stayed behind and bugged in.

    Hope that helps :)
     
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  37. Sourdough

    Sourdough "eleutheromaniac"
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  38. Old Geezer

    Old Geezer Legendary Survivalist
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    Your posts have given me a better perspective on the lay of the land in rural England. My wife likes TV shows about houses and real estate. She watches shows out of the UK and I have sat watching them with her. We look at what's going on in the background of these shows trying to get a wider perspective of how things run there across the Atlantic.

    WWII, my father was stationed in England moving heavy equipment, tanks, tank carriers, trucks of every variety. He told me that we was stationed at a huge area where such equipment was being stored until the invasion (after the invasion of the continent, he traveled with the equipment for its storage and then deployment of mainly tanks to the war zones; Dad loved driving tanks). While in England, everybody was getting bombed by German bombers, but also were buzz-bombed -- sure all military targets, but also civilian areas. This heavy equipment dump was right out in the open. "What! That's nuts!" Nope, Dad said that it was located in a valley and that that valley was fogged-in the better part of the year, not just winter. Right then, when a child, I figured that everything I'd ever been told about England being wet was an understatement. "My dad was stationed where there was always fog!", said the little boy a hundred times. "Half the men in my uncle's company got killed!" Burned into a boy's brain. "German civilians were nicer than the French."

    Woods in Winter along the Appalachian Mountains are wet in winter. However, there are times of dryness, even to the point of fire hazard. Thank God such periods are short. Spring snow melt = flooding of the valleys. And I mean killer floods; people die, houses are lost.

    Here's some demographics of where I'm from, so as to give non-Americans some perspective. The county in which I live has two "big cities". Each city has between 20,000 and 25,000 residents. Outside of the cities, you are in rural areas immediately; state roadways have thicker populations adjacent, of course. Two of the many mountain ranges in Appalachia define our county's eastern border (elevation 2800 to 3400 ft; 850 to 1050 meters) and its western border 3200 to 4500 ft.; 1000 to 1400 meters). The valley lies at approx. 1300 ft (400 meters) above sea level. The county (most eastern U.S. states have around 90-100 counties) is approx. 100 square miles; the population density is approx. 75 people per sq. mile. The murder rate is under 2 persons per 100,000 per year. Outside of the towns, every family has a gun. One of the two towns leans liberal, the other conservative, the rural areas are all conservative. The liberal town (yes, there is a college within town) has the most crime, by FAR the lowest rate of firearms ownership, and the highest crime rates. Some very rich folk have build mansions up in the mountains nearby. When it hits the fan, they are done-for. Who knows, maybe some of the rich are preppers! There are some mean folk up in "them thar hills", so any preppers up in those areas better be very prepared!

    Recently, my wife and I drove to a major city not far from the Atlantic coast. We drove over one mountain range, passed a small city, went through an endless forested area (plenty of farms back in there, just couldn't see them from the interstate highway. One way was 85+ miles / 140 klicks. Half the way, all we could see were trees -- deciduous where we're from then turning to pines as we got near the coastal region. I loathe pine forests. I hate everything about pine forests. The ground is way too acid and there's the little matter of forest fires being normal natural events. The coastal area city has a quarter million people inside its city limits, however over a million people live in its surrounding area. From that city to the ocean itself is only another 60 miles, 100 klicks.

    The city we visited for shopping has a very high crime rate ... in some areas. Safe neighborhoods = 150 crimes per year. Bad neighborhoods = over 800 crimes per year. Overall, their murder rate is 20 per 100,000 -- i.e. over ten times (10x) that of America's heartland areas. The lower-order people living there-in mainly do harm to each other. Of course, they do burglarize the homes of "safe neighborhoods; sometimes rob the stores in "safe areas". Stay in the areas of the strip malls and nice restaurants, you'll be fine, even after dark. We shopped. We left.

    I hope that the above information helps people better understand SouthEast America's areas beginning in Appalachian mountains to the coast. Virginia down into Georgia, the above paradigms hold true.

    LoneWolf, I've read about Devon. What I read reminded me somewhat of my own region. The distances in America are rather large in comparison to England. "One hundred miles is a long distance to those from England and 100 years is a long period of time to Americans."

    Our rural areas and small towns surrounded by rural and wilderness areas are survivable even in the worst of times. However, our urban areas appear, in this day and age, utter write-offs. Simply turn off the electricity and urbanites begin to decompensate. In wintertime, turn off their electricity and water ... soon they are dead.

    Temperature swings, winter vs. summer, in the northern states of the United States are often somewhat radical. In winter, temperatures will drop below freezing and stay there for weeks and weeks. Windchill temps will go below zero degrees Fahrenheit. Chicago bad weather, any winter storm, will simply kill a human who is not wearing heavily insulated coat(s) and has no heating -- and I am talking about that person being indoors. Without heating, a home or business' water pipes will freeze solid and burst. If somebody living in Chicago's suburbs has some form of alternate heating, kerosene or firewood, they could survive while wearing coats and heavy blankets.
     
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2019
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  39. Old Geezer

    Old Geezer Legendary Survivalist
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    Our temperature swings in Southeastern America are greater than those temperatures experienced in Devon England. Quilt-making is a tradition in Appalachia -- in decades past, this was "do or die".

    In summer daytime temps will vary from mid 70's to mid 80's Fahrenheit. Nighttime it'll go down even into the 60's, however some nights are unbearably hot. Daytime temps of 90 degrees are not uncommon. I've gotten into my vehicle and the temperature be 110 degree F.

    In winter there is all manner of variation! Daytime temps are in the 30's and 40's Fahrnheit. At night, temps go below freezing. I am at 1300 feet in elevation, a valley immediately adjacent to a mountain. I've left a drink in my vehicle, get back in after work, and it be frozen solid. Snow and ice covering your truck in winter is quite normal. Seen frost already here in October.

    Click on chart below to expand it to where you can see its details:

     
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2019
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  40. Old Geezer

    Old Geezer Legendary Survivalist
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    Living up in Appalachian wilderness areas takes people who can endure horrible conditions.

    American Indians in such areas were migratory. They left out in wintertime.

    Parts of the Rocky Mountains are basically unlivable. Before modern amenities, only trappers endured the winters in such environs.

    Here is a photo of a major interstate highway crossing through one of the gaps in the Appalachian Mountains. Such gaps only happen each 50 miles north-south-wise, but these mountain ranges run hundreds of miles. The Rocky Mountains out West are far taller and sharper; often stone and support far less forestation; the Rockies are dry compared to the Appalachian ranges.


    18584e36dfcedbc1660e546e86c2885a.jpeg

    upload_2019-10-20_16-23-56.png

    Virginia has one of the longest railroad tunnels going through the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ridge_Tunnel
     
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  41. randyt

    randyt Master Survivalist
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    There's a gap from Erwin Tenn into North Carolina. It was on the old road, it was called Sam's Gap. Every year a few truckers went off the road on that gap . It was a curvy, hilly, twisty road, it seems at times we passed the same tree several times as we went up the mountain. I miss the old south, these dang new roads have all but ruined it
     
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  42. Pragmatist

    Pragmatist Master Survivalist
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    Good morning Randy,

    When Interstate Hwy 10 was build, Madam and I lost our access to our favorite gumbo soup restaurant in Bay St Louis, Mississippi. We lost tranquility and good southern cookin' for a new super highway.

    The old South is still here though. It just requires getting off of the Interstate highways - but the towns and cities have also changed.

    I am now in the mood for ............
     
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  43. CountryGuy

    CountryGuy Master Survivalist
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    We used to often shoot across 90 over thru Bay St Louis on the way over to I10 on the way for our weekend liberty of fun and debauchery in New Orleans.
     
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  44. lonewolf

    lonewolf Societal Collapse Survivalist. Staff Member
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    Old Geezer, the Devon/Cornwall border is 250 miles from London, to get to the western tip of Cornwall add another 100 miles minimum.
    on an average day a road trip from London to the Cornwall border would take about 5 hours, 7 in the height of summer and 10 in very bad weather.
    these distances might not seem much to an American but on our road system and with the amount of traffic there is these days these sorts of journeys can be long on time.
    you can probably figure out how long a BUG OUT on FOOT would take post SHTF and why I do not think such a journey would be possible and why I don't give it much credibility.
    we have one rail line into Devon and on into Cornwall, that gets cut off regularly as part of the line runs alongside the sea, there is one main road through Devon and into Cornwall which carries all the delivery trucks and road accidents delay the traffic, anything from 2 hours to 8 hour tailbacks are normal.
    the south west of England is therefore very remote from the rest of the country and is overlooked for any infrastructure upgrades-unless its an election year that is(every 5 years).
    the majority of the population in Devon live around or near the south coast, the rest of the county is underpopulated and rural , and hilly.
     
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