where do you see yourself?

My family has always been farmers and warriors each of them having a war and land of their own. I love the forests mountains and seas.I could easily live out the rest of my days on a pasture next to the ocean. My father began moving away from that lifestyle and after military service he became a fitter and turner, then an engineer. I owe both my love for machinery and weapons to him, skills that will serve me well in the coming days.

Modern boys wouldn't be caught dead being a boy scout. It's seriously uncool these days. Sad really as so many skills are taught there. My nephew is 12 now and he plays "safe" sports. He doesn't know the difference between a flat head or Phillips screwdriver but he can tell you all about what computer games are new and the latest handheld devices. I've been trying to teach him things but there is just no interest. He doesn't ask how things work he just accepts that they do until they don't.

 

I totally agree. Repairmen use to be a trade all on their own. My brother is the same. As a gamer he has to have te best in order to play the latest. Just look at Venezuela and their current situation. They are very desperate. You are definitely correct in saying that they put too much stock in modern technology. I was thinking the other day that all the knowledge that my father and grandfather accumulated during their lifetime is gone. I learned a lot from them but compared to them my skills are subpar. The levels of skill is declining in every generation but their complacency in the system is ever increasing.

 

Twenty years ago I went to put my boy into scouts!
Found out it was scouts in name only!
No Fires as they are too dangerous!
No cutting trees to make stuff, trees have feelings you know!
Flooded with girls!

The main tasks were primping and preening the uniform etc
winning inane badges for inane useless stuff!
I could go on but lets just say it was a "Hen" house!

Waited a few years and put him into Army Cadets!

 

I used to play rugby all thru school and weekends after school my dad always had some form of a project for us boys to do. Either maintain the small garden next to the house or fix something or build an enhancement.
I was never in the "Voortrekkers", which is the equivalent of the cub scouts but I also heard that it's has become a friendship circle and they learn social skills rather than practical things.

There used to be local commandos in every town. As my father was a member we got to shoot a lot of different types of firearms. The first time I got to fire a gun was when I was 3 years old. I learned many things from those guys before they were disbanded.

 

A skill is a skill, doesn't matter how you got it! I wouldn't worry about the computer skills too much... After SHTF they won't be good for nothing but throwing them at each other.

 

I won't lie... I love technology. I studied mechanical engineering but I didn't complete my studies. (I still want to) I love to figure out how things work. Most of my experience is in aviation so I used to see a lot of cool things before it the market. That being said I don't know how adaptable I will be when there is a long term grid down situation. Most of the things I own have buttons on them. It's only lately that I realized that I will need to adapt and quickly.

 

It may sound misleading but don't call it prepping made it hobbies or family get togethers do bbq so they learn to cook over open flame do a family day at a adventure center most do a multi-activities days where u can do archery kayaking canoeing teambuilding game which means they will learn skills and how to work together while having fun if u want to teach them to hunt get them into bird/animal watch show them how to sneak up quietly and close to take pictures while ur really teaching them to track to stay hidden try to get them into hill walking or even walking in parks or sight seeing on nature walks if they enjoy it they might even get better out door gear to help them with they new hobbies which means u know they hav gear to help survive in the after it happens time just remember u cant force them to be some one or something they are not but u can give them the opportunity to hav some skills and gear to help them it might not work with all ur family or any but even if they don't get into any of the hobbies u still hav fun family days out together and without trying you'll never know

 

Excellent ideas, thank you! The BBQ thing will work hands down as we all love that. Disguising activities to teach them new things is not a bad idea at all! I am thinking a camping trip should do the trick. I can show off my flint and portable BBQ and so on.

 

I know how terrible it can be because our local power provider used to cut our power for days at a time. Panic ensued and the prices of camping gear, gas related products and generators soared to crazy high prices. Work places lost huge amounts of money, the fuel stations went down as nobody bargained that fuel wouldn't be available. Stores had to throw out frozen food that had now become rotten. At the time I had virtually no food or candles or wood to cook on and used my brazen torch to make food haha. Crime increased dramatically as their was no cameras and police had their hands full. Large numbers of people raided stores... As bad as this was it wont be a patch compared to the next economic crisis or grid down situation.

 

It is amazing watching computer nerds learning new skills out bush!

Had one small group (four boys) of 12y olds out camping once
The first night dinner was cold as none could light a fire, they learnt to light a fire by the second night but two burn injuries.
The third and last night they got it right with no injuries and had learnt how to dress burn injuries!
Camp hygiene was still a problem though!

After just a few weeks those sheeple who survive will be shedding there fleece quick!
Need is a great motivator to learn! many will learn and live and many will not and perish!

Sheeple are sheeple because they can be and get away with it now when they cant get away with it they will adapt!
Sadly most young girls will suffer as they are mostly incapable of anything other than being a leach!

 

Hahaha! Necessity breeds expertise as they say. I imagine that would have been fun to see. Yea camp hygiene can be a problem. I smiled when I read your "young women liches" ! On Facebook the other day I saw a picture which said that men have become experts in housework as the previous generation of women didn't teach their daughters ****.

 

The hardest part of that trip was "not" helping them after I had shown them how!

They are nearly all "Princess's" so any sort of work is beneath them or they are "Career women" and have no time so a maid in employed!
The maid is the 1% who learned the domestic duties, keeps there own home and maybe several others!

 

Well said friend!

 

Interesting thread. Going to throw this out there. I think , initially at least, all governments will try to do things to assist the general population. I think you give politicians to much credit. They believe exactly what the masses do, anything that happens will be corrected rather quickly and life will go back to ....blah blah. Thats when crap will get real, when it doesn't go back to normal and the government's abilities start to fail. When the general panic starts the government will seek to "restore" order and that will quickly devolve into general anarchy.

 

Excellent perspective

 

6 days- Hopefully still at home with food and the generator.
6 week- Still at home with food and generator.
6 months- At the 6 months point we'd have to branch out and look for others to barter with for supplies and put together a team to rely on for security, networking, food.
1 year- Same team. We may have kicked a few greedy folks out at his point. We'd have a team set-up for hunting, food gathering, cooking, cleaning, tending to the kids. It would be organized.
I would still be here in California, realistically. I probably won't branch out.....I don't think. I never know.

 

Well I thought I had a solid plan for my SHTF situation but upon reassessment I realized that I am well and truly not prepared. I didn't factor in so many things and mobility in a time of crisis with my family will be near impossible. My family also don't have a prepping mindset so my finite resources will be diminished alot faster than I had planned. Additionally my family is rather overweight... This makes tactics and group dynamics really challenging. Just thinking about this gives me a headache...

 

I recently moved the core of my tools into this state from my home state. Doing so found me utterly unprepared to store such. Thus I rent a storage unit which costs me more than I want to pay. My work shed was overwhelmed rapidly. I have one of those two story roll-abouts, plus enough tools to fill two more, my benches and shelves above the benches are full. I have already foisted off onto my youngest son (who lives in our home state) as much as he would take. I was going to build another shed immediately adjacent to my house, but it turns out that my current town's building commission won't issue me a building permit for such -- fire code, whatever.

Now some of my lawn and garden equipment are under a tarpaulin. I have some power tools in the den.

That I work on different kinds of equipment multiplies the space taken by such tools. I have a disabled son who lives with us and he is a computer geek, hardware and software. At work, I program and repair high tech equipment, but must also take care of small mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic issues. All the while dealing with the medical community / medical needs. I have developed brain hemorrhoids.

Decades of buying this and thats, "Oh, I need this -- Oh, I need that," has resulted in my Tower of Babel. My advice to the young, when "needing" something, first consider where you are going to put it, consider how you will transport it when moving to another job, and consider whether you can get by with less.

 

Having studied engineering and currently working in an It field I totally understand where you are coming from. I also care greatly for my tools. Af I lost my job I had to store most of my belongings with my aunt in her auto electric workshop. I retrieved most of my things but I was greatly relieved of a few power tools, measuring equipment and electrical equipment. Having nearly had a heart attack upon discovering this my mother urged me to let it go as "they are merely earthly possessions". I often feel conflicted these days as I am giving away stuff I don't need and tons of things that I will most definitely use. Does that make me a minimalist prepper? Who knows...

 

I know better, however I perpetually attempt to understand human nature ... to include my own psyche. Seems our evolutionary baggage may be contributing to our physical baggage even unto this era. We have caveman and nomadic man behaviors stuck in our heads. "Og must fix!" "Need sharper stick!" "Makes fire! Must have three!" "Trog on top of horse!; Trog crazy; Og need ride horse!" "Must drag deer better way; make woman happy."

What with my skeleton's joints going to crap en masse, I'm having minimalism imposed upon me. And God forbid I have to move again.

I've thought about what to take on a bug-out. Brain hernia! And my bug-out will be to another state!

Truth be told, I'm finished. I'll be trying to get younger family, friends, grandchildren, people I care about to survive. I may (?) be good for fixed point defense, otherwise I'm not worth much. I can do a lot of first aid / triage.

All this stuff I've gathered... looks like I'll be doing a bunch of selling. Post SHTF, maybe I'll become a hardware store owner (armed owner). I'll hire/arm me some young soldiers who need the work for their families; hire those with my beliefs. Try to keep my sons from getting killed. We've lost one adult child and the pain of such is utterly unbearable, never grows less painful, negates the will to live.

I'm 100% not looking to save myself, but maybe I can be of service to those who deserve to live.

 

Now that you mention it lately I have been thinking about my mortality alot... I used to believe that I had some special purpose and I once had all these noble ideas... These days I go to work and come home and not much else. I don't care about preserving my life but I do care about my family. I have lost much but I don't have children so I can not even begin to imagine how painful that was... I do want my family to survive and thrive so maybe I am just prepping to help them survive.

 

I do not find Camus' take on the plight of Sisyphus comforting. I do however appreciate the incisiveness of his mind when contemplating life's futilities. Here is a line from a prayer, "We are all, verily, patient in God." I'm not.

http://dbanach.com/sisyphus.htm

 

Since I still live with my parents and we have communication with other relatives of ours, my idea would be that all of us gather in our woodwork shop and make it us our temporary settlement. We are in an urban area which is rather far from any forests.
We'll collect supplies and trade some of them for what we need and I believe we could remain like this for 3 months.
Since we already have a truck that is being used for business purposes, we could use this truck to move to our province that takes 12 hours of drive to reach.
It's either we try to survive the urban environment with limited resources or we move to our relative in the province wherein we could find more essential resources for our survival. We might not have access to electricity there, but the abundance of fresh water sources compensates for that.
If I were to survive by my own, then that would have to be another matter. I believe I wouldn't last a year without relying on someone else for help but I will try.

 

Even in survival situations, we could run into both kinds I guess. I have always been wary of trusting others, even family members and there is a good reason to that. Despite all my family problems, i think more often than not people tend to backstab you whether they are willing or not. Up to this day, there have been a couple of people who earned my complete trust. One of them is my deceased grandfather and the other is a close friend.