Hello All,
What are your thoughts on any necessary precautions needed to take in these dark days and possibly darker days to come? I have never been a “survivalist” person and scoffed at others that stockpiled and prepared…until now. I was naive and wondering what I should now have to get prepared or do most not see the need or feel it won’t matter?
I have the basics stocked. Toilet paper, food and water, of course. And I did go and buy a handgun and plan on getting a couple shotguns and more ammo soon – if I can find it. What else should I have? Gas powered generator? Solar power unit? Candles? GO bag packed and ready? Tent and camping gear in case we have to flee the house? I have no idea if I am being paranoid or smart even thinking about all this? Is this nuts or necessary??
I appreciate any thoughts and guidance! Thanks!
43 replies on “Time for Survival Mode??”
If you stock up on stuff without learning critical skills and building a local community of like-minded people, you will accomplish only one thing: creating a valuable supply depot for the first group of merciless raiders that comes sniffing around.
Good point.
Give serious thought to how long your supplies will last. Then double that.
I’m continually stocking up on food & home supplies (easy, for now) and ammo (difficult these days). Have been since February and I only have about two years’ worth of stuff, maybe one if I bring my kid’s family on board. Not nearly enough, and I live alone.
Great info here on prepper-ations. Thanks to Rob and all who posted.
Yes! I am learning so much. Thank you all. I feel like I am behind the eight ball at this point but knowing is half the battle they say.
Oh – one thing I forgot – I think an RV is more viable than a trailer long-term because trailers have to be built very light for towing and are made of lighter materials that don’t hold up long term as well. I don’t think I’ve seen reference yet to a trailer older than 15-20 yrs old. Whereas I’ve seen several videos of people refurbishing (or buying already restored) RVs that were 1970s or 80s vintage and still going strong.
One of the options you might want to look into is how to live full time in an RV or trailer. That’s my plan long term. I’m researching this myself right now and the options are very interesting. I think that many of the same things one must consider for “Off Grid” RV-ing (often called “Boondocking”) are the same or nearly the same as any considerations you’ll be making for living off the land or in a cabin far out in the wild. You need fuel, solar panels, security in the form of guns and locks and a knowledge of basic mechanics for starters.
As far as I’m concerned, I don’t want to be tied down to one spot on the land I have to defend. I’d rather be like a hermit crab – take my home with me and stay on the down-low out of sight. Plus – in theory you could “follow the weather” and stay in mild locales year round or at least avoid areas during seasonal problems. I love my home state of Texas, but I wouldn’t want to have an RV or mobile home anywhere in Tornado alley during thunder-storm season! Move down to the Galveston coast or up to South Dakota during the spring and early summer. Have a mail drop location or a trusted friend to keep your physical mail for you for pick-up. Use wi-fi or satellite internet (which may become more viable soon, with Elon Musk’s space-based internet going into operation in a few years).
An RV, like any home will need maintenance and care. And you have to be careful handling disposal of black water.
If this sort of thing appeals to you, you may also be interested in “Schoolies” – converted buses that people have turned into fantastic homes. Often built from the shells of school buses (thus the name) but I’ve seen others built out of double decker touring buses that are amazing!
Yes I was very interested in this. If it was just me I would already be doing that. I just need WiFi for work. It will be a hard sell to my family though is the problem. And not sure what you do about a permanent address?
They don’t call themselves “survivalists” anymore, they prefer to be called “preppers”. It’s silly semantics to try to make themselves sound less kooky.
There’s a rabbit hole in that direction and there are some serious kooks you’ll run across if you go down it. Be warned.
I live now where hurricanes can be an issue. I grew up in the northern tier of states where a blizzard could bring all travel to a halt for up to a couple weeks. I take what I consider sensible precautions and don’t consider myself a “prepper” or survivalist or any of that noise.
I always have at least two months of canned goods and some food in long term storage configuration in case of maximal disaster. Like that which follows a direct hit from a Cat 5 hurricane. The can goods need to be faithfully rotated, btw.
In an emergency/disaster situation water is going to be one of your biggest issues. If you have well water you need a generator at least big enough to run the well pump or you’re going to be trying to figure out how to hook up a hand pump. A hand pump you very likely don’t have. If you’re on city water … good luck and God bless your heart.
I have generator capacity enough to power the whole property as though the grid were still live. I can keep that up with fuel on hand for about a week. After that it’s all about using the 4×4 to go find a gas station. I’m looking into increasing my fuel holding capacity and hope to get that addressed sometime this summer. If I conserve my fuel and don’t use it for things like air conditioning I can stretch the duration out quite a bit.
I never, ever let the gas gauge in any of my vehicles get below half full. It doesn’t cost any more to run on the top half of the tank than it does to run on the bottom half. Doing this not only means I have a minimum of 50% fuel reserve in the vehicle, it also means I have fuel storage for the generators in the vehicles. Under heightened threat, like an approaching hurricane, I top everything off and keep it that way until the threat passes. I treat all my fuel with a stabilizer/conditioner and rotate storage though the vehicles to keep that fuel in usable condition. Gas doesn’t take very long to start losing octane, ethanol is hydrophilic (it likes water) and bad gas can cause all sorts of problems.
As far as arms go, get what you feel comfortable with and KNOW HOW TO USE. Handguns are very useful if you know how to use them and practice until using them becomes automatic — Otherwise they’re practically useless at ranges beyond a few feet. The sight radius is very short, it’s extremely easy to mess up your grip and trigger control resulting in misses that can cost you everything. If you’re not intimate with handguns you’re better served by a high capacity shotgun. A 12 gauge shotgun with 8 rounds of 3 inch #4 buckshot is more firepower than a sub-machine gun … until the magazine is empty. A shotgun is far more useful for foraging too. The king of firearms as far as I’m concerned is a rifle in the hands of a genuine rifleman.
Whatever arms you choose, familiarize the hell out of yourself with them. Firearms are freakin’ dangerous by their very nature. You need to learn muzzle discipline, trigger discipline and how to develop muscle memory for how the safety catch/selector works. Until you develop good habits in those basic elements you’re a danger to yourself and everyone around you.
Train yourself and your family in grip breaking techniques. This is one of the simplest and most useful of the martial arts moves that anyone can learn with a little practice and a few YouTube videos. I teach this to my grandchildren as a matter of policy in our family. When I’m gone my sons will carry on the tradition and so on. If someone grabs someone you care about, you want the loved one to escape or help you get a clean shot.
Stay away from any sort of explosives. Stay away from anyone who has any sort of explosives. Besides the obvious legal issues … Explosives require special training, experience and storage. You only get one mistake with something that goes BOOM! and when explosives bite, they bite hard.
The idea of surviving The Apocalypse in a bunker full of guns and food with no other logistics is ludicrous, don’t go down that rabbit hole. If things get that bad and you have little to no training and zero outside support you’re toast anyway. Stand between your family and threats and do the best you can.
Mind you, I’m planning on being comfortable and safe for a duration of no more than a couple months in the very, very most severe scenario. I could do more but if the danger isn’t mitigated by then it’s not going away in any useful time span. At that point you’re in an “Alas, Babylon*” situation and it doesn’t really matter what you do if you and your neighbors cannot form a cohesive, mutually supporting community.
So … One of the best preparations for a full on disaster is getting to know and becoming involved with your neighbors.
Mental preparedness is a big thing, don’t neglect it. If you have not thought through in your own mind many times “when this happens, I’ll do that” sort of planning you’re doing all this for nothing. Look around and consider “If someone with a weapon comes through X door under YZ conditions … I shoot.”
Working through scenarios like that can help you move quickly, effectively AND correctly. Your brain doesn’t have to start from scratch, you’ve already trained it what to do. When standing between foe and family in gravest extreme if you’re not mentally prepared with total resolve you will die and so will the people counting on you. An armed baddie will not hesitate, he knows he’s dead if he lets you get off a clean shot and he is not going to care if he hits something or someone else in the process. So think about these things before you have to do them.
I’ll be happy to say more on this topic and if you have any questions, ask them.
God Bless you and good luck.
Semper Fi
*By all means, please do read the novel “Alas, Babylon” by Pat Frank. it’s both entertaining and instructional.
Really great and thorough info! Thank you. Very thought provoking. Gives me much to ponder and much to do to prepare. God bless you as well and I may be in touch. I appreciate your offer to answer further questions. I feel so naive about all of this. My father never hunted and didn’t own guns. He is the only one in our family that didn’t so therefore I never had much desire to do so and received barely any instruction with firearms, other than what I could glean from my grandfather and uncles. But not residing near them I was not involved in their hunting endeavors and I regret that deeply now.
Well, 3 things to remember about firearms:
… which are all covered by the various disciplines I mentioned above but are a very good, brief set of rules to remind everyone of even so.
You’re very welcome.
I grew up in a rural area with guns all over the place. Safe gun handling and marksmanship instruction was part of my childhood. Joining the Marines when I was 17 added to that by quite a lot and there have been other situations since then.
I don’t keep up anymore on the latest and greatest in the gun world but it’s safe to say that there’s not a firearm on the planet that I could not pick up and immediately operate effectively. (Unlike some others, “effective fire” to a Marine means putting rounds on target.) I’m not bragging, I’ve been a “Man at Arms” most of my life in one capacity or another, official or civilian, and it just is what it is.
Guns are vital tools but you must learn to operate them correctly and safely like any other tool. I.E. regarding tools you should never use a tubular handled hammer to pull nails … Yes, there are people who do not know how to operate a hammer correctly. It’s not shameful and you’re not less than a man if you don’t know how to use a tool properly. You’re an idiot if you think you know when you don’t and go ahead anyway. Instruction in tools, be it hammers or a black rifle, is not difficult to come by.
If I had to choose only two guns they would be a high capacity shotgun and a high powered rifle. The shotgun gives you massive firepower from the muzzle to about 50 yards (and up to 100 yards with solid projectiles like the myriad forms of “slug”) with huge selections of ammo for any purpose spanning that distance. The rifle gives you effectiveness from the muzzle to whatever range you learn to use it at. For most people without more specific training that’s around 300 yards. With any modern high powered rifle 300 yards is “point blank range”. At that range you simply get a good sight picture on the target’s center of mass through scope or open sights and fire, you’ll hit within a couple inches of your point of aim if your technique is good. Longer ranges require training and experience and the experience is as important as the training.
As important as how to use a firearm is when to use a firearm. It does you nor your family any good if you use your gun and end up in prison. If you’re a decent, good human being shooting the wrong person is going to do very bad things to your mind even if you don’t go to prison. Suggested reading on this topic is Mossad Ayoob’s “In Gravest Extreme” and you’ll see me use that phrase a lot …
Seconding the recommendation for “Alas, Babylon”. I, too, really enjoyed it.
I read that when I was a kid, I think it was published some time in the 1960’s.I accidentally left it at my Grandpa’s house and he, not being known for reading novels, read it and told me how much he liked it. I think he read it just to see what kind of stuff I was reading. Grandpa’s “seal of approval” was very important to me. He was a very good man and my personal hero. Many, many times in my life I’ve been confronted with a situation where I solved the problem by thinking “What would Grandpa do?”
Just ordered! Thanks
There is something to be said for local vs. online suppliers. I have to believe most large cities will have “prepping” stores. I gathered what supplies I could from a local store when I lived in Atlanta. It’s good to be able to wander aisles and ask questions of the store owner. I learned a lot by doing that. The supplies I couldn’t get from a local prepping store I bought online.
Robert,
I do not think you are being paranoid. Being ready for an emergency is prudent and smart.
We took precaution 4 years ago. We have 6 months worth of food, water and other essential supplies. We bought camping gear and even WENT camping to see if we could do it. If you knew me you would understand how out of character that is for me.
Also, I would be armed. However, this must be taken seriously and with much thought. First and foremost is to take safety training classes, and then practice, practice, practice. Also, choose a weapon carefully, and make sure it fits you and your comfort level.
Prudent, reasonable preparations are smart.
We did the same recently with our camping gear in the middle of our blazing hot summer. Totally doable, even when we forgot the pump for our air mattress and got to experience sleeping on the hard ground. Very uncomfortable, but after 2 days, you start learning how to tolerate it. Made me happy to know I could do that.
Cut a bunch of small pine boughs and put them under your sleeping bag. Comfy! They also insulate you from loosing body heat.
As someone who has spent many, many nights sleeping on the ground, here’s a tip –
Scrape out a shallow divot for your hip bones. If you don’t, all your weight will rest on and be cantilevered by your hip bones and you won’t get very good rest. When you do get up you’ll be a lot less sore if you do this too.
Good rest is important. In the military I was taught that you must get 4 hours of good rest out of every 24 hours whenever possible. It’s not always possible but exceeding that limitation degrades your performance significantly. 4 hours allows your brain and body to complete one entire sleep cycle.
Another tip is to never, ever fall asleep with a loaded weapon that has a round in the chamber. During a period of maximal threat you might need to sleep with a gun, take the round out of the chamber if you do. If you wake up by having the gun yanked from your grasp you’ll know there is no round in the chamber and can take countermeasures accordingly. This practice will also preclude the possibility of an accidental discharge wounding/killing you or someone you really don’t want to shoot. Train yourself as you get up to chamber a round and safe the weapon even when there is no immediate threat.
Thanks!
Great points! We all are being pushed out of our comfort zones and need to make sacrifices to ensure our well being. Thank you for the comments.
I’d suggest finding a good site to join. But be mindful that a great deal of them, particularly US ones, have recently sold out to firms seeking to essentially buy their member lists; and the remaining real ones are skeptical of incoming members.
I did this 2 years ago “just in case” of a SHTF scenario or major natural disaster. Eventually, I did build a bug out bag with some stuff on this list.
Not all of this goes in the bag. This is just some of the major stuff we have. A lot of what would come with us if we had to flee all depends on how much TIME we have. If we have 24 hour notice, we can basically pack the Jeep as if we’re going camping, only with all the “shields” packed up as well. This is the ideal get out of Dodge scenario as we could be very comfortable hunkered down in the woods. If we have 1 hour notice, then it’s a major scramble to get the go bag, shields, papers and dogs ready to go.
The food supply and water filter are good for hunkering down.
I would recommend getting a generator. We don’t have one and this may bite us in the rear.
Some other stuff to think about:
Very helpful and much appreciated info! As I figured…I am not well prepared at the moment and need to be. Thanks again!
If you want to extend that food supply, you can get a find 50 lb bag of rice from most Asian markets. You put that rice into some Home Depot buckets (with a tightly sealed lid), and throw in some air/moisture absorbers, and it should last about 20 years.
Oh… and gas goes bad after a while. There are some gas stabilizers you can add to it to make last longer.
Nice, thanks for that info!
I don’t know, but I’m sure there are a LOT of people asking themselves the same question. I’m asking that question! I think what’s happening right now is exposing just how dependent we are on systems that we grew up thinking of as non-political. But they aren’t anymore, and we have to figure out ways to disentangle ourselves, or at least build some half-decent parachutes for if/when we get tossed out of the helicopter.
My recommendation, at this stage, is to prepare as if you’re expecting a hurricane that’s going to kill the local infrastructure for a month or so. That’s limited enough that you’re not going to go full bunker crazy, but should give you time to implement better long-term solutions if your job/utilities get killed.
I think this is a good approach, Lydia. Unless you have access to land to grow your own food, a medical background/supplies to care for your family, a small arsenal and military training, etc., the average person will not outlast a long-term shutdown of services in any case. Some people have these abilities and supplies, most don’t. The one month recommendation is doable by most people. A longer-term approach is possible by banding together with your neighbors; there is safety in numbers.
Ah good point about the training as I have none. I will probably be going down some rabbit holes starting to research that on YouTube!
I made it a point to stock 10 lbs of coffee. Great for bartering. Worth it’s weight in gold.
The only bad thing about trying to grow your own vegetables is you have to protect it from animals and other people stealing it. Been there. Even in good times!
Thank you for the input! Much appreciated! God bless!
There are a number of survivalist websites out there that can help you. I don’t normally like to go into conspiratorial mode, but a generator and gas would be good (preferably the inverter type which can run nearly all day with very minimal gas usage). There is a good video around also about how to get water from your hot water heater, I recommend finding and watching that. When I lived in the Colorado plains and had a blizzard approaching (if you have any warning), I’d also suggest filling your bathtub and have a bucket nearby. Helps to ‘flush’ when you need to.
I do recommend the survivalist websites though… very informative. Oh, and you should have a battery powered radio too… you’ll want information at some point.
Thank you Stephen! I am going to start researching more and getting smarter about all this. May be time to look for a camp to buy as I live in a populated area. Be nice to have a place in the country stocked up to get to just in case. Definitely need the radio and thanks for the input on the type of generator. Very helpful indeed!
Well, I’m in the market to purchase a ‘get-away’ property in Colorado (or maybe out of the country), if you are interested in teaming up to get something.
If it was just me to worry about I would love to do something like that but I still have one daughter to get through college. Thanks for the offer! If I do get property it will need to be in Western PA for now that I can get myself and my family quickly to safety.
When you get that property, start off burying small caches of supplies in non-obvious places so you don’t have to transport everything at once. Buy a small diesel generator because the fuel will remain stable a lot longer than gasoline.
Appreciate that. I didn’t know that about diesel.
Don’t forget to buy a spool of nylon parachute cord. It’s strong, light, and works for just about anything that needs to be tied together. A lot of my ideas come from US Navy survival training.
We lost power for 5 days after a very bad wind event took out a lot of trees and electric poles. I have a well that’s too deep for a hand pump and no generator. I used water from my swimming pool for a lot of things, even purifying some of it for drinking water. Having 10,000 gallons of very clean water at hand is a good thing. I even shared with neighbors.
Oh wow! Never would have thought to use pool water for much but good to know!