Any preppers here

hopnpop said:

If you're talking prepping the way I think you're talking prepping, then I'd say I'm in the process. Actually, anyone who starts prepping doesn't really finish prepping - it's an endless task. We'll be prepping until those preparations are needed.

To those mentioning One Second After - I haven't read it but will look into it. Let me recommend to YOU all - PATRIOTS: Surviving the Coming Collapse, by James Wesley, Rawles. ...and keep your highlighters handy...

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I assumed that's what he was talking about. My issue with Patriots is that it read like a survivalists wet dream. Almost all of them had boatloads of money and worked from home. It also read like a technical manual with a story tacked on as an afterthought. The only chapters I really found entertaining were the last 5 chapters. Especially the "Amendments" chapter where I just had a giant grin the whole time.

i would suggest everyone review the recent reports regarding solar flare activity, and the cycle we are entering into.

gsx1138 said:

I assumed that's what he was talking about. My issue with Patriots is that it read like a survivalists wet dream. Almost all of them had boatloads of money and worked from home. It also read like a technical manual with a story tacked on as an afterthought. The only chapters I really found entertaining were the last 5 chapters. Especially the "Amendments" chapter where I just had a giant grin the whole time.

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I agree re: survivalists' wet dream - with that kind of money, the possibilities would be pretty endless. That, to me, was a bit of a stretch. I kinda liked the technical manual-ness of it. I liked that it was specific regarding many items, etc. BUT...where I couldn't relate to some of...well, many of the benefits they had that were attained through their incomes, it still got me thinking on the poorer man's means of overcoming and dealing with the issues. It still put the ideas in my head and started the gears turning. ..And yeah, the Amendments chapter had me just a'smilin', too.

Am I preparing? Yes, I have been looking around for my coyote traps the last few days, and looks like I need to go into PA and look in a certain trapper buddy's bin to see if the rest of them are in there. He was supposed to boil/dye them along with a big bunch of other traps in a big metal barrel of water- 2 years ago.

I've been preparing since my days as a Boy Scout!

I started without realizing it in the 50's in Boy Scouts... continued my blind preparation as I picked up skills running the woods with a bunch of Long Hunter re-enactors messing with 1700's survival skills and weapons... and recently started shooting with a local bunch of civilian, active/retired Police, and retired Military with an interest in the concept of T. Jefferson's "Every citizen a soldier".

My "Bug Out Bag" is a hickory split Pack Basket from Panther Primatives, that looks funny next to the ALICE packs and North Face packs the others carry, but it works until I can afford something more suitable for prone shooting! My equipment may be a bit "primative" but it is light weight, and it is functional, and over the years, I've whittled down my load to the basics that I actually need to be reasonably comfortable in camp, and still "Run and Gun" under my load.

My wife and I have always tried to buy food in bulk and store it against the lean times created by frequent Union Strikes and Company Lay-offs at my work, and living in a rural county made us look to protecting ourselves from electrical outages early on... while bottled water became added to storage, when we were without for just over a week due to a collapsed water main in the '80s.

I got "prepared" over many years, and sorta by accident!

It's on-going... and upgrading is constantly in my mind, and in our budget when we can do so.

KansasMustang said:

Need to prepare? For what? As to the question, I'm always prepared. In Basic training I had a Senior Drill that was a sadist, but then again didn't all of us that went thru Basic/Boot? His thing was when he first addressed the training company I was in he asked "What's the Boy Scout Motto?" Of course this good Boy Scout knew "Be Prepared" But the ignorant ones didn't! Soooo we as a company owed the sadistic sumbitch 1000 pushups by the time he was satisfied that all knew. He extracted the pushups at every turn, but also stuck in my mind, NEVER be UNPREPARED!

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LOL!

My drill was a 6'4" Cav Scout with more combat and service stripes than sleeve space. Sadist is probably the optimal term for describing my drill sergeants. Even the "nice" drill Sergeant was a sadist. The Senior Drill may have been genuinely psychopathic.

Comically, the guy looked, and I kid you not, like Bull Tannon from Night Court.

Which made the random "WHUDD'ER YA LOOKIN AT PRIVATE? GET DOWN. JUST PUSH!" absolutely hilarious.

It was muddy. It was nasty. I tore my feet up on the march back. I bled about as much as I sweated.

I recal pugil sticks very vividly. I had just gotten done from working for a year at Apple Computer, and prior to that had been Helpdesk or Desktop support for varying companies.

The drill sergeant brings me, and this reasonably built dude to the middle of the pit. He stands us back to back. He asks the guy what he was before he joined, and the guy says, "I did construction, uh brickwork Drill Sergeant!".

He gets in my face and asks, "What did you do before you joined up?"

"Uh, Tech Support DRILL SERGEANT!"

HE steps back and looks at me and says, "Wai...Wait you did WHAT?".

HE then just shakes his head and says, "Whatever! Mason versus PC Nerd"

Then he blows the whistle.

Now, I don't know whether it was the amping myself I did prior to the fight, or the comment. Maybe it was a bit of both, but, as soon as we had taken our steps and the whistle blew, it was on.

I came around counter-clockwise and was intending to slam the right side of the stick into dudes helmet with kind of a right straight. I put all of my strength and leverage into this strike. I am talking proper extension aiming at a point several inches behind the target, rotation of hips. Everything I had was in it.

As I made this one sweeping motion, the poor guy dove in at me without his stick up, head slightly down, and my glove made hard, solid, positive impact at the base of his helmet, and drove right into this guys jaw. It really was a lucky blow, because frankly, he handed me the contact.

He went limp. Simply fell over and didnt move.

They called the medics over and after a while he started stirring a bit.

When I got up to go back to the sidelines after apologizing to this poor, groggy guy as he got support-carried back to the Ambulance, I looked over to my side and the Drill Sergeant was smiling at me and nodded. I didn't say anything cause I felt kinda crappy about the whole ordeal.

To top things off, the guy had a training exercise mishap on a previous cycle, and was already a recycle when I laid him out.

SO IF YOU ARE READING THIS DUDE IM SORRY!

lol.

Anyways just a cool basic story I thought I would share. Have dozens of em, but then again all us vets do. :lol:

there is a sticky about survivalism/prepping on top of the general discussion forum.