TOTM February 2015- Bugging In

There was an old you tube vid that was linked here many years ago that seems relevant to this discussion. While I couldn't find it on YT, i did find it on IMDB.
Old Friends Full Movie - IMDb

 

I have five...my wife "rescued", three are sleeping on my bed right now as I prepare to nap.

 

I had a cat wash up with a hurricane one year. Used to torture the dogs when they were little...and when they got not so little, we suddenly had a lot of trouble keeping cats.

 

@Motomom34 GREAT THREAD!

The Old Plan A was G.O.O.D. and go to my Grandfathers 147 acre Farm, then he died and Mom sold 100 acres off.... ok still good to go, then last year she sold the 47 that was left and moved into town...... #$%^$%&#$#$&^!!!

Plan A for now is to Bug In-ish...... BUT it will be a tough one.

Been married 22 years and for about 15 of that we have been prepping. Started out on a shoestring and slowly added preps and more importantly skill-sets to the mix. We had a nice solid brick home on ¾ acre with a well, in a quiet secluded neighborhood 3 blocks from the forest preserve full of bambi, geese, fish, and other tasty critters.

Then the Housing Bubble burst. We had one of those wonderful “Hybrid Sub-Prime ARMS” form Countrywide. I was in the process of re-financing when TSHTF. Countrywide quit answering the phone and then a month or so later BoA sent me a letter with my new interest rate..... 16.75%APR! Working in the construction industry, my Gross pay dropped 30% the first year of the crash and then the second year we were down to 25% of what I made two years earlier. For my family of 6 it was TEOTWAWKI! And Thank God we prepped beforehand because that is what kept our head above water. Moved into our current house 6 years ago with our food preps near ZERO and the slow rebuild of preps began.

Things you can do without immediately...

We don't have any junk food per se in the house but our diet would certainly change up and meat and coffee would be rationed. Caffeine will be a tough one and my daily nightcap would have to be adjusted a bit. (A LOT!! )


Things you can do without but would take you 1-3 months to prepare for or ease into...

This would be the end of our Coffee stores as well as my scotch. At the end of 3 months, our diet would be totally bare minimum.

Things you can do without but would take longer than 3 months to prepare for or ease into

Long term, we would need to go all out on gardening. [Mental Note: need to asses condition of gardening tools and other implements of destruction]

But the big issues is not what we can do without, it's what we CAN'T do without.

Immediately we would have a water issue. My water back up at the old house was our well, now I'm on city water. Surface water is everywhere around here but it would all need to be treated/filtered etc. nearby Ponds are full of road run off, and every river/stream/creek around here has a sewage treatment plant dumping into it. My only hope is that our water table is high here and the sump pump pits would need regular emptying, and that is probably 6 gallons per day in the dry season, much more in the spring. [Mental Note: Get sump pit water tested.]

If I am able to buy this house this year as planned, the second thing that will be done immediately after the new garage will be a very large french drain to help dry out my back yard, that should be easy to get approved by the village. I'm thinking 8'X10'X 8' deep, lined with landscape fabric and then filled with 3”+ Stone covered in more landscape fabric and then sand, then dirt and then build a small 8X10 greenhouse on top of it. What the village would not know about is the 8” pvc pipe vertical in the center that I could use to retrieve ground water. That might not work everywhere, but like I said we have a lot of soil saturation around here, and any water the downspout fed rain barrels cannot handle would be diverted to it.

At the 3 month mark we would be getting into some issues food wise. But the second TSHTF we would start gathering/canning local meat. Fish concerns me due to the previously mentioned pollution, but it would need to be on the menu. Survival gardening would be a must. At a quarry I haul out of, I have personally nurtured/pruned and cared for a Pear tree and an Apple tree that sprouted from drivers throwing their cores into a grassy area. They produce good now, but would do much better if sprayed. Need to check out the forest preserve about a mile away for fruit trees and note their location. Gardening is a tough gig in hard times and you have to understand how easy it is to fail. You need plenty of extra seeds in case a late frost wipes you out, and of course a good mix of things that will sustain you. If you don't have enough food already on the shelf your SOL.

I have about 3 dozen various traps for critters plus professional snare kits sized all the way up to deer. [Mental Note: Need more snare components to repair damaged snares], in a suburban AO, hunting with a gun will just bring you unwanted attention, though potential trap thieves will be a problem.

Of course all of the above is fine and dandy.... until you add ZOMBIES. I'm a 1 day walk from the West side of Chicago with several poor towns in between. In a “Light Switch” event, I expect minor issues almost immediately and a very target rich environment within a week. A serious defense plan would need to be enacted instantly and the ONLY way that could be accomplished is through the help of the whole neighborhood. On my block, I am in very good with 4 neighbors, and on a friendly wave basis with the rest. That is not good enough, but it is a start. [Mental Note: Block Party]

I HIGHLY recommend the book....

A Failure Of Civility – How to defend and protect you, your family, friends, neighborhood, and America during a disaster or crisis

It is written by 2 Veteran combat Spec Ops fellas and it has a lot of important info, all based on getting the neighborhood working together. It is NOT the easiest to read book out there but it is excellent info.

My entire family can shoot, and we have plenty of bb's and bb guns to go around (I too tragically lost all of my real guns in a boating accident), but in reality, if things were not brought to an end quickly, we would eventually be over run by the locust and grasshoppers.



YMMV

 

@Garand69,
"... be the end of our Coffee stores as well as my scotch."
Good God man! No Scotch! How are you to face the end of the world without a night cap? Scotch is a excellent replacement for most everything! (Note to self: Bugger the coffee - increase scotch supply!)

Someone recently told me that it takes a case of #10 cans ( 6 cans) to feed a person per week. That seems a lot of food to me...I mean, better to have more than less but you really think it takes that much...I need to add a few cases to dried food storage...beef stew or something hefty like that.

We got a huge garden and seriously can everything...I realize now (from another thread) I need to learn pressure canning. My wife mostly handles that stuff but where she lived there wasn't a reason to do pressure can as most of the meats or fish were done fresh mainly because there was little of it...third-world, but gardens were everywhere, a necessity, and waterbath canning is the norm...

We have debated about doing a green house but the wife starts here tomatoes and etc. inside our home...and heating that greenhouse during the winter could be a problem...not sure it would be worth it. A few people have them here but mostly used just to start the growing season a bit earlier.

What about a fish pond? That seems like a good source of renewable fresh food...and would be nice to have one around for giggles. That does bring up the question of what to feed them...and a thousand other questions...

I think it comes down to short-term or long-term survival...in the short-term (3 months) I think we would do fine. It would be a lot more work but we'd make it. Long-term...dunno. Doubtful...for numerous reasons. First there being only two of us...

One last thing, many people seem to think they can expect to obtain a large portion of their protein from the land critters. I live in the country, heavily forested and I have deer and elk and even moose here but I do not believe that as a food source they would last very long given everyone here is armed and would be hungry and venturing, alone or even in pairs, far afield to obtain them could be dangerous not only for you but whomever is left behind at home... - Rick

 

LOL,, Exactly!!!

The Fish pond idea has crossed my mind a few times, there are some neat self contained set ups that combine raising fish as well as growing food.and if you have a basement it could be a stealthy way to grow food under the radar.. that is until the power goes out.. Part of my small green house idea is to have it be a small aquaponic set up, but I probably need more space to make it worthwhile. Aquaponics Systems

I have also kicked around raising rabbits, I would love chickens as well, but that is a no no here.

 

Yes! Rabbits would be an excellent idea as long as they didn't get loose and into the wife's garden...then I would be knee-deep in it. They would be easier to raise than fish; I think. We are planning to raise chickens this year so would be easy enough to add a place for a few rabbits as an experiment...But, Lord help me if they get loose. Out of curiosity, why no chickens You live in town? - Rick

 

Because the typical suburbanite is clueless about them so the city ordinance says no chickens. We even had a strong push for it at the village board meetings when I had first moved in and the economy was still imploded but it failed to get passed. Ironically it says nothing about pigeons, and I know of 2 large pigeon coops in the town.

 

Ah! Flying rats! I have had a vendetta against pigeons for many years now. As a young man I took this sweet, young, absolutely gorgeous woman to London for a bit of a weekend (nudge-nudge, wink-wink). Well, I love London, it's one of my favorite cities and I took her to Trafalgar Square to see old Nelson and while I was trying to look cool and debonair and get her interest...Yep! You guess it. Right on my head. Try looking debonair with your hair full of pigeon muck! - Rick

 

It depends entirely on what's in the cans. In my storage mix it takes 21 cases a year, 498 pounds, 2,200 calories a day, right at $700 total and it's just basics from LDS.

 

Hey T. Riley!
Yes, I saw you had a HUGE amount (that's a sigh of envy you hear) and meant to congratulate you. If you are correct, and I doubt not, then I am way off for I want at least 3 months worth for 2 people in dried food alone: ~10.5 cases...???
Did I do that right? I never broke it down to calories, just eyeballed it... and see now it was...stupid. Okay, this is an easy fix. Thanks so much for taking the time and answering this question. Given the amount of your preps and your experience I consider you an expert. Thanks! - Rick

 

You engineers. Haha.

 

Bug Out plan for me,

grab my essentials and hit the road to my families property. our camp has wood heat, hand dug well that has never run out of water and no electricity. 12 acres of wooded lot just enough for us to heat the camp and lots of hunting woods around. its 2 hours away from any major city

 

Even bugging in, I like a BOB as a work pack. Not a big one, maybe more of a GHB, but I like to carry something with a little extra in it in case something happens.

 

I would be bugging in for sure. Its just my wife and I, and we are working towards a more self sufficient life. Like raising our own food, gardens and lifestock. With that we would have to plant other things to feed those animals. We are also working towards getting a solar pump for our well. As far as the neighors, living out in the rural area, I would try to help out as much as I could, without it comprising our life. There are some older people around here, but everyone seems to be related somehow. Either blood or marriage. We are the outcast. We do have a BOB, but that would be the last options for us. If we were over ran or someting else happened that forced us out, then we would use our BOB. I would hope that we could stop a treat, but just two of us it would be hard if there were a lot of treats. As far as anytime down the road I have not thought that far yet. I dont plan farther than about a year out. We have seeds, about 5 months of food, and about 2 months of drinking water. There are a few ponds less an 100 yards away from out house that if we need to get water from we could. I have several water filtration devices, supposed to be good for alot of water. Hopefully they are. Also a few waterbobs, to start with. We have an ashely wood stove in the house, so it would heat the house in the winter and could cook it as well. We need to stock more dog food for the three dogs we have and also more water for them. As I said earlier we are working towards a self sufficient life so that if a major event took place we could stay here as long as we was not forced out.

 

This used to be our situation. Then, we moved to town and now everything is shot to hell. I've learned to can and have been putting up supplies but not nearly enough. My wife is not on board with my prepping but she understands what I'm doing, to the point, she instructed me to go ahead and buy our generator that I've been wanting for years. Problem is, we used to have water on our property in the country and now we don't. I have plans to lay in water barrels but they won't work in the winter without freezing. I suppose I could always add drums in the basement but I'd be in trouble for "loosing my mind."

We have an ideal BOL and I used to think we'd bug out but more recently I've been thinking that our place to vacate to isn't the best because of the remote location with extreme terrain changes that create so many choke points that it'd be nearly impossible to walk there without running into trouble. These issues that make me question the sanity of walking there would become assets if we were able to arrive in advance of any real issues because then the impediments become defensive advantages.

The real issue regarding bugging out vs bugging in, in my opinion, when considering options for most people, are when to decide to evacuate. The specific type of event would dictate a potential action plan for many. I/we could walk or ride our bicycles as well as drive if the roads were to remain relatively clear. However, as circumstances deteriorate, passage will become more difficult and physically exhausting; still possible but much more difficult to nearly impassible. Of course our advancing age also complicates our plan as well. No one knows the time of TEOTWAWKI

 

Elessar I agree no one knows the time or how fast things break down. I'm glad we got out of the suburbs of the city. In all it was something that my wife and I was really wanting to do. We both grow up in the rural areas or small towns. We are glad that we did it. I guess I'm lucky my wife is on board with me on what I want to do as long as we have the money. She love to help and likes her guns. So I cant complain, just wish I was born rich instead of so good looking....lol. Well just keep chugging along. Maybe you will get her to understand why you need to be more prepared.

 

I was really feeling confident with my bug in plan. I looked at all my circumstances and decided I was prepared for everything but the zombies & you just do not know if there will even be that threat. Since starting this, I have been mentally checking things off then I looked outside my box. Actually, I saw my neighbor who is a great guy then I thought of his family. One branch of his family lacks everything good. If his daughter and family arrive during a crisis time, then I will have a threat next door. Stupidly I looked at my neighbors, land layout, skills but failed to consider the extended family that could arrive. Chances of them bugging in next door- 60-70% chance. I am really disturbed that I overlooked the neighbors scary relatives. These people will not play nice and my neighbor would not be able to control them.

 

To make an Old West reference, "it's time to get a new sheriff in town".