What have you been through? SHTF in real life

I've always looked at it this way. The best stories come from ignoring better judgement.

No real SHTF for me more of a sucky inconvience. Unemployed for a spell but food preps kept money in bank for making the house payment and necessary expenditures.

Had to and still rebuilding food preps, but that was what they were intended for. Emergencies.

I should also mention, food resources still being available (ie grocery store still has food and we didn't ration as we might in a true SHTF). Originally estimated 1.25 years of food stocked lasted about 7 months. But we did add an additional mouth at the table. Should have put that one on a reduced caloric intake as it provided no benefit to the compound.

 

Boy ain't that the friggin truth! The crazy stalker roommate? 42 year old single dude on welfare working for minimum wage for a ranch. It was my bright idea to leave a perfectly good house that I had all to myself, to move in with this clown because it'd save me a few hundred a month in rent. I was 20. He was nuts. The stories I could bore you with. Friggin sociopath he was. I wouldn't call my parents for help in getting me out of there because I'da rathered been tossed dead in the storm cellar like he offered than ask them for help. Three months in, after he killed my cat, cut the phone lines, and chased me through the pasture with his truck, I bailed with whatever I could scoop up and run with in the half hour it took him to run to the beer store and back. KNEW BETTER! F yeah I did. But did it anyway, just to save $200 a month.

In retrospect, the living in my truck for months wasn't really that bad compared to the three months of living with Mr Psychoscrewtard.

 

The list of stupid crap I've done.... I am my own SHTF generator. It's a wonder I made it past 30.

 

Im beging to see a pattern here ...
90% of the shtf situations people have mentioned is from plane ignorance and there own fault ...

 

Certainly not everything, but probably ninety percent of the bad things that happen to any of us can be traced back to a bad decision; either the decision to take the wrong action, or the decision not to take an appropriate action to forestall something bad happening. But how boring would it be, if we always did the right thing all the time?

I've been lucky enough to have made it this far in life with only a couple of failed marriages and the turmoil that follows such; and living through a few hurricanes on the east coast. Both the marriages and the hurricanes were temporary inconveniences, more than SHTF situations.

Most of the SHTF situations from which I have taken my lessons have, happily, not involved the destruction of my own life. I've taken my lessons from the history of our own country, and some of the places in which the military was kind enough to drop me. Beirut, Lebanon, remains foremost amongst those experiences. I can easily see our own society disintegrate along similar lines. Contributing factors were a dramatic shift in demographics, competing religious/cultural views, a strong contrast in economic situations (haves vs the have-nots), foreign interference in domestic affairs, and an economy that relied upon continued foreign trade. A triggering event brought to the forefront the simmering hostilities of the people against the government, and those of one population group against another. Sectarian violence and violent criminal acts erupted. The government declared the equivalent of martial law. Militias formed. The military split along sectarian lines. Neighborhoods were blocked off from one another. Barricades were erected. The economy failed. Micro-societies formed. Black marketeering and smuggling became the best way to make a fast buck, and provided most of the essentials that people needed to survive. Violence became common place. Life became cheap. Children grew up in a world that couldn't have been imagined by their parents; a world that no one wanted to imagine. But most adapted, and survived.

So, I can't offer much other than amusing anecdotes from my own poor decisions, but there are plenty of lessons to be learned from other times and other societies which have faced many of the challenges that our own society faces today.

 

Well put now were getting somewere

 

Earthquake, flood, fire waiting on the famine

 

I had to change a tire in a heavily loaded car in a hurry, with a tornado coming up the road behind me, does that count? turns out, there was another one crossing the road ahead of us, that would have caught us, if that tire had not blown. Major pucker factor.

I sleep through most earthquakes.

 

Erm ... There should have been red flags, air raid sirens, buzzers and bells going off. ...

Just glad you survived the adventure.

 

We all are a result of what went on with us before today. What is it they say, "what don't kill you, makes you stronger". We all make mistakes. Some can be quite costly to us physically, emotionally, financially etc. How we get on with life during and after shows our character and who we are and can be. No one here is without failed actions of their own misdirected decisions or evil interference of others. Chin up, pick yourself up, and move ahead, we are survivors!

 

Does being on duty during and after Hurricane Katrina qualify?

 

In my opinion Katrina was an abysmal disasster not because of the hurricane and failling levees, but for the human leaders and authorities responses before,during, and after.
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Tell us about your experience, and insight with Katrina. We all might be able to learn something from that.

 

o boy... here we go ....
please let him finish his story before yall chew him up....

 

Hey KAS, tell us your experiences from Katrina and Rita. Are you a city Monkey or a rural Monkey?

 

Lunchbox, don't let them jerk your anchor, Bud. Sometimes they can seem a little mean-spirited but most of them are actually pretty decent folks. They might use spell-checker but hardly any of them could even begin to get a roller-bag under a loaded hopper sitting aground in waist-deep muck or rig a hook onto a 1000 ton pick 300' under the sunshine in the Gulf.
I think the hardest SHTF was when I got stuck in Trinidad when the World Trade Centers were wrecked. I had been there a few months, replacing the bottom and decks on a barge when my wife phoned to tell me we were being attacked by missiles, she thought, before the telephone system crashed mid-conversation. I turned CNN on the SAT system and watched as the second plane crashed into the towers and started figuring out what was happening. Then the SAT system went down and all the news I could get was from local sources. It was over two months before I got another phone call through to the U.S. and over six months before I could get a flight home. We were very low on cash and had a weekly payroll that was wired each week to support 40 indigenous workers. Suddenly there was no more wire transfers, credit cards didn't work, and the locals were afraid Wall-Street was going to go tits up and would take U.S. Dollars except for a few speculators that wanted to ignore the 7.50 to 1 exchange rate and trade U.S. dollars for T.T. dollars heads up. We were very low on supplies, nearly out of potable water, and didn't have nearly enough fuel to make Puerto Rico, the nearest U.S. Territory.
We were working adjacent to Sealots, the largest and most impoverished Ghetto in Port of Spain. All of our indigenous workers were provided by Terry Hogan, a gold-toothed dead-locked Rasta Warlord that lived in a Mad-Max fortress on shore. Hogan was paid a weekly bribe for "Security" and to provide us with the workers we required. There was a race-war going on between the Blacks and the East Indian workers on our crew that resulted in several deaths and serious injuries. Once the money quit flowing, our friend, Hogan, began conducting raids on our operation to supplement the income he was no-longer getting from each of the workers and his weekly protection money.
I could spend pages talking about the many lessons learned during this time but the single most important thing that I learned, in retrospect, was this:
The people around you become much more important to your survival than anyone out of reach. Total strangers become much more critical and important than loved-ones and family a continent away.

 

When I lived in SE Texas, I had to evacuate for a hurricane. No big deal for me, I hooked up to the RV, and moved my wife 100 miles inland. I had responsibilities back in town, so the next morning I returned to the gulf.
On the way in, I passed a 40 mile parking lot that was supposed to be the evacuation route. Vehicles overheated, broke down, and just plain run out of fuel. Lesson learned and reinforced: LEAVE EARLY! Have at least a 1/2 tank of fuel in the vehicles at all times. If the heavy rains that precede a hurricane knock out the power, gas stations won't be able to pump gas. Have some cash, if the power is out, ATM's don't work either!
Have some food, because if the power is out, stores won't be able to run their cash registers to scan the stuff you need to buy, and be able to sell you the stuff you want even if you have the cash!

My brother had to evacuate from the north side of NO for Katrina. On the way out, when his family got hungry, he only found one restaurant that had any food, and it was steak. He complained that it cost him $75 to feed his family a meal. I had told him more than once about the importance of having emergency supplies, he still does not have a BOB or 3 day kit, and still lives on the north side of NO. Lesson NOT learned!