Where are you lacking prepwise?

More long term meat products. I need shelf stable meat products that can be stored for long periods of time. I have lots of canned goods, some soups and others with meat, but I need "meat only" products. Preferably not spam, but something that we would regularly eat and rotate. I have freezers full of meat, but if the electricty is out long term sooner or later I will run out of gasoline for the generator.

Long term auxiliary fuel tanks for my vehicles. I am working on this.

Propane. I need more. More to power my propane heater, and more to power my propane stove, lights, etc. I have quite a few small cylinders, but not enough to last months on end. Another consideration, how do you store them safely? I store mine within my garage. Where would a better place be?

Solar panels for re-charging electronics, batteries, etc.

Gas masks. I have none.

More mags. More AR and AK mags.

Ammo. I need more 5.56

More batteries. This is an ongoing use/buy relationship.

 

not much

I have been at it for a while, (here we go agian) for you Melbo I teach and preach servivalism. MS intentional. ha ha I am not the be all and end all of such things, PM me ,I can and will assist ya'll. Yeppers, paranoia great dastroya. bla bla. All I really need is to help people, what ever level they are at to be more selfsufficant Or how ever your spell it . How long are YOU prepared for? 1 wk 1 month 1 year 1 life? Melbo you do great posts, very, very nice ones. What do I aim at? Make people think. Your do it well, you make me think!!! The best thing for your survival is your brain.. yatta yatta la la snowbyrd

 

Why do I feel that something about a wheelbarrow is coming?



Anyway Melbo, I don't even think I can answer... all areas of my prep needs more, I'm not happy with any of it. More food, more ammo, more clothing, more trade goods.

The only area I'm completely happy with is water.

 

ohye'

I need more like minded people, "stuff " I have never enough people with skillls and knowledge boy does that suck. Tent crawlers too. Makes life more bearable

 

It would be easier for me to say what I have than what I need. I am sorely lacking on all fronts. Gotta get more gear. Haha.

 

+1 I'm not happy with much or I wouldn't be here...

 

Melbo, I think that's a great way to categorize things. It's helpful to see things laid out in an easy to analyze format.


In fact somebody ought to make a chart with those 3 categories (maybe more like BOB or a 3-day outage (very common)) on one side and on the other side would be the needs (water, heat, food, bla bla). Each person could print it out and fill things in as they prep. You could look at your preps and see where exactly at a glance you are deficient. It would also help in setting short term prep goals.

 

As far as the everyday stuff the BIGGEST area where I am lacking is in the financial department. It may not fit to a lot of folks thinking in terms of collapse or invasion or whatever, but haveing no saveings is my single biggest problem. Due to chooseing to get out of the city and to an area where I dont have to worry about the crime and such everyday and am in a better situation if SHTF, BUT while I was able make $20+/hour in the city, there is very little employment out here and what there is dont generaly pay much. So on the money end of things it tends to be hand to mouth and catch as can.

On the more dramatic SHTF type stuff, which would also help out on day to day (and hasnt gotten done largely due to the above reasons) would be that I still need to build our house so we have something better than the mobile home we are in and also need to put in a good well or 2.

Once that stuff is done I also want to build a dam for a pond on the place for better water for stock as well as a place to have fish for more food.

Then there is always the fact of that you can never have enouph ammo, especialy when you like to shoot. I do have a moderate supply and stuff to load up some more. One of the things I want to do to take care of this for the hunting and long term areas is to get a couple of flintlock .50 cals. I already have the stuff to cast bullets for them, could knap new flints and could make powder and so could feed them forever reserving the 'good' ammo and guns for times when they were specificaly needed.

On the food front, it would be good for us to improve it some but we have several months worth of food if we stretch it a little and get over being to picky (dont feel like haveing that today) and grow our own meat, vegies and some fruit so thats a renewable resource.

 

LOTS!!!!

While I have been working on the knowledge side of prepping, I am really just starting on the preparing side. One of my major slow downs to prepping is that as part of prepping we are working our way out of all consumer debt.

While paying down the debt we are occasionally adding to food, water, and supplies storage. While we are getting it done slowly, we are getting it done.

Fortunately my wife is slowly coming around as to why we need BOB's, Car Kits, etc. That makes it a bit easier to try to get her to loosen the purse strings to allow us to buy what we need.

Ryan

 

Talk about stages really hit home here. Just got over an ice storm and no power for 2 days at our place and up to 4 days in the area. Cold 30 at the time of the storm and 0 the next night with no power. Papers are all full of tips on how to thaw frozen water pipes without burning the house down. Propane torch and cobwebs make a nasty and very effective fire starting system in your crawl space and you don't have a very effective system of putting it out with no water. Our backups worked fine. Started the generator, switched the power over, which selects what we need the most and we had heat, limited lights, power to our refrig and freezer, and water for the toliet. We had enough fuel for about 2 weeks if we run the generator 2 hours at a time 3 times a day. After that we would have to drain gas from the tractor, truck, etc and go another 3 weeks.

BUT there was no gas available in this rural area. All the stations also lost power. When the genrator was hooked up to the local station, they could not take credit or debit cards, and limited you to 10 gal per vechile and up to 20 for pumps and generators. That being said, the station had 4,000 gal in storage when the storm hit, sometimes it is down to nothing on a Tuesday after a long weekend and with no emergency, and the police, fire, and road crews had first crack. Thus need more fuel for even a type one event. Sure can't depend on the local system for even 3 days and we live in a "rural" are and are a lot better off than most cities. We went over and picked up grandson and family. I don't think one house in 20 had a working generator. Need a much better muffler system, could hear the generator for at least 1/4 mile, and blackout curtians. At the moment I have a very effective system of telling the world that I am prepared and you know where to go to be comfortable. Under "perfect" conditions and only a little relative discomfort for most people, our household of 3 adults grew to 8. Two kids under 3, and one 88 year old with a list of medicines I can't believe and using a walker and can't climb stairs. Then the next door neighbor, with 3 children, asked me and I helped him use my generator, disconnect it take it over and use a sucide cord to connect it to his house, run his furnace and pump water so his pipes wouldn't freeze. He also borrowed a kerosine lamp after his flashlight went dead for light.

Lessons learned. I don't know what I need for a type 2 or 3 situation. I don't think I can stop the sheeple. They happen to be the lady that my wife takes care of, my grandson, his wife, my greatgrandkids, my daughter and her husband, the next door neighbor and his wife and kids. The neighbor kids spend an hour a day here most days and such. I guess that I need more fuel and a lot better cache system a liffle farther away or well hidden on this place and a heart transplant to replace the one that I have that refuses to let the greatgrand kids go hungry and cold. The grandkids live in an appartment and need help now and then just to survive under normal conditions , so they will not be prepared when TSHTF.

 

Duanet, there is nothing like a real live test to show you where you are prep wise. It is going to be hard to keep all of those people away, especially when they are loved ones. You just have to stock extra for them when you can. You also might want to look for some extra fuel storage. Go to a wrecking yard and find some external tanks from a 18 wheeler. They are aluminum, lightweight and hold a lot of fuel. Bury them with just the inlet sticking up out of the ground, or add a line that runs straight into the tank and is capped from above. When you need to you could always pump the fuel out, or add more. This would keep it concealed, but you would still have access to it. Be sure to add some stabilizer.

 

Melbo is dead on about writing stuff down. About 15 years ago, I sat down and made up a list....broke it down into categories like Food, Fuel, Weapons, etc.....and then went to work on it. Took me about 7-8 years to get a real dent in the list.....and now I'm way past the list....which means it's TIME FOR A NEW LIST.

If you don't write it down, odds are real slim it will ever happen.....it's just a daydream.

 

I have been thinking all afternoon about the three stages that Melbo so nicely outlined and how the comment on how peoples financial resources to prepare for the events were limited. Well what I got wondering about was not money, but stored value. We had an ice storm and the power and telephone went out. That ment that the ATM, credit cards, debit cards and in most places checks were not useable. If you were limited to the cash you had on hand or something to trade and you purchases were limited to the goods the stores and gas stations had on hand. What would you have on hand to cover your needs for 3 to 5 days without a bank, credit cards or checks. Everything worked out well for most people here, but a lot of water pipes froze and a lot of people stayed with friends or in shelters. If it were to go on for 5 or 6 weeks, most people would be in really big trouble. What happens if my Social Security check doesn't come, the bank won't cash my checks or allow me to draw my money out of my checking or savings accounts, I can't cash in my CD's or draw on my 401-K and my paycheck stops when the boss closes down the shop as he can't get parts for repairs or collect the money from the customers or cash their checks or deposit them. I don't think it would make any difference if you had paper "money" assets of $100 or $200,000. Most of us don't have a way of functioning outside of the monatary system and it is even worse if the "system" is manageing your retirement funds. If you draw it out, the taxes and penatalies are incredable and what are you going to do to keep it for the next 20 years if the SHTF doesn't happen. That is even in a minor disruption of power and communication, not a SHTF situation. Just to start the thought out, the next door neighbor was ready to do almost anything to have the use of a generator for a few hours and the gas to run it in order to keep the pipes in his house from freezing, the food in his freezer from thawing and the basement of his house filling up with water without a sump pump. He is getting a generator now and much more interested in "survival". In a lot of more traditional socities the wifes jewlery was the last ditch survival tool in case of famine or war. In India it was gold, in western USA it was silver and tourquise. A half dozen 18 karet gold "wedding rings" with the karet value stamped in the ring, or the usual real silver coins might be best here. I think the best value thing I saw was a couple of working generators and extra gas. Even in the short run that is needed. Now do you use it for trade or keep it for stage 2? Guns and ammo, wheat, beans, survival food. etc do not have any extra value in stage 1, but absolute total value in stage 3. Well into stage 3 a $1 and a $100 bill would both have the same value and that is as a rather poor quality toliet paper. Would love to know if the forum has discussed this before I joined and if so, where I can find it and read it.

 

Be very careful some folks got "serious" about week before new years eve for y2k. People talked aboutwantonly filling up the credit card because the system was going down the toilet. I don't know if this is just urban legend, but you would really be in hurtin shape january first...Kurt Saxon reccomends preparing as you can afford to and it doesn't have to be expensive.

You bring up a really good point, buying two kerosene heaters and extra fuel may be worthwhile from an investment point( "rent" it out.. though people who have what you need in a phase 2or 3 ( like beef on the hoof) probably already are that much prepared). but paper moneyrent payments may be useless to you then anyway. .22lr may become "coin of the realm" everything else is reloadable. Until they take away our powder...