How I'm prepping
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2018 1:38 pm
Starting this as I am more or less basically starting from scratch, so it might help out some people in the future and it will be interesting to look back on.
So starting with an inventory of what is available in my 3 person household:
Food - Enough for about 3 days uncooked, probably a week or more if we can still cook. We do have a barbecue with a full tank of gas that last got used in the summer.
Water - Very limited atm, think we've got about 12 of those 500ml bottles in the cupboard so this is gonna need some work. No filtration options.
Heat - Gas heating at the moment with a woodstove in the living room. The wood stove throws off a lot of heat but we don't have any logs or coal in at the moment. The house is well insulated (only about two years old) so in an absolute worst case scenario we could go into one room and just use a lot of blankets.
Alternative Lighting - A lot of tealights and a few torches that's about it.
Fire : We have working smoke alarms and fire doors. No extinguishers or blankets and only one real escape route from upstairs.
Medical - I have a good-sized backpack and a decent pocket sized kit from my degree, as well as as a few packets of common OTC medication (paracetamol, ibuprofen, lemsip, etc) so for my needs at this stage this is more or less covered. I'm allergic to wasp stings so keep a piroten tablet in my wallet and a few in the pocket kit. We have private health and life insurance.
Transport - 3 cars, generally with 25-50% of the tank filled. Definitely going to work on staying over 50% when resources permit.
Financial - Very tight at the minute, but should improve substantially in the next few weeks when I get a job over here.
Fitness - All of the family are in decent enough shape. I'm the only one who doesn't exercise regularly at the minute because I can't afford a gym membership but a few weeks of not training won't do too much damage.
Skills - Prepping related skills we have between us amount to gardening (however, nothing edible is grown in the garden at the moment), map-reading and cooking and some limited DIY. My brother knows how to sky dive too if that counts. Hoping to join the reserves in a few months - a year when I get my run times up to an acceptable level which should help in some matters. Also looking at doing some part time joinery courses at the local college. Would like to learn some bushcraft stuff, but that's purely as a hobby. There's nothing major in the area to hunt/fish for although maybe some stuff to forage for.
Security - We have a yappy spaniel and keep the doors/windows locked.
Documents - Generally quite well organised. If we had two minutes to evacuate we could get all the important ones but there are no backups.
Space - Very very limited. It doesn't help either that both of the other people in the house consider preppers nutcases so this is all gonna have to be done on the down low.
Family and Friends - We have quite a few friends in the local area. Closest is about two miles away, then I have a few about 5/6 miles away in the countryside. Grandparents live in a large town about 10 miles away while my dad's side of the family lives about 40 minutes drive away, on the other side of Belfast.
Location - We currently live on the outskirts of a small village of <500 people about two miles away from a large town and motorway. Decent sized river about five minutes walk from the house. No risk of flooding. Don't know our neighbours super well, but they're quite friendly and we don't have any problems with them. One down the road is a bit nosey though.
So in general, we'd survive the zombie apocalypse for all of twenty minutes but would be able to muddle through a 3 day or so powercut. This will need some work.
Threat Assessment
(This bit is to write down my opinions and to see how they change over time as well as figure out what I'm actually prepping for).
Nuclear War - Unlikely but nothing can be done about it at this stage. The bunker will come later!
Pandemic - Possible but nothing can be done about it at this stage. NI's geographical remoteness would give us a chance.
Solar Flare/EMP - Very unlikely and an EMP's effects are greatly overstated by a lot of preppers.
Natural Disasters - No risk of volcanoes/earthquakes/tsunamis/hurricanes here. Where we live has no chance of flooding. An Icelandic volcano erupting and shutting down planes for a few days is quite possible.
Weather - High likelihood of temperatures up to +35 or down to -10 over the next few years. High likelihood of strong storms each year.
Power cuts - High chance of losing power for at least a few hours each year.
Losing income/job - Check!
Unforeseen circumstances such as boiler breaking - Sods law dictates this will happen
Car Breakdown - Entirely possible
Financial Collapse - Another recession is likely in the next five years.
Total societal collapse - Unlikely but nothing can be done about it at this stage.
Government takeover - I wouldn't trust our politicians to take over a farmers market tbh.
Fire/Burglary - Quiet area and the houses are built to good standards but still possible.
So at this point it looks like I'm preparing most for bad weather, financial upsets and car trouble. So where do I go from here?
http://www.theplacewithnoname.com/blogs ... p/map.html is going to be the foundation for a lot of my plan in the next few days. It's written by someone who went through hurricane katrina and seems like a really sensible resource with lots of information focusing on the most likely sort of disasters. Read through it last night. The primary takeaways from it are keep your documents backed up, have a plan to get out of the house in under 60 seconds, one to get out in under an hour and one to get out in under 12 hours.
Action Plan
Short Term (30 days)
Expand water storage - possibly get some sort of filtration
Assemble a neck safe, EDC bag and 60 second plan using the placewithnoname as a base.
Put together a car kit from the resources I have available
Copy and scan documents I have, storing encrypted copies on the cloud and on a few flash drives.
Put some more stock up onto Ebay and Amazon to try and raise some money.
Medium Term (30 days to a year)
Sign up to some part-time courses
Receive regular income from a job
Assemble a bug out bag under the guise of taking up "hiking" as a hobby
Take up hiking as a hobby
Start saving. Worked out that I should be able to save around 50% of my salary. This money will go towards establishing a rainy day fund and funding a house.
Long Term (Year+)
Join the reserves
Buy a house in the countryside. There's quite a lot of farmhouses that need some TLC going for cheap and I've always wanted to grow my own food etc. House prices are low enough over in NI that I should be able to get a deposit within a year or two if I save hard.
I'd love any advice/opinions you guys have of what I've just written!
So starting with an inventory of what is available in my 3 person household:
Food - Enough for about 3 days uncooked, probably a week or more if we can still cook. We do have a barbecue with a full tank of gas that last got used in the summer.
Water - Very limited atm, think we've got about 12 of those 500ml bottles in the cupboard so this is gonna need some work. No filtration options.
Heat - Gas heating at the moment with a woodstove in the living room. The wood stove throws off a lot of heat but we don't have any logs or coal in at the moment. The house is well insulated (only about two years old) so in an absolute worst case scenario we could go into one room and just use a lot of blankets.
Alternative Lighting - A lot of tealights and a few torches that's about it.
Fire : We have working smoke alarms and fire doors. No extinguishers or blankets and only one real escape route from upstairs.
Medical - I have a good-sized backpack and a decent pocket sized kit from my degree, as well as as a few packets of common OTC medication (paracetamol, ibuprofen, lemsip, etc) so for my needs at this stage this is more or less covered. I'm allergic to wasp stings so keep a piroten tablet in my wallet and a few in the pocket kit. We have private health and life insurance.
Transport - 3 cars, generally with 25-50% of the tank filled. Definitely going to work on staying over 50% when resources permit.
Financial - Very tight at the minute, but should improve substantially in the next few weeks when I get a job over here.
Fitness - All of the family are in decent enough shape. I'm the only one who doesn't exercise regularly at the minute because I can't afford a gym membership but a few weeks of not training won't do too much damage.
Skills - Prepping related skills we have between us amount to gardening (however, nothing edible is grown in the garden at the moment), map-reading and cooking and some limited DIY. My brother knows how to sky dive too if that counts. Hoping to join the reserves in a few months - a year when I get my run times up to an acceptable level which should help in some matters. Also looking at doing some part time joinery courses at the local college. Would like to learn some bushcraft stuff, but that's purely as a hobby. There's nothing major in the area to hunt/fish for although maybe some stuff to forage for.
Security - We have a yappy spaniel and keep the doors/windows locked.
Documents - Generally quite well organised. If we had two minutes to evacuate we could get all the important ones but there are no backups.
Space - Very very limited. It doesn't help either that both of the other people in the house consider preppers nutcases so this is all gonna have to be done on the down low.
Family and Friends - We have quite a few friends in the local area. Closest is about two miles away, then I have a few about 5/6 miles away in the countryside. Grandparents live in a large town about 10 miles away while my dad's side of the family lives about 40 minutes drive away, on the other side of Belfast.
Location - We currently live on the outskirts of a small village of <500 people about two miles away from a large town and motorway. Decent sized river about five minutes walk from the house. No risk of flooding. Don't know our neighbours super well, but they're quite friendly and we don't have any problems with them. One down the road is a bit nosey though.
So in general, we'd survive the zombie apocalypse for all of twenty minutes but would be able to muddle through a 3 day or so powercut. This will need some work.
Threat Assessment
(This bit is to write down my opinions and to see how they change over time as well as figure out what I'm actually prepping for).
Nuclear War - Unlikely but nothing can be done about it at this stage. The bunker will come later!
Pandemic - Possible but nothing can be done about it at this stage. NI's geographical remoteness would give us a chance.
Solar Flare/EMP - Very unlikely and an EMP's effects are greatly overstated by a lot of preppers.
Natural Disasters - No risk of volcanoes/earthquakes/tsunamis/hurricanes here. Where we live has no chance of flooding. An Icelandic volcano erupting and shutting down planes for a few days is quite possible.
Weather - High likelihood of temperatures up to +35 or down to -10 over the next few years. High likelihood of strong storms each year.
Power cuts - High chance of losing power for at least a few hours each year.
Losing income/job - Check!
Unforeseen circumstances such as boiler breaking - Sods law dictates this will happen
Car Breakdown - Entirely possible
Financial Collapse - Another recession is likely in the next five years.
Total societal collapse - Unlikely but nothing can be done about it at this stage.
Government takeover - I wouldn't trust our politicians to take over a farmers market tbh.
Fire/Burglary - Quiet area and the houses are built to good standards but still possible.
So at this point it looks like I'm preparing most for bad weather, financial upsets and car trouble. So where do I go from here?
http://www.theplacewithnoname.com/blogs ... p/map.html is going to be the foundation for a lot of my plan in the next few days. It's written by someone who went through hurricane katrina and seems like a really sensible resource with lots of information focusing on the most likely sort of disasters. Read through it last night. The primary takeaways from it are keep your documents backed up, have a plan to get out of the house in under 60 seconds, one to get out in under an hour and one to get out in under 12 hours.
Action Plan
Short Term (30 days)
Expand water storage - possibly get some sort of filtration
Assemble a neck safe, EDC bag and 60 second plan using the placewithnoname as a base.
Put together a car kit from the resources I have available
Copy and scan documents I have, storing encrypted copies on the cloud and on a few flash drives.
Put some more stock up onto Ebay and Amazon to try and raise some money.
Medium Term (30 days to a year)
Sign up to some part-time courses
Receive regular income from a job
Assemble a bug out bag under the guise of taking up "hiking" as a hobby
Take up hiking as a hobby
Start saving. Worked out that I should be able to save around 50% of my salary. This money will go towards establishing a rainy day fund and funding a house.
Long Term (Year+)
Join the reserves
Buy a house in the countryside. There's quite a lot of farmhouses that need some TLC going for cheap and I've always wanted to grow my own food etc. House prices are low enough over in NI that I should be able to get a deposit within a year or two if I save hard.
I'd love any advice/opinions you guys have of what I've just written!