Hi all.
Yes thanks for the advice. Funnily enough the matter of being cautious was something I was considering as I was making dinner this evening, and totally understandable given how left field the general consensus is about prepping.
I was quite open about my views here in New Zealand, and spent a fair amount of time hanging out in "hippie circles", but in all my time here I only met two other preppers who were a couple that I was planning the community with. Its a common problem, in that I have found that even though a lot of people share many of the same concerns there is a disconnect between what I believe and the actions I take compared to them.....and that never makes sense to me.
I guess most of my life I have been a massive idealist, which resulted in me doing a project at University on my art degree to create a 3D interactive Dystopia at first to dissuade people from following the road to destruction. However because I saw enough negativity in the world already, I flipped this idea on its head and stated wondering what a true Utopian Civilisation would be like, how it would function, what it would look like and where it would be located.
During my extensive research into climate change (10 years ago) I realised that New Zealand would be by far the most ideal place to be given what I knew of it at the time, and it does indeed have lots of things in its favour, but let me tell you it is by no means perfect. If temperatures rise by more than 2 Degrees, the Northern Hemisphere won't be able to support life. Southern hemisphere is considerably better because the Ocean helps regulate the temperature and NZ being a temperate climate should still be able to support life.
If you have lots of money to by land and develop it and can get a visa, then yes its a great idea. Land is much cheaper here, planning laws are much more relaxed as well as their firearms law. However the soil quality on the whole is poor, and many of the first settlers here struggled to grow food. There are certain minerals usually found in soil which are completely absent here like Selenium. The other major issue is that while property is cheap, the majority of people here are poor and struggle to get by, especially if you have a family. Much that we take for granted in the UK like free healthcare or heavily subsided dentistry isn't here. Yes, healthcare is subsidised here but not as much and things like GP visits cost on average $50 per time.
Its a hard working culture and people commonly work long weeks say 45-50 hours. A "good" wage is considered to be anymore than $18 per hour, which is what I am as an arborist with five years experience. I don't struggle on that but it certainly limits my options of what I am able to do.
People are friendly and helpful on the whole, much more so in smaller places or the South Island. It can be cliquey though and take a while to get settled in. Though many people are friendly, it may take a while for them to invite you to do things with them. Also us Brits are far more open and open minded as a whole. And there is also a fair amount of mild racism present which can be quite strong depending where you are. This is mostly directed towards Asians however among the whites there is an attitude that many native Maoris are lazy etc, and they are in return racist toward whites for the bad feeling after taking their land. Some areas are completely out of bounds for whites, like the far north, where the rule of law goes out the window and police have no control. Although in the far south there are many neo fascist whites....
NZ is 75% supplied with renewable energy, mostly in the form of hydropower and has a complete ban on anything Nuclear which is fantastic.
For me it fell apart because I had an especially bad run of bad luck, one of which was ultimately running out of money due to all the other stuff which happened at the same time as losing my job as a Rope Access Technician (industrial abseiling) so I have been forced to return home. But in doing so I have also been able to acknowledge all the things I miss about living in England like losing contact with friends and family or missing significant events in their lives, the trees, the history, the pubs, our culture.......it goes on.
It really depends on what you are looking for. The other thing to consider is preppers are in an even bigger minority there and thus harder to meet. People are much more relaxed here on the whole, help each other and have time to actually have time for listening to one another without constantly rushing around or being distracted - although this relaxed attitude means that people sometimes don't get around to doing stuff and they can be very fickle and rarely make firm commitments to anything.
By all means if you have any other questions about living here I would be happy to answer them. That's a lengthy enough reply for now
