I'm Sarah and I want to prepare; I haven't got a clue how to start and am feeling a bit overwhelmed and like the odds are stacked against me. It's great to see that I'm not alone though.
I am a single mum to a lovely 9 year old boy. I work in admin to pay the bills and fancy myself as a bit of an artist/crafter in my spare time ; not really great skills come the apocalypse
I really think the writing is on the wall for western cizilization as we know it and I want to increase my son's chance of survival in the world he will know. I don't want to feel helpless and too scared but I have to admit that I am. I can tell that most people I bring up the subject of preparing for natural and man made disasters and the possible collapse of civilized society think I am losing the plot. So then I wonder if I am.
This all sounds dreadfully serious but I do have a sense of humour too thankfully; I have to laugh at myself sometimes - I'm only half joking really when I say, tongue in cheek, to friends that I 'want to marry Ray Mears, learn survival skills and move to high ground away from the cities'. If Ray happens to be reading, I'm free
... Maybe I've read too many Stephen King novels, watched too many shit hits to fan documentaries and too much Walking Dead (if anyone can even have too much Walking Dead or Stephen King,for that matter). My friend, today, asked me a question that made me really think hard about the future, she asked me 'why on earth would you want to stick around in a scary doomsday world?'. She said that she (a single mum too) would want her and her son to check out quickly as soon as the shit hit the fan. She said that humans had been through massive climate change before and had survived so I shouldn't get too hung up - that I should be happy and live for 'now'. There is certainly a lot to be said for having a positive attitude but I realized in that moment how important it was for me to try to survive whatever scary stuff is coming primarily so my son can survive. I feel like I need to be enabling him to aquifer the skills he will need to survive post-collapse instead of pushing him to fulfil school league tables by obediently following the government's narrow curriculum. Do I want him to live in a terrifying Mad Max world? No, but I fear that he or his children will face something along those lines and I would be failing in my duty as a parent if I didn't at least try to equip him with essential survival skills. I look online for these 'bushcraft'/survival courses that we could attend to start learning but they are all so expensive; is it only going to be people with financial means that can survive?
I can't drive and I am mostly skint (aren't we all ...?). So no expensive nuclear bunker bolt holes in the country for me yet and the not driving bit is a bit of a problem even if I had such a bolt hole! I'm in a second floor one bed flat. Shall I just resign myself that there's not much I can do and accept the lovely anesthetic offered by my friends' and most people's blinkered view that there's nothing to worry about?
I have a possible chance of swapping my flat to move to a small village near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands; my instinct tells me that my son and I might be 'safer' there - I certainly know that we would have a better quality of life through living in a beautiful area such as it is.
Anyway, I'm rambleing on a bit now - just wanted to say hello
You have skills you just do not know that you can use them for prepping. Arts and crafts are a good skill as you can look at what others consider rubbish and see potential in it and that is what you are going to need in a TSHTF problem. 