Hello all, area 8.

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Hello all,

New prepper here - or at least new in actually really doing something. It's funny but I've been thinking about all things prepper for some years now but never really done anything... well when I say that I've always had a multi-purpose knife, carried a tea towel and I suppose I thought that would do. Recently, I've completed an archery course, trained for a 10k and ran it, learned to swim as well as gaining plenty of experience in some pretty dire weather hillwalking. Yet I'm still overweight, lol!

This last month has been an odd time as I started to realise that all the points mentioned (except the tea towel, probably) are prep one way or the other. So talking about this to my partner has also revealed a long dormant interest and we're now planning for bug in and the first step is securing our water supply (water storage and filters) and hoarding food.

I guess the next step is obtaining sufficient meds for existing requirements as well as possible future requirements and that is going to be the tricky bit.

After that, we are looking to go on a weekend survival skills/bush type course. Nothing overly Bear Grylls but some basics. If anyone can recommend one that would be great. I also want to go on an introductory crossbow course. Then I guess we'll look at a bug out location and start bulking that plan up.

If anyone has any suggestions for us that would be great. Thanks.

[preppingsu]

Hello and welcome.

Have a mooch around the forum, there's a lot of information here!

[tigs]

welcome to the forum

[Oldarborman]

Hello and welcome

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Thanks for the welcome. I've been reading the forum every evening really for the last few days before I registered and I'm continuing to read... isn't there a lot of information out there?

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Currently, we're taking advantage of online shopping (set order per month of set items) as well as bargain hunting to stockpile food without spending a fortune. By using this method for only a short time we've got enough food for a family of four that will last five weeks at the moment.

That food comprises of tinned products, stews/soups/currys and so on/fruit/veg and dry goods such as pasta and rice.

I mention in another post that we're about to purchase 45 gallon fruit juice containers for water storage, these are £20 each. While they might not be everyone's cup of tea we feel that they'd be useful for long term storage given that light is blocked and it will help keep algae growth down. These will be stored outside in an enclosed, covered area under the decking. At least for now. And depending on the nature of the emergency there may or may not be time to refresh water stocks and relocate indoors.

The meds are an ongoing hoarding experience. Lot's of fun repeatedly getting tiddling amounts of basic meds. Two of us have daily med requirements so this is now a top priority for me. I'll try to sound out the GP and see what they say.

We've got bumper amounts of cheap tea lights, candles and camping gaz stoves with gaz. As a standby we have fire lighters but no actual fuel. One of the things we have discussed and are planning are to have a wood burner, preferably a water heating one but that's all in the planning stage at present.

Defense-wise, due to the house configuration a security gate will help us in terms of marauding low skilled yobs. Also ground floor security shutters/grills but that's a little in the future. If we were to deter anyone with any real skill then I think bugging in and defending the home will need a little more thought.

That's us.

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Well, as mentioned I sounded out my GP to get an ample supply of Levothyroxine for myself and my daughter. She asked why we wanted to have it. "You're not one of those neurotic people, are you?". The conversation didn't really improve after that. So I'll have to get some from overseas likely, even then it's a finite resource.

In the good news category, we've now got nine weeks worth of food, I've just purchased a water filter straw (really need a bigger capacity filter but that can come later) and have ordered N99 respirator masks given all the heightened reports of bird flu and similar.

The EDC needs work but at least I have both of us equipped with a bag each!