One area that we don’t spend much time worrying about at the moment is wastage. We don’t need to as there is always more out there and all it costs is money. After an event though that will all change as we will want to reduce our waste to zero. Everything we produce will have to be used, every minute we spend will have to be productive and we won’t want to waste anything at all. Resources, including our time, will be limited and if we waste anything then that is time and resources we will lose and if it is bad enough it could be the difference between living or not.
We can look at the output of years of experience that has been gained in our productive part of the economy as they have spent years refining their processes to reduce waste and maximise profit and we should watch and learn from where we can.
Industry has identified 7 areas where waste occurs;
- Overproduction
- Idle Time
- Transport
- Non-Value Added Activity
- Inventory
- Unnecessary Motion
- Inferior Quality
This is where we produce too much too soon. In a business they don’t want to store items as that costs money when they can just have another production run. In an event we are pretty much going to keep our production to a minimum. We don’t want to be doing work we don’t have too as we could be spending time elsewhere to ensure we cover all our requirements not just our requirements for one item.
This is where we do nothing productive with time. Industry doesn’t like workers doing nothing. It pays them to do work and idle time means they get nothing back for that payment. In our case though idle time may be acceptable as long as we have no critical outstanding tasks and we need a break sometime. Bear in mind though that idle time could be used to some good perhaps on less arduous tasks or tasks we enjoy so that we can make productive use of more of our time.
This is where we move things around unnecessarily. In industry it costs money to move things around and this makes their product cost more or if it doesn’t it reduces profits. In our case though this wastes both our resources involved in the move and our time to make the move. So instead of killing the cow in the field and carrying it back to your home in several trips it would be better to walk the cow to slaughter.
This is where we perform work that doesn’t not add to the value of the item. In industry this simply adds costs to the product that may not be recoverable. In business however some people will pay extra for finishing touches. After an event though we won’t want anything with unnecessary engraving or colourings. Just plain old function.
This is holding items in store before they are needed. Industry has changed from storing vast amounts in warehouses to getting Just In Time (JIT) inventory where as it comes into the factory it goes straight to the production line. Saving warehouse space and reducing lost or damaged stock. In our case though we can’t afford a JIT strategy just in case we have issues. This is linked with overproduction and for our requirements as long as it isn’t wasted we would rather store something than not have it when it is needed.
This is where Staff move around because of poor layout on site. In industry you pay people to produce items. They don’t do that while moving around and this simply adds costs. In our case though we may find that we are doing multiple tasks and simply have to move around. Planting in the morning, butchering in the afternoon means that we must move around to perform these tasks.
This is producing goods that are not accepted and thus wasted. In industry this means you have paid someone for nothing. In our case it means that valuable resources have been consumed. Perhaps a blade you have been working on has been ruined by a mistake. This wastes both resources, the metal, and time, our work so far, both of which are critical to us.
After all after an event if you are unproductive the chances are you will go without something to eat or go cold. Imagine you ruin a meal. You have wasted food, fuel, water, time and possibly the cooking utensil. Now you would just get a replacement and redo it. After an event this could be all you managed to catch that day and makes the difference betwen eating or not. This is a lot different than a lot of shareholders losing a few pence on their shares. We cannot afford that so ensure that you make the most of our resources and time. Consider everything you do and while we should not do any more than is necessary we must ensure we do enough to cover our requirements plus a little contingency just in case.
I was quite surprised by an article last week saying we waste upto 6 meals a week….that will have to change…my partner and her son(especially the son)are fussy eaters…going to be interesting when the mayonnaise and coca cola have all gone lol….still at least after a major event I won’t be following them round turning the heating down/turning lights and appliances off…I spose every cloud eh!
Superb summary. Really articulating survival, presumably in office-speak to paint a picture for that kind of person. Never seen it done with an industrial analogy.
Very impressed.
Industry isn’t a good example in my opinion.
Industry is constantly cutting corners, endangering workers and failing at an alarming rate to actually get anything done on time.
Its usually weeks behind if it actually has what you want in stock or if it doesn’t it lies, says it has then try’s to keep your money…
Use industry as an example post shtf and you’ll end up dead.
Better use the hive mentality of bees if you want or need a comparison.
Each bee has a job, it does it, gets fed and protected for it.
If it doesn’t do it, gets kicked out of the hive or killed.
Not sure I agree. They have adapted so people die a lot less often than you imply and those not in the public sector get a lot done on time.
Keeping your money is efficiency from their viewpoint. No outgoings for a time yet paid in advance.
Bees. That is a socialist concept and the very concept that got us into this mess. People are not insects.
That should be enough for most people post shtf.
Do what your told, do it well or f off and be a lazy hungry t**t elsewhere.
I like the hive mentality…be nice to implement it now but her indoors might get uppity about me chucking her lazy arsed little cherub out to fend for himself lol
Why does everyone asume in a hive mind they will be the queen. Women are the leaders in Hives. It’ll be you out on your arse when she is fed up with you.
Prepper1 I hear what you say however, you were talking about shitty industry, I was talking about good practices. What Skean was describing are the gold standard industrial analogies, the fact that many, many companies don’t get there doesn’t stop them striving for them.
Hive is = communist approach.
The problem is and always has been with comminst [not soviet] that we are all individuals.
Sure in a survival situation there are a set number of tasks to perform but you run straight into trouble if you use the obvious approach of -only those best suited do job A and you in the corner there get job B all the time. Job B being bury the poo and job A go and hunt.
I think one of the early things to do in any SHTF scenario is to democratically elect a leader, hopefully people will pick the best for the job not the tallest/shortest/biggest if you see what I mean. If you don’t have day 1 community agreement on leadership your hive won’t work because -pardon the simile- everyone will want to be the queen. It has to be a ‘hive’ decision too otherwise you won’t pull together.
It then becomes a trade of between the ‘here and now’ and the ‘future’.
In the here and now there are certain things/tasks that need doing in order for all to survive so you send the best -you think- to do the job. BUT at some time not to distant, when things settle a little you have to start pairing people to spread the skills.
The person that makes the best food needs to educate the others one by one on how to do it. The person who has proved best at bringing home the bacon needs to take an understudy hunting, the person best able to set the booby traps and early warning kit needs to share that with those who don’t know how to, the best engineer or mechanic needs to spread that to. There can be no hoarding of skill in the same way that no food hoarding can be allowed.
Failure to do this will in some instances cause all skills in one field to be lost by accident or ‘enemy’ activity.
This is what I posted on the ‘Are we alone’. You’ll see that I’ve been giving this sort of thing a lot of thought for a long time. My wife is on board, children are on board. It’s all about ‘reasonableness’ as you already know. I can say that once you get used to having large stocks of food, massive quantities of available water and the means to clean it, a roof over your head and a reasonable plot with the ability and determination to defend it; then it’s a matter, as Skean has said, of keeping the stuff cycled and in good repair. But for those who haven’t read my entry on the other page here it is and why I am where I am.
“I’ve been meaning to look for UK sites for prepping for quite a while.
I’ve been doing it for some 6 years or more myself. You’ll laugh out loud when I tell why. By the way this might be a long post, as there’s some explaining to do.
I used to work in Pathology in the NHS, no longer in the lab but managing the pencils and grubbing for budget latterly. About 2 years or so before our ‘damp squib’ of a pandemic in 2008-9 I accidentally got involved in the revising of the government fantasy plans for dealing with the next pandemic [flu mainly but could be a lot of other things], anyway I contributed, asked questions, buffed up on my virology, pestered colleagues for opinions and facts, asked more questions, did some more personal research, thought about it a lot with regard to consequences. Within several months I became utterly disillusioned with the government’s ideas on dealing with the next pandemic. They truly were laughable and lucky for them it wasn’t a bad one when it came or they’d have been screwed and so would we.
I’ll give you an example. There’s a couple of terms used in this. CFR or case fatality rate and SR strike rate which is the % of the population who will contract the disease. Now we hadn’t had any pandemic for decades and as each year went by without one the numbers starting stacking up against humans because it appeared from historical records that the longer the gap between pandemics, then the worse it was likely to be when it got here [particularly with flu since the larger gap meant fewer of the population with immunity left, those having been around for the last one].
All of us were caught wrong footed by what came through door eventually. Everyone and I mean everyone involved in this had an eye on a flu virus called H5N1 which had been killing people for a couple of years in the far east. As it slowly changed, certain of the sub types became more and more pathogenic[more severe disease causing]and one in Indonesia had a CFR of 83%. This thing was killing 4 out of every 5 people it infected in a dreadful parody of the 1918 flu but worse![1918 flu only had a CFR of about 10%] The good news though is that even now, it still hasn’t naturally worked a way of passing easily between victims [although some idiot scientists in Holland artificially forced the mutation in a lab -felt like killing them myself jees it’s a gift for some terrorist nutjob. H5N1 was in effect mass death on an unprecedented scale waiting to happen. Because it was a flu virus we knew/know that the slightest change could alter its ability to infect us. The bad news was that it could be present in the same animal -a pig that had other kinds of flu which already easily passed between humans. The pig is one of the few animals which can incubate human and avian viruses simultaneously -gee thanks God. We know that viruses can and do exchange genetic information, and as I say everyone had their eye on this thing expecting it to make the last real jump. It hasn’t yet but is still out there killing, and still out there mixing in pigs along with now the latest H1N1 flu virus which did pass easily.
So we were all looking east and it came from the West. An old virus with a couple of new tricks but essentially not a real problem.
Ok, so all we were planning was a numbers game for the government. They wouldn’t let the scientists/doctors use the worst case scenario because that truly was scary and it immediately put them on notice that should such an event occur, there simply was no solution. So we had several working scenarios we were allowed to consider.
60,000,000 population -the agreed SR was 50%. So 30,000,000 would likely get it -and did [but most never knew with this one]
The accepted hospitalization rate was 5% – i.e those who would need additional care in hospital
So we have around 1,500,000 people needing hospitalization. Not all at once BUT within a likely window of 12 weeks AND staying likely for 10 days.
At that time the entire NHS could muster only 188,000 beds of all kinds never mind that these people would be requiring ventilation, aspiration and a damn sight higher care level than a normal ward. So even if we kicked everyone out of hospital the day before we would still fall well short of bed availability and staff availability, in any and all of the scenarios.
The CFR was allowed to be just 1%. or 300,000.
So no matter how I computed this -and there are specific algorithms around for working out how many will get it how many they will infect etc and at what stage- it was a no win situation. The more I read and learned the more convinced I became that there was only one way to survive in this nightmare scenario.
As soon as you become aware that there there is a highly contagious virus with a high CFR [we might not even know that for a couple of weeks, so you can see how hard it is to know when to jump?] then you have to put up the shutters and have no contact with anyone outside your family group, which means being prepared. That’s it. There is no action or activity that any government can take which will stop, arrest, reduce or prevent these diseases, regardless of what they say. There is also [at the moment] no treatment other than supportive measures which may be given to the ‘lucky’ few in the first few days only.
So I wrote a book on this. It was too damned important not to tell everyone that personal survival was the only way. I wrote a novel called ‘The Worst Case’. I spent nearly 2 years writing it and had it ready to go to a publishers in the October of 08 I think it was. Basically it was the horror story written into everyday life and I explored what would happen when the sh1t hit the human fan. I even refused to watch some BBC drama about the same thing which ran towards the end of my writing time, so that no one could say I did it on the back of that. Anyway early 2009 the pandemic hit from the opposite direction and I guess it was the worst time in the world’s history to try to sell an ‘End of the world’ book about the next pandemic as it had already started. No one at that time knew how it would play out though or that it wasn’t as deadly as a lot of scenarios played it. We were lucky. just lucky -then. That time. but the clock is still ticking. I had up to the minute access to what was happening as scientists around the world sent each other every snippet of new info. Now that I have left the service I’m not even going to be in the loop if it happens again in my life. But I will be watching and looking out for it on the net.
So I scared myself half to death with just how un-prepared I and my family were to face this scenario. I even covered this in my novel because the biggest enemy to prepping is when you say ‘nah, it’ll never happen’. So I laid out a chapter with this guy going through the phases of learning about the potential threat, becoming alarmed and convinced, then working out just what he could do to prepare for this possibility without going OTT. Just sensible practical considerations.
At this time I have not yet looked at the rest of this site so I don’t know what you have already by way of ‘preppy’ lists and stuff. From the two pieces I’ve read, the intro and the one dealing with the industry analogy, I am pretty sure that Mr Dhude will probably have thought of all the things I have.
I look forward to reading more.”
Blimey the above post is a bit of an eye opener…wasn’t even onmy radar as i was so focussed on societal collapse being the primary….more stuff to go on the wishlist.
“survival rate of 50%”…..that’s very interesting, even the “black death” had a 60% survival rate,(100% of people that got it died-but not everyone got it) presumably that’s only in our major overcrowded cities though? outside of the capital and maybe 1 or 2 others the survival rate should be higher.
No mate not survival rate, ‘Strike rate’. I did say at the beginning it was long winded so sorry for that. I did Identify the two acronyms CFR and SR used later.
Black death was one of three variants of yersinia pestis, a bacterium. Ironically nowadays a single penicillin injection would sort it. The CFR for the bubonic form nowadays -untreated- is up to 65-70% ish, offhand I don’t know what it was in medieval times. I’d be surprised if it was higher because people in those times are generally reckoned to have had a more robust immune system because of their lifestyle and exposure to dirt and disease.
There are a couple of factors that influence how deadly a disease can be in a population. one of them can be how long a person incubates the disease before symptoms appear. Second to that is whether or not [in the case of viruses] they ‘shed’ virions or viral cells which can infect others during that time.
One of the problems with H5N1 is that the incubation period can be up to 5 days -and they do shed viral particles [coughs sneezes etc]. We have been so lucky because as yet these particles have not been found to cause infection, thus making it easy to spread.
The ‘mother of all diseases’ to borrow Saddam’s words, would be a H5N1 virus which infects you and then spends 5 days spreading itself to others before anyone -including yourself- notices that you’ve got it.
There are more deadly diseases already but they strike quickly, are apparent quickly and kill quickly like Marburg and Ebola. It’s bad news if you are close when they strike because you are very likely to die, the good news for the rest of us is that it dies out because it wipes out its human victims.Entire villages have been found empty of the living, cultures of Green monkeys captured locally have shown the presence of these viruses.
This is why H5N1, if it changes is even worse, it wouldn’t even have the decency to wipe out only the local population, it would spread so effectively that road blocks, airports and other termini would simply serve as points of distribution. Literally the only way to avoid it would be complete isolation. There is not any treatment -forget Tamiflu even as our stupid government panicked and bought 30,000,000 doses [now out of date and thrown away] it had been advised that because the use of Tamiflu was widespread in the far east, that the influenza viruses were often resistant to it, plus over 50% of those who had died of H5N1 in Vietnam, had actually been given it anyway.
There some things you can do to make your body’s defences top line. It takes a few million viruses to cause an infection to take hold. The reason for that is that most of them are eaten by large predatory white cells called macrophages that circulate in the blood all the time. These are the body’s first line of cellular defence and they are awesome. They work in two ways, unguided they wander around touching cells, the walls of the blood vessels, just wandering testing to see if what they touch is ‘self’, they identify ‘self’ by certain lumps and bumps on the surfaces they touch. From time to time they come across fragments of destroyed cells or are nearby when a cell sends out a thing called a cytokine. A cytokine is a self destruct advertisement. Literally this cell will self destruct in ten, nine, eight and so on. When that happens the nearest macrophages are activated by the chemical signal and move in to eat the dying cell.
When you get flu the invaders attack your lung linings first and the cells at the surface are the first to die and the first to send out the cytokines shouting for help in effect. They are sounding the alarm.When a macrophage arrives on the scene it does its job but if there are lots of dying cells and viruses mixed in -which there will be- it releases a slightly different cyctokine calling for help. It will die soon because it has eaten near to its maximum number of enemies so it calls for help knowing it itself is dying. Every macrophage in your body now heads towards the infection site and your bone marrow goes up a gear to replace the lost ones -but there is of course a lag there and that is where people who’s immune system is already compromised [maybe just getting better from something else] are vulnerable, they quickly go through their ready supply of defenders.
The second way of activating macrophages is when other white cells known as lymphocytes designate targets for the macrophages by pinning a protein onto the target which then acts as a beacon to attacking macrophages.
OK. Now the number of virus particles that each macrophage can eat is limited in normal operations, however there are ways to give them a turbo boost.
1. If you take 1g of vitamin C per day you will energise them by a factor of 10.
2. If you add aspirin to the vitamin C together they energise the macrophages by 100.
3 If you add alcohol to the aspirin and the vitamin C they are energised by 1000.
This means that they can eat 10, 100 and 1000 times more viruses than normal. Some of you might recognise what a combination of those three might be in old wives tales. A hot toddy! Seems our ancestors knew more medicine than we do.
There is a hope that if on first symptoms you take a hot toddy and go to bed, the disease [a flu -like infection] may not develop any further. It may seem a slim hope but really it is absolutely better than anything in the modern medicine arsenal.
I buy bottles of 180 1g vit C from Holland and Barrett when they are on offer BOGOF. When there are plenty of viruses about I take 1 daily, if I start to feel symptoms I take 2,3 or even 4 a day. The good news is that your body will absorb and absorb vit c up to saturation point then it will stop and you go for a big one-off dump. That’s how it gets rid of excess.
If the disease progresses I go the full hog and take the aspirin and a whiskey tot every 4 hours. This is literally all we could do if faced by a deadly virus or an ordinary flu.
If anyone is interested I could explain further about why the activation of the cytokines could actually help to kill you rather than save you but enough for today.[we know why 1918 flu was so effective and that is related to it]
In reference to what ‘midnitemo’ said, I would rate this possibility every bit as likely as societal collapse or even the reason for it. Political unrest is rising in the wings at the moment and we end up in t he same place. Up shit creek negative paddle.
In survival terms it alters the dynamic with regard to meeting people after the collapse.
At some point I may as well post the book itself, it was fun writing even if the subject is horrendous, all of this is covered in some way in the text as well as numerous survival scenarios.
I suppose for the ‘elf an’ safety’ gestapo I should point out that you should only take aspirin if you don’t have active stomach ulcers, you should take soluble/dispersable aspirin not the tablets that just sit in a lump.
Still if it ever comes to it -a deadly pandemic- I shall take the aspiring and sod the small bleed that may or may not accompany it.
A big problem with comparing a modern day pandemic with something like the black death is the comparison doesnt take into account modern travel. A disease starting in china could be in the UK quicker than the black Death could have got from Plymouth to Bristol back in the 1300’s which depending on the incubation period could result in millions being infected before anyone noticed a major problem.
After the Cold War a Pandemic was always top of my worldwide shtf concerns
spot on gizmo.
the 2008-9 pandemic actually managed to circumnavigate the globe in around 48 hours. This rendered any thoughts of quarantine redundant. One of the reasons it wasn’t identified as far and wide was because it was mild and people weren’t looking for it, doctors do not routinely ask for bloods and viral studies on someone presenting with flu like symptoms, in addition it was so mild that many self medicated. When it got here they only took blood for culture in the first few weeks, after that anyone presenting with the symptoms was just another statistic.
I may have misunderstood, but am pretty sure Me_Again said that SR stood for Strike Rate (the number to contract it), not survival rate. And the CFR, or Case Fatality Rate was only ‘allowed’ to be 1% by the PTB.
spot on Bob
I only mentioned the black death in relation to the survival rate over the entire country, I think about 40% of the population died. as far as modern times go going into voluntary isolation has always been top of my list and is what I do every flu season. being a long way from our overcrowded cities and any major airport or sea port is also a plus.
You are no doubt in the ballpark there paul, records are pretty difficult to find since most of the record keepers pegged it too.
the isolation is a two edged sword though. After a first wave like spread over an area sadly, like in a nuke explosion, there’s a returning tide effect. Change in bugs occurs by mutation or swapping. usually about 12 weeks after a pandemic there’s a returning changed bug which will take more lives. In fact it has recently been speculated that the 1918 flu actually started in 17 or even 16, and changed a little to return as lethal in 18-19.
So someone may survive the first wave only to pop their head above ground and get zapped by the second. In addition to that sad fact is the problem that there will be survivors who are immune, they can carry the bug for short periods without harm to themselves BUT with the ability to pass it unchanged to someone who has perhaps never been exposed. Its a real problem working out what’s the best way to play it. I suppose some of it depends on how long it takes to recover civilisation -if. Otherwise strangers are always going to be dangerous to survivors.
strangers will ALWAYS be dangerous to survivors, and not JUST cos of the diseases they may carry.
BP this is true, but, and it’s a big but, after some time alone either you go looking to see what’s about or it comes looking to see what you’re about. As you hint, there will be two choices when you meet someone, war or peace.
I had thought as far as what I would do and how to work out what their purpose is and whether isolation must have an end point. Some of it I guess depends on whether there will be a return of society, albeit in a different form than before. I have included such encounters in my book, one positive and one extremely negative. Personally I would hope to make a truce and agree a stand off firstly. Then assuming I haven’t been spit roasted over a fire, I would try to ascertain what happened to them and work out whether there’s an advantage/danger to closer contact or cooperation. I think I’d have one of my boys covering me from 50 yards with the big crossbow peering through the Hawke SB30 scope and mounting a broadhead, heavy bolt, I’d have the other 2 circling wide to make sure there were no surprises and I’d be carrying my own close range crossbow as well as the usual personal weapons.I’d also have agreed in advance a fire signal my lads.
That’s where you get to the point of saying am I being paranoid or am I being paranoid enough? It’s really hard isn’t it? When you go through a Q&A with yourself answering the questions honestly you start off with a choice, Do I want to live or I don’t I give a damn?
From there you just work through don’t you? Like ok I want to live so what am I prepared to do to make that happen? And so on down a logic tree until you end up with a small battlefield nuclear device in your back pocket……..
I think on the whole that after the 12 weeks is up then I’d want to know what was happening out there if only to plan further. I guess that would mean all travel or scout party with the attendant risk of no return.
12 weeks? 12 weeks? hell, I wouldn’t come out of my hidey hole for 6 MONTHS and maybe not even then!!! big enough “die-off” and I’d never have to put up with people ever again!! bliss!!!
BP can I take it that you don’t rate yourself as the most sociable fellow in the village, or maybe the county or maybe the country?
I’m a libertarian myself. I admire and would happily defend your right to be on your own. There are times when I feel the need for spending some time alone with my demons so I think I get a little of what you mean. I’m semi retired now [really another few months and that’s it. I’m just tinkering around the edges of consultancy now and I’ll be done by next summer] and I am amazed at how little I can get done in a whole day. I potter around fixing things that should have been fixed years ago, discovering things that need fixing, re-decorating my spare bedrooms, pottering in the garden [the curly kale looks good and the parsnips are doing fine], walking my dogs, writing and thinking.
I keep meaning to go back to my pandemic book and update it. I must do because really we are in as much danger now as we were in 2008. I did it then for altruistic reasons so I won’t bother looking for JK Rollings agent I’ll just publish on Amazon through Harper Collins.
The problem seems to be at the moment that I run out of steam halfway through the day and it’s damned annoying. getting old is a pain in the ass [sometimes literally] you know so much and forget more, Skean will appreciate this analogy, you have plenty of RAM but your disc storage is full. So when I switch off at night it wipes clean and I’ve got a clean start in the morning.
Anyway, sometimes even old grizzly bears need company so don’t necessarily rule out humanity completely. ITSEHTF then the people that survive longest are more likely to be of your nature and allies rather than enemies.
I speak to my neighbours once every now and then, I don’t know the names of their children or where they live, I have no idea how old they are or what life has done for them BUT, if their house caught fire or their burglar alarm went off, I’d be out there -usually with something in my hand and a good excuse for carrying it -Yes officer, I was busy practicing the seventh sword kata in my snooker room when the disturbance began, I completely forgot that I was carrying a katana when I rushed out of my house to assist a neighbour in distress……
How do you like your steak diced or sliced?
no, most of the folks on the forum have got tired of my anti social ramblings so I wont bore you (much) with them, I was brought up as an only child and have spent most of my childhood and adult life on my own, married 3 times, divorced twice and I am now retired, I call myself a YOUNG retired, I may be 65 years of age but I don’t feel or ACT 65!!health wise I cant complain, bit of elevated blood pressure and a mild case of psoriasis and i’m good to go!! I don’t have much to do with the neighbours(small rural market town) apart from “good morning” or a discussion about the weather..thats it, anymore than that and I don’t want to know. best times of the day is when i’m walking the dog in the “back lane” between fields of sheep and not another person in sight…like I said before…..pure bliss!!!!! so if I had to batten down the hatches and stay isolated for long periods it wouldn’t be that much of a strain, i prefer peace and quiet to having to make “polite” conversation any day.
BP sounds a bit like myself. I too live in a small rural town in an almost deserted county [relatively]. This is by choice. I wandered the world for 30 odd years more than half of that as a military medic and lived in big cities and big towns all over. The only big city I ever liked was Hong Kong before we threw it back to the Chinese. I cannot abide UK cities, dirty smelly and not too many Brits in amongst them. Also a scarcity of resources unless you fancy frying a few strangers for supper after the balloon goes up. I trust any of out current bag of politicians about as far as I can throw a double decker bus. I wouldn’t pee on them if they were on fire and expect a citizens revolt some time soon [well as soon as they wake up and see they’ve been ear tagged and sold for slaughter on the great european chopping block, but I won’t hold my breath. The only way I can think of to foment a revolution at the moment is to switch off the X factor, Strictly and and Corrie, blame the EU and wait for the bang.]
I wholeheartedly agree with your last sentence and no doubt will be relegated to the ‘grumpy old git’ file with you, before too long.
Cheers mate!
Still chuckling at the whole Corrie/X-Factor/EU line, as well as the katana skit! 😀
Perhaps I’m a grumpy old git too then, as even in my (early!:P) thirties, I’ve found both of your comments to be a highly amusing read tonight! 🙂
anyway back to the point I was trying to make re timeline, we have discussed this many times on the forum and the general opinion is that in a SHTF situation 6 months is the MINIMUM we would “batten down the hatches “, keep a low profile and stay hidden, this is to let the general madness, looting, arson and dying to take its course on the general (non prepping) population, then and only then we MIGHT come out of our hidey holes-if we thought it safe enough-to see what was left of our neighbourhoods.
Yeah six months is not an unreasonable time for the SHTF and the smell to die down a bit. I suppose it depends as much on your location and likelihood of being disturbed.
When you had the discussion before were people thinking of total batten down the hatches then limited foraging and scouting? Patrolling in force, that sort of thing?
yes that’s right, limited foraging and scouting, generally have a look around.