[lonegunman]

Over the last few weeks I have caught a few episodes of those various doomsday shows on NG network. Those people have some weird ideas of the end of the world. I doubt a comet will strike the earth with no warning and the mega volcano is not likely in my area, nor are tsunamis or global warming induced floods. No zombies are likely(although this one would be a blast) and complete social collaspe is tough to sell. A 1970's Jimmy Carter gas crisis is a real possibility.

I do not consider myself a "prepper" but I am mildly prepared for whatever disaster befalls me. For instance, during the worst snow year in decades my home was without power for eight days. I used my milsurp diesel 5K generator to power my home for 4-6 hours a day, it heated the place up, insured some pleasant TV time, got the home heated and the laundry done, everything in the fridge stayed cool and we were none the worse for wear.

There was 18" of snow in the road and I kept my drive and the nearby street cleared as well as possible. My trusty M35A3 was chained up and able to drive out with no problems, even with another 18" of snow it would have probably made it.

I have three kinds of heat in the home and shop, food for at least six weeks and my own well. If things took a turn for the worst, I'd stock up on more canned goods and dry goods and probably top off my 200 gal fuel tank. If the locals got restless, I'd build a tanglefoot and upgrade the fencing around my property then plant pasture grass over the whole mess. Nothing says funny like falling face first into barbed wire. I don't see myself building a "bunker" in the back yard or woods and then spending my weekends trying to keep the tweakers from hauling the stuff away or the high schoolers from using it for keggers. Putting it on TV is the worst idea EVER in my opinion.

I think shortages of fuel, food and currency are real possibilites. If the current socialist government continues to incite hatred of those with good credit and jobs I can see a serious increase in property crimes and theft with the government doing little to address it ( it would be a form of "income redistribution").

Violence from civil unrest after Katrina is troubling, lack of respect for law abiding citizens in their own homes by civil authorities gave me some concern as well. But, all of the problems I see that could use a little preparation for are fairly short term. I can see a general decline in civilization and slow failure of our government as it slides towards a greek style ruin. Then we end up like England, 70% of the country on welfare and a false sense of global importance based on our success in WWII, a second rate country.


What do you see as the "Top 5" or 10 issues people should be prepared for?

 

[rr2241tx]

I'm prepped for supper to be up to an hour late. After that, we'll just call beer and pickled eggs supper.

 

[oldgoat46]

More realistic disasters are Hurricane, Tornado, No flood here, Probably not going to see SHTF, TEOTWAWKI, in my lifetime so I'm all set for Hurricanes. Been through 6 of them so I'm all set.

 

[lonegunman]

I'm prepped for supper to be up to an hour late. After that, we'll just call beer and pickled eggs supper.

Sounds like prepped for flatuance,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,please let supper be on time.

 

[DK PHILLIPS]

retirement....to accidently happen....
no weather related damage has happened to us in 30+ years living in my house?
just around us!
fires but i have the stuff for that...
government shut downs.... mostly!
fuel shortages because of a weather related problems......kinda...
have been lacks lately.....

 

[plonker]

Fire (quite likely as we are in a heavily wooded area).
Toxic spill/accident. Major interstate junction, several warehousing complexes nearby. Large RR presence.
Weather, mostly severe wind or winter storm.
Political upheaval. No clarification needed.
R.M.E's. Random Moron Events. Such as "Occupy Something", or "Lets have a HUGE political rally", but not tell 50% of the attendees from out of state how exactly to get to the venue.

These break down into smaller concerns such as:
Loss of Water/power.
Stranding.
Refugees of various sorts. Mostly self-inflicted as they refuse to prep for anything round here.
Need to evacuate.

 

[greyheadedguy]

I'd say my biggest concern is a financial melt down, devaluation of the dollar completely wiping out the little bit I have put aside. Dollar has devalued to 1/4 value in ten years ($4 today buys $1 worth in 2002) and that barely includes the government's start of four consecutive years of trillion dollar deficits and printing money as fast as they can http://www.forbes.com/sites/charleskadlec/2012/03/19/the-rising-price-of-the-falling-dollar/

I am significantly worse off today then I was two, three, four years ago. Funny thing is I still have the same income and burdens on my finances plus inflation (which really does exists at a much higher rate over 1.2% or 2.1% what ever they are saying it is.)

 

[DrMike]

I think the 2 biggest threats deal with civic unrest related to one of two things: 1.) Natural disasters, I.E. Katrina or 2.) Social services being cut off due to financial cutbacks. As far as a global financial meltdown- I seriously doubt it, the fact is most people dont have enough $$$ in a fund to worry about loosing value- half of all tax filers in the US made under 36K- these people are not heavily in any market. As far as the Government imposing Martial law- has this ever happened??? Besides they have far more guns and bigger guns than all of us combined- Im not going to give too much thought to it. I have seen, however, how quickly civic unrest can explode ( lived in LA during the Ridney King thing) All you have to do is restrict water for 3-4 days and people start to loose the ability to think rationally, " a dog will always find a way to get a bone"

 

[IamElmerJFudd]

"R.M.E's. Random Moron Events. Such as "Occupy Something", or "Lets have a HUGE political rally", but not tell 50% of the attendees from out of state how exactly to get to the venue." - Plonker

That's a great term, "R.M.E.s," We should use it, it really does cover a lot of situations or conditions that are not naturally occurring.

 

[greyheadedguy]

I think the 2 biggest threats deal with civic unrest related to one of two things: 1.) Natural disasters, I.E. Katrina or 2.) Social services being cut off due to financial cutbacks. As far as a global financial meltdown- I seriously doubt it, the fact is most people dont have enough $$$ in a fund to worry about loosing value- half of all tax filers in the US made under 36K- these people are not heavily in any market. As far as the Government imposing Martial law- has this ever happened??? Besides they have far more guns and bigger guns than all of us combined- Im not going to give too much thought to it. I have seen, however, how quickly civic unrest can explode ( lived in LA during the Ridney King thing) All you have to do is restrict water for 3-4 days and people start to loose the ability to think rationally, " a dog will always find a way to get a bone"

In the desert I live in natural disaster is not likely a problem, except if water were to be cut off. It is rather inert as far as natural or global disasters are concerned. Civil unrest might be a problem, but I don't think likely. We do not have nearly the population density that most big cities have. We had an occupy group here, but in the whole time they were there, I never saw them or had reason to go by where they were. From where I sit, I see financial turmoil to be the threat. Either from a governmental collapse, or an economical collapse created by spending us in to oblivion. Were that to happen, may be we would have a threat from the drug cartels, like in the Mexican towns turf battles caused by failure of enforcement.

I understand for some, SHTF could come tonight while you're sleeping, heaven forbid, from a violent turn of nature or earth. I spent a day in Joplin, Missouri... all that I visited that day was destroyed in one storm. That is a scenario that I really don't think is likely here. May be the Nuclear power plant outside Phoenix would melt down then I would possibly live in a wasteland...

 

[jkaler48]

A super volcano ANYWHERE on the planet could result in little or no food grown for one to two years and massive famine. Our government and most others do NOT have a strategic food reserve and farms and granaries no longer hold many weeks supply. Food is a great prep for so many disasters including more mundane ones like job loss or waiting for disability approval.

 

[db2044]

14 million + starving desperate people streaming out of the megalopolis of dark and burning cities ...
No prep except for hasty retreat to parts unknown and sufficient supplies to get out of Dodge on the quick.
A buried cache for an eventual return, if possible, after all the corpses have rotted and the stink is gone.

 

[plonker]

Re: R.M.E's.

Sadly that is based on a couple of actual events that happened here recently. Where I worked at the time was the end of the road, literally. You turned off the 6-lane highway, followed the 2-lane blacktop a couple of miles to the driveway, went through the gates with "PRIVATE PROPERTY" Signs on it, drove across the big parking lot & ended in a circle of concrete. Beyond that was just an empty field & trees.

The 3 tour buses got all tangled up when they ran out of road as they were following the leader in his motor home. Then the fun started yelling, cursing, screaming & fighting as to how when where & why they got lost & missed the entire political rally they were going to. It was about 2 hours East of me in a different state.

Unfortunately I'm beginning to think R.M.E.'s are becoming a bigger risk factor here than many of the more usual storm/disaster possibilities that we used to be ready for. Our motto is becoming "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers!"

 

[AmmoSgt In Memoriam]

I think the 2 biggest threats deal with civic unrest related to one of two things: 1.) Natural disasters, I.E. Katrina or 2.) Social services being cut off due to financial cutbacks. As far as a global financial meltdown- I seriously doubt it, the fact is most people dont have enough $$$ in a fund to worry about loosing value- half of all tax filers in the US made under 36K- these people are not heavily in any market. As far as the Government imposing Martial law- has this ever happened??? Besides they have far more guns and bigger guns than all of us combined- Im not going to give too much thought to it. I have seen, however, how quickly civic unrest can explode ( lived in LA during the Ridney King thing) All you have to do is restrict water for 3-4 days and people start to loose the ability to think rationally, " a dog will always find a way to get a bone"

I got to quibble about your Idea of a global financial melt down .. most people have valuable things, like a job, or a home, or a pension, a car, and access to groceries, or recieve social services .. all of those are at risk in a global financial melt down. In fact, right now, right here in America alot of folks are either pissed about losing or worried about losing things like jobs, a house, thier pension, their ability to feed ther families , the loss of thier pension ( most are seriously underfunded and whole cities and counties are either bankrupt or going bankrupt or concidering going bankrupt just so they can default on their pension obligations) and the ability to put gas in thier car etc...

And then there are taxes.. we not only have to collect enough more taxes to balance the current budget or reducing spendng to balance the current budget, and most of those tax increases or spending cuts will directly affect people in one of the ways I mention above, but we also have to raise enough taxes to pay our outstanding national debt.. and funny thing about debt, you can't make cuts in past spending that you already spent. You have to either raise taxes or cut current spending, in fact with 17 trillion in debt , 60 trillion if you count already promised money in the future and an annual income of just over 2.2 trillion from taxes, you have to QUIT current spending, which further impacts people as menioned above.. and those people I mentioned above, not only have valuable things, but they have valuable things they haven't paid for either, and have as much debt as the US Government. That means they need the same dollars the govenment wants to pay off governemnt debt to pay off thier private debt. Trying to service the existing debt, much less pay it off, and having to pay enough taxes to pay off existing debt , buy gas , grocieries, etc means all the money is used up before folks can buy new stuff or use services . and if folks can't buy stuff and use services , then nobody needs folks to make stuff or provide services , which means people lose jobs .. see above list of things worrying and pissing off people. Global financial meltdown is not so much about people investing, it is more about people buying stuff and using services that keeps people working making stuff and providing services so they can keep buying stuff and using services. Break that chain, or go into a negative feedback loop ( aka deflation) and you spiral down until you crash the whole thing. Keep taking to much out in taxes and the cycle goes negatve. keep spending so much that a ever larger fraction of the budget is spent on servicing the growing debt and things go negative ...
Try to take to much out of the economy in taxes so you can pay down debt , cut spending to be able to afford to pay the debt, and keep borrowing so you can spend more than you have, all at the same time ... and everything just blows up.

 

[Sidney Smith]

I do not consider myself a "prepper" in the TV reality show sense. I'm not concerned about worldwide natural disasters, or pandemic diseases, etc. I'm not concerned with a nationwide, or worldwide social breakdown because I don't think the probability of that happening is very high..What I am concerned with is a localized, short termed disaster, be it natural or manmade. I've seen people lose it due to impending snowstorms. Why I have no idea. We've always weathered such events just fine, because we used our heads and remained calm. I've seen people turn due to the oil crisis back in the 70's. Again short term, but it had an effect.

I have alternative heat in the form of a fireplace. We keep enough food onhand under normal circumstances to last for weeks if need be. Two things I do need to concentrate on though are possibly a generator of some kind to keep food from spoiling for a few days and a way to run our well pump. I plan to remedy those situations shortly though. And, I've always been prepared for any civil unrest that may result from any said short term disaster.

 

[greyheadedguy]

One thing AmmoSgt left out was the way government deals with high debt, by devaluing the dollar. If you devalue the dollar by 50% or more like Mexico has done when their debt was due. The government still owes the same dollar amount, but because of the inflation created the worth of the debt is much less of a threat, but the people of the land suffer terribly. Just look South of our border. I am hearing a common theme coming from most economist, The government is going to keep printing money to devalue the dollar, creating inflation to push up the GDP and to lessen the effect of our national debt.

That said, how are you going to fare when the dollar is devalued another 75% - 85% this decade? If you read the article I posted above, they discuss the cost of oil being directly related to the devaluation of the dollar. In fact they blamed the $4.00 gallon gas directly to it.

More businesses will be closing because they can't afford to stay in business. The loss of business alone cripple the government because of the loss of revenues. When a business closes income taxes are lost, sales taxes are lost, property taxes, Social security, then there is the spin off from the companies that supported that business that closed and the businesses that supported that one and so on.

 

[DrMike]

I couldnt agree with you more. Im self employed and my income is down 50% from 5 yrs ago. Im 45 and will probably never be able to retire until 70- there simply is no vehicle out there that will gaurantee my income at 90-95% of my highest earning years without being influenced by market conditions. My comment about global meltdown comes from the understanding the the powers that really control things (The Fed reserve, world banks) dont want to kill the golden goose- they still need it to lay eggs. And if thid goose goes down- the others will go down after it. Theres a big incentive to help us avoid a full collapse- I think its highly unlikely. If that where to happen-no matter how much you preparred- It wouldnt be enough. What my initail response pointed to, was what I thought would likely happen- Natural disaster and civic unrest are highly likely things you should be preparred for. Its prudent to have water, 90days food and basic medicine stored- trying to prepare for eveery conceivable event will turn you paranoid. Civic unrest is very, very, very likely to come

 

[jrswanson1]

I'm more worried about some super bug taking out a good percentage of the planet's population. So many people using anti-bacterial soaps and cleaners, there will be a point where these microscopic critters will not be affected by it and wipe us out. We've already got an antibiotic resistant pathogen out there. If it ever goes air born, we're all going to be in trouble.

 

[Billofthenorth3]

I'm prepping for the inevitable end of The Simpsons, that show has been on 20+ years and is no doubt closer to it's end than begining. The societal upheaval that is bound to follow has me terrified.

 

[greyheadedguy]

I'm prepping for the inevitable end of The Simpsons, that show has been on 20+ years and is no doubt closer to it's end than begining. The societal upheaval that is bound to follow has me terrified.

"Don't have a cow man!"