PREPPING ... who was already doing it?

Discussion in 'Survival and Sustainability' started by crank, Mar 18, 2020.

  1. Ericb760

    Ericb760 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And you clearly didn't comprehend the post I was replying to.
     
  2. Ericb760

    Ericb760 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Hoarding ammo every time new gun legislation is even just proposed does nothing but jack up the prices and prevent others from buying, especially those with lower incomes. That is what led to .22LR ballooning to nearly .50 cents per round back in 2012. There was no manufacturing shortage then, just like there is no manufacturing shortage now for TP.

    It's just hysterical buying to ease unwarranted fears, be it Obama coming for your guns, or thinking you need 1,000 rolls of TP for a virus not known for causing GI distress of any kind.
     
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  3. MrTLegal

    MrTLegal Well-Known Member

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    I'm not sure I understand your point about seeing red flags from me acting consistent with the advice I was providing others.

    I made it a motto weeks ago to start telling people to prepare for this virus by researching it and educating others about it. And then, after reading that article, I realized that part of the preparation needed to also include ensuring that I could isolate myself and my family for 2-3 weeks in the event we got sick. A few days later, I incorporated the suggestion that people start to engage in social distancing even if they were not sick and were likely to survive any infection.
     
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  4. modernpaladin

    modernpaladin Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I don't buy .22lr cuz I dont have anything that fires it, but all the other various calibers I buy have been a pretty steady price for the last decade, with increases being very short lived and followed by an equivalent price drop. 9mm, .38, .357mag, 5.56x45, 7.62x39, 7.62x54, 30.06, 20g and 12g have all remained about the same price since we closed down all of our domestic lead foundries several years ago. The reason for this is that folks, like me, who stock up when supply appears threatenned, lax their purchases once the percieved threat ends. The resulting increased supply and decreased demand drives the price back down.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2020
  5. Ericb760

    Ericb760 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    But it doesn't, not really. In 2004 I could buy a box of 550 rounds of .22 at Big 5 for $15.00. Today that same box is selling for $60.00.

    https://www.sgogunsandammo.com/product-p/750.htm

    This is a direct result of people like you hoarding, whether you understand that or not.
     
  6. modernpaladin

    modernpaladin Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    In 2004 we still processed lead in the US.

    Also in 2004 people were hoarding ammo then too. Since the AWB of the 90s its been a common worry that gun rights in the US were in danger.

    Also rimfire cartridges are not commonly reloaded at home due to the liquid priming and centrifuging, so theres not as much competition in the market to keep prices stable.

    I think you've found the wrong scapegoat for your .22lr problems.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2020
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  7. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I've kept a month or so supply of food, plus other essentials, plus first aid supplies, for years. After the Bird Flu thing in 2006 I've had about 30 PP3 masks available, and can now give one to friends and relatives. Seems like common sense to me. I convinced a skeptical liberal ex-wife who lives in central London to stock up on a month's supply of food a couple of years ago as well, so she wouldn't have to go out onto the mean streets during some protest by the Oppressed in which they get provoked by our vicious racist fascist police into breaking out into an orgy of burning and looting. She probably still thinks I'm crazy but at least she did it.

    Most of are natural empiricists. The sun will rise tomorrow because it rose today. Today was pretty much like yesterday and tomorrow will be pretty much like today. Occasionally you feel little tremors and wonder if there aren't perhaps some social tectonic plates straining against each other ... but nothing happens so it's back to the struggles of daily life which are absorbing enough for most of us, sufficient unto the day being the evils thereof.

    Preppers are different. For whatever reason -- a heightened sense of the negative possibilities in the world, a desire to have an exciting hobby that distracts them from a boring daily life ... they want to be prepared for Troubles, and they know that troubles, when they come, come not in single spies, but whole battalions.

    But I think American Preppers have one big flaw ... many of them anyway. They're typical American Righties, individualists. They see themselves and their families surviving in isolation, in their Chez forte, dropping two or three Home Invaders trying to kick down their front door. Better than nothing, far better, but it's a strategy that concedes victory to the Enemy. Because short of a giant meteor strike that eradicates 99% of sentient life on the planet, the survivors WILL have a government -- either the existing one or a new one. And you WILL obey it. We need to make sure we're part of it, or at least have to be taken into account.

    Rather, I think we should take a leaf from our friends on the Left here, and think collectively. This doesn't mean relying on, the gubbmint, but rather organizing within your community to form a Volunteer Emergency Response Force, or something with a nice fuzzy name like that. No need to use the 'M' word, but of course such a force would be prepared to deal with Premature Reparations Seekers, of all colors.

    We need to re-read our Hobbes, and understand that civilization took a great step forward with specialization and the division of labor. Fifty ordinary American families taken at random will have a great range of useful skills, and if necessary, some people who can learn useful skills ... like First Aid (and then who can go further and learn what the Red Cross course doesn't cover, like how to deal with a sucking chest wound, and why you should put the severed limb, in a bag of course, of a CAX onto the stretcher with him when he's casevacced.) You can have available useful engineering equipment like jacks and chain saws and generators available, plus people who know how to use them. There's a lot of engineering skills involved in responding to a natural disaster, including the natural disaster called civil war.

    No one knows the future. But we can know the past, and if it teaches us anything, it's that history proceeds by long slow periods of 'underground' incremental quantitative changes ... and then suddenly the 'Old Mole' bursts to the surface, quantity becomes quality, all that is solid melts into air, and today is not at all like yesterday.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2020
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  8. US Conservative

    US Conservative Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    There are alternatives to toilet paper...
     
  9. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Exactly. It's the people who sneered a month ago, who are now hoarding in a blind panic.
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2020
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  10. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    The problem with this is that it's totally unreasonable.

    The people who made sacrifices to provide for themselves should not be expected to give it up for those who simply couldn't be arsed making the effort.

    There's a world of difference between your elderly widowed neighbour who can't get out to buy toilet paper, and the many many perfectly able people who sneered four weeks ago. If they chose to watch tv instead of spending their evenings in preparation, that's on them. They received the same advice we all received.
     
  11. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Tell Burt I am off grid :)
     
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  12. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    It's a new level of sneering, which peaked a few weeks back. As long termers, we're used to people finding all sorts of fault with the way we live, but it was off the charts even for us. Some people were actively contemptuous. Like, really bizarrely angry. As an observer of the brainpan, I put it down to our old friend 'denial'. They were trying very hard to pretend all was well, and didn't like reminders that maybe it wasn't.

    As for the food side of things, yes ... it's fun coming up with new recipes daily based on whatever is in season in your garden. We're now doing mainly beans/rice/veg (with small amounts of canned salmon for protein), to preserve whatever perishables we have on hand that we can't currently grow. It's led to some interesting flavour profiles !
     
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  13. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Nothing wrong with being empiricists, as long as you don't add hubris to the mix. It's one thing to know the sun will rise again tomorrow .. it's a whole other thing to never stop and consider your own ability to make hay when it happens.

    Agree that Preppers are different, though. It's also the difference between Preppers and people like us .. the self-sufficiency types. We've never done it because we think the world might fail us ... we do it because we think WE might fail us. As it turns out, this approach works in both instances :p
     
  14. Idahojunebug77

    Idahojunebug77 Well-Known Member

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    I am too hard on the preppers at times. Sure I think they prep for the craziest of reasons, but they are still prepared nonetheless. I can't fault that. I know they envisioned themselves out keeping the streets clear of zombies instead of holed up at home killing zombies on their tv screen, that's got to be sobering.
     
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  15. Ericb760

    Ericb760 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    On the contrary. The ones that I have interacted with personally are more concerned with their ammo hoard than they are actually eating or feeding their families if the SHTF actually happens, and they seem to think that during a catastrophe they will be out hunting for their protein. Go check out some prepper forums. One month of food? Check. 50,000 rounds of ammo? Double check. I get that ammo matters, and you should be prepared, but let's be honest here, are you ready to start shooting your hungry neighbor? I'm not.

    It used to be that we had Civil Defense, which stored food, water, candles, etc. in areas around a city. My dad was a custodian of such back in the 60's until they fell out of favor due to FEMA. He had hundreds of pounds of beans, rice, powdered milk, chocolate, coffee, sugar, etc. stockpiled at his designated shelter.

    Today the Right screams "SOCIALISM" at the thought of all of us pooling our collective resources to confront a problem, or if the government actually does something to assist it's citizens on a grand scale.

    I would argue that is exactly what government is supposed to be there for.

    But, I'm a progressive Leftist writing in Sanders, so wtf do I know...
     
  16. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Of course. That's what the state is properly for. 'Market failure', I think it's called.
    Every sensible person, Left or Right, knows this.
    So .... what happened?

    The reality is, there is also state failure. The good councillors of San Francisco, no enemies of government intervention, cannot even keep their streets from being covered with feces. And that's in normal times. Why ... it's politics. Victim groups are not responsible for themselves.

    As a liberal judge once ruled, a stinking tramp who goes into a public library to sleep has just as much right to be there as a kid trying to borrow a book.

    So we horrible old heartless people on the Right tend to think, better take care of ourselves.

    Of course, there is a lot of play-acting among 'preppers'. You sometimes get a sense of people with boring daily lives, looking for excitement.
    Well, nothing wrong with that. We are also homo ludens.

    And a good supply of ammunition might just come in handy some day.
    But you'd better have those tinned beans as well.

    More importantly -- and here is a genuine 'rightwing' weakness -- you need to do this collectively.

    The Lone Hero is just Hollywood fantasy, albeit a concept that goes back to Homer and probably earlier: it's what sells movies, or brings the villagers to the bard's campfire ... the Lone Hero saving his family, not the whole society working together to provide the warriors with three meals a day and a fresh supply of arrows.

    The reality, in a real disaster, natural or man-made you need a bunch of people, you need organization, the division of labor and specialization -- you need guys with chain saws and jacks and winches, guys who know how to turn off the power and reconnect the water supply and prop up the walls of a damaged building..

    And if you ever need those guns -- against a mob of premature Reparations Seekers for example-- it's handy to have a few guys who know how to designate a secure perimeter, put up some barriers to canalize the approaching shoppers, establish overlapping fields of fire, keep rotating the people on watch, and all those tedious things some Americans have learned over the last sixty years of bringing democracy to the Third World. And how to deal with sucking chest wounds and why you put the severed limb of a CAX on the stretcher with him when he's casevaced -- all the things they don't teach you at the first aid course at the YWCA, as useful as they are.

    But the liberals are right. We ought to have a robust Civil Defense program, including a 'Social Defense' construction project to provide, at a minimum, the ability to shelter Americans in the big cities and towns in case of nuclear fallout. There ought to be a much better emergency civilian response program -- every high school kid should be required to take a serious first aid course, for example. A good start. It might help to counter the me-me-me, precious little me, attitude that 75 years of being on top of the world have bred into all of us.

    And as for conservatives... if you're under 35 and have not yet done your military service.... go enlist right now in the National Guard. Put your money where your mouth is. Up until a few years ago, this might have meant suddenly being sent to bring Lesbian Outreach Centers to Kandahar, but I think we're getting over that. So forget those bone spurs, spur yourself down to the Army Enlistment Center, if the local lefties haven't closed it down, and sign up.
     
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  17. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yep. There's nothing like the feeling of smug self-satisfaction you get, when the crisis hits, and you find you've actually prepared for it. Especially if others haven't.
    It's common sense: have reserves, always consider what the Russians call 'the pessimistic variant', and above all, try to think out in advance what you would do in various situations where you would need to make a quick response. Example: you're awakened at 3am by a hammering on your door and the shout of "Police -- we have a warrant ... Open the Door!" It's possible that not having thought about this got a young man killed in Maryland last week. He had the gear -- three assault rifles and two handguns, was an intelligent guy ... but maybe he made the wrong move when the SWAT team arrived.
     
  18. BigSteve

    BigSteve Banned

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    My friends used to give me a hard time for always "prepping"; stocking up on non-perishables, three generators, cases of bottled water, etc.

    When Hurricane Matthew hit, though, I was the smartest guy they knew...
     
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  19. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    You actually think the right is responsible for the collapse of civil defense because..."socialism?"

    I admit that's a hot take I've not come across before.
     
  20. Ericb760

    Ericb760 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    No, that is not what I am saying at all. The ending of the Cold War and the advent of FEMA led to the decline of Civil Defense teams funded by the government.

    I have no doubt, however, that some would consider it "socialism".
     
  21. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    Socialism.

    I've been seeing that word a lot the past few weeks on this forum in totally unrelated subjects and threads, like this one.

    Did someone send a memo?

    I don't particularly see how this thread has anything to do with right or left, let alone socialism. You must really have just one track.
     
  22. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Except, not in this disaster.

    I'm actually a collectivist, so normally I'd agree wholeheartedly ... but not in this case. Your own small collective is about the limit. Some situations really do need disconnection from the broader community. The idea being .. of course .. that you can survive without that broader community.
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2020
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  23. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    1) Agree .. those fat rednecks who think survival means a month of freeze dried meals and ammo will be the first to die. They haven't a clue how to actually survive 'in the wild' as it were.

    2) Why would we pool our resources in this instance? Why should an individual who has worked really hard to avoid making themselves a burden on others, give up their resources? It's completely unreasonable. During World War II in the UK and other parts of the world, citizens were asked to plant vegetables to relieve pressure on rations, and were given instructions on how to preserve resources - food, clothing, electricity, water, fuel, etc. Responsibility was given to citizens, because citizens could be trusted to do the right thing. Those few who were irresponsible actually went hungry - until they realised they weren't special, and would need to suffer the extra work just like everyone else if they wanted to eat.

    3) There's nothing "Left" about giving hard fought for resources to the lazy.
     
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  24. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    I'll be honest, we've never thought about emergencies. That's not why we do it. We do it because we don't like the feeling of physical and financial dependence on the grid/system. Call it claustrophobia!

    We own no guns. We're not a gun country.
     
  25. jay runner

    jay runner Banned

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    1) If you don't have the skills no size of rucksack can compensate for that.
     

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