4 ms·

It's not irrational IMHO to be prepared to live a couple of days or so without power or grocery stores, as that's happened dozens of times all over the US for a

by ufmace 10y ago

It's not irrational IMHO to be prepared to live a couple of days or so without power or grocery stores, as that's happened dozens of times all over the US for a variety of reasons. A total collapse of civilization on the other hand, not so much. I will also say that I've wondered how many of the people prepping are capable of spending a day hiking in the woods with a decent pack on their back. Having a ton of stuff may not be very helpful if you don't have the physical capabilities to adapt to unexpected circumstances.

Alex3917 10y ago
> Having a ton of stuff may not be very helpful if you don't have the physical capabilities to adapt to unexpected circumstances. The actual amount of physical stuff you'd need to survive some sort of post-apocalyptic scenario really isn't more than a few hundred bucks, e.g. a year worth of crystalized iodine for purifying water and a flint & steel fire starter costs all of $25. What's more expensive is learning the edible plants and mushrooms in your area and their medicinal properties, plus whatever other miscellaneous survival skills you'd need.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Iodine is probably a good idea, but unless you're the only one left you probably ought to save up some ammo as well.
  - Alex3917 10y ago
    I'm not a gun owner, but at the same time I realize that it's not possible to live as a vegetarian in a survival situation. This is because plants have almost no calories, you can't digest them without fat, most don't have enough protein, they take too much energy to gather and cook, etc. So without being able to cover everything with tofu, blue cheese, nutritional yeast, etc., there is basically no way to survive for any period of time without a gun. I have an interest in edible plants and mushrooms, so that's where I overlap with the preppers, but I feel like not owning a gun is one reason it wouldn't really make sense to label myself as such.
    - ufmace 10y ago
      IMHO, in a realistic survival situation, unless you already live in an extremely remote area, like hundreds of miles from even a small city, the other survivors are going to be a much more immediate concern. Unless of course whatever the disaster is results in immediate casualties in the 95%+ range in all major cities, and you somehow survive this. There would be a huge number of people in the area and no prospect of feeding all of them. They would all be very determined indeed, and many would have their own guns. Everyone would either starve, die at the hands of raiders/thieves, or become raiders and thieves themselves, and thus have plenty of supplies from whoever did prepare. Having a gun would help, but more important would be to have a large group with military-like organization strong enough to stand up to the stresses involved in surviving such an apocalypse. If you already have that or can make it/become part of it, you'll survive. If you don't, then your guns probably won't help you much, no matter how fancy they are and how much ammo you have. So IMHO, to realistically prep, you'd have to either live way, way out in the boonies already, already be part of some kind of warlord militia in our current mostly peaceful world (a street gang might do it), or just accept that this is basically never going to happen anyways.
      - Alex3917 10y ago
        > There would be a huge number of people in the area and no prospect of feeding all of them. I'm currently in NYC, where clearly there are way more people than edible plants. Even if you look at only the 1% or whatever who know which plants are edible, there still wouldn't be nearly enough plants to feed them. But in any sort of post-apocalyptic scenario, the first thing that would happen is that people would be unable to mow their lawns and the parks. So within two or three weeks the amount of edible plants would go up 100x. Still not enough food to make staying in a city viable for the longterm, but probably enough that you could feed yourself while hiking or biking to a more remote area.
        PhasmaFelis 10y ago
        You think a few weeks will turn lawn grass into an abundant food supply? Actual wheat takes months before it's ready to harvest. If, on the day of the apocalypse, every single person in NYC dug up the lawns and parks and planted every inch with edible grains, they'd all starve to death long before getting any bread. If they planted before the apocalypse so that the harvest came in just before the shit went down, they'd still starve to death, because a city doesn't have enough arable land to feed even 1% of its occupants. The amount of land required to keep NYC fed is larger than the city itself. That's putting aside the fact that there's nothing in lawn grass that humans can get enough calories out of to even make up for the effort of harvesting.

by ufmace 10y ago

Alex3917 10y ago

> Having a ton of stuff may not be very helpful if you don't have the physical capabilities to adapt to unexpected circumstances. The actual amount of physical stuff you'd need to survive some sort of post-apocalyptic scenario really isn't more than a few hundred bucks, e.g. a year worth of crystalized iodine for purifying water and a flint & steel fire starter costs all of $25. What's more expensive is learning the edible plants and mushrooms in your area and their medicinal properties, plus whatever other miscellaneous survival skills you'd need.

jessaustin 10y ago
Iodine is probably a good idea, but unless you're the only one left you probably ought to save up some ammo as well.
- Alex3917 10y ago
  I'm not a gun owner, but at the same time I realize that it's not possible to live as a vegetarian in a survival situation. This is because plants have almost no calories, you can't digest them without fat, most don't have enough protein, they take too much energy to gather and cook, etc. So without being able to cover everything with tofu, blue cheese, nutritional yeast, etc., there is basically no way to survive for any period of time without a gun. I have an interest in edible plants and mushrooms, so that's where I overlap with the preppers, but I feel like not owning a gun is one reason it wouldn't really make sense to label myself as such.
  - ufmace 10y ago
    IMHO, in a realistic survival situation, unless you already live in an extremely remote area, like hundreds of miles from even a small city, the other survivors are going to be a much more immediate concern. Unless of course whatever the disaster is results in immediate casualties in the 95%+ range in all major cities, and you somehow survive this. There would be a huge number of people in the area and no prospect of feeding all of them. They would all be very determined indeed, and many would have their own guns. Everyone would either starve, die at the hands of raiders/thieves, or become raiders and thieves themselves, and thus have plenty of supplies from whoever did prepare. Having a gun would help, but more important would be to have a large group with military-like organization strong enough to stand up to the stresses involved in surviving such an apocalypse. If you already have that or can make it/become part of it, you'll survive. If you don't, then your guns probably won't help you much, no matter how fancy they are and how much ammo you have. So IMHO, to realistically prep, you'd have to either live way, way out in the boonies already, already be part of some kind of warlord militia in our current mostly peaceful world (a street gang might do it), or just accept that this is basically never going to happen anyways.
    - Alex3917 10y ago
      > There would be a huge number of people in the area and no prospect of feeding all of them. I'm currently in NYC, where clearly there are way more people than edible plants. Even if you look at only the 1% or whatever who know which plants are edible, there still wouldn't be nearly enough plants to feed them. But in any sort of post-apocalyptic scenario, the first thing that would happen is that people would be unable to mow their lawns and the parks. So within two or three weeks the amount of edible plants would go up 100x. Still not enough food to make staying in a city viable for the longterm, but probably enough that you could feed yourself while hiking or biking to a more remote area.
      - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
        You think a few weeks will turn lawn grass into an abundant food supply? Actual wheat takes months before it's ready to harvest. If, on the day of the apocalypse, every single person in NYC dug up the lawns and parks and planted every inch with edible grains, they'd all starve to death long before getting any bread. If they planted before the apocalypse so that the harvest came in just before the shit went down, they'd still starve to death, because a city doesn't have enough arable land to feed even 1% of its occupants. The amount of land required to keep NYC fed is larger than the city itself. That's putting aside the fact that there's nothing in lawn grass that humans can get enough calories out of to even make up for the effort of harvesting.