4 ms·

> 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

> 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.
        Alex3917 10y ago
        So in your typical NYC grass you have: dandelion, chicory, common mallow, burdock, curly dock, bitter dock, red clover, plantain, various onions and mustards, etc. All of that stuff gets pretty big very fast if you don't mow over it. Obviously you still can't feed yourself on only plants, but the quantity of edible plants would probably outstrip the number of people who knew what they were. NYC has 30,000 acres of public parks, and tons more unofficial open space.
        PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  - taneq 10y ago
    > it's not possible to live as a vegetarian in a survival situation Well, maybe not impossible, but difficult enough that you're doing yourself a grave disservice. > there is basically no way to survive for any period of time without a gun How do you jump to this? In fact on any medium-to-long scale, guns are going to rapidly become useless. You'd be better off with a compound bow and a good supply of hunting arrows. Even without a projectile weapon there are plenty of other options: Fishing, trapping/snares, herding, captive smaller food-animals (chickens/rabbits).
  - hga 10y ago
    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. This book claims otherwise, and without resorting to grains (note I've only skimmed it a bit, starting a garden is a next year thing for me): https://www.amazon.com/Grow-Die-Guide-Survival-Gardening/dp/9527065712/ https://www.amazon.com/Grow-Die-Guide-Survival-Gardening/dp/... Nuclear War Survival Skills says you can almost get by with grain, but that includes sprouting it for vitamins (and making yeast might be better for that). BUT children will not thrive without fats. As for hunting, I am not only a gun owner, but my father's favorite/only hobbies are hunting and fishing (the latter of which I don't like, whereas hunting was OK, if he offered to take me on a hunt I'd go). While we didn't hunt anything that we didn't eat, it's generally not an efficient way to gain high quality protein or fats. To do that, you need to cheat with methods that as I vaguely recall don't involve guns, e.g. use big nets to catch fish (or raise your own catfish, for example, although as I recall most fish we in the US catch aren't good oil sources). For animals, "poaching" and trapping methods, e.g. snares: http://www.snareshop.com/departments.asp?dept=14 http://www.snareshop.com/departments.asp?dept=14 As for not being able to label yourself as a prepper, I'm an old school nuclear war/economic collapse 60s-80s survivalist, and as others have noted, if you aren't able to protect you and yours, including the stores of materials and food you'll be needing to survive, well, why bother unless you live in a completely rural low population far from the big cities areas where you can depend on others in the community to do that in general for all. (And, hey, try one out some time, they're lots of fun and not very dangerous if you follow the 4 Rules (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Cooper#Firearms_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Cooper#Firearms_safety) and for your first time or three, have a formal or informal coach.)

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.
      - Alex3917 10y ago
        So in your typical NYC grass you have: dandelion, chicory, common mallow, burdock, curly dock, bitter dock, red clover, plantain, various onions and mustards, etc. All of that stuff gets pretty big very fast if you don't mow over it. Obviously you still can't feed yourself on only plants, but the quantity of edible plants would probably outstrip the number of people who knew what they were. NYC has 30,000 acres of public parks, and tons more unofficial open space.
        PhasmaFelis 10y ago
- taneq 10y ago
  > it's not possible to live as a vegetarian in a survival situation Well, maybe not impossible, but difficult enough that you're doing yourself a grave disservice. > there is basically no way to survive for any period of time without a gun How do you jump to this? In fact on any medium-to-long scale, guns are going to rapidly become useless. You'd be better off with a compound bow and a good supply of hunting arrows. Even without a projectile weapon there are plenty of other options: Fishing, trapping/snares, herding, captive smaller food-animals (chickens/rabbits).
- hga 10y ago
  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. This book claims otherwise, and without resorting to grains (note I've only skimmed it a bit, starting a garden is a next year thing for me): https://www.amazon.com/Grow-Die-Guide-Survival-Gardening/dp/9527065712/ https://www.amazon.com/Grow-Die-Guide-Survival-Gardening/dp/... Nuclear War Survival Skills says you can almost get by with grain, but that includes sprouting it for vitamins (and making yeast might be better for that). BUT children will not thrive without fats. As for hunting, I am not only a gun owner, but my father's favorite/only hobbies are hunting and fishing (the latter of which I don't like, whereas hunting was OK, if he offered to take me on a hunt I'd go). While we didn't hunt anything that we didn't eat, it's generally not an efficient way to gain high quality protein or fats. To do that, you need to cheat with methods that as I vaguely recall don't involve guns, e.g. use big nets to catch fish (or raise your own catfish, for example, although as I recall most fish we in the US catch aren't good oil sources). For animals, "poaching" and trapping methods, e.g. snares: http://www.snareshop.com/departments.asp?dept=14 http://www.snareshop.com/departments.asp?dept=14 As for not being able to label yourself as a prepper, I'm an old school nuclear war/economic collapse 60s-80s survivalist, and as others have noted, if you aren't able to protect you and yours, including the stores of materials and food you'll be needing to survive, well, why bother unless you live in a completely rural low population far from the big cities areas where you can depend on others in the community to do that in general for all. (And, hey, try one out some time, they're lots of fun and not very dangerous if you follow the 4 Rules (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Cooper#Firearms_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Cooper#Firearms_safety) and for your first time or three, have a formal or informal coach.)