Stocking Up, Putting Back, Prepping = Paranoia?

[Wifezilla]

Are some people having a hard time envisioning a breakdown in the system because they are a part of the system so to speak? Maybe us "fringe" types have an easier time envisioning the system falling apart because we have been viewing it from the "outside" for so long? I can see the current system as being unsustainable. Too much debt. Too many people sucking the system dry. Too much bureaucracy. Too many barriers to entry for new small businesses. Too many existing companies closing their doors....

Just thinking out loud I guess.

 

[Lady Henevere]

No need to be snarky or rude or assume I lack empathy. I asked for information so I could better understand something, and tried to explain the parts I don't understand. If it came across as condescending or rude, please accept my apologies -- I didn't mean it that way at all.

I have been dirt poor. I have scrounged for change enough to buy a meal. I have wondered whether I would be able to pay rent. I have put a few dollars in my gas tank since that's all I had. (ETA: I was thinking of my adult years here, and forgot to mention that I was homeless for while as a teenager and lived in a car.) I've been there; I get it.

But that's individual. And I understand the individual stuff. People and families come across hard times -- that's a given. My DH's job depends on his physical ability -- if he's injured, his career is over. I understand that kind of thing.

The part I don't understand is the bigger threat that seems to be discussed here. The idea that starving friends and family will be knocking on your door and you will have to turn them away. The idea that you need lots of ammo to protect against starving masses of zombies. It's the societal threats as they relate to prepping that I am looking to understand better.

I have been a member of this forum for two years. I am not a troll. I do not start fights. I do not criticize others. I am asking for information because I honestly want to know.

I have to go but I am looking forward to reading through these responses more thoroughly. Thanks to those who have shared information -- I appreciate it.

 

[k0xxx]

My original intent of the thread was not about preparing for Armageddon or famine, but rather some peoples attitudes toward just keeping enough food to feed themselves and their family for a short term emergency, so as not to become part of the problem. Some parts of the general public are ingrained with the belief that doing anything to be self sufficient is tantamount to being antisocial.

That being said, we have had the great fortune to live during a exceptionally stable period of history, in an exceptionally stable country. Having stocked mega-stores and an uninterrupted supply of cheap food for the last 60+ years is quite unusual, if you look back through human history. However, we live in a very fragile society, and it's one that is starting to show deep cracks. As someone once said, we are only three meals away from total anarchy.

Consider a few things.

The US dollar is becoming very unstable. As a nation, we are borrowing almost 45 cents of every dollar we spend, with our debt now exceeding the entire GDP of the nation. That means that if you took every cent of every dollar produced by the entire country during a year, it still would not equal what we owe. No nation in the history of civilization has ever recovered from such a debt without imploding economically and its currency becoming worthless. I have no faith that we will be the first.

On the world market, oil is priced in dollars. As dollars become worth less, buying oil. and everything else, takes more dollars. This is called inflation. (The common misconception is that inflation is the cost of goods rising. In reality it is caused by the value of a currency declining). Modern farms run on oil. Mega-machines cultivate the land, plant the crops, harvests them, and then transports it. As oil becomes more expensive, so does food.

In our effort to feed the world, we are dealing with severe problems of soil depletion and have become dependent on artificial nitrogen fertilizers. These fertilizers are made from oil. Over drawing has reduced aquifers in most our agricultural areas to crisis levels. In areas with renewable aquifers, farmers are having to drill deeper and deeper wells. Eventually pumping will have to be stopped until the aquifers can be replenished. For fossil aquifers, such as the vast U.S. Ogallala aquifer, the deep aquifer under the North China Plain, or the Saudi aquifer, depletion brings pumping completely to an end. Farmers who lose their irrigation water have the option of returning to lower-yield dryland farming if rainfall permits. In more arid regions, however, such as in the southwestern United States or the Middle East, the loss of irrigation water means the end of agriculture.

There are many more reasons to be concerned with our long term food supply, but the above should be enough to get the point across to most. As history has shown us, things can spiral out of control quite fast, especially when multiple factors are involved. Even with inflation as we see it today, our food is cheap by the standards of the rest of the world. It won't be that way forever. A wise person sees storm clouds and prepares for rain.

 

[freemotion]

let me tell you that panty and stock pile came in very handy

Hee-hee-hee!!!! I love this typo, so common on this forum......I didn't think of stockpiling underwear, but it makes perfect sense.

 

[freemotion]

Having stocked mega-stores and an uninterrupted supply of cheap food for the last 60+ years is quite unusual, if you look back through human history.

It won't be that way forever. A wise person sees storm clouds and prepares for rain.

I've been reading cookbooks from the WWII era and it was considered doing your patriotic duty to put food away, canning, dehydrating, root cellaring, etc. The book I'm reading now has detailed instructions for all this and more....building a smoker, recipes for stuffed possum, etc. Almost all the recipes have ingredients that are readily available on the homestead or that can be easily substituted.

You don't have to look far to find images of ads from that era that promote self-sufficiency in many forms. I find that fascinating, as I do my parent's stories of their childhood and how things were done....they both come from large families and stocking up was just normal everyday operating procedure. Not a fringe element activity.

My father's family grew almost everything they ate, family of 13, and sold the rest (working farm.)

My mother's family moved into the suburbs and raised a family of 10 there. My mother tells of her mother cooking on the wood stove and trading WWII ration stamps so she could stockpile certain items. She made all the families' clothing and they had a huge garden.

This was normal just one generation ago.

 

[old fashioned]

What I can't seem to wrap my mind around is anyone with a family only having a couple of days worth of food on hand as mentioned in earlier posts. Although I'd bet they probably did have more food than that, they just don't know how to prepare it. I can't believe how many people don't know how to cook.
I guess I consider myself lucky that my Ma had grown up during the Great Depression & had always talked of when she had to eat pancakes with lard everyday for her school lunch cause that's what they had and stories of walking to the dump to scrounge for foods that hadn't had chemicals dumped on it. Ma was a great 'scratch' cook, could make a meal out of almost nothing and canned alot. She'd also stock up on sales. This wasn't done to hedge against some gvt take over or world collapse, but personal financial hardships. Even my ex-MIL did this who also grew up during the GD although she was a MAJOR hoarder.
I guess it's kinda like Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind shaking her fist full of dirt saying 'I'll never go hungry again!'

Anyway as for myself, I've been raised this way & have always done it...stocking up. I wouldn't know how to NOT do it. It's definately come in handy many times when personal finances have been too tight. I'm not stocked to cover more than about a month if anything should happen. That's better than alot of people, but nowhere near what I'd prefer.

 

[BarredBuff]

And also most of us are just wired this way...............

 

[GOOGLE NIKOLA TESLA]

Doesnt matter how much food our country has, its how its transported, and all the parts of the economic process that can break down and stop its movement to the store. When the fuel and the parts for the trucks cost so much that it cuts transportation thats one reason to be stocked or self sufficient. The system is always to control, but when ur ss u can be broken from these slave chains and be able to live no matter what happens. The - 500 on the stocks was a good example to not even think twice for preparing. To me its obvious, its surprising when people dont understand these huge drops.... Some people are in jobs that could dissappear tommorow and so it makes sense for people to prepare, so you can off set costs of food when you dont have the money to buy food..

Preparing and self sufficient life style is important to our future. In the past people prepared but they turned people into consumers. When u think of the word "consumer" on its own, its insultive lol. Being self sufficient makes you a "producer" of ur own food and products,and energy, and you are more able to live without being directly connected to the economic machine.

it makes sense to me . Loss of the triple AAA rating for the first time is a big WTF!! lol

Goood luck ss people!!! From what ive read lots of you people are doing great and it relieves some of the pressure when all the predicting starts to become true, because we prepared for it

 

[Leta]

Interesting thread.

I said in different thread that something in the (U.S.) cultural installation process happened backward with me. This is a part of it, I think. I have a pantry (two, actually) not out of paranoia, but because it saves me money and time. If you buy what you need, as you need it, you will:

-pay top dollar
-go to the store once a week or more
-pay more than you need to in shipping and/or gas
-make multiple trips because you forgot something
-live without essentials until you can find time to get to the store
-live with a low level anxiety brought about by chronic disorganization

I know, because this is the way I grew up. Learning homekeeping is underrated.

My mom was deeply unhappy during my growing up years, I know that impacted her homekeeping and organization abilities. She also got very, very little help from my dad and prioritized cleanliness over absolutely every other domestic virtue, which meant, as I got older, relying more and more on packaged foods, disposable items, and eating out.

She also constantly whined about us not having money. Not in a keeping up with the Joneses kind of way, in fact, the opposite. More like a self pitying thing. Which all goes back to her being unhappy, of course. I look back on it now, and when my mom was my age, my parents had a lovely, lake home, almost 3000 square feet, 4bd 2bth, two living areas and an office. A huge laundry room filled with nice kitchen cabinetry and a freezer. (You know what was in the cabinets? Dust, and my brother's boy scout camping mess kit. You know what was in the freezer? My cousin's placenta and cold dust. Really, you can't make this stuff up.) They had less than 10 years left on their mortgage. My mom bitched a lot about lack of closet space and a garage and not having a master bath.

I always thought this was odd, considering we almost never had toothpaste, toilet paper, bread, cheese, or peanut butter in our house. We were constantly out of things- not like milk and produce, but stuff that's easy to stock because it has a long shelf life. I remember trying to talk her into buying several loaves of bread and freezing it, and her refusing because we'd forget about it in the basement freezer.

I made a very conscious decision to do things differently. I live in a 1850 house that has no countertops, crooked floors and 2 prong outlets and old Michigan cellar for a basement. We are on a tiny 1/10 acre city lot. But you know what this house came with? Two pantries. Even though this has been a city for 150+ years, that's the way they rolled then. I have gamma seal buckets full of white flour, white sugar, wheat berries, oats, pasta, baking soda, brown rice, dog food, and a year's supply of laundry powder. I have gallon glass jars full of popcorn, brown sugar, dry milks, cornmeal, gluten. I have dozens of mason jars full of other stuff. I have a freezer, a big one, that is under a serious rotation schedule because it's constantly crammed. I have dozens of jars of food that we've put up, mostly from forage and our garden, a year's supply of yogurt cultures, sauerkraut fermenting as we speak, and a tote full of ziploc bags. I have cloth TP, kitchen towels, diapers, menstrual supplies, mop heads, and cleaning rags. I have indoor and outdoor clotheslines, and a handwash set up that includes a washboard and a way to remove the water (a giant manual salad spinner). I have a generator, an inverter, and a hand crank radio, not to mention a lot of hand crank kitchen items. And yet, a flood would wipe us out. You don't have to know which end of a weed to pull to know that wet grain in broken jars isn't worth much. I would not guard my house with a gun, and I would expect government help, I think that's what government is for.

I watched Mad Men recently, and it was so funny, I felt like it really illuminated how backward I am: the main character runs from his Depression era, farm childhood, and lives a wealthy life as a Manhattan ad exec. I am totally bored with midcentury design, I don't like money very much, and I'd rather gouge my eyes out than live in Manhattan. But the Depression era scenes riveted me- the big enamel dishpan and farmhouse sink look just like mine! I have that apron! They are so poor, but they are able to have a horse (and a car), LUCKY THEM! The scenes that were supposed to portray grinding rural poverty looked pastoral and very appealing to me. (Abusive alcoholism notwithstanding, but this series shows that in the urban 1960s as well as the rural 1930s.)

I am not paranoid at all. I think I'm basically an optimist. But I don't like to shop, and I'm not going to hang out in my cellar or pantry, so I may as well use them for storage. I like needing less than $100 per week to buy groceries and non food items for a family of five, it leaves us enough money to do other, fun stuff. I really like the fact that we rarely run out of anything- going shopping in the basement is so much quicker than running to the store!

Some people love to shop, and wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they didn't run to the store everyday. I think shopping sucks, I don't like spending money, and I have the space, so my priorities are just really different.

 

[goatilocks]

I have just started our SHTF prepardness. I finally got the ok from hubby to purchase some #10 cans of FD fruits and veggies. I have many bags of rice and beans, and bought some Ramen noodles that were on sale recently. Im looking at more coupons and sale items at the store and stocking up. Hubby has sold several guns and bought more ammo for the few he has kept. I have goats and chickens and we are looking for several acres to buy. Im not paranoid, but it never hurt anyone to be prepared. Rice and beans may not be the most nutrious, but I know we wont starve to death.