How many of you guys have stored extra food and prepared for emergency power?

[VladKEasternTiger]

Hi everyone, okay this may not be related to Electronics Im wondering because I see a lot on line people saying "prepare for collapse" etc.. and basically storing tinned food, bottled water, essentials and even power alternatives such as diesel generators and solar and wind turbines incase the grid shuts down.

I am a poor boy with a small house with no garden therefore I cannot be self sufficient as I wished. Not to mention I live in a building with people above me. The allotment waiting list is 10 years  But nevertheless I have stored about a months supply of tinned food and know a bit about bushcraft incase the Shit hits the fan. I live in the city center

Im wondering guys what provisions and prepping if any have you done and how about power alternatives? I have loads of batteries and car batteries 12v I will need an inverter to hook them up to something or charge them from a wind turbine to use for house hold appliances. 

[tecman]

I am out in the country, so need to be prepared for outages which can disrupt water and cooking.  I have a 10KW diesel generator and 50 gallons of diesel on hand.

Plenty of food in the freezer that will stay cold.

No expecting any collapse any time soon.

paul

[EEVblog]

I live in the suburbs, so it's kinda pointless to even think about such things.
If the power fails I can just drive (or ride my bike) to somewhere that has power if needed, otherwise no big deal.
I have about 2 hours of video battery time, so I can shoot a few blogs by torch light 

Dave.

[A-sic Enginerd]

Not as prepared as we'd like to be, but getting there.
Wife got back into canning couple years ago. Not just for emergency stash, but because it's soooo damned good. (mmmm....triple berry jam.....mmmm.....). Oh, sorry, got lost in the moment there. Pantry is always pretty well stocked with all kinds of goods.
We're also pretty rural with powerlines up on poles still so outages are not terribly infrequent. At one point it was a weekly occurrence. Got a generator coming from my folks as soon as we can make it up to their place to get it. Not much, but enough to keep the freezers going. Aside from normal fridge, 2 large freezers well stocked. We get a half a cow and a whole pig each year. (3 growing kids can pack it away). Got a bunch of laying hens last year so now we get about a dozen eggs a day. Garden keeps getting bigger each year. Would like to setup solar, but need to wait for the $$ on that one. Especially since we're on a well, so no power = no H2O. And no, I'm not going to hoist it up by hand. The hole is a whopping 6" dia. with the static water level at about 50 feet on a good day. The well is 300+ feet deep.

If something were to happen that made things really THAT bad, we'd be packing up and heading out before long. If something say like the scale of Katrina were to hit Cali, to be honest I really don't want to be here. Too many whacko's with severe cases of cranial rectosis that think they are always owed something and someone should just hand it to them. Sure we get the quakes, but for the most part things are built to handle them now. It doesn't even make the news anymore until it's at least a 6.0.

[GeoffS]

Although not stocking up for the apocalypse, I recently turned the backyard into a veggie patch.

Come the downfall of civilization, I'll be able to survive provided I don't mind a diet consisting mostly of cabbage.
 

[Simon]

well when i get my house (a week from now if words are kept) I will have a veg patch but really easterntigers what TV channel or radio station are you watching/listening to ?. I'm also onto getting in solar power but that is costsly

[EEVblog]

I recon that for $2.3M you can't go past this place:
http://www.missilebases.com/adironback

Dave.

[Simon]

I recon that for $2.3M you can't go past this place:
http://www.missilebases.com/adironback

Dave.

is that for real ? the photos are so bad quality I'd hardly take them seriously

[rossmoffett]

Those are real, Simon.  Through the nuke decommissioning process America has also been decommissioning the silos - then they go to auction and those guys have built a bunch of luxury homes inside of them.

Here in the US most people keep some ammunition to protect their food stores also if they're into that sort of thing, I just keep enough for the copperheads.  

My electricity is known to go out for 1-2 weeks at a time up to 3 times a year in really horrible weather.  My part of the country just isn't equipped to deal with snow/ice, and we've been getting a lot of that in the past few.  Because of that I keep enough food to last a couple of weeks on a stretch.  My house is heated and my stove cooks by propane fuel, so I get by fine with a lantern and candles during those times.

[kc1980]

I'm not a gun freak or anything, but if I lived near Compton or Watts, I'd definitely own a gun for protection.  All it takes is one Southern Californian earthquake and subsequent fires, and the whole place could possible become a circus for a few weeks.  BTW, I'm sure all of you have heard of Compton, right?

[Thomas]

I am 38 years old, living in Norway. I have experienced about 5 power outages in my life, all of them lasted less than 3 hours.

Never owned a gun, never will.

[VladKEasternTiger]

well when i get my house (a week from now if words are kept) I will have a veg patch but really easterntigers what TV channel or radio station are you watching/listening to ?. I'm also onto getting in solar power but that is costsly

Russia Today, 

[VladKEasternTiger]

well when i get my house (a week from now if words are kept) I will have a veg patch but really easterntigers what TV channel or radio station are you watching/listening to ?. I'm also onto getting in solar power but that is costsly

I hope
you are not
purchasing, rent your much better this economy is made of fiat currency not backed up by anything

[Pyr0Beast]

I have absolutely no supplies and I don't plan on getting any. As long as we have running water to flush the toilet, we'll be fine

[VladKEasternTiger]

well i think, u dont have to. all u have to do (i think) is googled more or infront of national geographic television and find out how tribemen live and work. so in case of a really serious sh*t happen, just go to a nearest jungle, and start living inside it

the greatest thing that god has given us other than life, is the earth itself, so dont worry, use it, we still have it, up until now. Cheers!

Good comment, God bless 20 miles where I live they is a beautiful park with lakes and an abundance of fish and rabbits, I can set up some snare traps and thats me sorted, 

[VladKEasternTiger]

rabbits? hmmmm.... yummmy!! 

haha add some Spices, my female friend is an Indian cook throw it on the Triangia stove and the smell is breathtaking. Seeing as Ive begun this thread I just want to add you dont need large acres of land to grow your own food or be self sufficient, in my old apartment I just had a small balcony and brought some large drums and buckets and grew my own Potatoes, carrots and onions they tasted far nicer than the supermarkets and my local market fellas were so impressed when I told them 

[Simon]

well when i get my house (a week from now if words are kept) I will have a veg patch but really easterntigers what TV channel or radio station are you watching/listening to ?. I'm also onto getting in solar power but that is costsly

I hope
you are not
purchasing, rent your much better this economy is made of fiat currency not backed up by anything

I got it about 12 % cheaper than asking price which was already low for a nice solid house like this, the only defect the house has is that there is no drive but in compensation I got a huge garden so when we loose our petrol or it becomes £10/l I will not have to worry about the car anymore and will have enough garden space to feed me and some. I'm going to do my veg patch so that it is minimal maintenance, put a sheet over the ground to stop weeds and hold in moisture and have an automatice wattering system, i may even make it electronically trigered according to the ground dampness  so all i'll have to do is reep the crop.

I'm sick of buying over priced ready rotting veg anyhow

[VladKEasternTiger]

I have absolutely no supplies and I don't plan on getting any. As long as we have running water to flush the toilet, we'll be fine

So you implying we all drink toilet water if push comes to shove?

[Simon]

it is the same water coming out of your kitchen tap

[VladKEasternTiger]

it is the same water coming out of your kitchen tap

With a little bit of human waste added to it from the system

[VladKEasternTiger]

tap it! before it reach the bowl! 

But the passage it comes out of before it reaches the bowl is full of grime 

[Simon]

well it is the same water pipe system that you get "drinking water" from, really if your toilet system is higenically clean you could scope it out and drink it 

[saturation]

To plan for emergency, you need an estimate of when civilization will return or you will simply prolong your demise, with no help in sight. 

So you stock enough supplies to last you until rescue appears.  Food and water should last up to the longest possible rescue time, otherwise supplies should keep you alive long enough to backpack out of the disaster area.  Hand crank lights, 2 way radios, are important. 

Longer that a few days without power, sewer and water, things can get pretty ugly: hygiene becomes difficult and if you have unprepared neighbors asking you for help and you are well stocked, you'll reduce your survival chances by 1/2 time for ever added person you take in based on your fixed supplies.  Luckily thats quite rare, but tell it to the folks in New Orleans.

[saturation]

If you are not sure of water, you should boil it.  In an emergency its better to be thirsty and healthy than to risk getting diarrhea; if you get a true infectious diarrhea you better make peace with God; plus you risk contaminating all others with you because you may not have enough extra water to wash, otherwise why risk drinking sewage?  Unlike fresh water in streams that could have disease, human waste contaminated water can have disease causing bugs that will resist boiling, so unless you have an reverse osmosis hand pump, even boiling won't be enough.

[Pyr0Beast]

So you implying we all drink toilet water if push comes to shove?

Heheh. No, no.
It is just that you need something to drink/maintain the hygiene far more than something to eat.