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Hello everyone, I'm Matty, based in South West Devon. I have been a prepper since I was about 16, so coming up to a decade now. I've come to a point where I think it would be good to branch out and meet some like-minded individuals. Initially I was preparing for a pandemic scenario, so with some of the equipment I had I suppose I was ahead of the curve when it came to covid. I've read up on plenty of theory's, watched every documentary there is. But I believe there is only so much you can learn from theory and I'd find it valuable to have other people to bat ideas off of and potentially connect with people that are more local to me. I just stumbled into this site recently and thought I'd see how I got on with it. Happy for anyone to private message and such! Otherwise hope everyone is staying safe out there
Good morning, Mattyboy and welcome to the Forum.
hello mattyboy, I'm in North Devon but was brought up in Plymouth.
have a look at some of the files on this site they may give you some of the info you could be looking for.
Just a word Mattyboy.

We are mostly all old geezers here. Please take that into account. Also remember due to that, we have each and every one lived through several financial squeezes, civil unrest, terrorist attacks and this latest round of illness.

Also take into account that most of this crew, being old geezers and some of us with the resulting health issues such as bad hearts and respiratory ailments, we still all survived the pandemic so far.

Most of what you see on You-tube and the internet in general is a load of crap, and as you propose, theory.

Feel free to ask here what we have actually seen and what we have done, and what we are really doing about the things that could still come upon us.
MB nailed it. When he and I were your age we never believed that we would live this long. Long life can be both a blessing and a curse. Best advice I can give is to be frugal, active and practical. Live simply and learn basic skills like carpentry and gardening which can help you be both resilient and self reliant. Build a network of trusted friends, maintain social contacts, remain active and fit as you can be and maintain food storage and a cash reserve against hard times for when the old Jeep breaks down and you need a new engine, which I recently had to do. I felt it more cost effective to rebuild the 20-year-old vehicle than to buy a newer one plagued with computerized whiz-bang gizmos which present multiple single-point sources of failure, having to pay more for taxes, insurance, etc. and having the thing depreciate 30% as soon as it was driven off the lot.

During the 1980s I was out of work for over a year and had to relocate 1000km from where I had been to start a new career in a different field. It paid off and I retired in 2010 with a modest pension, being debt free and I moved away from the city to my parents old mountain cottage which was paid for and in good hunting and fishing country about 100 km West of the I495 beltway around DC.

Maintain your health, doing whatever it takes and avoid going to places where crowds of stupid people congregate to do stupid things. Living and working in and around DC after 9/11 was an eye opener. My goal was to not live in the hive.

But you cannot survive long term in the country without trusted friends and neighbours.
The older you get the more important it becomes.
Hello Mattyboy and welcome to the forum ! as been said already we are a pretty decent and helpful lot ! ....just jump straight in and join in .......you are now amongst Friends !
Thank you all for your warm welcome to the forum. I hope to get to know you guys and learn from you. As made abundantly clear, it seems I'm rather young in comparison to you guys. But I find that to be a blessing of sorts. Experience is more valuable than anything and hopefully I'll be able to draw on that experience to further my own knowledge, hope everyone is well and keeping safe
Hello and Welcome. As well at the people on this forum we have lots of files on the file site and lots of articles on the main site. One bit of advice is that there is a variety of ways to do anything. Not all will be right for you so listen to peoples advice but try it out for your own requirements.

Enjoy.