If you think about it Prepping is not really a new thing, before supermarkets, motorways and just in time delivery logistic systems millions of people used to set food n supplies aside for a rainy day. Rural folks right up to the mid 60s often got cut off for weeks at a time, before the importation of foods by air from places like Spain, Egypt, Australia, South Africa etc, you only saw strawberries, melons, grapes, tomatoes, bananas etc when they were in season in the area you actually lived in. So if you wanted fruit or certain veg your grannies had to preserve it and stockpile to see them through the winter. I remember only seeing tangerines, dates, figs etc at Chrishtmas.
So we moved forward with Supermarkets, air frieght, freeezer ships etc bring food from right across the world on the " just in time" delivery system, if a ship breaks down, storm delays it that food arrives to late and past its best. We can no longer grow enough food in the UK to feed more than about a third of the people. Since WW2 we have concreted over millions of acres of former farmland, that again makes us more vulnerable to expensive imported foods. Then we have the famous British weather, this year 2012 saw drought at the start decimate the soft fruit industry and the never ending rains in the middle of the year decimate the veg industry, a bag of spud that cost £2.38 a few months ago now goes for £8.25 according to the TV news.
So now food is expensive, difficult to find and of questionable quality, so those wise preppers who set food aside when it was cheap, good quality and plentyful now reap those benefits, and the sheeple.... they get to whinge over their beers.
As for the HOARDING question, During WW2 when things were already in short supply some people did indeed HOARD desperately needed foods ( note the rich were not affected by food rationing). HOARDING is wrong and immoral BUT HOARDING is not STOCKPILING.
Stockpiling is when you buy or grow food when its plentyful and affordable and set it aside, thats just prudent and wise.
The modern fabel of the Ant and Grass Hopper is very apt.
THE NEW ANT and the Grasshopper, Two Versions:
**** OLD VERSION
The capitalist ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The socialist grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE OLD STORY: Be responsible for yourself !
**** MODERN VERSION
The capitalist ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The socialist grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
ITN, SKY, CH4, and BBC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
The country is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Jeremy Kyle with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not EasyBeing Green'. Occupy the Anthill stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the SEIU group singing, We Shall Overcome. Then Rev. Rowan Williams has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake, while he damns the ants.
David Cameron and Ed Milliband condemns the ant and blames Maggie Thatcher, John Major, Winston Churchill, Oliver Cromwell, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.
Dianne Abbbott & Tony Robinson exclaim in an interview with Jeremy Paxman that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share. Finally the Equalities Comision drafts the Economic Equity & Anti Grasshopper bill retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper. The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his Labour voting socialist friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighbourhood.
(22 October 2012, 10:23)Metroyeti Wrote: Dont think you have to be "crazy" to prep. We rely on the shops being open 24/7 and running out of microwave meals is the norm in our society.
I recently interviewed a regional manager for Tesco 24 the convenience store side of the chain, he informed me that in many city centers ( he focused on Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle) they only stock small bags or sugar, pint sized bottles of milk, small bottles of detergent, loo rolls in two packs, ready prepared salad, chease in lumps under 250 gram etc because the vast majority of the city center residents only buy enough food to last out the day.
But the further away from the urban hubs people live the bigger the size groceries they buy.
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