Respect for other members - specifically those in a suburban area

[Geordie_Rob]

How comes every other post I seem to read on here has at least 1 thing criticising members who live in a town/city or other built up area?

No, this isn't specific to NR incase anyone is wondering. If it were, I would've sent him a message direct.

Yes it would be great to live somewhere in total isolation, surrounded by a crocodile infested moat before you reached ten foot, poison tipped spiked, electrified fence (which in turn, leads to a 12ft solid reinforced concrete wall).

However, most of us instead have to live in this place called reality.

We probably (in my case yes) live fairly close to where I was brought up. I live close to where I work. I live here because its more suitable for my family that the above mentioned fantasy home. I work where I do because I need cash to survive.

You do what you do, I'll do what I do.

Please respect me enough as an individual to not try & force on me your opinions. My opinion may well be that your opinions are utter crap!!!

I thought this forum was all about sharing knowledge to assist fellow preppers. Instead, every day it seems that something else has been posted knocking people who live in towns/cities/other suburban areas.

Skean, you/we have a great site & forum here. However the same old people keep preaching the same old high & mighty rubbish on it & this in my mind may have negative consequences. Lets say for example we have a qualified doctor as a guest who happens to know a lot about herbal medicines. They may well be put off because they live in a town/city & after reading the (IMO) offending articles think "sod that, ill look to join elsewhere". Same goes for the huge criticism of foreigners. I would love to see someone become a member who has lived through a collapse such as the yugoslav conflicts of the 90's (we may already have members). Their knowledge might be absolutely crucial & the difference between someone living or dying. But instead all they will read is they are blood sucking parasites only here to blow us up after claiming millions in various benefits and living in a state funded 200 bedroom stately home.

Here's a suggestion (that's all it is).

If you have something useful to share, please don't hesitate to share it.

If all you're going to do is critisise other people's choices, I for one don't want to here it.

If you happen to be an unregistered guest reading this & are considering joining, please do. We aren't all high & mighty, bigoted dinosaurs. I for one would love to hear from you & read about any knowledge you want to share.

Finally, if this post has upset or offended anyone I apologise as this wasnt my intention. I am however quite offended by some of the other posts on here.

Rob

[NorthernRaider]

I'm sorry if it offends your sensibilities but my opinion is as valid as yours, you choose to live as you do, I choose to live as I do, if you think (wrongly) that I am attacking your lifestyle IGNORE me its that simple.

Indentifying and highlighting the hazards from urban living are just as valid as the threat from terrorism, storms, the EU, NWO, But you dont appear to like the harsh undeniable facts that the greatest threat most people face is living where they do, but we cannot cover it up or refuse to discuss it because its a fact of life.

No one is criticising them PERIOD

Kenneth, Tarrel, Bracken, myself, AL, BP etc etc all have our routes in reality I can asure you of that, we just have different priorities over people who choose to live in cities.

[Geordie_Rob]

NR, I specifically said it wasn't specific to you. I actually think a lot (99.99%) of what you have to say is very informative & helpful. As I said, if I had a problem with you (or anyone else for that matter), I would send a message directly to them.

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I also said specific & specifically in the same sentence. Stoopid me

[NorthernRaider]

Geordie sadly it a harsh fact that most of this community urban or rural, young or old, ex mil or 100% civvie, lad or lass are ALL very inteligent and highly motivated and driven people with a fiery passion hottter than a blow torch, its just utterly impossible not to upset, anger, annoy and even piss off each other at times, I dont think... no I'm SURE no one MEANS to offend anyone else but I think when you have such a passionate driven subject as preparedness and survival we are all going to upset each other at times.

I used to get into allsorts of often heated and nasty arguments with other preppers that just would not happen if we were sat round a coffee table, good friends have sadly become enemies because their viewpoints clashed, SD helped me individually to preseve the peace by showing me how to use the ignore button, so now folks I strongly disagree with or argue with to often I put in the Ignore drawer and peace is maintained ( to a degree )

One point I think you may not have thought of is you have been here a while and so you see similar articles about the iissues involved in urban prepping surface time and again and it appears that its a campaign against urban preppers, but what you (like me) often forget is we get one or two newbies joining each week, 99% of em live in ciies and towns and the first question they usually ask is " What should I do first? "

The usual answers are read the forum, "make a plan, then see if you can move out of town" which sets off the debate again.

Best I can advise is the same advice SD gave me, ignore the posts that rile you most, I have to myself or I would go insane
Your driven barmy by anti city posts and I go loopy over conspiracy theories !!!

Peace and love to your family dude.
NR

[Geordie_Rob]

I understand what you're saying mate. But why should a new preppers plan be 'leave the city asap'?

[NorthernRaider]

Because for a large number of them its wise and prudent, many folks come to the forums specifically because they see their once loverly boroughs become hellholes, I would hazard a guess that environment living conditions such as crime, pollution, insecure food supplies, immigration, gangs and terorism are the prime reasons for a lot of people to become preppers.

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I know personally that BP, AL and my own family buggered off out of cities for excactly those reasons. You may be wiser / braver / madder than us and be content to stay put, but many more people look at their urban lifestyle and say F*** this I'm offski"

And its not just preppers, look at the white flighters, over 250,000 from London alone, then the down sizers trying to free off capital from their expensive town houses, millions of those buggers say " screw the commute, bugger the crime, sod the congestion charge, I'm getting out"

Then there are our close cousins in the green community who want to go back to nature and offgrid hundreds of thousands of folks look at their urban rooots, some set up city coops like the one in Walker, but many more choose to leave the cities outright to live a greener lifestyle.

Some folks are hardier / tougher/ crazier or just happier in cities good for them, But I think ( underline the word THINK) that the majority ( may be a slim one I'm willing to learn) of preppers want to get out of Dodge at the earliest opportunity, Judging by my INBOX and Letterbox full of people asking for advice about finding the best way of moving further out for the least cost.

[Geordie_Rob]

Yeah but a lot of those issues affect smaller communities aswell.

For those familiar with the north-east English coast, there is a small ex pit village called lynemouth (not far from ashington). During one night, tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage was caused by some little toe rag(s) who thought it would be fun to slash car tyres, scratch bodywork & smash off wing mirrors. This is in a place where the population is a few hundred.

My point is, it can happen anywhere. Moving out of a city doesn't suddenly make you immune to anything.

[NorthernRaider]

But the risk of crime is much less out in the boonies, tyre slashing is a nightly occurance on the council estate I grw up on, our estate used to see three or four cars nicked and torched each week. out here the last crime of note was theft of hand tools from a shed on an allotment !!

I was bimbling around Whickam, Ryker, Walker and Gosforth a bit lately looking at the fabulous urban eco projects but I would rather suffocate my family than live there, yet millions of other folks live there quite happily, horses for courses. I was born and raised in the smog, filth and crime of Teesside, to me it was the norm until I got to visit the army apprenticeship college at Harrowgate late 71, then was posted to Taunton in 72, I had never seen an orchard before then and I could not understand what the local yokels did for work cos they had no chemical complexes, nuclear power atations, ship yards, coal mines or steel works to work in, and the air was clean!!!!!

So when after being married for 20 years we finally realised we could afford to start a family I looked at my environment in Teesside, the dirt, the noise the constant traffic, the sirens, the yobs, the vandalism, the only places for kids to play was synthetic play aras in the middle of an estate, the shitty schools, the pollution we looked at our son and decided regardless of sacrifice or cost we are getting out of the city, we dont regret a thing even though we are skint. Its each to there own at the end of the day, in my opinion the most viable option for many folks is to move out, be it from city center to suburbs, or from suburbs to villages it doesnt work for all but it does work for many.

[Scythe13]

I love city life. Vibrant, fun, entertaining, exciting, and good gyms haha.

The crime and all that is around, but who cares? I hang out with mates from the gym, and we have a laugh together. We don't get mugged, or attacked by racist islamist extremists, or angry police, or anything like that. Put simply, a city is only as good as the people you hang out with in there, and the places you frequent.

For me, if we didn't have cats, I'd have pushed the wife more towards buying a city property. I LOVE city life. If stuff kicks off, then so be it. But if you want to go black ops and get illegal items, it's faster to get them in the cities. So, there's a plus side to the crime part.

As for cities being the biggest danger to a prepper (you're all going to hate this, but suck it up....pardon the pun) is that big gut! Yes, how boring is that, but bad quality of health and fitness is a killer, and it's dependent on what you put on your plate, not on where you live. You're more likely to get a heart disease or something health related, snuffing you at an early age, than you are being killed by a city gang.

As with everything, weigh up the costs, rewards, benefits, etc, then go from there.

For me, live it up in the city. Get an office job, work up the ladder, then use that money to buy a BOL with solar panels, water collection systems, a shooting range, a wooded area, crocodiles in a moat and all the rest. Better to do that than live in a dump in the country where you'll freeze in the first heavy snow fall. I don't know about you, but the idea of owning a nice place out in the stix with all the mod cons, appeals to me much more than living in a run down old farm house (although I know BP loves those kinds of properties, so as NR said Horses for Courses).

A city is HUGELY advantageous in regards to finances, which is a MAJOR factor in limiting the prepping ability.

Each and every to their own, but if you live in a city....I'm jealous!

[Geordie_Rob]

Where I live, the cost of insurance for for theft & damage is less than when I lived in a rural area.

Don't get me wring, I would like to give my kids the chance to experience some of the things I experienced when I was a kid. But equally they will experience things I never did when I was a kid. 1 example is we have a beach less than 20 mins walk away (5 min drive).

As for saying you would rather kill off your family mate, I would ask SD to remove that bit. We don't want to add fuel to the fire that as preppers we are crazy & obviously insane. I know what context you mean it in, but just incase someone else mis-interprets it.