Planet lockdown

[LAC]

That's true SD. The thing that got me into prepping was the 2011 riots. I remember thinking to myself, how long is this going to go on for? Do I have enough food? When will law and order be restored? The streets stank of fire, and the tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

So, my advice to any aspiring preppers lurking on this forum is 'think ahead' in as much as that is possible given your situation. Don't be a sheeple, do the things that people are doing now weeks beforehand and plan accordingly. Do you really need 200 rolls of loo roll if you don't actually have that much food to wipe off in the first place? That is sheeple herd mentality and mass hysteria. When people were busy buying up all the loo rolls, preppers should just laugh and be buying up the things that may be needed a few weeks or months from that time (a good stock of loo roll should be kept at all times anyway, and can be accumulated gradually), like cough medicine and painkillers if you're unfortunate enough to get sick, as the shelves were still full of these when the sheeple were at the loo roll mass hysteria stage. Alcohol hand sanitiser and N95/99/100 masks should have been bought as soon as the news came in from China in January/February (if you didn't already have them), along with an increase of food supplies to avoid the panic buying mania. Dried foods, tinned foods, and plenty of wet stuff like curry sauces, chilli mixes, condiments, and dried/powdered herbs and spices to spice up bland food. Plenty of vitamins too, a wide range and a good stock of multi vitamins. You can live on just rice alone for a long time as long as you take a multivitamin at least every other day. Boring but you're still alive.

We should think of this pandemic as real world training, and I myself am using it as an opportunity to review my prepping. It's impacted me personally, as unfortunately my father has become a statistic of it, as he sadly passed away over Easter and his death was recorded as Covid-19, although he had been in hospital since December last year following a severe stroke. He was constantly improving and deteriorating with chest infections as a result of the stroke, so whether it was actually Covid-19 that he contracted or just the stroke induced chest infection that finished him off I shall never know, because as the law stands now, all enquiries are suspended, and the NHS are directed to allocate their resources as they see fit.

Ultimately, many urban preppers strive to get out of the city and buy some land to live off, and I am just getting to that stage myself, I started searching last year. That is my primary long term goal from this point onwards. It's difficult for people with jobs and mortgages etc, so do what you can with bought food, even buying one extra tin of food a week will give you 52 spare tins after a year. If you have a garden then grow veg or try and get an allotment to do it if you don't. You don't even need to till the land, you can grow root vegetables in grow bags with soil and compost/fertiliser in them (lazy man's farming).

Do everything methodically and proportionately, label by date and rotate accordingly. Once you have your base stock it's just a matter of topping it up regularly so as not to let it fall much below that base level. Keep your radar open to news and events here and abroad as these can be early warning indicators to increase and/or adapt your preps accordingly to a possible future event. As I say, this pandemic was text book in that regard, and quite forgiving in the sense of it's gradual nature and forewarning. Maybe the sheeple can now see that we're not mad, just prepared, and it wasn't us panic buying the loo roll, that is not prepping, that is panicking!

There is also a wealth of information in the files section as I'm sure we can all attest to.

All the best people,
LAC