“How Far Do You Want To Develop Your Preps?”

[Scythe13]

(7 June 2013, 10:46)NorthernRaider Wrote: You have got me paranoid now SD, every time I see you reply straight after I post I think its been closed

SNAP! Me too haha.

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Oddly enough, I was going to make a very similar post to this one the other day, basically asking how far people wanted to take their preps. Great minds think alike ;-) haha

Well, considering the situation down here is not too urgent. There is not a huge problem pressing on the boarders of Wellington, I feel like we have time to continue upping our preps slowly and steadily.

Originally, I was earning a reasonable wage, but now that I'm doing this security work (leaving soon!!!) I'm only putting about £100 a month, at most. Some months I'll be busy relaxing and building the relationship with the wife. So we tend to go out. Those months the spend can be as little as £5 or £10 a month on tins, soap, and water. Other months it can be a hell of a lot more. I like the idea of scrumping, where you steal fruit from trees. You can adapt that and make it into urban-scrumping, where you steal other stuff haha (for legal reasons, please not all ridiculous comments, or any comment I make, is purely for entertainment purposes. Neither I nor anyone else on this forum recommends any illegal activities!!!). With that in mind, I'd say my preps increase in value, above that which I spend on them.

Off-Gridding!!! I had originally been a part of a group planning on building a 10 building Earthship Centre near Brighton. Funding fell through, and it went to crap. Did try to gather interest from other areas, to try and build funding for a similar project, but not enough of an interest to get it off the floor :-( With that in mind, I would love to be able to go 100% off grid, but thing I would actually opt for a 70% O-G lifestyle.

At the moment, our only electricity use is cooking, and charging laptops/phones. We could take the phones off grid, but I snapped the wiring for my mini-panel that was charging a car battery. Need to sort that out, when I have time. Our food is largely from supermarkets, but we are growing a lot of crops at the moment. So that's a nice thought. Got 6 chilli plants growing, 12 peppers, 8 courgettes, LOADS of basil, loads of rocket, 12 kale, and a hell of a lot of garlic. But a 'small' project is in the pipeline that could well change that.

I have a chinese friend sending over a load of solar sections so that I can build my own solar panel. It is costing me £40 in postage, but will make a fair whack of power!!!

Water is mostly off grid, but we are still happy using the taps for now. Knowing we could switch is more important than actually changing, at the moment.

When we have the ability and facilities, to go 100% off-grid, we'll still need stuff like fuel for our cars, unless ITM gets their systems up and running sooner! That would be awesome.

The wife and I are living a semi-normal lifestyle. She works, I work, she loves animals, I love plants. So, it's pretty good. She puts up with a lot of my prepping, complains about others, but then supports somewhere else. You'd be hard pressed to tell we're preppers. Tins hidden under the kitchen cupboard flooring. That false back wall under the stairs, freshly dug holes in the garden where trees were once located. We just look like an ordinary family, at the moment. Small project may change that though :-( But everyone knows I'm a bit odd as it is, so they'll probably just thing "It's just Scythe13 being eccentric again."

Personally, I'm planning for as many people as we can shelter. Where we live, it's a close social group. Most people get along really well. Whether it's weapons, food, or whatever, we are planning to have enough for much more than just ourselves!