Threat of black outs

[BDG]

You still have to flail at it with a hammer however, which damages your joints, you could injure yourself and it makes a racket - which should TSHTF, you would not want to happen.

I too used to use a bolster and a hammer. Then I got a pallet breaking fork for not much money at all. Much quicker, much quieter, much less stress on the body.

Timber is only going to be of any good to those that have the facilities to burn it. Most of the people I know who have wood burners get them put in and then stop using them after a short while down to a couple of reasons - they dont like the mess, they cannot make or control a decent fire, they worry about CO, they worry about a chimney fire and so on.

I look often at chimneys and there are quite a few I see with the cowls on that do not look old in my area, but you never see the smoke of the fire starting or the heat haze - they are little more than ornaments to most. As for those collecting pallets, good luck to those fellas and their small and average sized cars. Everyone I know who burns wood has a stack of wood already.

The soft spoken, soft around the middle soft in the head lot who have bought a stove as some kind of statement - I would like to see them carry a pallet 200 yards in the cold. They will more than likely give in and camp out at work or in the pub.

That and chimney fires and CO poisoning will happen to some.

For me, I have my big stew pot that goes on my stove, I need a new stove kettle, food is always prepped and I have more than enough wood to see me to the warm weather the end of next spring. As for light, torches and candles are always in the house (matches and lighters with all candles placed in lots of different places in the house) and the tilley and storm lamps are with the parafin in the shed.

If I get the new greenhouse up before winter - which I probably wont, as I have a shed load of other things to do - it is going on a 3ft brick wall and I am going to incorporate a masonry heater into it too, keep it very warm for the amount of wood it will use - I could stay warm in there too.