Oh wow where to even start with this... I think I voiced something similar a while back ("Are we all just kidding ourselves?" IIRC)
Whilst John's initial post raises loads of valid points, I don't think a crash or collapse will result in a return to the stone age, unless we are really unlucky. BP made this point too, I think humans in general are pretty good at surviving crashes and coming out the other side reasonably ok, after all, what is human history but a series of collapsing and changing civilizations? Please see my recent review of The Knowledge How to Rebuild our World from Scratch for more on this. I think a good group of survivors could soon return to a printing press and gunpowder level of technology.
I still think that in any given scenario, a good proportion of British preppers will not survive; it'll be hard to hide for long from raiders, and hard to defend your little patch (later on this would be more feasible in my opinion.) I honestly think luck will be a large factor in those who survive, and in the end we will be sharing an island with a scattered population of the lucky who stumble through, the vicious primal gangs of men and those who were prepared ( the groups are not mutually exclusive.) As such, we should all be ready to ride across the rainbow bridge . . . that would be a pretty noble albeit f*cking brutal end, a rorkes drift style last stand against groups of raiders.
NR is right on seafood; early humans tended to run to the coast and stay there. Things like salt from the sea, sustainable supply of fats, seaweed for making soda ash, as well as lots of flotsam.
Mortblanc - in an ideal world I would have been in rural Idaho, but here I am stuck in Norfolk with a head full of ideas about constitutional republics, pioneers and natural, and unalienable rights to things like bearing arms and free speech....
BP, I'm studying Agricultural Management atm, currently the UK produces around 60% of indigenous foods, but that is with modern farming which is just as interdependent and fragile as the IT industry. About half of the modern yield levels come from artificial nitrate application, even on the best soils. If we could go back to something like the Norfolk four course (legumes to fix N, nitrate hungry crops like maize and wheat, then root crops, mainly for animal feed before nitrate scavengers like Rye or barley) where animals are a crucial part of food production, we could probably support quite a large number. Interestingly, the gap between "modern" agriculture and organic, sustainable etc farming is shrinking, as more farmers adopt minimal tillage systems, green manures etc simply because it's reeeealy expensive and quite illegal to chuck agrochemicals everywhere.
It's amazing to see how much squabbling there is here. I would have thought we'd all be reasonably united, as prepping often seems to be a political identity all of its own. Where do you all go when not posting here? Is there a VIP UK prepper email chain I should get involved in or something?
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