New Scenario

[John]

With all these just for fun scenarios lets take the just for fun out of it and do a serious one.

The SHTF whatever the cause.
You and your survives.
It is now 12 months down the road. All your stocks are fast running out.
You know that all power has gone and there are not many survivors.
At present you have not seen any others but you they are around.

Two questions.
What are you going to do now.
What longer term future do you see for you and yours.

Have a nice day
John

[Mortblanc]

At 12 months in you should be gathering you first or second harvest depending on when the "event" occurred.

What you do after the food is canned, dried, pickled and stored is split up all the firewood you accumulated over the summer, continue improving your living situation and pray no one gets sick or injured.

The "long term future for you and yours" is dependent on who "you and yours" are.

And there will be people about. That famous 90% die off still leaves 100+ people psm in GB. (6+ people per acre)

"You and yours" should have been patrolling and locating exactly where they are and their situations. More than likely they know exactly where YOU are.

BTW, you can expect your sons to marry worthless women and your daughters to run off with worthless men. They will sponge off you whenever possible, dump the grandkids off on you while they tromp about, be irresponsible and disrespectful.

Org the cave man had the same problem.

[bigpaul]

(27 July 2015, 15:43)Mortblanc Wrote: The "long term future for you and yours" is dependent on who "you and yours" are.

And there will be people about. That famous 90% die off still leaves 100+ people psm in GB. (6+ people per acre)

the average in the UK is 650 per square mile, in my area of the country it is 120 per square mile or just over one fifth of the UK average. according to the last census there are 11 acres per person in my parish. that's before any "die off".

[Steve]

One square mile is 640 acres. 100 people per square mile gives them 6.4 acres each.

That's just me being pedantic. In reality much of the land is worthless, poor soil, too steep, waterlogged, covered in tarmac etc., etc.. Forget city "openspaces", your crops will be gone as soon as they look edible.

If you're a city / town dweller perhaps your best course would be to head for the countryside and make yourself available as a labourer, farmers will be missing those huge tractors so an extra pair of hands could be welcome, you get to learn the business and can bugger off to do your own thing later on.

[Scythe13]

If it's a year on, we have 2 other preppers on this road as well as a couple of shooters, and a farmer. So cannibalising nearby houses for solar power and the alike would have been a priority, as would open planning the grounds between the houses. The first 'major' crop would be getting harvested, and the fortifications would be guarded. Thankfully fortifying our area would be pretty simple. Just have a couple of exits to block, then we have houses all round, and open land in the middle. Once fences are down, we'll be happy to farm what's left in the middle, working as a team.

What future? Well, considering I don't foresee a major die off scenario e.g. EOTWAWKI, I believe that we would need to stay alive, and in time, we would make contact with other groups similar to ours. Even with a 90% die off, that would leave the average UK village with around 100 people. So seeing other people would be pretty common, until they died off too. Very pessimistic, now I think about it.

But gradually, the final surviving 'greats' like the scientific minds, engineers, and the alike, will be able to start rebuilding. Within 5 years there will be a safe food chain, and communication channels (like radio and the alike back up and running more regularly). Power generation will be pretty speedy from solar and the alike which will already be running. With the reduced population, the electrical needs/draining will be HUGELY reduced, so running batteries and solar will be pretty much enough for most of the year. The other things like wind and water wheels will be harnessed by year 6.

Slowly, but surely, we'll be back to where we are now. Yes, I kid not, we'll be back up where we are now, speaking about the lessons we should have learned. And then in 10'000 years time, everything will go wrong again :-(

But the future I see…it's pretty bright. The future is whatever we're going to make it into.

Personally I would be happy with returning to life BI (before internet) say back in the early 1990s. But even things like TV would be about 10 to 12 years down the line. But really not that much further. The internet would be available as it is bomb proof…literally.

Human Creativity has allowed us to have the world that we live in today. It has enhanced science, medicine, arts, literature, mathematics, and the alike. Some people take books and essays like "I Pencil" (awesome read by the way) to be a symbol of how fragile the world is. While others see it as the amazing ingenuity of mankind as a species. So they see it as a beacon of hope for the future.

In 1 year I see us as stable (if you're not stable in the first year, then you're doing it wrong). In a year and a half, starting to prosper. In 2 years, we'll have the option for 'leisure time', but it'll be best employed as an academic pursuit time period, to help further what we would have built.

[Mortblanc]

That is if everything works perfectly for you with no crop failures, good weather and no interference.

[bigpaul]

I see Scythe has got his rose tinted glasses on again 1990? you'll be lucky if its 1890!! the main problem apart from all the unprepared and the infirm, the very old and the very young and those on life saving medicine dying of starvation, dehydration and disease, is the power grid going down and staying down, once the electricity goes down that is the end of modern life for the majority of the population, most people cannot and will not survive without their modern conveniences. "scientific minds"? they wont be immune from what is happening, what happens to the general public will happen to them also.

[bigpaul]

depending on when the event happens, you may not even get your first harvest until year 2, certainly 18 months is quite possible, and as for "leisure time" we will be working harder than ever as everything will have to be done by manual labour-horse power if you are lucky.

[MaryN]

Well, 12 months on (depending on which season we would be in - say summer) I would be trying to get as much of the produce I could harvest in, stored, preserved etc., and making a go at getting a second crop into the ground to carry me into Spring and beyond. We have some great trees here, so I would have made efforts to get a good stock of firewood cut and stacked in readiness - heating and cooking would depend on it. My stocks of perishables and those previously available would need to be replaced by sustainable foods, so it would be back to the caveman diet of protein supplemented by whatever I could grow or forage for. We have a good size river around here so fishing would be on the to do list. I think, from everything I know and have learned, we would probably survive, although it would be very hard. We have transport though (horses) and could get ourselves around to see what was available around and about.

Got to say, I would not be particularly hopeful about a large number of people surviving after a big event - even here in the countryside. The last power cut we had (it was planned and leafleted!), my neighbours ran round like headless chickens because they could not make coffee! I fired up our barbecue, boiled a kettle of water and made bacon sandwiches. It was like watching a farce. I would do my best to help, but honestly, I think most of them would be liabilities.

The future for us would obviously depend entirely on how successful our first year after the event was.......

[bigpaul]

I know what you mean Mary, I remember during the Fuel protests-which were known about and advertised widely, people still running their cars virtually on the fumes not bothering to top their tanks up before the protests started, then moaning about it afterwards.