Is it possible we are all just kidding ourselves?

[bigpaul]

I have heard this said so many times online" I don't want to survive if I cant have my coffee to go/broadband/mobile/xbox/whatever", well fine, more breathing space for the rest of us !!!

[CharlesHarris]

Malbushim.

[MaryN]

Prepare for the worst; hope for the best; be prepared to grasp every opportunity; stay as healthy and fit as you can. We're none of us immmortal. If the worst comes to the worst you should be able to say that you lived your life to the best you could.

[Tibbs735]

Don't get me wrong guys, I understand the need for prepping . I enjoy it, and will continue to do so. It has a lot in common with a simpler, back-to-the-land lifestyle that is worth pursuing even with a guarantee of total safety. It is also very useful in the numerous possible personal and local mini-SHTF scenarios. I've said before, I want to survive. I want to survive even an OTT The Road style scenario, with no nature left.

What I am asking is, in a full blown lights-out-forever scenario, with the unique set of challenges set by living in the UK, is how you will make it through the initial period of chaos? How will you prevent everything you have being taken? Lets be real here. When desperate people are combing each house looking for stuff, how will you hide your preps or stay safe? What about things like livestock? Or children? I'm trying to think outside of the box.

For example, I realize that I will almost certainly not make it as I am now. I'm in the process of getting some shotguns and getting the neighbours to consider prepping (thinly veiled as transition community stuff.) It just seems rare to acknowledge that even with a fully developed plan, and total preps, that we have conditions outside our control that could make it very, very hard. I just don't see how even if I was fully prepared as I could legally be in the UK I would be able to deal with thousands of desperate people combing the countryside, short of setting up on an island off the coast, because of the relatively short distance from large urban centres to our equivalent of "wilderness" or rural areas where the retreat or sensibly placed home is.

[Sunna]

theirs no rule book here, sombody from a city area may have a harder /eazyer time than a rural prepper.
if things go as bad as your saying , i think of rapper 50cents cd get rich or die tryin /// my take survive shtf or die tryin.

you can only do your best...

[Steve]

All we can do is increase our chances, nothing is guaranteed. I know for sure that I have a better chance of enjoying life now than when I lived in suburbia, because my life is already better. Call it prepping, call it a change of lifestyle, whatever, it's better.

I'm another who doesn't see "armageddon", just a slow erosion of living standards as the UK struggles to pay the bills, so I'm removing myself from the rat-race as far as possible. There will be no state pension for me or my wife in 15 years, and none for my kids or grandkids, so it's my job to set up something that might help support us. Not easy, but perhaps possible.

[bigpaul]

depends where someone lives, someone in a big city is going to have a hard time when it goes TU simply due to pressure of numbers on what there is left, than say someone who lives in a rural area where there might be less material stuff but there are also less people. I have never been a disciple of the "thousands roaming a tiny island" brigade, british people(at least the 21st Century population) aren't built that way, they will wait for "the government to save us"...

[Skean Dhude]

We could fine that nothing happens but most of the stuff we put aside can still be used. Only some of the items you buy are likely to remain unused and it is no different to that fondue machine that was all the rage a few years ago.

Humans are survivors, they adapt and thrive. So people will survive. We prepare so we are a step ahead and this increases our chances. Doesn't mean you will survive but it will help a lot.

People put aside money for insurance, just in case, a pension, so they can retire. This is no different to that.

[Tarrel]

Nuclear conflict or total destruction of our habitat through runaway climate change would probably be issues but, apart from that, I'm optimistic.

[Mortblanc]

Extinction level events occur once every one billion years, on the average.

Sudden loss of technology throwing all humanity back into the stone age has never happened.

Sudden and total world wide breakdown of the social order has never occurred in all of world history.

World wide, civilization ending, nuclear war has never happened in the history of nuclear power.

Armed insurrection inside the boundaries of my nation has happened only three times in the past 100 years. In each episode the good guys lost!

HOWEVER!

Chances are 100% that I will endure several days at -40 next winter.

Chances are also %100 that within the next year I will endure a power outage that lasts several days.

Chances are 100% that I will be snowed in for a significant period of time.

Chances are 100% that I will experience damaging wind storms, probably within the next two weeks.

Chances are 100% that some time in the next year a criminal will drive past my house and decide if he thinks the risk is worth the effort of invading my property. If he is desperate he will not care if I am home or not.

Chances are 100% that I will use my firearms to kill a predator attempting to have a chicken dinner at my expense within the next few days.

Chances are 100% that I will put meat in the freezer using my firearms this hunting season.

Chances are 100% that I will go "wild camping" or vehicle based camping within the next two weeks. It has been part of my recreational life for more than 60 years.

My mind wraps around these smaller issues that have happened, or are very likely to actually happen and my NEED for preparations for those events that everyone should anticipate, because they happen over and over, again and again during one's life.

I find that these preparations for actual and expected contingencies do not need constant validation for my attention, they do not create an obsession and do not make me doubt my sanity.

Not being prepared for the normal eventualities of life is the insanity.

The fact that preparing for those "normal" problems easily translates to a more extended or concentrated time frame or effort is a beneficial side effect of the normal activity.

Some of my preparations extend well beyond the "normal", but that is only because I enjoy that aspect of my life and would pursue that activity anyway as a hobby or sport. I justify it as a pleasure and not a necessity due to any likelihood that "the end of the world as we know it" is near.