Could we survive??

So when this COVID "pandemic" started a bunch of us laughed. As it took fire the shortages began. Yeah I know we still joke about the TP that went AWOL through out the Country.

It was kinda funny...............at first until you found yourself as one who could not find any TP. I watched as supplies started dwindling. Can goods, hand sanitizer, gloves, masks and the list grew. It grew so much that our meat, chicken, pork etc started deminishing as well.

Prices started getting higher as supply and demand had to be met or some stores just price gauged you. The meat market around here is finally a bit better. For a while HEB was wiped clean and nothing coming in. Yeah I know, the factories workers had COVID ect

My family and I never have been hoarders, preppers and such. We kept a supply of stuff for about a month or so. TP was the only thing that really killed us or trying to buy it. TP is still on the short end in this area anyway.

Makes me rethink if we have been doing it right with everyday items. Also I do not think this Country can suffer anything larger then this virus. This was enough to pretty much cripple us, imo.

A lot of us would survive. Preppers, hunters, fishermen, outdoorsmen, to name a few. The majority would not survive. All the major cities would burn, just take a look at the last few months protesting over a lie being pushed by the media. Billions of dollars burned and dozens of people dead. Imagine if our supply chains stopped, imagine if an EMP hit and our electrical grid went down for good. People would lose their [censored]. Store owners have been killed where they stand trying to protect their store from "peaceful protesters". Imagine what people will do when it is total anarchy with a breakdown of society. It would be the wild west out there.

Me and mine can survive. I've got plenty of bullets and knowledge to get off grid to live a sustainable life for a pretty long time if shtf. I do love my TP, but if push comes to shove, we could work with it. May take a bit to callous up to to the pine cones though.

Read the book series "299 Days"

My family would be ok. Pretty sure Buzz would be dead in the first 5 minutes from a panic attack.

Plenty of other things to wipe your butt with other than toilet paper if push comes to shove.

As far as long term survival - not too worried about my immediate family - short of a nuclear fallout we'd be just fine.

However, I think any sustained problem would wipe out about 2/3 of the US population pretty quickly as the vast majority of people have zero common sense, let alone survival instincts.

I consider myself somewhat handy. I'm a 1/2 arsed mechanic welder chef, I'm an avid hunter and fisherman and have lots of supplies.

That said if tomorrow, someone flipped a switch and the power grid went down, public water quit flowing, retail and manufacturing were gone, gas/diesel/propane etc. were gone, vaccines for people and livestock alike were gone, we were back in the days of hunting for dinner on the daily i think a lot more than less people are going to be in world of hurt.... even the ones who think they are A O K. Even if they are ok for a day or a week or a month, i bet it doesn't take long to turn real southerly for them. Lots of people would die. I may be able to live as in survive=not die for a while, but its not an existence i will probably care to have.

When every person in America is killing deer/hogs/fish etc. to feed their family how long you thing its gonna last before there are none?

If this was the case we'll all be super happy how fast all these feral hogs reproduce.

Every person won't be. Only those capable.

Let’s be honest most don’t know how to store meat anyways,

Most people don’t even have enough salt or cure handy to make a pounds of jerky

My clan can....not sure about some others I know....

2 things made it worse...
1. The media.
2. The reason stores ran low is because we (stores) rely on other countries (China) to fill their shelves.

Just learn what NOT to wipe with... Leaves of three, let them be.

There would be massive amounts of waste no doubt.

I've already cut back on my portions.

I think the best answers thus far on this thread are from redchevy and BOBO. We including myself would like to think we could/would survive. Yea we have guns, ammo fishing equipment etc. During the last few riots of mayhem [censored] here on our soil, some just a few months ago homeowners and business owners were being handed their arsess.

It's in our back yard as close to the State Capital. I really want to believe that all of us, including myself would self preserve. The stats as we have seen in just the last couple of yrs seem at odds with us. It is easy to arm chair qb this but there are people who have tried and sadly failed.

Please don't think I am in any way shape or form pushing the liberal agenda. I truly wish when it came to protecting, feeding and taking care of my family I could do what was/is lawfully necessary. The arrests of law abiding people doing just such have crippled our mind set of self preservation when needed. Truth.

Think of the large cities, where no food is grown, and all is imported. I think I read that 90% of large city populations would die from riots and starvation. The other 10% would come looking for the things that we country folks have, and attempt to take it from us.

You want to read a chilling book? Read One Second After. It’s the US one second after a huge electromagnetic pulse. The book scared me to death, and I’ve read that the government has used that book for a basis on hardening our grid and our military against an EMP. If you have an old truck and/or tractor that can’t be disabled by an EMP, now’s the time to give them a hug and kind words.

It was a great book, but I still think about it sometimes.

IMO we were not anywhere near being crippled due to the virus. Some were mentally crippled.

When food runs out the city dwellers will head to the rural areas and will be desperate for food and supplies. How long do you think it will be before they start shooting cows or other livestock. Rural folks will defend their supplies by all means. Not going to be a pretty picture any where as the haves and have nots battle for survival.

Oh I agree. We did ok but watching the lines even her locally just blew my mind as to a Nuclear Holocust of sorts had started but we were no where close. It was a spin with the news media and they just keep churning it.

Another good one is Lights Out.

Both those are great books as are “Survivors” and “Patriots” by James Wesley Rawles, who also has a pretty interesting website on prepping.

I do believe that I could survive. The question is, would I? I have the ability. On the property that I hunt in OK, I have been known to do a eat what you kill trip. My longest stint was a whole week hunting and fishing. The only thing I brought with me were a few potatoes and some eggs, flour and cornmeal. I ate fish, squirrel, rabbit, and finally, some fresh deer tenderloins!
Would I be able to survive long enough to get to either the Ranch or the OK property? That would be the initial danger. Once I am there, would I be able to protect my supplies and property from the have nots? As someone stated earlier, it would likely get ugly...but at least I would be well armed, and I would have my boy and my wife, and hopefully extended family members who can all shoot, hunt and fish as well.

Loss of power and fuel would be huge. A good point made above about importing so much food. What we found out in all of this is that we've worked so hard to make our economy roar, when it doesn't, it works extremely hard against us. JIT mfg isn't just for mfg, it's also the way the world is today. Well, when things stop arriving Just In Time, S will HTF in a hurry. Riots will happen, small militias will form, neighbors will kill each other in the streets in very short order. People just don't have the mental capacity to handle such a huge event.

Its all hypothetical anyway. Not going to happen.

You are probably correct. Probably...

This is a good book to get you thinking. I can make it 30 days at the house without power or water pretty much without issue. If things get bad and stay bad longer than 30 days we are all going to be in a world of chit and I don't see a whole lot you can do to plan for it.

The book after "One Second After" is "One Year After" is also a good read. It's about the fake governments that are established taking advantage of the people's plight. The electrical distribution system is very vulnerable to shutdown by computer hackers as well as armor piercing shells into electrical distribution substation transformers. The armor piercing AK47 rounds have been used in California already twice . The multi-million dollar electrical transformers are not shelf items in most electric utilities and cooperatives due to cost and lead times for manufacturing is months if not years. Well placed explosives on transmission lines can take out the east and west coasts easily. Texas is isolated from the major grids but a well planned attack could wreak havoc on us as well. It's not just an EMP strike we need to worry about.

If the world were truly to go into an apocalypse I think I personally would be screwed. I live on a couple acres. I have to travel to hunt or fish if gas is out so is travel. I guess our best bet would be to make one last run to the ranch, but then are we going to just abandon every possesion we have an our homes? The ranch also doesnt have water without electricity so it wouldnt even be a good place to go.

I think a lot of people would find out how ill prepared we/they are the hard way if push came to shuve.

Watch some of the so called survival shows, the "experts" are some of the first to call "uncle". The mental issues will cause many to fail. And these shows have a definitive end date, in real life that "stuff" might never end, the mental stress will be a lot higher.

But as Bill said,

Spot on

Thanks for the heads up, didn't know there was a sequel so I went and looked. Looks like it is a trilogy now with "The Final Day: A John Matherson" being the last in the 3. Need to buy the second and third and read them all through.

I didn't know there was a third book either. I will be getting that one also.

Same here Jes. As long as birds fly and fish swim, we'll be just fine. I can wipe my butt with bird feathers!

AC?

I could survive and take care of a fair number of people if SHTF, but I sure would like to go back to pre-covid life sometime soon.

My ice cream freezer also has a hand crank so I’m good.

We didn't have electricity until,after the big war. My parents raised a family of 4 without it until the REA hooked us up.

People were different back then. No doubt people can become different again if required but there will be a massive learning curve involved that a whole lot of folks will not survive.

yep, agree. But...........when is that going to happen???

I'd be interested to hear what the authors of books like "one second after" think the percentages of deaths would be after 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 6 months. If we lost power tomorrow, my uninformed guess would be 10% dead after one week, 20-30% dead after two weeks and probably 80% dead after 1 month. Everyone seems to think hey, there's a creek behind my house that I can drink from. That works great until you get an intestinal bug and you can't keep anything down. No power means no refrigeration for almost everyone. Anyone that is relying on refrigerated medicine to keep them alive is gone. Anyone that picks up a bacterial infection is gone when there are no antibiotics available at the local Walgreens. If it happens in the summer, I think the numbers go up quicker. If it happens in the winter, I think things may slow down a little because you would have natural refrigeration. This is also one of those situations where 3rd world places/countries would have an advantage over the "developed" countries. Developed countries are soft, 3rd world places live almost like this every day.

They have a box set for looks like $25, think I'm going to buy it because honestly I don't know where my copy of one second after is. I'd like to read them all the way throuhg.

Here is the last one in the series.

Link

You have hit at the very simple things we take for granted day in and day out. It is always turn the switch on, go to the fridge etc for us. I hope this never happens because we will truly be in a world of hurt. No one seems to think past a week or so like what you are stating. Most of us including myself have not lived through a true disaster where we can gasp what can and would truly happen.

I truly love the mentality of "we will survive" but I am also a realist that has health issues, wife has health issues etc. So for me to say I will kill a deer and be ok? I would like to think me poaching a deer is going to help my wifes and my diabetic issues. Don't think it will though. Like I stated I am thinking outside the bubble.

Got a link for the box set?

Where you get the cream and sugar and ice and rock salt from?

Even then, without electricity there were still stores etc. No ice, no store to buy salt or cure or food.

Some time after Nov 3

If it really gets bad many will die. If you have a place with food out in the country and think you can defend it, you’re going to be surprised when about 100 to 200 heavily armed show up as a horde working together. That’s after watching you from long distance a day or two and then sniping the head of the household. They will just take everything you have and move on.

I also never understood the fear of not having toilet paper. There are ok alternatives just using soap and water.

Well not a box set, it just asked me to add all three to my cart at the same time LOL.


But here are the links in order.

One Second After
One Year After
The Final Day

Lights Out

Yep. We'll make it. I hope there are no intruders but we'll make it.

Thanks, i'm stacking hay so you and janie have separate spaces to house your family's during the zombie apocalypse

rc it's easy to stock those in calm times same with generators and fuel

Im not thinking about making it through a month without, im thinking the end of the world as we know it.

Most on here cant get their lawnmower to run after it sat with gas in it for a month lol yeah wonder how stock piling gas and a generator is going to work out. Hope yall like grasshopers.

True enough and you must be capable of defending your declared hunting land.....

Good advice here. Read the book, it will be life changing

An EMP would likely result in a 90+ percent die rate here in America

Most will die from drinking impure water

Most will not make it long enough to starve to death

Water. Water. Water and multiple ways to purify it.

JMHO

Walmart, obviously.

To be honest, I am buried so deep in the city getting out would be a challenge. I do have a trailer and could live off the grid for awhile. I know how to survive. Problem is 98% of the land is privately owned in Texas. It would be difficult to find a place to "squat" without getting shot at or asked to get off the property. Do need natural resources, living in far west Texas or New Mexico with little water or much game would not be smart move.

Does make me wonder.

Exactly why I tell my wife we will not sell my place in the country. I have some pristine well water that is so cold you can fill a pool with it and have to wait 2 days before it's warm enough to get in it. We got water and a green house that I'm working on. There is plenty of game for the time being. Grandma showed us how to live off the land even when she lived 2 miles from the city limits.

Bugging out or bunkering in place will be a tough decision for many folks.
Just look what a hurricane does to the roadways as folks try to evacuate.
In a grid down scenario (non EMP) the roads will be a vary dangerous place I do believe.

you might want to think about that first month, most people won't make it that long if it truly hits the fan.

no one has a fool proof plan after that, that's when you start to adapt to your new world.

Payne is right. After a month, most of population is gone, and you will have groups getting together for common defense and survival, and then other groups getting together to take what the first groups have. Just have to survive the first month...

TXHOGSLAYER is going to be a real life Leeroy Jenkins..

The idea of living off the land sounds good, but in reality won’t work so well. Back when my Mom was alive, she loaned me a book that was written by a woman in the 1930’s. She lived near us in a big run-down plantation home, and I knew her when she was a very old woman. The book was memoirs of her life in the 30’s, before WWII. Since I knew her, the book was particularly interesting, but there were parts that were a shock to me. The shock was about food. They hunted and fished hard, and ate what they could get. Squirrels, turtles, deer, the occasional rabbit. The place where they were trying to survive was where I grew up, along the Mississippi River in NE Louisiana. When I grew up, game was extremely plentiful, but it had been hunted to near extinction during the Great Depression. Reading the book clarified something my Grandfather had told me, which was his helping to reintroduce deer to the area, since there were none at that time due to food demands. I don’t know when the reintroduction happened, and I didn’t know at the time why deer needed to be brought in.

When I was a teenager, I remember a compliment that an old black lady (Blanche Johnson) used to use. She worked for the family for over 50 years, and helped raise me. We loved her and she was family. The compliment was, and I can still hear her say it, “Lawd, you so fat and fine”. She had lived through the Depression, and there were no fat people apparently. Being fat and fine, to her, was the best possible way to be. When I was older, and brought my wife-to-be home to meet my family, Blanche really liked her and told her “Lawd, you so fat and fine”, and my girlfriend took it to mean she was fat. That didn’t go so well, but we got past it.

So, if the hard times come again, you won’t need to diet.

How many will be able to last a week without their phone?

They'll probably last longer than than it takes for the billion-posters heads to explode because their computers are shut down.

Good stuff sir.

We recently had a thread on THF about your momma's cooking. Most wouldn't even eat liver and onions.

'Can't remember where I read it, but it was a lengthy description of a Texas hill country woman's life before electricity. It made the man's job working in the field look like a walk in the park. I've been in a German homestead kitchen, without a/c, with the wood stove going...in August; getting ready to cook what we cut off the lambs. (You sheep farmers correct me if August is too late to cut. It's been 50 years, but I do know it was hotter'n hell.) I heard my momma callin' (our place was next door).

That article made me realize why, although he was as crooked as a dog's hind leg, LBJ was considered a god to some, ushering in the rural electric cooperatives.

Wonder if you can still buy C-Rats?

a lot of good reading in this topic ... and I can relate to some of it. Both of my parents were raised thru the depression and knew exactly what hard times were. I grew up hearing about some of the hard ships they lived thru during their earlier years.

Water would be likely my biggest concern ... glad I have artisan springs on my place. Several haven't been dry since the late 1800s when the earliest records reflect a stage coach stop about 3 days ride outside of Austin heading towards Abilene.

Any of you city boys ever eat poke salad or wild onions. I have.

Yeah, and you can get severely poisoned if you don't pick
either one correctly, and the poke has to be cooked right.
There's a poisonous plant that's similar to wild onion called
the death something-or-other. Can't remember exactly what
it's called, but sheep will eat it and get deathly ill and
sometimes die.
There's not any poisonous possums or squirrels or wabbits

Potable water is the most important consideration.
Not potential water sources, but stored known safe
drinkable water. If I was a terrorist or addled brained
antifa, I could render a small lake unusable with a
pint of gasoline additive. A surface water source is
too risky and unreliable depending on the scenario.
And I don't think you can filter out nerve agents.

Just have to hope for the best

7 hours...and no mention of mules?

'Little fast and loose with your "city boys" label, living in that "acreage subdivision" and all...in...the...city.

Well I'm sure they'd be just fine if cooked right,
salt and pepper and and a little gravy, etc.

I didn't know HEB sold those

We have recently had similar fun doomsday threads recently and my stand has never changed. Its not going to happen.

REA (Rural Electrification Administration) and Screw Worm Eradication Program are the most successful programs the government ever initiated. I can still remember going with my Dad to the ice plant in Fredericksburg to pick up a huge block of ice for our ice box. We finally upgraded to a small refrigerator. Several rooms in our house had a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling with a long pull chain. Boy, did we get hollered at if we left that light bulb on and we were not in that room. We were wasting electricity! Mom and Dad never turned on the air conditioner we bought them unless they had company. They lived to be in there 90's without air conditioning and never missed it. Can I live without air conditioning. Yes. Can my wife, kids and grandkids. No. We had two kerosene stoves for winter heat. One in the kitchen and one in the living room. The one in the living room was only lit when we had company coming over. As soon as they left, it was turned off. The one in the kitchen was always on. That's where we lived during the winter. The rest of the house stayed cold. I slept upstairs in that old rock house and I would scrape the ice off of the inside of the window to see what the weather was like. It was a race to get to the kitchen to get dressed and get ready for the school bus. My job during the winter was to keep the stoves full of kerosene. We had two 55 gallon drums of kerosene with a hand pump about 50 yards from the house. I would pump the watering can with a rubber hose on it full of kerosene and fill the tanks on the stove. On cold days and night, I had to make regular trips to keep the stove tanks filled.

The Screw Worm Eradication Program was a boon to the deer population and livestock in our area. I don't know how many fawns, lambs, and calves I doctored. The fawns were so eaten up with screw worms that by the time I could catch them and doctor them they were pretty weak. Some made it but most died. Seeing deer and livestock with half of their head gone or sides eaten out was disheartening. Now we have so many deer that you can't raise a hay crop. That program is why the Texas Hill Country has so many deer now. The fawn survival rate is now probably 90% or more. With year round hunting and additional pressure for food, even that protein source would not last long.

I've read the book that Creekrunner referred to and know the home well. It was the hottest kitchen you have ever been in during the summer months but she made the best home made bread in that wood stove. If you got there just in time, she would slice it with her old bread knife, slosh it with real butter from their milk cow and put a generous amount of home made grape preserves on it. That with hard sausage out of their smoke house you had a meal you wouldn't forget. Well at least until you got home and ate the same thing for supper. When I was growing up, we were just a little better off then that household but not by much. We had a large garden and all of the surplus was canned in Mason Jars for the winter. I don't believe people know how long it takes to grow a garden and have fresh vegetables. We had a community potato patch where all of the neighbors would help plant and then come back when the potatoes were ready. Dad would plow them up and the neighbors would all help harvest for a portion of the crop. Those old pickups would pull out sagging almost to the tailgate with burlap bags full of potatoes. We ate a lot of potatoes after the harvest. The excess potatoes were stored in our smoke house on the cool dirt floor on news paper to keep them from sprouting. They would last a long time in there due to the coolness and lack of sun light. in time they would get soft and get sprouts and you had to sort through them to get the unspoiled ones. They also had a butcher club. One neighbor would donate a calf and they would butcher it. Neighbors would take portions of the calf and take it home and can the meat and fry up and eat what they could before it would spoil. We had hogs and come deer season, butchering became routine. I was raised on fresh and dried deer sausage.

I don't know of many people that still can their vegetables or even grow a garden. We still have all of the canning pots and pressure cookers but I was never involved in it. i was always outside with Dad. It may be time to learn the process. So could I survive. Probably but it sure would be hard to go back to those times. HEB has spoiled a lot of us.

I guess we all think we are pretty tough, but compared to those that went before us I know I can’t measure up.

Very well written. Loved reading this, reminds me of my great grandmother in Lawn, Texas.

We just about quit canning when we quit the garden work, age was too much for us to keep gardening. When our neighbor dumps a bunch of fresh vegetable on our porch, we sometimes can a little of it, but buying HEB canned goods is so much easier.

Boy id sit and listen to some of you guys for hours. Great stuff man.

There are 330 million people living in the US.

Roughly 95 million cows, 30 million WT deer, 4 million mule deer, roughly 3 million goats, etc. you see what I’m getting at.


Anyone seen the movie “ the road”? It would look a lot like that. No food to speak of, you better get ready to start eating people if you want to survive.

It’s possible to get real tucked back in some boon dock place but travel to would be dangerous and as stated before, be prepared for people to show up on the take. Game populations have been exasperated before with much less people and technology it can certainly happen again.





Long and short of it....it would suck. Mass chaos would ensue. The majority of the population being dead within a months time would be a blessing for the survivors.

My bloodline has made it to 2020. I’m not that worried about it. I’m old but still a fairly dangerous man.

How many of those are urbanites? It'll be ten times worse then Black Friday at Walmart.

Probably 80% live in urban or suburban environments. That doesent mean they are just gonna fall over and die like flies

Never underestimate people and their will to live

Your started this similar e doomsday thread awhile back.


https://texashuntingforum.com/forum...-average-law-abiding-citizen#Post7776768

Thanks for chiming in Oxner. This thread shows how much you know about what is going on.

I doubt most of those have a safer place to go and will stay in their neighborhoods. Within three days it will start getting ugly, in a weeks time you'll have complete chaos.

Those who think they can live off the land should read about what is called “rabbit starvation”.

I had to look it up. Caused by a diet deficient in fat. I would be eating plenty of pigs. No problem.

Yeah the toughest part would be getting to my hunting grounds. Here in the neighborhood there will be plenty of rabbits.......and dogs and cats and.....I could probably make it to my friends place and then there are deer and such.

Also have to factor in electrical going down and fuel being unavailable.

Wells with submersible pumps will be of little value and most can’t go more than a few hundred miles on a tank of fuel and then that’s kaput.

Most people have a false sense of security when it comes to end of the world type scenarios. They either think they can hole up indefinitely in their homes because they have a large stash of ammo or because they can spend a weeks time at the lease they are somehow prepared to live forever off grid.


Best case scenario for 99% of folks is it’s gonna suck pretty dang bad if we get to that state.

I would say a few who are extremely remote would stand a fair chance of remaining un harassed but that’s the exception not the rule and then would have to consider limited resources one would have.

Mad Max. Roving groups would form and move about taking everything from the "haves". Good people would turn into bad people in order to survive. Chaos would reign. Just look what happens when people think they can't get there cars filled up. I'd hate to think what they would do without electricity or water.

That’s why we are social animals. That’s why enclaves, towns and cities developed. Note how they were fortified.

Dehydration will probably kill more people than anything else. Either that or drinking contaminated water.

Me and mine will survive.
Been "not being wasteful" for over two decades.
Learning a little history will cause that.

Sure it is. Way worse than we can speculate on the web
Says so in Revelation. Look in the back of your Bible

Seen it. Have the disc.
" . . .Even if you knew what to do you wouldn't know what to do. . ."

Fairly prophetic for a fictional movie

Me and mine may not survive the whole deal but I guarantee you we will last longer than the urbanites. Half of them will die quickly without Starbucks and their TikTok videos.

Another book on the subject is Alas, Babylon.

How big a place? What are your neighbors like? How far from city? Have sustainable water with no power? Hunting is even going to be different when we dont have feeders or a tractor to mow senderos and the batteries in your night vission die etc. just thinking out loud i think it would be a lot tuffer than some thing.

I believe the places to be for best chances of survival would be on major bodies of water potentially the coast places that get regular rain. a big one might be up north, the cold would be hard, but the permafrost would make a nifty little freezer.

With a little bit of knowledge, water is not difficult to filter and make drinkable. You can take a gallon jug or one of those big water bottles, cut the bottom out, fill with levels of filter media which could be cloth, hay etc. Then rolling boil the filtered water for 15 to 20 minutes and you’re good to go.

I dont think many could. You may have whatever you believe is the ticket , but if a large group moves in from different angles, your done. I live on a large amount of property and I have tons of animals, water , etc. You can still only protect so much , and kill so many people.

No matter the amount of land its going to come down to you protecting about 5 acres. They will watch you and kill you at some point

Bingo.

I just love happy threads

I can't believe someone has "The Road" on dvd and watches it more than once. That's a whole new level of dark.

I figured you as more of a book of eli kind of guy

[After all,of that talk yesterday, this came in the mail today. You are all great salesman!

Get them before it is too late! Like T.P!

https://www.amazon.com/Sawyer-Produ...Sawyer-Min&qid=1596759918&sr=8-1

Those have a shelf life of about 4 years or so. Regular bleach lasts indefinitely. 16 drops per gallon of water. A gallon of bleach and a few Sawyer Mini's will keep a person going for years.

I have 18,000 gallons of water in the backyard and always have several gallons of bleach on hand.

Didn't know, good to know. Thanks to you both!

Good news guys. If anything like is being discussed actually happened. Ie government failure. There would be an armata of foreign soldiers heading to shore. You won't have to survive without the bare necessities for long.

I have one in every vehicle. The one that’s bigger will actually screw in to a lot of water bottles.

I have the MRS guardian pump filter also, it’s pretty handy also filters viruses. It works well for large quantities like 5gals jugs


Only down side to the sawyer is if its wet and freezes it done so make sure and shake it out well

I never had one freeze that's wet, sage advice

How do you THFers sleep at night with all of your delusional paranoia? I never counted sheep. I once counted coveys of my past. Now I count my blessings. I started yesterday with a great nights sleep, on to Folger's in my cup, good morning Janie, a great breakfast, cool morning walk, a little light yard work, on to a five star lighthearted book, the mother of all naps, evening martini, and the list went on until I until I feel asleep

It’s not really delusional paranoia, just being smartly prepared with a minimal investment , I basically put 15k miles a year on my truck between hunting some really remote areas in Texas, out west and vacation. I probably average about 10 plus nights a year sleeping in back of my truck.

A water filter is no different then a plug kit and air compressor, IMO.

Well Bill your life is almost over...so there is that.

Respectfully.

I have a couple of million gallons of fresh water out front and a Big Berkey water filter. Also have a couple of rain barrels.
Plenty of deer, pigs, geese, ducks,

It’s not paranoia it’s preparation
, it doesn’t apply to people who live in a bubble.

Any of you willing to make a bet similar to the one that J P made about the doomsday of the stock market? You can leave out the part head lighting deer and eating dog meat.

[

I think the major factor for survival is proximity to major metropolitan areas. The closer you live to one of those areas, you will be overwhelmed in hours or at least in a day or two. More remote areas as in South Texas or West Texas it may be a week or two. No one will be immune to desperate visitors eventually and that is when hard choices will have to be made. Let's take it a little deeper. Can we turn away or shoot a starving family looking for food and water when we have little for ourselves? Can we shoot someone for killing our livestock for food? We all have guns and ammunition but are we prepared to use it on each other in desperate times? Who are the bad guys and how do we recognize them? Who decides? You may be the bad guy in their plight because you have what they need to survive. It's a split second decision on who lives and who dies and why. Did you just kill someone who was a good person but only trying to survive? Can we live with ourselves after we have done the unimaginable and can we do it without remorse? Hard questions when faced with reality.

We were all fat and happy before this pandemic but in a very short time our lives changed drastically. Reality is still sinking in. We are vulnerable. Another hit by anything else like a power grid or currency failure would end this society as we know it. The reality is unless you live off of the grid completely where no one can find you and you have those skills developed already, there is little chance of survival. Some of us will make it for awhile. We have experienced regional disasters such as tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes and these can be responded to but a nationwide or worldwide disaster is another issue. I'm the eternal optimist but I'm also a realist.

This is a thought provoking thread but it should be given serious thought of how far will we go to survive. How far will you go?

I figured out he was blind when she went to his room and all he wanted to do was eat dinner

I think a question not answered is - If there's little left in the world, why would you want to live?

It is called the will to survive.

Gonna be like the first Thanksgiving. People will help the hungry and the hungry will bite the hand that feeds them and then try to take all their stuff. Don't come to my house unless your bringing fire water.

I’ve watched every series of The Walking Dead, I’m prepared for the apocalypse.

ftfy

Years ago I worked with a guy that was a doomsday'r.

He ask me this once. He said Billy, you like guns and you hunt a lot. I said I do. He said when have to fight in the street to survive, what is the most deadly weapon you have or would use. I said, never thought about it.

He said, 22 long rifle, you can fill you pockets with thousands of rounds. The more rounds you can carry the better off you are, just remember that. Make sure you have a 22 long rifle and thousands of rounds.

I still don't own one. He expounded a lot more and eventhough he was half a bubble off, some of the survival things he said made sense.

I'm thinking a PMR30 and lots of rounds.

I guess I'm SOL, as i don't have any ammo or guns to put them in.Maybe I can come to some of y'alls house??

For hunting and living off the land yes a 22LR with thousands of rounds is a great idea. I have several and I have several thousands of rounds for it.

However, being the deadliest weapon for fighting in the street it is not. Even makeshift body armor will stop a 22LR pretty effortlessly. It doesn't matter how many thousands of rounds you have in your pocket, if you can't stop the threat in front of you, it is useless.

But have you read my how to book on how to survive the Zombie Apocalypse?

I don't think anyone could live all the time being completely covered with body armor. I can barely handle wearing a IIIA vest, a ceramic plate, a helmet, a neck shield and a IIIA face shield for more than about 30-45 minutes. During the summer, forget about it. I don't think body armor would prove very practical in a long term survival situation. Maybe an entry vest with IIIA soft that can be easily put on and taken off but then that leaves a lot, for a person with a scoped 10/22, to hit.

Great choice on the Big Berkey

2 of those and plenty of extra filters and you are good to go

You probably already know this, but if you will run any lake or pond water through a cheap gravity filter first, your Berkey filters will last much longer

Depends...can ya cook and clean well?

This whole debacle that is 2020 has certainly woken up a few people I know. We have definitely changed a few things about our daily life, and will continue them no matter how "normal" everything becomes. We no longer buy it to use it, we now replace it when we use it. It was method I used when I was single. Always keep the cupboards full and rotate the stock. My wife, over the years, let me get complacent about this since she does most of the shopping. It even rippled out into my hobbies over the years. Life changes things. She now sees the value in my old method and now the cabinets are full all the time, I'm keeping the freezer full. Same with fuel. We have 4 vehicles that are roadworthy. I remember deciding on which one to use based on which had the most fuel at the time. No more, none are allowed to get lower than a 1/2 tank now. My circle of friends is small, but each family, on their own, has pretty much adopted the same mindset. Some have more skills and resources than others, the point is it seems the same mindset exists across a lot more people now. People are waking up to just how fragile our way of life really is.

Take this thread for example. While I don't post as much as many do, I've been a member around here longer than a few people. I remember when "prepper" was a derogatory term around here. Yet I haven't seen one truly negative statement or joke made on the subject in this thread. Post Apocalyptic Survival fictional literature is even being discussed seriously. I find the evolution interesting.

Don't think for one second that a whole lot of these city dwellers being spoken of in this thread haven't adopted a new way of thinking either. They are considering different scenarios previously thought of as absurd, or not considered at all. Sound familiar? Many who previously hadn't, will now have plans too. As we know weapons are being sold at record pace, have been for several years now, ammo is scarce, components to make ammo are as well. This speaks volumes! I listend to Rick Roberts on the way home today and almost his entire show was about the gun and ammo shortage. It started out about the NRA being sued, but the callers pushed it in a different direction. This is afternoon talk on WBAP.

All of these EMP scenarios being discussed along with almost every piece of PAS genre literature I've digested always hinged on one common premise, a sudden collapse of societal structure that takes the masses by surprise. That element of surprise now only exists in the truly gullible or narcissistic of society. So all the same rules would not apply.These are things to consider. We can all run practice scenarios thou our alleged brains, and we should. Chance favors the prepared mind. But the reality is even most here could not fathom the reality of a scenario such as am EMP, or similar sudden widespread disruption of our way of life. What we've seen recently doesn't even register on that scale.

But I digress. As I said, it is interesting seeing this topic being discussed in a civil and even constructive manner here. It wasn't that long ago such a topic would have been shut down by now.

Max Brooks has a great one. Very entertaining read. https://www.amazon.com/Zombie-Survi...max+brooks&qid=1596862512&sr=8-5

When preparing for the pocsiclypse, whatever its cause, everyone not in your group is a zombie.

You don't own a .22? Man, you are missing out on life! My .22s are my favorites. You can shoot. 22 all day long for less than the cost of 20 rounds of most rifle calibers.