SHTF actual survivor story

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Excellent stuff DCFusor, will be reading that this evening.

I was just going to post actually and see if anyone could recommend any good books about previous economic/social collapses (Argentina, Germany etc.) ? I'd really like to read some more first hand accounts of such situations.

Cheers.
 
Yes, the first-hand stuff is most valuable. I'd look at it in a couple perhaps non-obvious ways - partly because any actual situation is unlikely to be just the same - heck, even in this one, different people probably coped differently.
And of course, that nasty reality - many failed to cope - would have to be dealt with.

So to me, the take on how humans reacted, and what turned out to be really important was the key - some things would be a little different - a lot depends on the speed with which the S is flying and the RPM of the fan - but a lot is universal "stupid human tricks". Other humans will probably be the main make or break variable once the basics are otherwise taken care of in preparation, so that aspect is way worth study.

And as DoChen quoted - "Going into a fight everyone has a plan. Then you get hit."
An awful lot of this stuff is pure fantasy. This link had me rolling a few minutes ago:

Ok, stashing booze - for dual use seems obvious enough. But Bic lighters as a primary trade item? Not so much a thing I've thought of (but I always have a bunch of ways to make fire due to my normal setup), but it makes some sense in a crowded situation.

A lot of the first link reminds me greatly of a bunch of stories written by Robert Heinlein in the 40's and '50s about "after the big one" or "after the US is occupied" which he spent some time on. Man, that guy was as prescient as they come. Those would seem useful, as they seem borne out by real-world experience at this point - he makes many of the same points (and some new ones), but much more eloquently, looks at the ramifications more throughly.
 
suibhne said:
Excellent stuff DCFusor, will be reading that this evening.
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Ditto.

suibhne said:
I was just going to post actually and see if anyone could recommend any good books about previous economic/social collapses (Argentina, Germany etc.) ? ...
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Ferfal did some great writing on his blog during the Argentine collapse (also mentioned here):

http://ferfal.blogspot.com/

He's written a couple of books since, but I have not read them, so I don't have any comments on them.
 
interesting 'book of the week' on BBC Radio 4 this week -
'Beseiged' its about life in Sarajevo when TSHTF

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01gcz2h

only 2 episodes available so far ( it being Tuesday )

The closing line in todays episode was ' theyve made thieves of us all ' ............
 
Good post, DCFusor! Enjoyable and informative. Think I'll buy a few more Bic lighters! Thanks for the find.
 
DC,

I remember a thread a while back where we discussed Selco and the hard times over there during the war/siege and it was pretty graphic and very scary.

Far too many armchair warriors think they are all set and ready to handle severe civil dislocation and armed conflict.

I am here to assure those folks that you most likely are not. As prepared as I think I am, I am equally assured that when the baloon does finally go up, I will be far less prepared than I think I am. Those who think they have everything they need should think harder. You never have neough. There can never be "enough" ammo, food, meds, guns and friends who have these things stored up.
 
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my biggest worry is the less prepared friends ive been quietly trying to educate ..........

its not just that we will not have enough for our immediate family needs.
 
Usually you can see a SHTF scenario coming, but most people get stuck in denial and do not move out of the way. Some of Selco's writing talks about how people in that city didn't believe the war would come to their area.

Many can not fathom leaving the city/state/country that they have always lived in. They want to "bug in" when in reality the safest thing would be to simply change countries.

Take current day; It is staring Europe in the face, yet most do not want to admit the coming SHTF in Europe. Especially if you are in Greece, Spain, or similar situation countries, seriously consider relocating.
 
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rblong2us said:
my biggest worry is the less prepared friends ive been quietly trying to educate ..........

its not just that we will not have enough for our immediate family needs.
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That's exactly it. I stopped talking openly about prepping to my friends some time ago. We are in a sort of lay-low mode here. One of our greatest fears is having a horde of unprepared folks storming the gates demanding we help them because we are prepared and should share with them.
 
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I actually hope that the folks in cities near us decide to stay in place while waiting for the government to "save" them. If the masses from the center of our state fan out toward the oceanside areas, we'll be screwed, but if they stay in place, they will be the ones who are screwed. My friends and I who are preppers have actually talked about the two primary feeder roads from the major city to our west and how they really are the only two roads to get from there to here. We have also talked about taking a Cat 330 track hoe out and digging an anti vehicle trench across the entire width of the roads from ditch to ditch.

Of course, it would have to be degraded to a point of near complete civil war before I would do something that final and drastic, but at least we have discussed the dangers posed by a mass influx of refugees and a way to stop it. We can go to the half-way point and pretty much take out the only way in for the big city refugees.

Selco points out so many things that can and will go wrong that it makes ones head spin.
 
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I am not really talking if things are going to go wrong in Chicago, move to rural Illinois or something similar. I am more talking about if something is going wrong in Chicago (and the U.S. in general) move to another continent!

Many call it "UnAmerican", but that is how America got started; A lot of people didn't like what was happening in thier countries and moved to a place with better opportunities.
 
Benjamen,
Unfortunately I believe that this will befall all countries as the financial system and fiat systems fail worldwide. Europeans are scared to death right now because they are beginning to see the light about all the derivative bets piled up, one on top of the other on top of the next one. It's like a gambler doubling down every time he loses, just hoping to get the original stake back.

No sir, while it may be better in some places than in others, eventually it will be the same pretty much everywhere.

Will there be instances of areas which seem somewhat insulated from it all? Yes, I believe there will be, but those places will exist in the states as well as off-continent.

I believe the best course of action lies in the works of DC Fusor. He has a large plot of land, solar power, reliable wells and springs, arable land and a nice kitchen garden. He also has [I believe] small farm animals like goats and chickens. If we have the ability to set up like him, the coming conflagration won't be quite as hot for us.
 

That set up would insulate you from economic risk, but you also have to worry about soverign risk. What do you do if your governement loses its mind? What if your governement decides no one should have more than thier "fair share" of land and heavily tax anyone with more than one acre?

In times of economic stress, people have a bad habit of letting the crazies into the governement.
 
Benjamen said:
"That set up would insulate you from economic risk, but you also have to worry about soverign risk. What do you do if your governement loses its mind? What if your governement decides no one should have more than thier "fair share" of land and heavily tax anyone with more than one acre?

In times of economic stress, people have a bad habit of letting the crazies into the governement. "
That is what causes revolutions. There are simply too many guns and too much ammunition in the hands of regular citizens to contemplate that here. Some time in hte future? Under martial law? Maybe, but now.......no.
 
Some land is deemed not worth it - even for governments, due to its ruggedness and difficulty of putting major infrastructure in. The gov has better things to do than to chase some hillbilly in the mountains (me) or some guy living on a rock pile in Montana if there's no other reason. Even the IRS, except when looking to make an example, only bothers to go after people where there is more money to be had than it costs them to prosecute. No one sues poor people...

What would they do with my land if they took it? Too steep to factory farm, too far out to run real good roads to and have a factory. Public water and sewer and natgas? No way, too expensive to put in - took an act of congress to force electricity in here back in the day, and we were some of the last in the country to get DSL internet - and we still don't have cable tv (fine with me). Just hilly woods, worthless to most people, with a nice garden and a couple dwellings that don't meet code. Unless they want to harass me for some entirely other reason (not out of the question! But a risk for all anyway.) there's no point in it for them.

It would cost them more to make my land saleable to someone than they'd get. And it's not in that big a demand just now, that real estate thingie.

Now if you were flaunting it in a McMansion, with your daughter doing horse dressage in the yard and your exotic car collection in a 5 acre garage, that's another story, eh? So, don't do that.
 
ancona said:
We have also talked about taking a Cat 330 track hoe out and digging an anti vehicle trench across the entire width of the roads from ditch to ditch.
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PROMISE ME YOU WILL VIDEO AND POST THIS, IF IT HAPPENS ! :rotflmbo:

And then take the machine with all your emergency escape kit in the bucket and your family in the steel reinforced cab and transfer to bugout 2 along your, now private, road. :wave:

But obviously not until youve carefully covered your primary setup with a few feet of dirt, for future recovery and use.

Now thats what i call prepared.

awesome.
 
That ditch is an interesting idea, ancona - but fer sure would get you called a terrorist, even though it wouldn't terrorize anyone, just make them mad and inconvenienced.

I have the good luck that even with the roads intact, they might as well be choke points for any serious amount of traffic. But a little here and there, carefully planned could be a great improvement. I don't think you even need a ditch - how about a disabled school bus across the road? Or an old logging truck - they break all the time anyway - plausible deniability. By the time someone tried to tow it, there'd be so many cars backed up on all sides they couldn't reach it anyway! Just as effective, but you skip being charged with destruction of public property and anything else they can imagine to add to that.

Heck, a big wreck shuts down I-81 in VA for hours all the doggone time as is, and is already enough to make people turn back across the median illegally when they see the symptom of one ahead. Takes them hours to get traffic going again, usually - because the stoppages are so long people run out of gas, and become part of the problem while waiting.

As Asimov's Hari Seldon was forced to say at his trial - the galactic empire is already crumbling, I'm not trying to push that along, I'm trying to set up the path to recovery after the inevitable happens. Of course, that didn't make him friends with the status quo who didn't want to admit it was already bad.
 
smart ways of achieving isolation DCF and along the same lines as i thought.
track off the machine was my thought, cos no one will ever help me put the effing things back on. (-:

but the dug up highway with all the pipes and wires pointing skyward and emptying their contents, is just such a wonderful thought ............
 
Think about it under these terms:

Shit hit fan.....excrement everywhere. Widespread riots have died down and many unprepared survivors have died off. Roving gangs using up the last bits of useable petroleum going around to rape, terrorize, murder and pillage. Zero law enforcement. In fact, many of the gangs are headed up by now "disenfranchised, ex-union cops. Food supplies that remain are all in the hands of either gangs or private individual preppers like you and I. The primary threat is from gangs who have a base of operation in Orlando and use 528 and 520 to terrorize our side of the state. Now, Ancona has cleverly stored up four to five hundred gallons of off road deisel. He fills up the tanks of the 330 and his Kenworth, which is pulling the trackhoe on a hydraulic Fontaine low-boy. We roll out to a spot where we can safely turn around to flee, off-load the hoe, spin the whole rig around and start digging at the west end of the last bridge over the St. Johns. Trench is twenty feet deep and thirty feet across. Ends of trench are opened so water from the Lake on one side and the river on the other flood the hole. Done.

Walk the hoe back on the low-boy, go back to 95, go up two exits, proceed to third bridge to the west, repeat the process.

Go home, break out the last of the single malt scotch.

Celebrate.
 
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You paint a lovely picture Ancona.

Dont forget to get your 'permit to dig' paperwork in order though (-:

Cos there will always be a clipboard man to haunt you.
 
rblong2us said:
You paint a lovely picture Ancona.

Dont forget to get your 'permit to dig' paperwork in order though (-:

Cos there will always be a clipboard man to haunt you.
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I'm sorry, I forgot to include in the equipment list, 1 - .308 with 10 round magazine, one bag of lime.
 
Just be sure not to end up like these guys. And why the bag of lime? You won't need to go back there again.


One of my best social engineering tricks is to get one of my more "normal" looking friends to carry a clipboard and order me around. If I do as they say, everyone assumes he's an authority, and we can then do almost anything while everyone else looks the other way...
 
Bwahahahahaha!!!

Where the hell did that pic come from?!?!? That is nuts! I would love to talk to the knuckleburger that was responsible for that clusterfuck!
 

For two years, Barbara Demick chronicled the trials of one Sarajevo street during the Serbian siege. In her latest book, Besieged: Life Under Fire on a Sarajevo Street, she catches up with the people she befriended

Life and death on my street in Sarajevo

For two years, Barbara Demick chronicled the trials of one Sarajevo street during the Serbian siege. In her latest book, Besieged: Life Under Fire on a Sarajevo Street, she catches up with the people she befriended
www.theguardian.com
 
I recall reading about a family in Russia who went completely off the grid for decades. When they were eventually found, there were only two left and they could barely speak Russian - they had formed their own language over time. When asked what they missed (needed) the most, they said salt.
 
Link is long since decativated. thanks for finding some fresh meat for us to read curly.
 
"In 1978, Soviet geologists prospecting in the wilds of Siberia discovered a family of six, lost in the taiga"

They weren't 'lost'... they knew exactly where they were.

They were killed when the geologists who visited them introduced new germs and viruses they hadn't developed a resistance to
 
Not any TEOTWASWKI stuff. More along the lines of reality.

Lessons From The Great Depression​

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The risks of gambling in speculative frenzies and depending on serial asset bubbles continuing forever are easily observable, yet few act to reduce these risks.
Longtime correspondent Ishabaka recently shared key takeaways from a classic on-the-ground account of The Great Depression in the U.S.:, The Great Depression, a Diary.

Another reader reminded me that The Great Depression was global, and occurred earlier that 1929 in other nations and had equally (or even more) calamitous consequences elsewhere. That said, humans are running Wetware 1.0 everywhere, so it's likely that many of these lessons are applicable to the collapse of speculative asset bubbles in other economies and eras--for instance, the global economy's Everything Bubble of 2023.

Here are Ishabaka's key takeaways from the book:
Read the rest here:

Lessons From The Great Depression | ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
 

'Prepping' for disaster diversifies as more Americans lose trust​

LONGMONT, Colorado (Reuters) - Brook Morgan surveyed booths at the "Survival & Prepper Show" in Colorado that were stocked with boxes of ammunition, mounds of trauma medical kits, and every type of knife imaginable.

A self-described "30-year-old lesbian from Indiana," Morgan is one of a new breed of Americans getting ready to survive political upheaval and natural catastrophes, a pursuit that until recently was largely associated with far-right movements such as white nationalists since the 1980s.

Researchers say the number of preppers has doubled in size to about 20 million since 2017. Much of that growth is from minorities and people considered left-of-center politically, whose sense of insecurity was heightened by Donald Trump's 2016 election, the COVID-19 pandemic, more frequent extreme weather and the 2020 racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd.

More:

 

What Modern SHTF Looks Like - Emergency Survival​

Preparing for emergencies, in a realistic way, backed up by historical evidence, is not as sexy as the movies or survivalists say it is. So much energy, time, and resources are devoted to only a small piece of what's truly essential in a survival scenario. One that seems to be lacking in many people's emergency plans is the essence of community. To be an integral part of their local scene. To be of use to others. The best thing to prepare for emergencies is to first evaluate how you would become valuable to others through your skills and knowledge. Only after you've become proficient at one of the community focused skills, can you truly be considered ready. Historical accounts from the past and even from the last decade point to the importance of skills and knowledge over raw materials alone.


FerFal

I have attached a document with FerFal's posts.
www.pmbug.com

FerFal's Information: https://ferfal.blogspot.com/
/ themodernsurvivalist

Selco's Information:https://shtfschool.com/blog/
 

How doomsday preppers made gold and silver precious end-of-the-world assets​

  • The precious metals gold and silver are favorite stores of value for doomsday preppers, along with food and water.
  • Costco added silver coins for sale as the retail warehouse giant saw sales of gold bars top $100 million in the first fiscal quarter.
  • “Lots of people are more confident that a massive disaster is impending than that American prosperity will continue,” said John Hay, the editor of “Apocalypse in American Literature and Culture.”
Among the cans of tuna and flashlights in doomsday preppers’ closets, there is an increasingly popular staple — gold bars.

The recent rise in value of the yellow metal is not just another chapter of favorable economic conditions for the asset, experts say.

People’s interest in gold — and silver, too — reflect deep anxieties about our society and its future.

“People are looking for permanence in a crumbling world,” said Timothy Morton, a philosopher and ecologist.

More:

 
Came across this article from SB. From 2009.

Letter Re: Grub and Gear-Lessons Learned from an Alaskan Trapper - SurvivalBlog.com

James, Going through some old gear last month, I found my food supply lists and notes from 1976-79. I thought the old list might be of interest and the lessons I learned during the first three years in the remote Alaska bush may be helpful to a few of your readers. I do not recommend Alaska for...
survivalblog.com
 
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