Post: #151

Look at Venezuela right now and just think what it would take to ride that crisis out.
Food, hydration, medicine. A cheap motorcycle with several cans of fuel. Extra pairs of shoes. Long range gun, medium range and a pistol. After 2 months of nationwide suffering, the strong and prepared will be calling the shots on either side. Also cant forget binoculars and night vision.

Post: #152

Basically, you should train like Batman or more realistically a Spec ops soldier.

Flexibility is VERY underrated, most people have bad knees simply because their muscles are tight. Mastering your bodyweight is also crucial. MAstering means being able to do pull ups, squats, pushups, dips with ease. Maybe going the extra mile and being able to do it with 1.5 times bodyweight or such. Learning to swim, learning to run long distances (it's actually a skill), Muscles endurance not just strength. How long can you hold your breath? Do you use oxygen efficiently?

There's a bunch of things that I say you should focus on but here are the basics

Jog 2 miles straight
Sprint 100 yards
Swim 200 yards none stop
Swim 10 yards underwater comfortably (25 is best and 50-100 is perfect)
10 pullups
50 push ups
2 minute plank
50 air squats

Post: #153

Good quality night vision is hard to get for non Americans due to international traffic in arms regulations (ITAR), on my shopping list.

Post: #154

I'm planning on using the basic income I get from Andrew Yang to offshore to Colombia or some other third world shithole that has easy access to weapons among other things (females). Should be able to survive in the jungle indefinitely provided I get proper training and have enough Malaria medicine.

Sadly don't have enough money, like the billionaire class, to buy a winery and citizenship in New Zealand, which should remain unscathed from the nuclear war.

Post: #155

(03-10-2019 01:14 AM)Heuristics Wrote:  I'm planning on using the basic income I get from Andrew Yang to offshore to Colombia or some other third world shithole that has easy access to weapons among other things (females). Should be able to survive in the jungle indefinitely provided I get proper training and have enough Malaria medicine.

Sadly don't have enough money, like the billionaire class, to buy a winery and citizenship in New Zealand, which should remain unscathed from the nuclear war.

In a global collapse scenario you reeeeally don't want to be in a third world country and of a different ethnicity than the natives...

Post: #156

(03-10-2019 01:39 AM)BortimusPrime Wrote:  

(03-10-2019 01:14 AM)Heuristics Wrote:  I'm planning on using the basic income I get from Andrew Yang to offshore to Colombia or some other third world shithole that has easy access to weapons among other things (females). Should be able to survive in the jungle indefinitely provided I get proper training and have enough Malaria medicine.

Sadly don't have enough money, like the billionaire class, to buy a winery and citizenship in New Zealand, which should remain unscathed from the nuclear war.

In a global collapse scenario you reeeeally don't want to be in a third world country and of a different ethnicity than the natives...

I've looked into the viability of the US, but I have mixed feelings. I could pass as Colombian. I think in many ways the third world is already better equipped to handle the upcoming collapse, for numerous reasons, among them: agriculture, more fertile lands, more community orientation, and religion.

Post: #157

(03-10-2019 01:14 AM)Heuristics Wrote:  I'm planning on using the basic income I get from Andrew Yang to offshore to Colombia... should be able to survive in the jungle indefinitely provided I get proper training and have enough Malaria medicine.

How do you plan on withdrawing your #YangBucks in the middle of the jungle?

Post: #158

(02-21-2019 02:17 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  LD.

You interested in permaculture?

Yes and no.

Homesteading of any kind is all good and well during a decline but at the point law and order is no longer assumed then you definitely don't want to be on a homestead. I'll watch the videos but generally this kind of stuff costs more money/time-money than it saves when compared to simply living in a rural town and buying your food from the local farmers.

If it's a lifestyle that appeals to you then sure, why not. It's kind of like being a hobbyist mechanic. If you enjoy it then that's great, but if not then by the time you factor in buying all the tools and the time it takes you to fix/service your own vehicles then it might simply be more cost effective to let a professional do the work, particularly if you're having to juggle other time constraints.

Any kind of hobby farming is definitely a retired-man's game. I'll put it that way.

Post: #159

Don't forget traps for your shelter

Post: #160

(03-09-2019 10:07 PM)rpg Wrote:  Look at Venezuela right now and just think what it would take to ride that crisis out.
Food, hydration, medicine. A cheap motorcycle with several cans of fuel. Extra pairs of shoes. Long range gun, medium range and a pistol. After 2 months of nationwide suffering, the strong and prepared will be calling the shots on either side. Also cant forget binoculars and night vision.

Either you're part of a gang, be it police, military or criminal or you are going to be running away as fast as you can.

That place was already violent but to add in power failures on top of food and medicine shortage with a country full of 3 gang factions its practically suicide unless you are ready to duke it out in battles with any one of them.

Post: #161

(03-10-2019 08:28 AM)Foolsgo1d Wrote:  

(03-09-2019 10:07 PM)rpg Wrote:  Look at Venezuela right now and just think what it would take to ride that crisis out.
Food, hydration, medicine. A cheap motorcycle with several cans of fuel. Extra pairs of shoes. Long range gun, medium range and a pistol. After 2 months of nationwide suffering, the strong and prepared will be calling the shots on either side. Also cant forget binoculars and night vision.

Either you're part of a gang, be it police, military or criminal or you are going to be running away as fast as you can.

That place was already violent but to add in power failures on top of food and medicine shortage with a country full of 3 gang factions its practically suicide unless you are ready to duke it out in battles with any one of them.

It's no a situation friendly to "man alone" approaches. Sometime the best way out is a plane ticket before things get too bad.

The strong and prepared are calling the shots in many neighborhoods because they are gangs. Otherwise preps are just more shit for active people to steal.

Post: #162

(03-09-2019 12:43 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  Still banging the drum for permaculture.

Shape the land to harvest and retain water, plant low to no maintenance food crops as a forest, integrate livestock to kill pests and weeds as well as spread manure, and plant many diverse food crops and nitrogen fixing plants for the soil which creates soil instead of depleting it.

This guy is building a kind of Eden on earth while his neighbors suffer from floods and droughts, he just keeps trucking with his micro climates and bio-experiments.

There are worse lives than this, being a farming mad scientist, observing natural processes and figuring out how to mimic and tame them for domestic use.

It's like being a grown man and still playing in the world's largest sandbox, playing with mud and carving up the land with earth movers.

What a life.

I'm also fascinated by this. Joel Salatin is an American farmer who writes and speaks extensively about permaculture/sustainable farms.

Post: #163

(03-10-2019 04:29 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

(02-21-2019 02:17 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  LD.

You interested in permaculture?

Yes and no.

Homesteading of any kind is all good and well during a decline but at the point law and order is no longer assumed then you definitely don't want to be on a homestead. I'll watch the videos but generally this kind of stuff costs more money/time-money than it saves when compared to simply living in a rural town and buying your food from the local farmers.

If it's a lifestyle that appeals to you then sure, why not. It's kind of like being a hobbyist mechanic. If you enjoy it then that's great, but if not then by the time you factor in buying all the tools and the time it takes you to fix/service your own vehicles then it might simply be more cost effective to let a professional do the work, particularly if you're having to juggle other time constraints.

Any kind of hobby farming is definitely a retired-man's game. I'll put it that way.

I get your point, but would hardly refer to Geoff Lawton as a hobby farmer.

He is the most successful and famous permaculturist in the world.

He is a farmer, albeit a regenerative one.

He would be the guy selling you vegetables and beef, if he felt like it, because, except for doctors and some machined products, he is completely self sufficient.

@Duke Main.

Yeah, Salatin is good too.

The achilles heel of many permaculture farms is that they make most of their money off permaculture classes and consulting and not what they produce.

There are some who have figured out a way to make a good living off what they produce, but it just isn't as productive as conventional farming. Monocrops and petroleum based fertilizers, despite their negative effect on the environment, are just better suited to the capitalist system we live in.

Post: #164

Really useful video, but SHTF his neighbours will just kill him and take his shit. You need guns and sons if you're going to have assets.

Post: #165

Whenever people think of prepping there seems to be a lot of emphasis on the lone wolf. One man, with a badass setup, good stash of guns and ammo who can protect his family in a location that is pretty secluded. There is a lot of truth in this. But To truly be safe you have to have some sort of communal setup to withstand any serious attack on what you have built. I imagine a farm like above, but agree that once the people in the city start starving you will literally have an army coming to confiscate your shit USSR style. Being outside of a metropolitan centre is critical I would say.

Post: #166

No need to prep. I don't care what happens. I know the government loves me and will take care of me.

Post: #167

In my opinion the best plan is to leave the area where the shit is hitting the fan. The necessary tools for that job will be different depending on your immediate location. A gun and a poncho may be better than an expensive watch and a fistful of cash depending on the immediate situation. So each person needs to have a destination picked out and the tools to get himself there. Further preparations would be to have assets stored at the destination. It is rather simple but how many of us actually have done these things? Next time you are out in another country maybe it would be a good idea to setup a small bank account. Luck is going to play a huge part in your success and a man with options usually finds himself luckier than a man that doesn't. My 2 cents.

Post: #168

Unless you want to hide in bunker in the middle of nowhere and live off reserves you are going to need other people.

It's not too difficult to make alcohol/ethanol which can be used as fuel for vehicles (if properly setup), heat, drinking obviously and trading for other supplies.

In a true apocalypse scenario like the Walking dead, cash has no value so no need to worry about that.

Post: #169

If you plan on having a group then bulk up on cigarettes, alcohol, porn (like playboy mags and stuff), playing cards, guitars, and candy (preferably hard candy) They're not necessarily a priority but they are stress relievers. Imagine how much an addict would pay for just one cigarette let alone a box.

Post: #170

(03-10-2019 02:54 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  ...
I get your point, but would hardly refer to Geoff Lawton as a hobby farmer.

He is the most successful and famous permaculturist in the world.

He is a farmer, albeit a regenerative one.

He would be the guy selling you vegetables and beef, if he felt like it, because, except for doctors and some machined products, he is completely self sufficient.

@Duke Main.

Yeah, Salatin is good too.

The achilles heel of many permaculture farms is that they make most of their money off permaculture classes and consulting and not what they produce.

There are some who have figured out a way to make a good living off what they produce, but it just isn't as productive as conventional farming. Monocrops and petroleum based fertilizers, despite their negative effect on the environment, are just better suited to the capitalist system we live in.

With a little extra money there's no reason you can't do both. One of the ways to get the best of both worlds is to live in a rural town and perma-culture a small to medium plot on the outskirts somewhere, but as you said it's not going to be a viable business. Not for a very long time.

Declines preceding collapses are tricky. As I made clear in the beginning of the thread you absolutely should NOT compromise your entire life preparing for something that you can't say for sure will happen on any certain timeline, or maybe even at all.

Geoff Lawton is doing what he loves, and if he buys a small house in the local town then he's set for if a true collapse of law and order sets in. From what I can tell even if some hoard of hungry rovers came through his property they'd get that season's produce but there'd be something else to harvest a month after that anyway. You just really don't want to be on the property when that group of 100 starving people roams in.

(03-10-2019 04:43 PM)Matsufubu Wrote:  Really useful video, but SHTF his neighbours will just kill him and take his shit. You need guns and sons if you're going to have assets.

Even if you could cut the mob to ribbons then a third are going to be women and a third are going to be children. That's what the real benefit of a small, fenced city-state arrangement is. You can repel roamers as a group and take group responsibility. If you're homesteading then you might get the prepper fantasy wet-dream of rude, unshaven ne'er-do-wells assaulting your compound with storm-trooper style expendability but more likely you're going to have a bunch of bedraggled men standing at the end of your driveway while the women and children walk up to your house waving a white flag. What then?

Homesteading. Don't do it unless it floats your boat on a lifestyle basis, and even then have a fallback plan if everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

Post: #171

Just get something like this and hide out.
https://www.costco.ca/In-Case-Of---1-yea...76712.html

Post: #172

@LD

One of the upsides of permaculture is that a large percentage of their productive land just looks like a tangled forest, and they plant so many goofy edible plants that beserkers wouldn't even recognize a lot of it as food.

At least that is the theory.

Post: #173

Yeah, it's a great idea as long as you're not on it when the lunatics arrive.

I've got a lot of seeds that can be used for what some call guerrilla gardening but I would never get into permaculture the way this guy does. I just don't have the green thumb. Sure, it's meant to be a science but I'm just not good with plants.

Particularly as someone on a relatively limited budget I buy stuff that I can put in a jar or a bucket or a tin and say "I have this now". My rice and my rainwater and my firewood = me and my family fed for quite some time, even if Yellowstone gives me and Mr Lawton a few very bad growing years. I admire his determination and think it's a brilliant way forward for hobby farmers as well as being extremely valuable knowledge for career farmers if something happens that means no more diesel, fertilizer and easy electricity. But for the average schmuck like me who has trouble keeping his dwarf mandarin trees alive in his back yard it's a bit of a non-starter.

Post: #174

The only way permaculture works is if you somehow work out a deal with a local law or military group to protect your shit in exchange for produce. Even then, who is the say they don't just roll up during the End and put a bullet in you because they have their own gardener or chemist who can do what you do?

During these times no one wants to deal with strangers.

Post: #175

During those times the smaller towns (>100 people) are going to clear out except perhaps for a couple of scouts and the larger towns are going to become tiny city-states who will be looking to police their districts ruthlessly. Everything will be loosely collectivised and quite voluntarily too because farmer John knows he's got jack-squat chances of defending his herds and his other valuables on his lonesome.

My best guess is that towns will be fortified. In the case of farmland, area cattle and as much feed as possible will be moved to the land ringing the town. Scouts will be put in place and one or more response teams will be set up to deal with incursions.

Food will not be a problem for a long, long time. Farmers breed cattle for outside consumption and with no way to sell them then the townsfolk will be complaining about beef for dinner again while people are eating each other in the suburbs.

Local military incursion is a possible problem but hopefully they arrive holding an olive branch and simply offer protection or at least an opportunity to be a part of a makeshift regional government. That's a good thing unless they're going to attempt to incorporate the city folk into that government, in which case resistance would be in order for the same reason you don't let swimmers over-burden a life raft.