UK specific prepping.

Prepping for what? Nothing's going to happen, well not in my lifetime anyway. In the hundreds of years which Britain has been a civilised place, there has never been a need for any 'prepping'. What is about to happen? My apologies if I've missed something which may hasten our impending doom.

A fair point but did we not "prep" as a matter of course until the advent of debit cards and supermarkets?

Most familys/households today would be in trouble in a matter of hours never mind weeks.

I encourage your input.

a reply to: yorkshireman

Do we prep as a matter of course? I don't know anybody personally that preps. The only people in the UK I ever come across as preppers are those here on ATS.

Please don't think I'm being funny or awkward about the matter. I just don't really get the point of going to all that trouble for something that is more than likely never going to happen.

A fair point but you have to define prepping and apply it to your location.

I can only guess by your username that you live in yorkshire( I am clever like that) I am from Linconshire/Nottinghamshire but now live is the Southwest of England.

I admit that the world is not going to end but how far are you from a candle? how much food do you have? off grid heating? off grid cooking?

3 day powercut? are you good or are you in a state of panic?

I ask because I think we both know this is a possible situation without the world ending?
a reply to: yorkshireman

originally posted by: yorkshireman
Prepping for what? Nothing's going to happen, well not in my lifetime anyway. In the hundreds of years which Britain has been a civilised place, there has never been a need for any 'prepping'. What is about to happen? My apologies if I've missed something which may hasten our impending doom.

I respectfully disagree.
The whole point of preparation in advance,is based on the "just in case" scenario.
You say nothing will happen in your life time-that is an impossible claim to make I am sorry to say.

Did the folks of Mosul,Kurdish Iraq think their city would be taken by ISis?
Did the people of Pompeii anticipate their doom by volcano?
Did the workers in factories in Hiroshima have an escape plan in case of the atom bomb?
Did the Aztecs have a plan in place if they were hit by a plague(smallpox)from overseas?

No-none of them anticipated the doom which was dealt to them so suddenly.
If they had been able to prepare in advance,many more would have survived.

So the people who try to be ready for every eventuality are not wasting effort-some of them someday,could be the ones who survive a great as yet unknown upheaval.

BTW the biggest "preppers" are not those who you see on idiot reality shows,but Governments.
It is they who build 2 mile deep underground town sized complexes with food stored for 10years+
They who have underground fuel/water reserves to last for years.
They who will survive to carry on their BS.

Unless some ordinary folks also prepare.
There is no harm in being prepared IMO.
But there may be harm in being unprepared.
I know which one I choose.

Not to pour water on the parade here.. but do any of you know the extent
to which military planners plan an attack on a specific target?

Say there is a goods Railway yard in the middle of a city..
The planners are told by their masters that the Railway Yard is high
priority target and must be totally destroyed.

The Planners have the math to smash the the railway yard to either
football size rubble, brick size rubble or gravel .

They achieve this by running computer simulations of nuclear
strikes from various heights , angles and distances.

So one railway yard in the middle of one city might be targeted with multiple
nukes of different yields to achieve the military planners objectives.

Now thats just one target in one city...
We in the UK do not have the space to survive a full nuclear strike.

Prep away if it makes you feel better .. but the reality is you won't survive.

Sorry

a reply to: nonspecific

Good guess about my location I'm minutes away from some beautiful countryside.

Candles no problem, second drawer down in my kitchen. Food wise, I'd be ok for a few weeks tops, I have plenty of tinned food, a fridge freezer and a chest freezer full of meat, courtesy of my local farm shop. I do realise that my freezer would defrost by the way! Heating would be ok if I stayed at home, and cooking I'd be fine, I spent time in the infantry so I know how to rustle up a good meal with some hexy blocks and a mess tin.

A three day power cut in my house would be bliss. No kids arguing over ipods, ps3 games, no soaps to sit through...

a reply to: Silcone Synapse

A very well put reply, and one for which I respectfully give you a star.

I guess I do have some preconceived ideas about preppers. I tend to think of them as the idiots I see on TV having underground bunkers, and an arsenal of weaponry that would be enough to take on IS (I wish).

There is no harm in being prepared, but I'll take my chances and carry on as I do, I'll cross that path if it comes along.

Is your take on it not "prepping" in itself?

Food, shelter, ect.


a reply to: yorkshireman

a reply to: rigel4
A nuclear war is only one of many potential catastrophes,and you are correct to say if we experienced a real nuclear war we would be screwed in all but the most rural locations of the UK.
But,other disasters could be survivable with a bit of knowledge and preparation.

I wouldn't call myself a prepper at all,but I do keep enough food for 6 months in my house and eat from the local environment when I can.
Plants,fungi,seeds and berries are handy to know about and may help anyone in a disaster scenario-plus they are great free food and tasty.

Better to have the knowledge/escape plan ideas just in case.
But hoping I will never need it to survive.


Ohhh,sheeet-Am i a prepper after all?
Its just my way of living I think.
Like a squirrel hides its seeds and nuts for winter munchies..
Damn squirrel preppers.

a reply to: nonspecific

Sorry I don't think I'm grasping your question...

Are you asking what my take on prepping is? And if I prep at all?

If so, no I don't prep at all, I have no shelter other than my home and a five man tent with sleeping bags etc. That was bought for the sole purpose of enjoying camping, though it may come in useful should things take a turn for the worse.

Food wise I have what I have in my house, I'm well stocked up but only to feed my family through a normal weekly routine, plus extra tins that seem to sit in my cupboards for months or even years sometimes. I have a tinned fruit salad in there from 2006!

originally posted by: yorkshireman
Prepping for what? Nothing's going to happen, well not in my lifetime anyway. In the hundreds of years which Britain has been a civilised place, there has never been a need for any 'prepping'. What is about to happen? My apologies if I've missed something which may hasten our impending doom.

Correct - everywhere in the UK is legally obliged to have an emergency contingency plan which is well tested and proven to work (which is kept secret for obvious reasons) - this is just scaremongering.

The only kind of 'prepping' anyone should bother with is listening to the various Civil Defence siren noises that tell you what has happened and what to do.

All of which can be heard by ringing 01946 775254 (but you didn't hear that from me)

Scratch that they're available on youtube here (and yes these are the official ones, not a hoaxer)
www.youtube.com... (stuggling to imbedd it)

a reply to: bastion

Haha! I'm almost tempted to try that number!

I think we'd be reasonably ok in this country, it's small enough to manage and has plenty of resources to keep us going for a while, barring a nuclear war or something on that scale.

a reply to: yorkshireman

See my edited post with youtube alarm sound links, it's interesting stuff with a lot of detail (and really shouldn't be that easilly available)

Even for nuclear war there's thousands of secret underground bunkers, though they're mainly for 'Gold Command' (heads of emergency services, local authority, MPs and academics) but the other plan is more than adequate. I have no trust in politicians at all, but they're right on these plans.

lets just say we ran the nuke proof network of telecoms right next to a major base of the airforce should say how much how much the civilian government would of lasted, and thats before you saw the fact that most of them from the last 10-15 years have given up their 'bunkers' for storage etc so really if they drop the bomb lets just say ... byebye

a reply to: yorkshireman I feel that us humans are closer than ever to destroying ourselves, it would to me make sense to prepare to delay my demise for as long as I could, that said I have not prepare anything for a shtf event, 3 days an my family would be hungry,inside every person there is a primevil instinct to survive, driven by hunger id eat my neighbours, there would be plenty of human meat around dead or otherwise then its back to the cave for sex.

originally posted by: Silcone Synapse
The whole point of preparation in advance,is based on the "just in case" scenario.

Which is why I always were a crash helmet in doors, just in case the ceiling falls on my head! You can never be underprepared, eh.

I can see no circumstances - other than Armageddon - where the population would be reduced by 95% after six months due to the loss of electricity, as per the OPs doom-mongering. If you think stocking 4,000 tins of beans in a hole in the garden is going to help, then good for you. I say you could spend the money by having a really good time in the pub and you'd be happier for it.

Regards

originally posted by: Maxatoria
lets just say we ran the nuke proof network of telecoms right next to a major base of the airforce should say how much how much the civilian government would of lasted, and thats before you saw the fact that most of them from the last 10-15 years have given up their 'bunkers' for storage etc so really if they drop the bomb lets just say ... byebye

I can confirm they're still building bunkers, but aren't prepared to go into any more detail than that (i,e proof of their locations and new construction sites as in a worst case senior terrorists or nations who hate us would be desperate to find out where they were in order to infiltrate/attack them - apart from the new Eden Product fully bomb proof mile underground seed/dna bank to restart the food chain) . I can only give you my word on that and it's fully understandable if you don't believe/trust me as you have no idea who I am.

Actually managed to find public proof here from a Universities own website. Was not expecting that as the staff aren't even allowed to know about it and I'm pretty sure there's a government D/D8 notices on them in general (a veiled threat the government send out to journalists exposing similar subjects under the suggestion doing so will cause major damage to national security.

The nineteenth century mansion house was
originally built in 1864 by Adam Leigh, a
prominent mill owner from the area. It has
had a long history, from a family home to a
partial remodelling into a Cold War
communications centre complete with
nuclear bunker, and has now been carefully
restored into a top-of-the-range Conference
Centre.

www.uclan.ac.uk...

The Uni sold the centre off a few years back, a certain Uni CEO has been using international student fees to update the bunker and communications - this story should be in the Times Higher Educational Supplement in coming weeks (I'm currenyl working with the editors there)

The towers are all over the UK following WW2/Cold War (i.e 15 in Broadmoor alone) and are serviced on a weekly basis to make sure they work. Her's proof from a public known one. However as the reports indicate they may be being reduced as part of this stupid governments austerity program - which is certainly cause for concern as it would defeat the plans.

If you live in Crowthorne or the surrounding area, you’ll be familiar with the sound of the Broadmoor siren, which is tested every Monday morning at 10 am.

The wailing escape siren is sounded for two minutes, followed shortly later by the all clear continuous siren for two minutes.

There are 13 satellite sirens covering local areas including Sandhurst, Wokingham, Bracknell, Camberley and Bagshot.

www.wlmht.nhs.uk...

a reply to: paraphi

Completely agree there's hundreds of oil tankers in the English channel just waiting for fuel prices to rise to a particular point and then they'll sell them - we still have all the coal and nuclear plants and we're barely started with renewals but already up to self producing nearly a third of our electricity needs, which is set to double in two years.

Even if all electricity/feul and the like was lost there's back ups, emergency systems and energy stockpiles so it would have minimal effect for a couple of weeks before returning to normal.

human beings have come so far that should any event happen we have further to fall. I do laugh at the "it'll never happen" brigade they'll be the first ones to "shuffle off this mortal coil". take most people away from their comfort zone, electricity, hot baths, food in the shops, petrol in the car, and yes internet and mobile phones, they will be as helpless as little babies, we are reliant on technology that take that away(as I said before electricity is the weak link here) and most people will be lost. and civilisations have collapsed before, its not a matter of if its a matter of WHEN.