It is common knowledge that after three days without food honest people will steal for it and after 7 days without food people will kill for it.
We have nearly 2 generation who have never experienced real hardship, how prepare is your household should the system even fail for a month?

Should you lose power for a number of weeks, do you have a stockpile of firewood and a fireplace?

Do you have a gas cook top and spare gas?

Do you have a form of transport that needs no fuel like a push bike or animal?

Should the supermarket also dry up, do you have enough dry stock, Tins and bottled water to see you out a month?

Should money become worthless do you have a little stash of gold or silver to barter with.


We live in modern times and I am really interested to see if any are really prepared to survive more that a week should the system come crashing down say in the middle of a cold winter.


[edit on 24-9-2008 by smokingman2006]

Edit - missed the point of the post

[edit on 24/9/08 by Dermo]

I live in the bush, I have livestock and grow vegies, also have some very handy survival skills and trade skills, Blacksmithing ect., I reckon I could last oh about 40 years, if I give up smoking that is " I don't grow tobacco" maybe I could swap some chickens for some tobacco seeds hee hee

We in australia should be ok we've been running a 20 billion $ surplus for a while now. However that would decline if some of our trading partners were to go broke.

[edit on 24-9-2008 by Toecutter.]

Honestly, we are so weak that I'd be surprised if over 30% of the population survived real hardship.

The last real crisis was the Great Depression. There were no government programs or unemployment. If you couldn't find work, you lived in the street or at the YMCA.

My point exactly if the world governments drop the ball we will be in an even bigger mess than 1930.

back then we numbered a little over 1.5 billion and still has many natural resources today we number 4 times that number.

Plus the people of the 1930 were a lot more hardened than the creme puff we have today.................

People still are not getting it...

See that when you mention a system crashing, most don't even have an idea of exactly what would such an event would entail, and whether or not they would be able to deal with it with any competence, seeing that most have not even been out to discover what their true abilities are.

In any case, survival would depend mostly on access to drinkable water, and in most big cities that would already be a huge problem, to put it lightly...

We'll see...

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth
Honestly, we are so weak that I'd be surprised if over 30% of the population survived real hardship.

Tell me about it. It's a time when people call 911 if their pizza is late, contact their representatives if the cable goes out, pack a storage bin of Heineken to flee hurricanes and beat people to death to steal iPhones and Playstations. Hmmm... maybe if they react to food and shelter the way they react to consumer electronics and alcohol they might just survive.

Estimates that I have seen is that once power and water go out in urban areas, you can expect 90% of the population to be dead within 30 days. (That is, of course, assuming no major help for the populace in said urban area).