Has the survival mentality made you less materialistic?

Originally posted by 30 Seconds
I dont know about you survivalists. I mean i would love to know the basics and pretty much do.

but anything beyond havin food and water supply for a week or 2, i think your a little paranoid.
there is always "sitX" floating around yet in the past.... X amount of years, when has it ever happened?

Its good to be ready, but to be constantly thinking about it. I dunno bout you people sometimes. lol

Oh god the third one this week, Sit X refers to Situation unknown, and that can be a storm, flood, forest fire, quake, fire storm, tsunami, terror attack, hurricane, ice storm, riot, civil unrest, drought, recccession etc etc ad infinitum. its one just TEOTWAWKI we plan to survive its everything anf anything thats the effect of can be mitigated someone by a bit of judicious preparedness.

I think that part of my response to the financial crisis that has struck at the world is to become more focused on being self sufficient. My income has not been affected by the economy but I find that we are thinking more about the purchases that we make.

We went through a bit of a binge on consumer goods when our kids got out of college and we suddenly were able to spend some of our earnings rather then send it to the colleges. We kind of worked through that and now have more clothes than we need for the next decade.

Now, we're getting back into gardening and actually saving money on almost a monthly basis. When we purchase things, we make sure that they are things that we really want or need.

We lived for years in a very frugal fashion because we needed to. We no longer have the need but we continue to live frugally. If our luck holds, we may be building a cabin in the near future.

As to materialism, we are certainly choosing more carefully when making purchases. We don't buy things that are just so much fluff.

Originally posted by 30 Seconds
anything beyond havin food and water supply for a week or 2, i think your a little paranoid. there is always "sitX" floating around yet in the past.... X amount of years, when has it ever happened?

Its good to be ready, but to be constantly thinking about it. I dunno bout you people sometimes.

It depends on what you think of as a situation X, its not all about the sudden collapse of society or major events like Katrina...more the little unexpected things that happen that require flexible thinking and quick reactions, or patient planning and the will to sit something out

You could have a mechanical failure of your vahicle and be in the middle of nowhere, miles from assistance, with night falling and the temperature rapidly dropping. Maybe stuck in an elevator in a multistorey carpark and no-one is aware you are there till the following day. Or return home from work to find that your front door has been kicked in and dont know if the intruder is still in the house.

There have also been larger events that took a hell of a lot of folk by surprise. You may remember the two petrol-strikes in the UK a few years ago that ground cities and most of the country to a halt and caused a run on the local shops and supermarkets...

You can never know whats around the corner...but by being prepared, even if just mentally, at least you'll have the jump on the vast majority of other folk