prepared ?

with all the bad weather of late i thought i would bring this up.
my bride and i could likely go 90 days or better in a pinch. after talking with a few friends it shocked me that many of them have only a normal bill of groceries on hand . no generator or water stored . no no back up medications .
at the very least folks should have some MRE's and plenty of bottled water on hand . also you have to consider kids and family . things could get tight real fast and we need to be like our grandparents and be prepared for lean times.

just food for thought and worth what you paid for it :3dSMILE:

I'm not as prepared as you I'm sure. I have bottled water, juice packs, and 2 shelves of non perishables for the kids. Quite a variety of canned veggies etc, all of which is kept in our basement. I doubt there is enough for 3 months though. I do have a generator and I keep 5 gallons of gas around for it. I try to cycle it so it doesn't get too old. I also keep some diesel since my mower is a diesel and my 72 will run without much if you know what hits the fan.

Meds wouldn't be to much of a hurdle.. As long as I can run the generator I'll have water. Food? That could be a hicuup. But right now there's deer and turkey aplenty. If the local power utility gets off their butts we'll have a solar array doing 1.5 MW's, so I won't need a generator!

i have a pto gen that will run the whole place. plenty of diesel to keep my tractor running. we can stuff from the garden every year and put up meat. MRE's at sams club are not too bad. buy a little at a time and stick it back.
not sure if i'm a prepper or just cheap :) my bride loves canning so it's all good.
i worry about friends who do their farming at krogers . some would not last a week.

This year our garden didn't do too well. So our canning is on the meek side. I would like to get a deer this year. I haven't gone out for 2-3 seasons and it drives me nuts. I have been keeping the freezer stocked with good, cheap pork though. My last whole pig with most of it smoked after it was butchered was only $370. It's hard to pass up. Next thing on the list is a larger deep freeze though. :LOL:

We have a PTO gen too. And I have one for the cub cadet as well. 550 gallons of diesel not to mention the heating oil tanks..
Gardens are being harvested now, but the freezers are filled. I'm no prepper and mre's are awful!

One of the guys at work is a prepper.. say she does all these things and more so they can survive a nuclear blast, I tell'em I'd rather be vaporized than live with what's left!

This reminds me I have an old light unit I need to dig out so I can swap the engine out. It is supposed to be the mobile generator for anyone in our family who may need it. The sucker is a loud air cooled diesel, but will power a farmstead. (If we ever get around to putting the good engine on it) :LOL:

every dairy i have visited around here has a pto gen set up to run the dairy . otherwise somebody has to hand milk a couple hundred cows twice a day. :) you get more bang for your buck when you only buy the gen and not the power plant to run it . i do have a 5k gen that is small and portable.

The Mormon church has some good info regarding long term food storage:
https://www.lds.org/topics/food-stor...eng&old=true#1
You are not required to join to use the info!!

around here we could live off hogs for the next hundred years. :(
and we have plenty of mesquite to cook'em with . :)

mmmmm, mesquite cured bacon

on any given day you could kill as many hogs as you have ammo . i've seen as many as 30 in a group rolling through here.

The recent blow revealed how poorly I am prepped.

I have lots of canned food, several half gallon jugs of rum for barter/personal use, ammo and weapons. No hand pump for the well, no generator to run the pump or the freezer. I've been putting off a generator and hand pump for too long.

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Originally Posted by firebird77clone

The recent blow revealed how poorly I am prepped.

I have lots of canned food, several half gallon jugs of rum for barter/personal use, ammo and weapons. No hand pump for the well, no generator to run the pump or the freezer. I've been putting off a generator and hand pump for too long.

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You brought a really good point up that I have been forgetting about. I have an old cistern next to my house I need to pump some water off and have tested. A hand pump would come in handy if everything is out but I could get our own water next to the house if we needed to.

This just in:

We each have a water pump with an independent power supply.

Just hook the inlet side of your water pump to the well, and crank the engine. After the glycol purges, you have potable water. Save the glycol mix in a couple buckets to put back in later.

It's not convenient, but it is an option.

2 yrs ago we were without power for a few days because of a ice storm, other than that I can't remember the last time we lost power for more than an hour or two. I'm not very prepared at all.

We've had 2 instances this year where we've been without power for a bit. The first time a semi took out about 4 power poles and that was during a severe thunder storm line. That was about 12hrs. The next one was a burnt up transformer on each block for 4 blocks caused by I don't know. Lightening I can only guess. That was 36hrs. That was the only time I actually used my generator for no power and i'm good with that. :LOL:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by firebird77clone

This just in:

We each have a water pump with an independent power supply.

Just hook the inlet side of your water pump to the well, and crank the engine. After the glycol purges, you have potable water. Save the glycol mix in a couple buckets to put back in later.

It's not convenient, but it is an option.

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That sounds good, but your water pump is a circulating pump, designed to pull water from the radiator and push it through the engine in a closed system. I'd be really surprised if it would lift water more than a couple of feet (if that) without cavitating. If you're pumping from a positive suction head, the water's going to flow through the engine and come out quite hot, too, and you can't choke back the flow without overheating the engine. Not sure that's really a viable option.....

We're quite well prepared.
With forty years or so of camping and hot-rodding we've accumulated quite a bit of camping equipment, gas hobs, gas stoves, gas lanterns, and several gas (lpg) bottles.
We've also got a small generator that would (and has,) keep the freezers frozen.
As for water: we've got four 30,000 litre tanks full. Sufficient for twelve months if used wisely.

The most worrying thing would be the beer supply. I usually buy a dozen bottles or so when needed...maybe I should get in a twelve month supply!

:) :) :)

(Although I think She Who Must Be Obeyed might get a wee bit septic about that...)

We could go for a couple of months with no problem, except I would need a generator for the freezers, no meds as of yet so thats no an issue, my kids on the other hand...day to day groceries, can`t understand that...

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Originally Posted by 406Rich

We could go for a couple of months with no problem, except I would need a generator for the freezers, no meds as of yet so thats no an issue, my kids on the other hand...day to day groceries, can`t understand that...

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We do weekly groceries. Day to day would drive me mad. I couldn't go to any grocery store every day without loosing my mind. Groceries are crazy. We spend around $180-$240 each week on groceries. There is why I don't have a newer truck anymore. :LOL:

But neither of my two kids were raised that way, not sure what happened..:LOL: