I have been reading and watching prepping material for the last few months but I am still not sure what to do in my situation.
I can't bag in as I have very little space to storage preps and my wife begged me not to start storing staff. She is basically a sheeple
I live in south London(one hour driving from Box Hill) and I was considering to Bug Out in the South Downs. I will soon start some Bushcraft courses which will of course help me if the SHTF happens.
I know you guys are more oriented to Bug In but what would you do if you were living in London and could not Bug In?
I would try and move somewhere that I could, appreciate that it's not as easy as all that, but the South Downs really isn't the uninhabited wilderness that some people think, I live right on the edge of the downs, in a largish city, and it's basically surrounded by towns, so in a situation where lots of people are fleeing their homes it would get very busy and very dangerous, and as for food supplies, sure there's sheep and some rabbits, but it's mainly grazing land with few woodlands and little water, and I suspect that there will be a lot of pressure on what there is just from the people here, let alone with people heading down from London as well, of which there will be many.
Don't wish to piss on your firework, but the whole of the southeast is so densely populated that a bug out is not a particularly viable plan unless it's an absolute last resort, and if I lived in London and had to, I personally would be heading for Essex and east anglia, fewer people, (although still loads) better road access and more land that's not being used as heavily, as for me, if I can't stay home I'm fuelling up my boat and heading for France if it's at all possible, much more empty space to play with.
Other option is to secretly get a small storage unit close to your location and store bug in preps there, your wife can't complain if she doesn't know, and if you need them then she won't be complaining any more, you'll want to keep it secret from absolutely everyone though, storage units will get looted fast if anyone knows there's food there.
Last edited by Jamesey1981 on Sun Dec 13, 2015 3:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.
I have been reading and watching prepping material for the last few months but I am still not sure what to do in my situation.
I can't bag in as I have very little space to storage preps and my wife begged me not to start storing staff. She is basically a sheeple
I live in south London(one hour driving from Box Hill) and I was considering to Bug Out in the South Downs. I will soon start some Bushcraft courses which will of course help me if the SHTF happens.
I know you guys are more oriented to Bug In but what would you do if you were living in London and could not Bug In?
What would you do there, its mostly chalk and flint hills covered in grass where its cold and wet? The patches of trees are fairly small and the wildlife and wild food is too sparse to sustain life through trapping and foraging.
I have found, over the years, that for urban dwellers anything that is not "City" they consider "wilderness", and therefore open to public use.
I owned a sizable farm about a decade back and had a developer place about 200 homes on the border of my property. I soon had people hunting on my property, building tree houses in the wood, driving ATV and dirt bikes freely and chasing my cattle. These urban dwellers had no concept that anything over an acre was not a public park placed there for their amusement.
It took several confrontations, constant visits by law enforcement for both trespassing and illegal hunting, posting signs on every fence post on a mile square property and strategically placed deterrents to keep the riff-raff off my property.
If it had bee a WROL situation there would have been more violent measures taken.
And remember, the gamekeepers of your nation were once a feared group, taking the law into their own hands to protect the property and game of their employers. They are still one of the only groups of people guaranteed to have possession and true skill in firearms use in your nation. Do you really want to go squatting on those big estates and parks when they are protected by the group that invented the ghillie suit?
Mortblanc wrote:
And remember, the gamekeepers of your nation were once a feared group, taking the law into their own hands to protect the property and game of their employers. They are still one of the only groups of people guaranteed to have possession and true skill in firearms use in your nation. Do you really want to go squatting on those big estates and parks when they are protected by the group that invented the ghillie suit?
Not just gamekeepers, farmers too, a farmer without at least a shotgun is a rare beast indeed.
A few years ago I was hiding in a hedgerow bordering some farmland that I had permission to shoot over, waiting for rabbits to pop their heads up. I was still entirely on the land that I had permission to be on, I fired both barrels, then as I started to get up to go and pick up the rabbit that I'd shot, (I missed with the first barrel, doh) the farmer that owned the land behind me had sneaked up and shot me in the arse with a cartridge full of lentils! Was amazingly painful, and as I thought he'd actually shot me I'm just glad that he waited until my gun was empty, because if it hadn't been I would have shot him, and my cartridges weren't full of lentils.
He ended up going to jail in the end for shooting at a walker that was on a public footpath, turned out his guns weren't licensed either.
Not especially relevant, but thought I'd share as it sort of fits and I find it pretty funny these days.
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.
You've had some really excellent replies already. I'm not very far from Jamesy geographically, and I agree with what he's saying. Storage units ... hmm, thats a good idea. Big Yellow do very small "rooms" (I'd have got a quote, but you've got to fill in about 3 pages, sorry!)
The other thing is, to have either a van or a camper van you can sleep in if push comes to shove and you're literally homeless.
Prepping isn't just about having 12 months worth of food and water stored, or having loads of different knives, axes, bows etc.
I'd say you're better prepared by using the old grey matter.
Bugging out or running off to live in the woods/wilds might sound like a good idea, but you can only bug out with what you can carry/fit in a car, and that'll run out pretty fast.
Look at where you live, even in a one-bedroom flat, you have a roof over your head, a secure, safe, comfortable place to stay, you have loads of resources, or things that can be turned/adapted into resources, you're familiar with your surroundings both inside and outside, you know what stuff you have and what you need, and more importantly, you're not expending calories on the move every day to find a safe place.
You can keep your head down, move about and find resources in an area you know at your leisure.
Get yourself familiar with what you have within a mile radius of where you live, shops, food stores, police stations, water sources, DIY stores, ironmongers, I bet you'd surprise yourself if you did some searching at just whats around you.
With the storage units, I had one recently, it wasn't cheap but I was storing stuff in between house moves so it was huge, but the place I went to, (was one of the big names) had everything from swimming pool locker sized cabinets to small warehouses, and the smaller ones were pretty cheap, so depending on what you want to store, a small locker that can take a stack of the plastic lidded storage boxes that you get in any hardware store would store a hell of a lot of dried and canned food and bottled water, buy and pack sensibly and include a damp trap or two and you could easily get enough in to keep you going for a good while.
Another thing I would suggest, if you're going out to do bushcraft courses, take up fishing as well, nice relaxing hobby, I love it, and then you can justify having outdoor kit and a camping stove etc to your other half without her realising what you're up to.
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.
Off site storage units are also an excellent method of caching supplies in several locations to keep from putting all ones' eggs in the same basket.
In my area tornadoes are the greatest natural disaster threat. Since the funnels are seldom more than a miles wide one can be pretty secure having one portion of the supplies at home and a second set of supplies in an off site storage unit. The storm will probably not hit both locations and if it hits neither then 100% of the supplies are intact for other emergencies.
With storage units isn't there going to be a problem accessing them if things go bad?
I have only very limited experience of them when my brother stored his house contents during a move a while back, but it was a secure warehouse sort of place, I can't see similar places being open in a SHTF sort of situation.
