What made you become a prepper?

[Cocotte]

I remember learning in school how shale oil and fracking were possible means of extending the life span of global oil and gas reserves but it was far too costly to be worth it.
10 years later and it started being viable, now it's almost considered the norm.

Renewable energy can kick the teeth out of peak oil, but too much depends on rare earth metals (not that rare, just dirty to extract) from China who hold back on producing or exporting them to keep the price up. After all, if you're going to poison a valley for 300+ years, it may as well be worth it.

Pointing these things out in the past mad you seem paranoid but after 2020, everyone is more accepting of how bad situations can deteriorate.

[Arzosah]

Jerseyspud, quite a few of us think that peak oil (and the descent of oil production after the peak) is very important, it's also been called "the long slow crash". There aren't really any specific preps for it, I don't think, except to make sure you don't rely on mains electricity for the prepping side of life; research as you like, but don't *worry* about it, if you know what I mean - by definition that long slow crash is, well, slow

[Jerseyspud]

Yes it's amazing how many people I know talk about having a bit extra in. Even my parents on the mainland approve of my 'few extra bits' and think it's sensible. Yet they would normally be the people thinking tin foil hat tjme

[bobble]

Hi Jerseyspud
Quote -"Sorry to sound a bit stupid but what is peak oil and the implications on society?"
You've seen on films on tv where a company (like say Shell) "strike oil" and it gushes out of the ground like a fountain, then they put a plug on the top of the pipe to stop it. While the oil gushes out under it's own pressure, they don't have to spend any 'extra' money- its pumping itself out, straight into their barrels or pipelines. Once the pressure drops to a certain level, the oil will only dribble out and then it starts to cost money to pump the oil out. That's roughly when the well is past its peak.
So as an example, say Shell spent £100 drilling the well and then they get a 10,000 barrels of oil a day selling it at £60 a barrel, then they're making loads of money. But if they only get 1 barrel a day cos the oil's just dribbling out, then it's not worth them keeping a bloke on site to switch the tap off. Peak has been reached.
However, if the price of oil went up to £600 a barrel, then it would be worth the extra money to get a pump put in the well and get as much oil as possible out of it while the price was high. Hope that explains it a bit?! Took me a while before I understood all the consequences!

[Jerseyspud]

Thanks for the explanations all. Makes a bit more sense to me now!

[GillyBee]

One ex Navy parent and an ex Army wife stepmum meant that we had a degree of risk management trained in. The country aunt was snowed in with no power for a week and 3 toddlers and us kids quizzed her about what they did. No big deal says she, we cooked on the open fire, used the oil lamp and had plenty of food in the house. If water had gone we would have pulled the top off the old well and boiled that.

When Y2K came we got in a little extra just in case. Didnt need it but realised a buffer was smart. It came into it's own during the 2001 fuel strike. By fluke we had just bought a trailer bike so that was our main transport for a fortnight with the kids.

The more time goes on the more fragile it all looks and the more I prep and learn to do more myself within the bounds of health and finances.

[Vitamin c]

As a kid in the 70s 3 day week power cuts mum cooking on a camping stove a big stew
Mum had a mindset left over from ww2 anything on offer she would always buy extra and had a larder that could feed us all for ages .
It seemed like common sense to me plus you were saving money never thought of teotwawki till I got a lot older .
It did take over for a while but when I realised that the world had been a reasonably safe place since the dinosaurs kicked the bucket 65 million yrs ago leaving us to climb out of the trees and fly to the moon .
Just a few wars plagues nutty dictators volcanos ice ages in between but we seem to be doing fine even though covid.

[Appin]

Long term thing for me.

Child during power cuts from Miners strikes. So remember using candles and torches in short supply.

Cold War , I remember getting a rather feeble leaflet on nuclear survival by sending a postal order for 5 shillings. Later got my copy of Barry Popkess "The Nuclear Survival Hand-Book".

Later as a student lived through the cold war heating up and wondering how things would play out.

Since then various incidents where water or power have been cut off have reinforced my caution. Yes the tanker drivers strikes added to this and obviously now covid.

Appin

[featherstick]

I've always been a prepper I think.

As a kid I had a First Aid kit and "emergency rations" squirrelled away. Was always interested in survival skills, nature, woodcraft, but also in emergency response.

I think there's a few impulses that led to my current prep situation:
- Being the oldest in the family and having to look after my brothers over-develops your sense of responsibilty (I now work in international development and whenever I ask who is the older sibling in a meeting, it's about 70%, I'm convinced we transition from looking after our siblings to trying to look after the world).
- Perhaps remembering the 70s and candles and power cuts but very vaguely
- As several have said here, 2000 and the tanker strike, and researching Peak Oil subsequently
- Being generally aware of how many hidden vulnerabilities in the systems that underpin our way of life - 50 year old IT systems in banks, privatised infrastructure that is barely maintained, the everyday wonder of clean fresh water on tap
- Working in countries where conditions are very much worse than here and where life is cheap, or in countries where things seemed to be going well until The Thing happened - the Balkans in the 90s for instance
- Having kids
- Brexit and the appalling governance that we are currently suffering from

We're not super-preppers with bunkers and arsenals, just an ordinary family in an ordinary terraced house with a few too many groceries and paracetamol, an allotment, some fairly robust skills, and a community network that I've been working on for years.

[Jerseyspud]

See I don't remember the tanker strikes so much. I would have been about 15/16 at that point so I guess it wouldn't have affected me that much