Preparing for war

[Pingu]

So my question when signing up to the website for checking whether or not I was a robot or not was:
"What do cows drinks?"
My first instinct to this was typing out the word "Milk" - now obviously calves do drink their mothers milk but I had to do a double take on myself remembering that the majority of cattle actually drink water.

Hi!
Call me Pingu.
I'm a mathematician from the South West UK - I spend a lot of my free time combatting disinformation online. Without getting too political into the nature of my activities (as per the forums rules), a lot of my interest regarding global events, geopolitics and climate change has made me somewhat nervous (to say the least) about the prospects of modern civilisation's survival.
My main motivation for prepping is to form a contingency plan in the event that the worst happens, and Europe is brought into a full scale war. I speculate that even in the unlikely event that it does happen, that it will have reletively low impact on the survival prospects of people in the UK South West - all the same, I don't want to take my chances.
So my plan is relatively simple:
- To find unowned or cheap land in a rural area of Scotland or Wales
- To habitat and work that land enough to sustain myself to both become my own free man and to live a relatively simple and holistic lifestyle.
- To accomodate (and prepare to accomodate) my family on the land should the need arise for it.

I've got a couple years yet before the main foundations of this plan get brought into action so would love to hear any advise about how to get started! Would also love to hear your stories about off-grid living, how you managed it yourself, and what your motivations for it might have been?
Nice to meet you!
Happy camping!

[pseudonym]

Hello and welcome to the Forum.

[jennyjj01]

Call me Pingu.
...
So my plan is relatively simple:
- To find unowned or cheap land in a rural area of Scotland or Wales
- To habitat and work that land enough to sustain myself to both become my own free man and to live a relatively simple and holistic lifestyle.
- To accomodate (and prepare to accomodate) my family on the land should the need arise for it.

I've got a couple years yet before the main foundations of this plan get brought into action so would love to hear any advise about how to get started! Would also love to hear your stories about off-grid living, how you managed it yourself, and what your motivations for it might have been?
Nice to meet you!
Happy camping!

Hi and welcome,
I suggest reading posts from Jansman and British Red. The latter has a youtube channel, though I can't link to promote it.

[Winterprep]

I second jennys recommendations.If you are looking for British Red you will find him on YT search for English country life and he’s on several other forums and writes for several publications.

WP.

[Arzosah]

Welcome to the forum, Pingu.

I've been on this forum a long time, but I don't think I've have replied "water" to the question you were faced with - good for you!

I've got a couple years yet before the main foundations of this plan get brought into action so would love to hear any advise about how to get started! Would also love to hear your stories about off-grid living, how you managed it yourself, and what your motivations for it might have been?
Nice to meet you!
Happy camping!

Haven't done it myself but the recommendations of others in this thread are good ones.

And you may not be able to get your own plan going for a couple of years yet, but skills matter - read about them, practise them. Ropework, leatherwork, growing food, getting fit, finding out what properties go for in your chosen areas. How to purify water - if you want to make a retreat plus live a simple life, there's lots of skills you can learn right now, by reading and then by practice.

Good luck!