Where is the real line drawn?

[chrisred]

This thread could probably take so many different angles... Were do we draw the line between fear mongering and the real risk the S*** hitting the fan?
I guess the idea of this post was to get a little idea on other peoples take on society and how it's heading. What's probable, possible and outright crazy.

Now I believe I have an open mind and like to question everything while taking nothing too seriously.
I have a close friend who is absolutely convinced, 'HE KNOWS' that it's round the corner. Now this man I talk of is very intelligent and really is a fountain of knowledge and has literally been none stop for 10 years now trying to 'wake people up'. Currently, the fluoridated water dumbing down society, geoengineering changing our agriculture for the worst, gmo crops, vaccinations and medication slowly killing us, common purpose infiltrating our democracy, I could go on. Now his take on future is almost apocalyptic and will be caused purposely and is by design by the psychopathic global elite. Economic collapse, Red dawn raids taking out absolutely anyone opposing the establishment, leaving behind a perfectly complient state of zombies under a world government where no-one dare walk out of line. They have underground cities, seed vaults etc etc and their plan is about to take full swing. Now I won't go on too much about that.

My take is not so serious. I however have not made up my mind on such issues and take a lot of things with a pinch of salt although I have seen all the 'proof' in the form of documents and whistle blowing, dvd's such as endgame, loose change, obama deception, 9/11 inside job, what in the world are they spraying and many more.
Again my question is where do you draw the line?

I am a family man, run my own company and take each day as it comes. I don't keep myself up at night worrying about what may happen tomorrow but still, I try to prepare should the worst happen. I do however believe that the ecconomy has real risk of collapsing. I do believe that resources may become shall we say less stable than we're used to and I do believe that there 'may' be people out there who are psychopathic and will stop at nothing to see their agendas proceed. An illegal Iraq war for instance causing the death of hundreds of thousands. How Tony Blair sleeps at night I wish I knew.
But, I am not convinced about the endgame scenario. I am taking steps to be as prepared as I can be for if the worst were to happen. I have young children and family to take care of. I have a little nenewable energy, food stores, seeds stored, bug out equiptment should it be needed, gold and silver should there be trading, tools and utilities put away and more. Even small scale power cuts and job loss is a concern for putting bread on the table which is also why I have commodities and hunting equiptment.

Again, I don't worry myself about this. I'm the happy go lucky kind and am one who would like to believe that such evil would not prevail but that's just my thinking. If anyone would like to put some thoughts and ideas accross, I'd love to hear them.

[ForgeCorvus]

I have life insurance
I have home insurance
I have pet insurance
When I had a car I had car insurance

My preps are just another thing that I spend money on and hope I'll never need....... Mind you, prepping is a lot more fun....... After all, how many web forums are there dedicated to car insurance ??

SHTF can cover anything from loss of income for a couple of weeks to the full on Zompocalypse.... We all know which is most likely

[chrisred]

Yes a good point there. Prepping is fun in a scary way but the sense of adventure is a bit of a thrill. To be honest, I don't know what i'd rather. The challenge or the 9-5 routine... I find it just a bit of an existance and not a lot more really.

[poppypiesdad]

I have life insurance
I have home insurance
I have pet insurance
When I had a car I had car insurance

My preps are just another thing that I spend money on and hope I'll never need....... Mind you, prepping is a lot more fun....... After all, how many web forums are there dedicated to car insurance ??

And that folks is the simple summary of Being Prepped

Well said

j

[iceprep]

I think in the UK we are probably better off than other places; with exception of terrorist attacks or extreme weather - we aren't likely to suffer the major SHTF scenarios, as ForgeCorvus said, in the UK it will come down to personal scenarios or local events like flooding.

Again we are lucky. However, our Friends in the USA aren't so lucky. The prepper mentality across their must be more paranoid, after all:

The Big Earthquake of San Andreas is due.
Yellowstone super volcano is due to erupt.
The USA have detention centres ready and waiting for mass war when they pull the guns from citizens.
The 'big' tropical storm is due

The above is very very unlikely, but it's not to say it won't happen, but you can't worry about these things as it's out of anyone's control.

Realistically it's down to low of work, or of a loved one, flooding, severe weather, utility outages etc those are areas we prep for as they god forbid are the most likely ones but you can't live life waiting for it to happen.

That's my take.

And I like a good conspiracy story but I'm a realist!

[prepperG]

Politicians spend money on prep so that they don’t loose there job when someone says you should have prepared for this..
Things do not happen without warning, for example 9/11 3 weeks before a lot of phone calls were going around saying there is going to be a big attack.
The gov have spent a lot of money on radiation detectors, nerve agent drugs, body armour.
This week we get told that there is just a 5% power surplus and prices are going up 8% and the euro debt crisis is getting worse.
I think we can safely say no need for fear as we have been given plenty of warning and no excuse not to prep.
Oh and 5% morgage are they crazy so many people could end up in negative equity, guess the next gov will have to worry about that time bomb.

[TwoDo]

Again, I don't worry myself about this. I'm the happy go lucky kind and am one who would like to believe that such evil would not prevail but that's just my thinking. If anyone would like to put some thoughts and ideas accross, I'd love to hear them.

The world has been consuming resources at a massive rate. In the last 21 years half of all of the oil that the human race has ever been pumped out of the ground has been used. Think about that! The 50's, 60's, 70's the 80's, WWII and the years before that all of those decades consumed about as much oil worldwide in total as the last 21 years have. It just cannot go on and that which cannot continue will stop. IMO any reasonable analysis of the consequences of that do not bode well for our current way of life.

Its not just oil. There was one survey of all of the major resource inputs to our society and after studying them all they only found one input that was not at peak or past peak (Bauxite the raw ore of Aluminum). Sources of everything else are majorly stressed world wide. Peak oil, peak phosphate, peak copper, peak potash, peak topsoil, peak fish, peak fresh water, peak rare earth metals, peak antibiotics, peak population, peak forests .... peak pretty much everything. We have been living in a bubble and have now cleaned out the easy low hanging fruit and nearly all of the harder to reach stuff too.

I don't see it ending well. Maybe we can find solutions to some of the above peaks (by substitution or technical innovation) - but all simultaneously? I doubt it. Hard times are surely coming - Liebigs Law of the Minimum will take care of that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebig%27s ... he_minimum

Given the above, I doubt evil elites and global conspiracies are the biggest problem. People are funny, they will internally misinterpret any fact that does not fit their preconceived notions. Your friend, whom you state is widely read, probably is aware of a lot of a lot of the above information. However, deep down he likes our current high energy, high resource lifestyle and cannot and will not believe that things are spiraling down in an unstoppable way. His response is to look for vast international psychopathic evil elite conspiracies. Those, after all, are fixable - sadly peak everything is not.

[Lealee]

I think with all that is going on in the world at the moment it is easy to become paranoid and fanatical however I was a single mum with 4 kids for many years and found it nessesary to prepare for times of hardship because i was the only provider for my family.

I made sure i had enough to keep us including my parents well fed and provided for. Although working full time i have always kept a garden of veg and fruit as a stand by. My kids have never noticed the hard times even when i was off work for a while.

I think its just a responsibility to provide for your family and to be aware of whats going on in the world. Whether you are a nuclear bunker type or a food and water type of prepper i believe that something is better than nothing. only you are responsible for you and if you feel safer being a bunker type then thats whats right for you.

I agree that we are lucky in this country to a certain extent but we still have to do our bit at what ever level makes us comfortable. I dont think there is a line because we all have different reasons to prep and different lifestyles. Ive always been seen as a jam and junk kind of person im not going to change now. And when push comes to shove i wont be expecting the government to be prepared for every eventuality so if im ok for a while in my world then im ok. As a prepper i dont think any of us can truly be prepared for every eventuality but we are at least doing something and not just ignoring world events pretending it cant happen to us.

No line because the bunker type will do better than me if we get Nuked. Its up to the individual.

[m4me]

Hi ChrisRed,

It's an interesting topic that you raise.

I am not sure where the line is drawn and needless to say, storing anything more than a few cans of baked beans seems to be a bit of a taboo subject in 2013. The preparations that most are making are likely out of comfort i.e. a few blankets to ensure that they won't get cold if there are problems with their heating, bottled water in case local road works dirty the supply, a few extra cans of food if there is a fuel protest/heavy snow, a key left with family in case they are locked out etc.

If you think about some of these reasons for prepping, it's usually because people have experienced events themselves - their preparations evolve naturally and they are already prepared for the most common disruptive events they will likely experience. I am taking a similar approach to my own preparations, but I am using a longer "past" as a means of being more prepared:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_di ... fatalities

A number of these disasters are simply impossible to prepare for e.g. explosions, however I believe the greatest real-world SHTF threat is that posed by a long-term pandemic. I do worry about the broader threats of war, deliberate acts of terrorism, government corruption, the illuminati etc. but security aside, I feel that the approach to preparing for a pandemic would serve you well in most situations.

I think being prepared for a pandemic is where I will personally draw the line!

m4me

[nickdutch]

If anyone says they "know" they don't. I met a guy a few years ago who told me that the entire economy was going to collapse by march. He told me to sell every stock I owned (which was great, I was one step ahead owning nothing!) becuase "everything paper will be gone by march!!!". March came, march went. Nothing substantial happened.

I just think that the new era that we are moving into is one in which we will all have to look after ourselves more and there will be more economic bubbles and burst bubbles and all kinds of issues will happen. Health care in the UK will get more pricey, food will get more pricey, energy will become more erratic, weather and harvests will become more erratic.

Who knows.