A quick post of introduction.
A former Wimbledonian currently resident in Somerset (no hosepipe ban jokes, please), I've been a Bushcraft enthusiast since childhood (past 30x years) and have a good few years military experience. I'm into outdoor pursuits but, for several years now, sadly haven't done anything more than some hikes.
I encountered this website a couple of months ago and, not understanding the term, I made a Google search. Search results made it sound too much like the "survivalism" of the 1980s, something I'm most keen to avoid.
The current situation here (floods) has brought me back to this website. It's not armageddon but it is a real life disaster situation for some villages here. In Britain in 2014.
It's no news to anyone here (on this website), but "Prepping", to me, is an obvious essential. It's nothing more than commonsense. I therefore can't think of myself as an intentional "Prepper", more someone with enough commonsense to realise that I need to now focus on the increasingly more likely scenarios for this area. Like most subscribers here, I don't subscribe to the ethos of sitting on my backside, expecting the Nanny State authorities to bale me out of trouble when disaster hits and then whinge when they can't do enough for me or do it the way that I want them to do it for me.
I like to think that I've a fair bit to share and, just as much, continue to learn. As much by pragmatism as by design, my Bushcraft rucksack contains my essentials with my hiking rucksack containing kit more orientated towards that leisure activity. My bergen contains the valuable bits and pieces that change according to season or activity and I keep rarely used miscellaneous bits and pieces in a storage box.
This arrangement all probably inspired by the pods of Thunderbird 2...
Living at 11 metres above sea level and a safe distance from the waterways, my home is not so susceptible to being flooded so I'm not in a directly critical situation. Being cut off from town is one scenario I ought to consider. Another scenario is food and other supplies dwindling in the shops.
I intended to buy an inflatable canoe last year but didn't - and that could have been a really useful asset...
Recommendations welcome.
