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Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

lcamtuf.coredump.cx

101–110 of 123 posts

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are proud people who want to defend their country.

Let politicians fight and die in their own wars. If russia "visited" my country, I'd follow it with a drink in my hand from the bahamas. No piece of dirt or earth is worth dying for, ever.

Russia doesn't just "visit" your country. Lookup what Ruskiy Mir (Russian world) really means, basically your country gets subjugated by the Russians and I'm not talking about civilized or professional Russian forces - I'm talking about drunk and poor 20yo boys from a remote Russian villages that are now seeing the spoils of western civilization for the first time (do lookup what happened in Bucha, Kyiv suburbs in 2022 at the onset of invasion). Then of course the refusal of the Russians to recognize any other culture or language...the list goes on and on. So - yes, you could escape with a drink but then "If Not Me, Then Who"?

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow Ukrainian laws closely. I remember they allowed young men of ages 18-22 to cross the border in August 2025 (!). That caused enormous lines on the borders as the first day after this law 11,000 young men fled the country. But that only about men of age 18-22. Men of age 22-60 still cannot leave the country. And 18-22 couldn't leave the country for three years.

Honest question: why do you comment when you clearly have no idea what you are talking about? You make all kinds of false claims, and then people who actually know have to correct you.

I have information from the first hands because half of my family lives in Ukraine.

Where do you get your information? From CNN? Can you show an Ukrainian law that allows men to freely cross the border?

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are proud people who want to defend their country.

Let politicians fight and die in their own wars. If russia "visited" my country, I'd follow it with a drink in my hand from the bahamas. No piece of dirt or earth is worth dying for, ever.

If politicians and the people who voted for them invade my country and hurt my family and friends I will be looking at revenge.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on if the people with weapons can find the people with food. With no rule of law, everything is on the table. Warlords still exist in many parts of the world today

Modern warlords have large quantities of subjects from generations and generations of consolidation, which itself is a variation of joining instead of looting. Gaining subjects is extremely risky, when you don't already have an army. Really, modern first-world countries are just the descendants of warlordships that ran out of kingdoms to consolidate with and instead switched to taxation, either relinquishing enough p…

I guess we’ll be rebuilding society from scratch anyways

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#105
post #60

I think the ultimate form of prepping is meal prepping. By regularly cooking batches of food, you automatically get a really good backup throughout. There are no extra steps required. The last place you want to be during a disaster is at the grocery store or stuck in traffic. At any moment I could go for at least two weeks without really worrying about food or how it would even be prepared. I've got a standby generat…

Going out searching for more food after 2 weeks just ensures you're placing yourself amongst people that haven't eaten in 2 weeks and are willing to do anything they need to in order to eat.

If you don't have two weeks of food, you'll be one of those people.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#106

In the less doomsday version, everyone who is responsible for a family (the guy or gal who knows how everything works in the context of money, administration, etc.) should have a "what to do when I die" booklet. I wrote one years ago and update it with the most relevant information (how to get to my passwords (the ones that are not shared), list of bank accounts, list of investment brokers, what they will get when I…

I like this idea. I would like to extend it by providing bits of advice on how to handle the passing and how loved ones can move on with confidence.

Mine is very pragmatic, I let the emotional part to the ones remaining. I just want to pake sure that financially and administratively they are fine - this I can do.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#107
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL sorry, here's the list: Generator 5kw - you want something with a higher duty cycle than you need so it can run for extended periods Diesel storage for back of a truck - 330 Gallon (nice to have, after a week or two supply lines got fixed) Diesel - for said tank Medical supplies - IFAK kit (NAR is a good vendor). Bleeding control & dexamethasone. Solar power - 1-5kwh. We still get 10-15 hrs a day on the grid, but…

is the last point correct? "Get familiar with remote detonation with drones, these are what we use to set off the molotovs:" seems off for this list, like way off and more on military/offence side of type of thing? and why would you need a 300m+ ethernet cable in a disaster?

Ethernet cable is a high quality cable usable for various other purposes. That includes low voltage power line, such as 12V from the car to phone charger in the house, solar panel wiring, basic tripwire alarms, command relays in the yard from the house, basic audio intercom with your neighbors when phone lines are down, etc.

Plus the obvious ethernet repairs: lines broken by fallen trees/branches in a storm, video camera cables cut by thieves, install new survillance cameras, move existing ones.

Self-supporting ethernet cable is also a decent clothesline when your dryer is not working.

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do many people think that with their single assault rifle or other weap9n, that they would successfully defend against one or more truckloads of vandals looking to steal whatever they have stored up "self-sufficiently"? History seems to indicate that in the absence of law, those with the most people inside a fortified structure and position are the most likely to survive.

Those folks tend to have a confounding number of firearms, rather than just one. Not that it necessarily shifts the eventual outcome to your scenario.

number of firearms is moot without 1) the ammo to use it, and 2) enough bodies to use them.

I'd rather have 10 people with 10 guns than 3 people with 30 guns, esp. if of different calibers and configurations

and in a collapse situation I'd rather have excessive water purification and just enough firearms, than excessive firearms and little to no water purification

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#109

Its always good to be prepared materially, physically, and psychologically. The best preps are not supplies, but relationships. Social credit matters more, IMHO, than anything else when it comes to long emergencies.

yeah my folks live on an island off the coast and there are real concerns over things like tsunamis, flooding, or even just strong winds that knock out power for a while.

they live in a cul du sac and there are a bunch of community watch meetings where the folks get together and basically said "if shit goes down we need to be able to live together, so that means we need to 1) have trust, and 2) have the gear"

Of particular note are the few people with big trucks and boats, and the general gist of the planning was "live long enough on the island to be stable, and then use those boats to get off"

Re: Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)

#110

Lots of good stuff in here. One thing to note about building off-grid self-sufficient abodes for "Problem space #3: The zombie apocalypse" is that the roving hordes of warlord-run gangs will consider finding those to be the ultimate booty. This point is made quite clearly in Six Minutes to Winter, the new book about nuclear war by Mark Lynas. As much as I always wanted a sweet prepper cave, the idea has now soured on…

Roving hordes of warlord-run gangs aren't likely to last all that long. Unless they're extremely successful, they're going to be constantly infighting for resources, and success is a very high bar, because if they don't win every conflict, their population will rapidly decline from attrition. It won't take long for it to become overtly apparent to the members of roving hordes of warlord-run gangs that befriending an…

they'll either win, and become a local or regional power, or else they'll die off / get absorbed.

but that may take weeks / months / years and they can kill you and your fam and everyone else in 100km long before.

one of the conceits of nuclear bunkers was that there would be a lot of walking wounded and a lot of starving, crazy people for 6-12 weeks after the bombs go, on top of waiting for the worst of the radiation to dissipate. yeah those folks would die off but it's gonna be an ugly couple of months till then...

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