GO GO GO are you ready now?

bonniebede

Okay, thought it might be fun to do a sudden spot check of preparedness.

If I had to do it tonight....

bugging out from the car?
emmm, no. car bag is in the bedroom waiting to be sorted out. On the plus side the spare hiking boots are in the car, with a walking stick, emergency blankets, torch,lighter, and a small haversack or 72 hour rations.

Bug out from home?
BOB is in a bit of a mess waiting to be sorted. Boots and back laid out. FAK needs sorting. Docs and id not up to scratch yet.

Bug in?
On the plus side, three month food supply, gear for fishing and snaring. On the downside no water supply or means to collect and filter water. (Gave away my tarp which I had planned for this use. Could rig something to catch with a plastic sheet, and boil, I guess. Would be burning the furniture pretty quick though.

Evac to rural location and start over?
Have small seed bank, not enough. Food supply as above, but would have to put it in a wheelie suitcase or maybe the wheelie bin to get it out with me if car was not an option. Water problems as above, serious gap.

On this extremely well though out and scientifically measured scale of one to hundred:

0 (you're definitely going down)
10 (what! is tesco's shut?)
20 (armchair prepper)
30 (Practising)
40 (have a few bits put by just in case)
50 (There's no such thing as too many knives)
60 (Did a bushcraft weekend)
70 (what do you mean twenty bags of flour seems excessive?)
80 (please don't weed the garden, we need all the food we can get)
90 (regularly practising, many skills)
100 (everybody wants to be your best friend)


Tonight I'd give myself a 15.

Doc Ruby

Given five minutes I'd be tipping the high 90s alright. All kit packed, squared away, very familiar with most useful geography within fifty miles, stashes of food growing all over the place (taking a leaf from the Bear Grylls book of preparedness), no specific route planned out but not bothered, and well able to live off the land.

Barring a monster tsunami or a direct meteor hit its business as usual. If I ever get round to buying that inflatable boat the former isn't much of an issue either. Don't shoot at that grizzled but determined looking mobile baggage pile, that's me.

bonniebede

Doc Ruby wrote: »

Given five minutes I'd be tipping the high 90s alright. All kit packed, squared away, very familiar with most useful geography within fifty miles, stashes of food growing all over the place (taking a leaf from the Bear Grylls book of preparedness), no specific route planned out but not bothered, and well able to live off the land.

Barring a monster tsunami or a direct meteor hit its business as usual. If I ever get round to buying that inflatable boat the former isn't much of an issue either. Don't shoot at that grizzled but determined looking mobile baggage pile, that's me.

if I could afford to award you a prize I would. Well done that man.:D
http://www.lidl.ie/cps/rde/xchg/SID-0614F5EB-D25E6694/lidl_ri_ie/hs.xsl/index_20988.htm

baords dyslexic

bonniebede wrote: »

100 (everybody wants to be your best friend)

I think 100 should read

100 (everybody wants to be your best friend - but can't find you anywhere)

Think I'd make 40 but definitely done a few 60's for more than just a weekend but that was long ago so wouldn't really count that anymore.

baords dyslexic

Just in for a coffee after cutting some of the "lawn" (a survival fitness challenge all of its own) and thinking about

... this extremely well though out and scientifically measured scale of one to hundred:

and wondering if we could put together our own scale?

Bit of a challenge really as there are so many factors and how do you compare on the same scale someone prepared to bug in with a years supply of food and fuel with someone with all the skills necessary to bug out but who doesn't have the same supply back up?

Its worth thinking about because it picks away at what are survival skills, what are we are preparing for, how we are preparing and how much prepartion we have done.

...... goes back to cutting the grass.

bonniebede

Good idea.

WE could have different categories for:

Disaster and emergency preparedness for big events but te world doesn't end - things like car safety, house fire, localised flooding, severe weather, power outages.

Bugging out in wild locations and/or survival skills for hiking, camping, hunting, fishing, foraging

Bugging in at rural lcations (the only place you can long term bug in anyway) this is really about if can you be be a self sufficient peasnat farmer

Bugging out from an urban location. including temporary bugging in till coast is clear, camoflage, urban protection skills, how to be a gray man, etc

Its all gone horribly wrong but there's still people to care about scale. This is about preparation for building a survival unit/team/community. Also about staying connected to loved ones, maintaining communication links in emergencies, teaching younger ones what to do, all the people related skills.

Good lord this is getting more complicated that an olympic sport.:cool:
Let me try again and make it simpler.

Can you get out? Get out your loved ones out? Get to somewhere where you can survive? Take essential stuff with you? And do it now?

Doc Ruby

Hmm, tricky one, there's a lot of work already gone into this area by disaster management agencies but from a management rather than personal survival angle.

Disasters are easy enough to break down

• Seriousness: How urgent is it, how fast do you need to get rolling, impending oil shortages not too bad, nuclear war very very urgent.
• Scope: How many people are affected, from one (you) to a small group to the community, to countries, continents and the world.
• Region: Is it confined to one area, can you get clear of it, how wide an area or areas are affected.
• Duration: How long will it last in its current phase, what phases come next until its finally over, each phase might have its own charcteristics.
• Type: Plague, famine, war, floods, meteor strike, etc, or combinations thereof.

Armed with that one could draw up a spreadsheet of the different skills and preparations that would give one advantages, and rate accordingly. For example

• Famine, short to mid -> food stocks *5 points per month stashed
• Famine, long -> foraging and hunting skills *20 (cumulative with food stocks above but not the reverse, ie if the famine ends before your food runs out you won't need the hunting skills)
• Flood -> Mobility *20 points

(note multiplier there as the skills and advantages will themselves be numbers say from 0 to 10).

You'd first need to categorise all of the possible survival advantages such as hunting skills, a vehicle, food and medical supplies, and then break them down further cross referencing the disaster type. Advantages like community connectons are also hard to quantify, but should be included (although they aren't of much use if you need to rabbit, as in a flood).

These caveats and special cases would make it awkward to just draw up a simple spreadsheet, you'd need one for each disaster type at least, and even then, whew. Flood, region local, short term, community becomes valuable. Flood, region national, long term, maybe not so much. Doesn't mean that initially you won't gain advantages with making your ark though. Noah would have had a community score of zero.

So you'd come out with a number at the end of the process, rating your ability to survive in various situations. Surprise events like a plane crash could be simulated by putting your "tools and tech" score to zero or one, even if it might ordinarily be 8 or 9. Similarly "environmental protection - desert" is worth nothing above the arctic circle.

I don't know what the scale would end up looking like, probably anything over 200 and you're golden, but you could potentially assign a percentage chance of survival in each situation as the numbers shake out. 200 points for this disaster type and you get 95% survival chances.

Its doable but there's a bit of work in it! I don't think such a project has ever been attempted before however, so it would be unique and very interesting to survivalists and preppers everywhere, not to mention a useful tool. What you really want at the end of the day is a script where one can input the various advantages one has and choose the type of disaster to get a rating, easy enough to do once the data has been compiled.

We'll call it the BB scale!

bonniebede

I love it.
Sorry have typed a number of posts now and rubbed them all out. This thing is way to big and complicated for my brain.

Perhaps it could follow some of those sorts of life expectancy clocks, you know the ones that ask you questions related to actuarial life expectancy tables and end up by giving you a likely time of death.

Though of course that could be rather grim.

Q1. Type of disaster: A1: Nuclear attack
Q2. Location of disaster A2. Dublin
Q3. Your present location A3. Dublin

Calculating survival rating: Sorry . Insufficient time left in which to tell you that you haven't a hope in h:eek:

bonniebede

Just a little quiz.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/4218945

http://www.co.genesee.ny.us/departments/health/preparedquiz.html

evilmonkee

I like the idea of different scales. I'm in no way prepared for the Apocalypse but otherwise:

I've a couple of months supply of food in the house, nutritionally balanced without all the stuff growing in the garden, plus a solid supply of dog food so she won't be scrounging ours

Iv 2 water butts, plus a 25l canister and enough purification stuff to get myself, himself and the dog through about a month, cut it to two if I water the greenhouse plants with purified water (I'd use grey-water if its available)

I have a weeks worth of clothes in the boot of the car plus walking boots/socks/rain gear on hand.

Have enough medical supplies, survival supplies etc. to do the foreseeable future.

However I seriously fall down if I need to fish/hunt as I havn't planned for a long term situation. Should get a small fishing kit and add it to my bag just in case.

Zamboni

bonniebede wrote: »

0 (you're definitely going down)
10 (what! is tesco's shut?)
20 (armchair prepper)
30 (Practising)
40 (have a few bits put by just in case)
50 (There's no such thing as too many knives)
60 (Did a bushcraft weekend)
70 (what do you mean twenty bags of flour seems excessive?)
80 (please don't weed the garden, we need all the food we can get)
90 (regularly practising, many skills)
100 (everybody wants to be your best friend)

I think I'd get a 5 right now!
Decided to take a portion of my salary this month and get a large supply of tinned/dried food this week. That should bring me to 15

Tabnabs

Zamboni wrote: »

I think I'd get a 5 right now!
Decided to take a portion of my salary this month and get a large supply of tinned/dried food this week. That should bring me to 15

I'd caution against over streching yourself on the money side of things. The level of disaster at the moment is very low and looks reasonable for the foreseeable (aside from the economy, but even in Greece they have ways around the problems).

So instead of bulk buying and spending serious €s, try the $5 prep mentality
http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=36711

bonniebede

Zamboni wrote: »

I think I'd get a 5 right now!
Decided to take a portion of my salary this month and get a large supply of tinned/dried food this week. That should bring me to 15

Check out the stocking up at tescos thread.

I managed to stock up one month supply for 15 yoyos.

THats at 2200 calories per day, all in long term goods like rice flour, sugar etc and some tinned fish meat veg.

2200 is what you should allow for an adult who is likely to be working hard to get fuel, and more food planted, but in a pinch it could keep to people alive for the same amount of time.