Debilitating illness and survivalism

Grizzly 45

Just a thought.
For the last two days I have been battling my annual cold/flu week here.:(You know the kind that feels like somone has worked you over all day with a 2x4,and you feel as weak as Hell,coughing up all sorts of crud...Lets no go there!
Went out to reload our wood furnace at 8AM and that usually is a five min job with a wheel barrow worth of wood.15 minutes later,I am wrecked in my kitchen,pouring sweat,pulse going like a V8 on red line with just enough strength to make a cuppa,and bein looked at askence by my two Roxers,as they havent had their early morning ball throwing and fetch session.
Sooo I'm just thinking,were some event to happen right now,I'd be as useful as a chocolate firegrate.:([Proably some people here would say that anyway...:D]
If I had to sling my BOB gear pack and grab the firepower and GTFOD.I would not be able to do it..I'd proably get a half mile and collapse.

So this could drastically alter your BO plans..What happens if you actually cant bug out but may have to bug in until your strength is back or you bust a arm or leg or whatever...TEOTWAWKI isnt going to wait around until you are better and up to par.
Thoughts??

kildare.17hmr

My first thought for any situation would be to bug in as long as i could rather than bug out so once the house was ready for whatever you could prob stay put a while but if not and you had to bail id reckon you would want some decent people in your group to help ya out!

On your own? No bloody idea! Guns and dogs ready and stay put for a while till your better maybe?!

jugger

just becaues your prepared doesnt mean you will survive
the under prepared and unlucky will meet there maker first
if it happened today griz you would fall into the unlucky section:eek:
which is rough as i do like your posts

baords dyslexic

jugger wrote: »

just becaues your prepared doesnt mean you will survive
the under prepared and unlucky will meet there maker first
if it happened today griz you would fall into the unlucky section:eek:
which is rough as i do like your posts

Good point, but whats really annoying is that also means some totally useless people who couldn't be bothered to help themselves will also survive

I'm not totally with the Bug Out idea, Bug Out is a last resort, for anyone out in the country then then I'd say Bug In you are in an area that you should know well, so why loose that advantage, at worst you should be able to drag yourself off somewhere prepared in advance or you know to be safer so you can get over whatever bug you have, before returning to pick up whatever pieces are left.

krissovo

I have a glass back after a accident last year and a bit of a dodgy knee so these are always in my thoughts for planning as I never know when one of them will cause me challenges. I have a old nissan van that is well prepared and a camper van that are loaded and fueled up ready to go. Bugging out should be ok with a illness as I will be taking comfy beds with me and will not be that exposed to the elements. If I had to go on foot then no chance, I would take my chances at home unless it was something like a local chemical incident or natural disaster.

One thing worth mentioning is that you would be surprised about how far you can push the human body when you have a illness or injury. Unless you have a fever you can operate at near full capacity but it takes some huge motivation to get going but once you are going you can keep it up. Once you stop though you have to go through hell to get going again.

I also have literally 200 packets of lemsip and boxes of uniflu stored around my home and gear.:D

Doc Ruby

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

Thoughts??

No matter how hardcore a person is, they are going nowhere with an untreated broken leg...

...which is why its always best to have other people around to carry them.

Ophiopogon

krissovo wrote: »

One thing worth mentioning is that you would be surprised about how far you can push the human body when you have a illness or injury. Unless you have a fever you can operate at near full capacity but it takes some huge motivation to get going but once you are going you can keep it up. Once you stop though you have to go through hell to get going again.
.:D

Yeah I would think adrealine would kick in and may help you get to a safe place. It may not be at your best pace and you would prob die a death when you do eventually stop so make sure when you stop it would be in a safe place. That's if it's a walking illness, adrealine won't do sh!t for a broken leg.

The other thing is though you should have a back up plan for if you have to stay in the house, even if you're not sick there may be another reason to stay put for a few days. I have a secure attic (that you cannot be detected in) I would use is staying put is the only option.

baords dyslexic

Ophiopogon wrote: »

Yeah I would think adrealine would kick in and may help you get to a safe place. It may not be at your best pace and you would prob die a death when you do eventually stop so make sure when you stop it would be in a safe place. That's if it's a walking illness, adrealine won't do sh!t for a broken leg.

The other thing is though you should have a back up plan for if you have to stay in the house, even if you're not sick there may be another reason to stay put for a few days. I have a secure attic (that you cannot be detected in) I would use is staying put is the only option.

Don't forget to keep a decent fire extinguisher up there and a way of hacking you way out on to the roof if some bugger decides to burn the place while your up there.

Ophiopogon

baords dyslexic wrote: »

Don't forget to keep a decent fire extinguisher up there and a way of hacking you way out on to the roof if some bugger decides to burn the place while your up there.

Yup it's a back up but it's a "thought out" back up so have thought the scenarios through.

bonniebede

Here's how I plan...

If immediate danger threatens, then you bug out as best you can...that's the 'here comes a nuclear bomb and you are at ground zero' option.

As has been mentioned before, if you are in that situation you might survive if you are fit and healthy, smart enough to be prepared, savvy enough to MOVE NOW and not hang around wondering ' did they really say bomb?'

Sadly, in that scenario the unprepared, the weak (old, young and sick) would be unlikely to make it unless someone else is helping, and even being prepared might not be enough anyway.

Lesson.. be prepared, be ready to rock, BUILD SURVIVAL RELATIONSHIPS.

For example, we have discussed before on this board how Granny might get left behind to starve (now who would that cynic be, GRiz?:D).
But if your survival group values some skill you might still contribute, like next week when the flu is gone and you become a serious alpha male hunter/warrior/protector of the weak and vulnerable, then they have good motivation to help you out.

If the threat of danger is not immediate,but a rolling disaster type, say some deadly pandemic, or suddenly no more oil leading to food shortages or some such, then the best survival option is to get to a prepped rural location where you can establish your own food security, and hopefully have some defenses against the marauding hordes whether overt or covert (personnally I would go covert). The hordes will thin out eventually, as they die of starvation, or disease or whatever. And then it's just back to being a typical new dark age peasant farmer, living on what you raise.

However , given that it is a rolling disaster, if getting to your rural location requires bugging out, then you will want to choose your moment wisely. In case of a pandemic, I would not want to be in the middle of a fleeing crowd, would much rather bug in a city location until the coast was a bit clearer for a get away. In case of societal breakdown from other sources again one might want to pick ones moment carefully, lke travellling at night and taking cover during the day, or some such.
Having a margin to survive on, I would think months of food at a minimum, means you have the choice to stay or go as you see fit.

If you are already at your rural location, where are you going? If it's not an immediate run or die scenario, why would you be leaving? If you live rurally, you should be planning how to hide caches of food and materiel, and how to hide yourself and family, until it quietens down; followed by how to build a small defensive community with your neighbours for the long haul.

If you can survive a year hunkered down, you have probably made it through, because nearly everyone else will also be back to basics farming or dead.

There would of course still be people surviving by being predators. How fortunate for your community that they saved you when you had the flu, cause you sound to me like you might be able to bite back.;)

Grizzly 45

bonniebede wrote: »

Here's
Lesson.. be prepared, be ready to rock, BUILD SURVIVAL RELATIONSHIPS.

For example, we have discussed before on this board how Granny might get left behind to starve (now who would that cynic be, GRiz?:D).

HEY!!! I never said that!!!:)I'd be more inclined to slip her somthing in her tae if she wasnt going to make it very easily in the brave new world.
I'm talking the kind of Gran that was misfortunate to be stuck in the cellar with the family in the film "Threads":eek: Should think no one would want to allow an elderly person lest of all your family member to suffer such a undignified end..Not a hale and healthy 75 year old or whatever.
But you can be assured that proably will happen anyway with loads of old folks dumped in nursing homes aroun the land.

Survival relationships...Yeah,will happen at a later stage and nice if the utopian dream of a survival community could be put together..But TBH,cant see it working here as much as it doesnt work in the US or GB,unless its on a fammily level.

But if your survival group values some skill you might still contribute, like next week when the flu is gone and you become a serious alpha male hunter/warrior/protector of the weak and vulnerable, then they have good motivation to help you out.

You would hope,but then the old " dynamics of proletarinaism"[proletariat def the idle ones] kicks back in again methinks.

bonniebede

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

Survival relationships...Yeah,will happen at a later stage and nice if the utopian dream of a survival community could be put together..But TBH,cant see it working here as much as it doesnt work in the US or GB,unless its on a fammily level.

.

I don't think it is a utopian dream... I think it is a survival necessity. And I also think it is a sound survival strategy.

I think two things need to be separated out... want happens during the crisis time, in which case not only preparedness but also random events (like being home from work on the right day or something) will come into play.

Secondly what happens after the inital change, and how one re-engages with the long term planning and survival tasks. For that community of some sort, is I think, not only essential but inevitable.

The degree to which you engage with the community might vary, from a once in a lifetime visit to find a wife, to a small (couple of families?) group, to networks of such small groups.

One thing that seems to be a feature of smaller tightknit community seems to be an increased importance placed on the trustworthiness of the individual.

The people I think you might be dismissing as proletariat undesirables (my interpretation of your phrase, I know) have already been deprived in our culture of two important things - a connection between their own productivity and their well being (such is welfare dependency, and trust fund babies) and the loss of the skill set and encouragement to raise decent children (really that's an extension of the former, if you depend on your kids in old age you are incentivised to raise them decent).

Family and community building skills are the human race's longest term survival strategy. Part of the reason I'm prepping is because I see in the loss of these skills the evidence of decadence. which will lead to societal decay, perhaps even collapse.

Finally, I really do hope you are recovering and feeling better.:) I'd send over some chicken soup except for two problems, 1) you camoflage is too good and 2) I am only raising aphids as lifestock at the moment.:cool:

However, as usual, you have made me stretch my poor few braincells. Now I'm feelng feverish.:P

Grizzly 45

[

QUOTE=bonniebede;76924648]I don't think it is a utopian dream... I think it is a survival necessity. And I also think it is a sound survival strategy.

While it is all of the above...It sofar hasnt been very sucessful in the US,Canada or the UK with any sort of normal democratic overtones.However if you go by religious nutter cults like Jonestown or Waco or Aryan Nations compounds they have been ...sucessful?
To keep a community together,you need some sort of enforcement/incentive to keep it together.IE Damnation and or redemption as one of the chosen,master race or whatever.
If you were to ask long time survivalists from the US how many functioning survivalist communities there are,they will proably tell you maybe three in the entire CONUS,but hundreds if not thousands of extended fammlies prepping and being willing to defend their own.

I think two things need to be separated out... want happens during the crisis time, in which case not only preparedness but also random events (like being home from work on the right day or something) will come into play.

Luck of the draw as Kildare said...I would have drawn the short straw.

Secondly what happens after the inital change, and how one re-engages with the long term planning and survival tasks. For that community of some sort, is I think, not only essential but inevitable

.

will happen alright,butI think we are at odds as to what we classify as a survival community??I think it will be more like a loose community,town,village,not a disiplined utopian ideal that we all have from litature etc.

One thing that seems to be a feature of smaller tightknit community seems to be an increased importance placed on the trustworthiness of the individual.

Very much so.

The people I think you might be dismissing as proletariat undesirables (my interpretation of your phrase, I know) have already been deprived in our culture of two important things - a connection between their own productivity and their well being (such is welfare dependency, and trust fund babies) and the loss of the skill set and encouragement to raise decent children (really that's an extension of the former, if you depend on your kids in old age you are incentivised to raise them decent).

More like surplus pouplation.It's too much of a vicious circle now where you have fammlies that havent worked in three generations,and depend on the state to give because you demand it everything.And where criminality and breeding are considerd the only options open to you to make money.These people will not be able to survive a major cataclysm[witness the disaster of the astrodome in Katrina],and in a gradual collapse will go feral and dangerous really quickly..Why do you think we are pumping money no matter what into social welfare payments.

Family and community building skills are the human race's longest term survival strategy. Part of the reason I'm prepping is because I see in the loss of these skills the evidence of decadence. which will lead to societal decay, perhaps even collapse.

True,but then you would be better off producing quality,not quantity.

Finally, I really do hope you are recovering and feeling better.:) I'd send over some chicken soup except for two problems, 1) you camoflage is too good and 2) I am only raising aphids as lifestock at the moment.:cool:

Am thanks...:)
Well yo are raising good chick fod then,bit early though for aphids.

However, as usual, you have made me stretch my poor few braincells. Now I'm feelng feverish.:P

Thats the whole idea,try to figure out all the possibilities and angles,build the plans,find fault with them,rip them apart and build them better.

bonniebede

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

[

To keep a community together,you need some sort of enforcement/incentive to keep it together.IE Damnation and or redemption as one of the chosen,master race or whatever.
If you were to ask long time survivalists from the US how many functioning survivalist communities there are,they will proably tell you maybe three in the entire CONUS,but hundreds if not thousands of extended fammlies prepping and being willing to defend their own.

I think we are at odds as to what we classify as a survival community??I think it will be more like a loose community,town,village,not a disiplined utopian ideal that we all have from litature etc.


True,but then you would be better off producing quality,not quantity.

.

No I think we are closer in our ideas than you think. A survival community to my mind would be primarily families, probably with strong extended family ties, like intermarriage, cousins etc.

To my mind the family IS the primary unity of society, and it's most basic survival community. Without families we would only be the dying remnants...Family life means a community with a future.

Familial bonds are likely (though not inevitably) stronger. Building a community level beyond that might take a while, as you said a network, a village, maybe a trading aand mutual defense group...

As to quantity versus quality re children, if midwifery skills are lost and some other things we take as basic like antibiotics, then we will be back to the situation where human beings only barely reproduce enough to increase slightly, and you will raise all the children you can to ensure you have someone in your old age, as many will die in early childhood and not make it to maturity. A chilling prospect.

Well we know we disagree on the religious aspects of things...but don't worry; if my religious survival group meets yours we will be much more interested in swapping seeds that forcibly baptising.:cool: A nice packet of oregano seeds anyone? (not very resistant to aphids:()

Grizzly 45

bonniebede wrote: »

As to quantity versus quality re children, if midwifery skills are lost and some other things we take as basic like antibiotics, then we will be back to the situation where human beings only barely reproduce enough to increase slightly, and you will raise all the children you can to ensure you have someone in your old age, as many will die in early childhood and not make it to maturity. A chilling prospect.

OHHHH! Dont let the"Sisters" hear that one!!! You 'll be burnt at the stake along with many bras as a heretic to the international cause of "Wimminhood!":D:D.To be suggesting such things thst they will be reduced to chattels and breeders again...Sacrilidge!!Unfortunatly you are saying is very truthful,it is another problem of people facing unpleasent realities of what might or will happen once the lights go out.Hmm,would think a "survival chemist" would be a very good skill to have as well.Anyone who has a chemistry backround,and knows how to make everything from insulin to aspirin,to penecillin,to soap and explosives.Will be the multi millionare of the post apocalypse just for those skills alone,and needent worry about their saftey and future.

Well we know we disagree on the religious aspects of things...but don't worry; if my religious survival group meets yours we will be much more interested in swapping seeds that forcibly baptising.:cool: A nice packet of oregano seeds anyone? (not very resistant to aphids:()

Swop you for some of my "Herb":D.Ok you keep your Bible/Torah/Koran in its silk wrapcover,and I'll keep my 45 holsterd! Deal?:D

bonniebede

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

OHHHH! Dont let the"Sisters" hear that one!!! You 'll be burnt at the stake

Got disowned a long time ago. One of my lecturers told me that 'when the boot is taken off your face the imprint can remain for a long time' meaning that even though I acted and felt 'liberated' in fact I was not 'cause I didn't agree with her:rolleyes:

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

bras

now there's a saleable skill, feminie tailoring... imagine a world without that! (okay stop imagining it now:mad:)

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

they will be reduced to chattels and breeders again.

Not necessarily.. remember Clytemnestra...it is entirely possible to build a family culture where childbearing is valued not denigrated. The depiction of all males as predatory, violent and just longing to be bullying patriarchs is weapon number one in the feminazi armoury. Men are not automatically like this, though of course it is possible. They can also be incredibly kind, protective, self-sacrificing for their families, hard working and virtuous.

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

"survival chemist" would be a very good skill

Step one, make sure you have the right plants to extract these medicines from. We need to make sure we retain a lot of herbal lore, which is the basis for medicinal chemistry even today.

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

Swop you for some of my "Herb":D.

See above. Certainly, purely for medicinal purposes, of course.:pac:

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

Bible/Torah/Koran in its silk wrapcover,and I'll keep my 45 holsterd! Deal?:D

Ehhh.. bible. Well technically that includes the Torah, but , what can you expect a goy like me to understand?;) Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, as I think the phrase goes...:D

Grizzly 45

bonniebede wrote: »

now there's a saleable skill, feminie tailoring... imagine a world without that! (okay stop imagining it now:mad:)

What??All the cool post apocalyptic leather and PVC bin liner road warrior chick outfits????
Awwww!:pac:

Not necessarily.. remember Clytemnestra

I'd rather not...!!She sounded like a right piece of work.Her Dad being Zeus having it off with her mum in one of his kinky moments as a swan!!
She is hatched from an egg!Which leaves a Hell of a lot of questions to be answerd on that one alone!!!How long did ol Ledya ,her mum have to sit and brood out the clutch of eggs for???:eek:
Then a spot of social climbing to marry the king of Sparta Agemennon,whos brother s missus ,Helen runs off to Troy causing a bit of a upset with the hubbys bother who all sod off for ten years to have it out with the Trojans,and dont bother sending back word,not to mind a postcard as how they are getting on.

Dear Cly,
Having a great time here in sunny Troy.Weather and beach is lovely.Wish you were here.
Menalius still peed off with Helen,and wants to kick that ponce Paris head in,Fker wont come out for a one on one though!!Achilles enjoying himself mind,feckers dead hard!Must get back to building the wooden horse competition now..Talk soon. Luv ya lots Ag xxx

PS Great idea you had about offering up our daughter Iphigenia to the Gods.Fleet got here double quick time after that!!
A.

After that little bit of a holiday for ten years.Ags comes home with some Trojan totty ,Cassandra!Who does some pretty good fortune telling,but no one belives her as she wouldnt have it off with another God,Apollo!
Clytemnestra during the meanwhile has been up to abit of mischeif herself in the last decade.Having it off with her husbands cousin and getting jilted in the process.She decides to do away with Ag and his bit of aquired stuff Cassandra...Short story long.. She does them both in with a double bladed axe,or drowns them in the bath,or doesnt as the case may be..
Not surprising after her laying out her nice purple cloak for Agemenon to go tramping over coming into the palace and him refusing to walk and wipe his sandals on it!!!As for that foregin trollop,getting all moody and saying she has visions of me killing them with Ags best double bladed axe while they are having a bath after a big feast I've prepared......Hmmmm

Mythology and religion...Ya gotta love it!!:D:D:D

Hmmm,so what were you trying to tell us there Bonnie???:eek::pac:

bonniebede

oops did I say Clytemnestra? Meant Lysistrata...:o

On the other hand I wouldn't have missed your description of Cltemnestra's situation for the world, a tour de force:D

Bravo!

Grizzly 45

Lysistrata
Lets not even go there!!! A combo of Desperate housewives,Sex in the City and Cougar town set in ancient Greece!!:eek:

bonniebede

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

Lysistrata
Lets not even go there!!! A combo of Desperate housewives,Sex in the City and Cougar town set in ancient Greece!!:eek:

roflol.:)