https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/preparing-for-eme...

As does the Scottish Government:

https://ready.scot/how-scotland-prepares

And that's not even covering the Covid-19 pandemic where there was a lot of community based help groups checking that older people were OK etc.

Edit: Mind you some UK gov self help schemes were less well received:

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1500124311

(We did re-stock it. Never having to use it is a good thing.)

I wonder if there’s value in simulating disaster-living. It’s one thing to be ready with supplies and another to actually live through it, albeit for lesser time. Would it help discover a few more unknowns? Maybe some supply that you would only realize you need when you experience it?

Think of it a life-version of chaos monkey or similar to a fire drill?

Even recently we had a power cut at our place and discovered storing our power-out gear in the garage wasn't very useful with an electric main door and a blocked off side door. If it had been an extended outage I would have needed to break windows to get essential gear.

In my experience you'll find more isolated communities take preparedness more seriously because they experience grid frailty regularly and so build backup options into their daily lives. The least prepared live in denser urban areas where issues are far less likely. Problem is that when they do occur, and on a long enough timescale it's inevitable, general preparedness is low and so the shock and risk is greatly increased.

If shit hits the fan you probably don't want to be stuck with a supply that's already expired.

a) they'll sit in the back of the pantry and expire b) if you do have to eat them you'll be miserable if you don't like them c) you won't know how to properly prepare them and you'll probably be missing some other key ingredients

I know because that's the route I took haha. I won't pretend it was the BEST use of my time but it was fun and I can easily see how much I have of everything and where in my house it's located.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2I6Et1JkidnnbWgJFiMeHA

"16,000 Canadian Forces personnel deployed, 12,000 in Quebec and 4,000 in Ontario at the height of the crisis."

Many people were left without electricity, heating and even food. Alarms were disabled, police couldn't reach some neighborhoods and there was a lot of crime. Law and order were put on hold, until the army got to us.

I'm Canadian, grew up in the area, was living in BC during the ice storm, and returned soon thereafter.

No one I know would describe it this way. I've never heard the ice storm described this way.

Yes, many people were without services for extended periods of time. Yes, the Army was required to clear roads, removed downed trees, and was in play to help calm the public.

Yet "Law and order" on hold, paints a picture I do not believe as accurate. I sounds as if hoodlums and criminals were running rampant in the streets. Can you find any news articles, any info collaborating this, or some variation?

Certainly, I know of many people with snowmobiles, which made trips to get supplies and so forth for neighbours. I also know stories of people sharing, helping their neighbours.

I've been without power for 2 weeks where I live, due to a massive windstorm, and living in a very rural location.

Where I grew up, in the mid/late 1970s, our entire county's substation blew up, when covered with one of the largest snowfalls of the century (snow was literally to the top of telephone poles, I recall my father having to climb out of a second story window, and dig a path so we could get out of the back door and start digging out...).

The storm was already big, but it was coupled with lake effect snow in my area. Needless to say, it took weeks to get power back, clear the roads of 10+ feet of snow, which fell over a few days.

In none of these cases, did everything break down. People just stuck together.

NOTE: I fully agree that eventually, things will break down. If people have no food, and there is no food available, people will ensure they have food.

But none of these events seem quite like this.

Even a city apartment often has more than a week of something to eat. Even if it's old lima beans. :P

The book A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit examines several disasters over several decades:

* https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-b...

* http://rebeccasolnit.net/book/a-paradise-built-in-hell/

The general findings seem to be that communities tend to come together. The 'societal collapse' scenarios are generally urban myths.

In short, increases of crimes and then declines of crimes once the army is deployed.

> "Analyses indicate that there is a direct effect of increased public enforcement on the number of infractions reported in the affected areas."

> "The Montérégie region: [...] a relative increase of about 50%, while it is only 15% in Montreal."

> "For the Montreal region, we observe that the deployment of police forces has resulted in a significant decrease in property crime and crimes against persons. In addition, the deployment of military personnel has also led to a decrease in property crimes."

They explain the increases in criminality with: "In other words, while the door-to-door operation would reduce property crime, it would at the same time increase the visibility of certain offences such as burglary".

I am not certain if their conclusion is accurate. But whether or not, this explains the rumors of people breaking into people's homes/cabins during that initial period and how the presence of the army calmed people's fears.

Never was it gangs roaming in the street (knowing the organized crime scene of Montreal, getting caught looting by the leading criminal elements during such an emergency would result in sever punishment) but small criminals working in the shadow.

The article also agrees with one of your points: "The work of Quarantelli (1960; 2001) shows that one of the main characteristics of human behaviour in times of disaster is not to flee, but to stay and persist as long as possible in daily activities (preserving their environmental reference)."

[0] https://slate.com/technology/2020/10/cory-docotorow-sci-fi-i...

I have heard the term "prepper" used pretty much exclusively for people who prepare for societal collapse, though.

There may be a media push to constrain the meaning, but that has not been the common American English usage for the 20th Century at least. Prepping for an exam. Prepping a turkey. Common usage.

Odd that an attempt is made to distort the meaning of “prepping” in a forum called Hacker News. I remember about 20 years ago when there was an attempt by the media to limit the term “hacking” to unethical IT practices, instead of the whole range of creative ad-hoc system and product fixes. The community was annoyed...

Often during an acute natural disaster people help each other out and are more mutually supportive than normal. People usually find ways to get the basics up and running, such as shelter and food, pretty fast.

But in practice natural disasters are rarely a "collapse of society" sort of thing. It's more that you should have supplies and shelter, and a way to communicate. In the middle of difficulties where people work together, I'd say that's "society" in action.

"Collapse of society" tends to be more descriptive of human-driven disasters such as war and civil war, where people start turning against each other and there's high levels of mutual distrust and violence.

Additionally, if you want folks to be prepared, they need both the means to prepare and the space to do it - which basically means having a robust safety net and/or minimum pay laws.

Relying on your neighbors in a disaster doesn't mean hiding out in their anti-zombie bunker. It means knowing that the entire community will respond together to overcome the emergency.

Prepping, means preparing for situations where you will no longer be able to rely on society to provide the services it normally does, regardless of the reasons.

And more topically: let's be honest, right now the US is on a crazy train heading straight for riots and a general strike come December 14th. Are nationwide giant protests against a stolen government a "collapse of society" too? A little, yeah.

They're similar, but similar in the same way a paper cut is to a life threatening laceration. It's a spectrum to be sure, but you need dramatically different strategies to deal with them.

We formed a dozen smaller neighborhood teams that met regularly to identify elderly people who would need check-ins, medical needs, resources people were willing to share. This was in addition to family prep: water, first aid, food, batteries, etc. We even did an emergency rations taste-off (they all suck, btw) and bought a community cargo container that we filled with community supplies (I had left the hood by that point).

It was surprising that about 10% of the people in each area refused to participate. Most were pissed that we even had their names on a spreadsheet, even though they were older and might need assistance. They felt we were intruding on their privacy and they didn't need our help. However, we included them in the calculations for emergency resources in case they decided to come around after a disaster happened.

TL;DR: city recommended rural folks be prepared for a max 30 days on your own.

One hurricane knocked the cable out for months and I got so desperate that I signed up for AOL...

People are expected to be able to manage on their own for at least 72 hours in case of systemic/societal disruptions. It's quite sane advice really, even though a lot of people actually seem opposed to the idea for some reason.

There's going to be people who chose to live in such places despite recommendations, of course, but that's a matter of personal choice.

Instead, the following things have far more direct impact on me and my family: driving in traffic, walking on the street, electronics fires in my garage, the food I eat, the amount of exercise I get. I'm sure there will be a Big One at some point in the next 30 years, but in terms of risk, the basic prepping procedures handle a wider range of common problems than earthquakes.

> 'What are you worried about, I've lived here 25 years and that mountain never did shit.' -probably some Roman citizen in Pompeii, 79 BC

(Also, earth quakes are/were pretty common throughout Italy. This perhaps contributed to complacency.)

Yes.

The relevant number is not p, the likelihood of the event.

It is something like:

EV = p * consequences

If the consequences are high enough (eg, death), then it is still rational to prepare for low probability events. Especially when the prep cost is low.

Also, fun fact, the chances of a 'Cascadia megaquake', or a full rip of the Cascadia subduction zone, is about 1 in 6 over the next 50 years. That will produce a 9.0 extending from the Mendocino triple junction off the coast of Cape Mendocino, CA to Canada. It's the same type of earthquake that destroyed Fukushima. You'll have to be pretty far inland to avoid the shaking from that.

https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/pp1661F

...that has the full-fault events at ~500 year intervals, and the partial-fault events at ~240 year intervals. Last full fault event was January 26th, 1700.

This is a good introduction if you want to know more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ7Qc3bsxjI

Its banal for a city dweller but necessary out here.

I do agree about your risk assessment. For water, those who have water heaters (rather than tankless systems) have a ready supply of drinkable water. Assuming that it isn't damaged/inaccessible after the earthquake. But, it is also possible a separate storage of water could be inaccessible after an earthquake.

Then in August we were hit by a Derecho (an inland hurricane). The entire city was without power for more than 10 days (some much longer) and temperatures in the upper nineties. The one saving grace was I still had a working water heater since it's gas powered.

All other arguments for/against prepping derive from that.

I prepped for Covid in late February or early March, I was pessimistic in my assumptions, but not by much.

Prepping is important, but you also have to be reasonable when you plan, and you have to be aware of what you can't adapt for (e.g I realized that I had to assume water would still be available, because I couldn't store 14+ days of water in my apartment).

Most of the people who are normally labeled preppers don't have a reasonable assumption of what they prep for. So they try to prepare for the end of the world, not because it is realistically going to happen, but because they need to control things.

As a former soldier I respect firearms enough not to buy them unless I can safeguard them. And many people can’t or won’t.

Obviously you should be careful, and of you're not, I'm sure the odds are a lot worse. But empirically, it seems most people handle guns somewhat safely. Perhaps because they are scary.

That being said, if you don't feel comfortable being safe with a gun, don't get one. Or maybe you just don't want one more thing to worry about.

As for negligent discharges, which are probably the most legitimate concern, you should always follow the four rules of gun safety:

1. Treat all guns as if they are always loaded.

2. Never let the muzzle point at anything that you are not willing to destroy.

3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target and you have made the decision to shoot.

4. Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

In my experience, these are hammered into civilian students who take firearm training classes, but soldiers in the military often haven't heard of the four rules and generally are far more casual with their guns than civilians.

The wisdom is realizing that all of this goes out the window when the shit hits the fan. Also unless you're training your entire family on weapon use, they will be untrained folks around dangerous weapons.

There is a reason barracks do not allow weapons and all that stuff is under guard in a proper armory.

Your flippant response sounds more like a religious defense than practical consideration of real situations. There's a reason a large number of firearm deaths are one of the above categories I listed.

(And anecdotally, I've personally witnessed no correlation whatsoever between military service and taking gun safety seriously. YMMV.)

If one can't make these dogmatic safeguards, a firearm may pose more of a danger than what it protects against.

Sometimes the best way to solve a complicated problem is to avoid the source of complication in the first place.

A shit hits the fan scenario is when you're black out drunk or something where you're in a bad mental state, not society collapsing. Following rules does not help in a situation where you're unable to follow rules

I grew up around (unlocked) guns and knew better than to even think about touching one of them while I was a child. I am aware that many children aren't taught proper respect for firearms, which is part of why I recommended keeping them locked up. (The guns, not the children...)

My comment about soldiers is based on my personal interactions with them. I know they go through gun safety handling, but in practice they frequently have very poor muzzle discipline ("But it's unloaded!": I don't care). I've also talked to a few soldiers who had never heard of the four rules of gun safety, either by name or after hearing them listed out, so I don't think all soldiers have had gun safety drilled into them as strongly as you may have.

I don't live in barracks, but my understanding of military life as a whole is that the military has to support the lowest common denominator in their troops. If you have children, you probably aren't a hotheaded 20 year old anymore, and it seems like that should factor into your decision making process, no?

The other two points (being shot by a spouse or burglar using your own gun), frankly sound silly to me. You listed four categories, but only two of them are responsible for a large number of firearm deaths. It's extremely rare for a burglar to take and use a victim's gun against the victim, and also pretty rare for a spouse to murder the other.

And just to reiterate what I said in my first post, if you're even a little worried you might lose control and kill your spouse, or your spouse might kill you, you need to see a counselor right now regardless of whether you have guns or not. (Alternatively, if you do get along with your spouse, then I'm not sure why you factored that into your decision to not own a gun?)

I am making this post in good faith, and I hope you'll respond.

The biggest danger of all is the perception that you are somehow in control of things that you can mitigate but do not actually control.

While you may be correct that spousal conflicts are not the biggest cause of deaths, a quick search showed that suicide is 5x more likely if that suicidal person has access to a gun.

Whether you get along with your spouse today is not guaranteed tomorrow. Counseling? Yes it helps. Guns? Statistically not.

Fair enough, I'm not here to tell you how to live your life.

I know a lot of veterans struggle with depression and PTSD, so I don't blame you for taking that aspect seriously.

Regarding getting along with one's spouse, maybe that's just something I won't understand without getting married.

Which Europeans believe that you work for the government, not the government works for you?

This would seem to contradict the "gun control is the end of gun rights" argument you're trying to make.

So much for the "law abiding gun owners" meme, eh?

edit: While the registration law is indeed believed to be widely broken, the number of registrants was 20k+ people, five years ago. Nowhere near 100. https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/New-York-SAFE-Act-gu...

edit #2: Reno didn't say that, it's a hoax. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/janet-reno-on-gun-control-...

* I don't see how that wouldn't solve any problem with actual gun crime. Cars are required to be registered since they are meaningfully "operated" in public peacefully, guns aren't. For cars this is different because you can see the license plate, whether or not the registration is current, everybody has one... Nobody that wants to remain in good legal standing would drive an unregistered (unlicensed, uninsured...) car on a public road. Outside of concealed carry and a couple political protests, nobody is carrying guns around in public except criminals. Non-criminals shoot their guns on private property like ranges, and transport them in their vehicles on public roads. The latter has never been a problem. And lastly, criminals aren't going to follow silly restrictions like "get your gun registered before you carry it in public to go murder somebody."

* People are paranoid (probably rightfully so) about a gun registration database. This would not only confirm their fears, it wouldn't be useful for combatting crime making the paranoia worse.

If you take a look at CA's gun laws, almost all of them are laughably stupid to the point that they restrict cosmetic features, and where they don't, they don't meaningfully stop somebody from committing a violent offense with a gun. If you understand how guns work you understand this simply: the gun laws in places like CA are meant to stifle gun culture not prevent crime (since they are laughably ineffective) or they are written by people who are very, very, ignorant of how guns actually work. In the latter case, it has the former effect.

For example the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In other words, an inalienable right which is taken away from anyone who is shot and killed or disabled by another person.

There's a very strong argument that the right to life trumps the right to kill.

The USA is a legendary place for amount of gun crime. Probably if you didn't keep shooting each other so much, nobody would care about registering the guns, and you'd be happy.

But collectively you do shoot each other rather a lot. Strikingly more than a lot of other countries.

(this isn't an argument, just adding some context to our awful numbers.)

Actually the majority of the country does.

Take this with a grain of salt, as there’s no way to verify it’s real, but supposedly someone who lived through the Bosnian War posted about their experiences on a prepping forum, and the stories are pretty disturbing: https://prephole.com/surviving-a-year-of-shtf-in-90s-bosnia-...

By the way, regarding "gun and bunker" preppers, this is a sharp divide in the prepper community. Practically every thread in /r/preppers and similar forums and subreddits eventually devolves into what essentially amounts to an ideological battle between communists and libertarians, or, "we believe people are inherently good" vs "we believe people are inherently evil" to take a non-political-compass take. FWIW, the "inherently good" people have more evidence on their side, based on how communities have responded to disaster in the pass. A great book on the subject is "A Paradise Built in Hell" by Rebecca Solnit[1]. She takes a look at primary sources from a set of disasters throughout history, and how people helped eachother with no expectation of reward. She also turns up some cases of totally selfless ultimate sacrifices for strangers. It's really interesting.

EDIT: A great fictional illustration of this rift in the prepper community is 'The Masque of the Red Death', a short story in the book "Radicalized" by Cory Doctorow. It follows the story of the ultimate prepper fantasy, a rich options trader who builds a "Fort Doom" in scrubland, equipped with a year or so of food, water, purification equipment, sanitation equipment, and of course a veritable armory. It compares this character against the general community of IIRC Portland, who are reacting to a government-ending pandemic through mutual aide instead. A really fun exploratory take.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6444492-a-paradise-built... S

Boy would I love to get ahold of some handheld radios designed for 'prepper' use.

1. use cognitive radio techniques to find and frequency-hop to whitespace radio frequencies that are conducive to best propagation over the 0-10 mile range on unlicensed radio bands

2. use ad hoc mesh networking to support sending datagrams like text messages (preferably E2EE via say Signal Protocol) or GPS coordinates up to, say, 7 hops away

3. support a 'emergency mode' where the radio power limits are relaxed and the frequencies for use by point A are relaxed to cover any radio band not actively reserved by law enforcement / military / first responders. In theory the cognitive radio techniques of frequency hopping and waiting to transmit until confirming radio dead air would prevent radio interference with whatever commercial TF / broadcast radio / CB radio / MURS/FRS/Business band radio signal, but to keep the FCC and HAMs hearts from stopping, things like the military bands could be blocked off just to provide that last 0.00001% guarantee of safety against interference.

All of the 3 _seem_ possible to productize using SBCs and SDRs, but I don't know where to start, I think I gotta finish my 8-bit breadboard computer YT series by Ben Eater before I even tried to tinker with this.

Long term bow, atal, and sling are much better for hunting.

As for atal or sling, unless you've been practicing with these since you were a child, I think you'll sooner starve to death than score yourself a single meal. The cultures which used those tools had people practicing with them for years before they were useful with them. A sling is easy to make, I encourage you to try it out. I used a pair of shoelaces I bought at the grocery store for $2. It is not easy to even get the projectile flying in the general direction you intended, so if you try this make sure you're far from any buildings or bystanders...

(But really, I recommend buying some canned food. It is unlikely any infrastructure collapse would last more than a few weeks. Any scenario where you have to hunt for food at all, let alone for years, seems exceedingly unlikely.)

To justify my stance, in a long term survival situation slings are for low risk low reward hunting. With even moderate practice they become very high calories per resources and time invested while your doing something else. Aka, if you’re collecting firewood and see a squirrel, vs specifically looking for squirrels. That’s still true if you’re missing 95% of the time.

Plenty of active bow hunters are around to tell you how long that takes to learn. Unfortunately, manufacturing arrows and replacement bows takes significant effort. Atal are generally worse than bows, but vastly easier to manufacture and maintain.

As to ammo it’s very much possible to find good ammo that’s 50 years old. Depending on specific ammo to still be good in 50 years is a very different thing when you can’t depend on climate control. That’s not a concern at 70+ but a 25 year old presumably has a longer time horizon.

Controlling humidity after a long term collapse is much more difficult. Less so in arid areas, but their hardly ideal without modern infrastructure.

As for humidity, I think you would be surprised. Much of Appalachia and the East Coast have high humidity levels (typically 70-90% during summer IIRC) and I've never found ammo damaged by humidity there. I've shot 25 year old ammo that was put in an ammo can and dumped in a hiding spot near a pond (so, very high humidity) and had no issues shooting with it. Even if the ammo is stored in the manufacturer's cardboard box, I wouldn't worry about humidity damage unless average levels are over 85 or 90%. Water damage is a different matter, but I don't have any experience with that.

Edit: It's mostly true that ammo in a fire will just pop and maybe just throw a little brass a short distance.

BUT from that fire I'm witness to the fact that ammo can also "fire" with enough force to go through steel 50 cal ammo boxes and continue through such things as walls and cans. There were bullet holes through the shop's paneled and insulated tin walls. https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/ammo-in-a-fire...

I will admit I may be overstating the humidity issues, my personal experience was 15 year old ammo in Florida shed which had issues but clearly YMMV.

Some parts of Florida are more humid than Appalachia, so maybe the difference between 75% and 95% humidity has a greater effect than 55% to 75%.

As to humidity, I don’t know it might be just extreme humidity or it could be humidity + temperature, or perhaps we had a bad case of ammo to start with.

Enemy humans are a very different problem. Humans are smart, and sometimes they hunt you.

I'm sure there are exceptions, but as rule of thumb I'd stay away from any US prepper as far as I could in case of a genuine emergency like a Yellowstone outbreak or a worldwide pandemic.