Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)(lcamtuf.coredump.cx) |
Disaster planning for regular folks (2015)(lcamtuf.coredump.cx) |
His response was "You're not over reacting, you might be under-reacting, worst case you end up with some cool new toys. Best case, you're more prepared than anyone else."
So yeah, here we are. Good article to add to my research.
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 this would be ideal.
Batteries - minimum 5+kwh storage
Network cable - 300m+ to start. I'm shocked how many times I need a cable and cant get any.
Hand pumps or small electric pump for different fuels and water
Ice auger - gas, but electric ideally, large / long drill bit 2" works too if you have a drill and smaller pipes?
Take a first aid course - MARCH protocol
Iodine pills not important - way bigger issues if you're resorting to that.
Get a rifle - not good for military but useful against looters and other unarmed crazy people
Get familiar with remote detonation with drones, these are what we use to set off the molotovs: <https://www.amazon.co.uk/100-30cm-Electric-Fireworks-Igniter...>
Edit: formatting
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 die from the state and my company. I am in the process of adding "how to un-smart (or re-dumb) my house, this si a serious source of anxiety for my wife)
This is the right thing to do. Do not delay. Start small with the key information. Share with trusted people outside of your family if possible (they will be less impacted).
I shared that with my best friend I can trust my life with and one day he said "I cannot get to your bank account". To what I said, well, why are you trying to. He was running a DRP (Disaster Recovery Plan) exercise and found stuff that was not updated. I love him.
I renewed my home insurance policy recently and there was one clause along the lines of coverage being excluded for war/insurrection/rebellion/military related reasons. Previously I would have thought nothing of it. These days I read these exclusion clauses in the same spirit as the "problem space" sections listed in this disaster planning doc.
If anything happens to the my house, it can take a year or more to get permission to rebuild it, and if fire or earthquake or flood takes out the neighborhood, the permitting backlog can take multiple years. My neighbor tried to build a house on a slope, and it took ten years to get the county to acknowledge that the engineering plans were sound, but by that point my neighbor was too old to build the house.
It's really common to have power outages here at least annually, if not more often, and that's been a problem for decades, but there's significant resistance to building new power plants, including solar and wind, which wouldn't fix the instability anyway, and a tenth of our power comes from the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, which is past its design life and we'd be lucky to get another five years out of it.
The oil refineries keep shutting down, we don't have any pipelines to bring in oil, and gas stations are required to sell a California-specific formula anyway.
Restaurants are closing everywhere, discount stores are closing, the 99¢ Only chain went bankrupt, eliminating one of the few affordable sources of fresh fruits and vegetables.
We've been so obsessed with NIMBYism for so long that we're losing our infrastructure and quickly approaching a collapse. A high paying job is necessary to barely scrape by, a generator is a must, gasoline shortages may soon become a problem, and electricity outages may grow from seasonal to regular.
I have contingency plans for all of these issues, but long term I'll probably just move to Nevada, Idaho, or Utah.
Two things probably have made me initially think more about it. First, the predictions of a major subduction earthquake here in Oregon, and knowing I'd be somewhat on my own for a while after that. And the other thing is Burning Man, which has taught me about self sufficiency and how one can actually have their cake and eat it too now and then.
Then there are guns. I've got two, and both are very much antiques. One a Krag 30-40 from 1908, the other a 1946 Springfield M1903. Both military issue, bolt action, and beautifully crafted. And both quite functional, powerful, and deadly items.
Why do I have guns? First because they are historical (used to work on a WW2 era video game). Then there's in theory hunting if I had to. Then there's protection. I can't deny that yes, I would consider using them if me and mine were truly threatened.
My only rule of thumb for any of this is never shall it say "Tactical" in the product name or the seller. Nor shall it have camo pattern.
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"
119265903349 Aug 24 09:47 wikipedia_en_all_maxi_2025-08.zim
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 generator for the house and a smaller unit just in case that one dies. There's enough fuel on site to keep my fridge running for about a month in the worst case.
You want to be the last bear to exit the cave. The longer you can hold out, the less competition you'll have to deal with. The only other option is to get out before the disaster hits. This works great for hurricanes but not so well for earthquakes.
It did feel pretty good being able to go to my closet, hit the 'push' light I'd stuck to the wall so I could see better, then calmly grab a couple of lanterns-slash-phone chargers. Added bonus: getting to share one with our older neighbour (who had plenty of light but no way to charge a phone).
I grew up in a place with a few power outages every year, albeit brief ones. A few basic preparations in the present can make your future much easier.
- https://web.archive.org/web/20221004062915/https://organicco...
oh you sweet 2015 summer child.
Gold/Silver is up, preppers... Just instead of Argentina as an example people talk about Ukraine.
I don't think that's true. I imagine the people with the highest chance of survival are the ones whose governing/ruling people seek peace and the rule law quickest. Second would be people who flee to the nearest safe and lawful area. A fortification is probably the third best option if you can't have either of the first, but the probability of that structure keeping you alive is very low, especially if the conflict lasts long enough to become a siege. Entire cities managed to hold out from sieges that lasted for years, but the ordinary people inside did not.
Rifles are great for many things aside from roving bandits. First thing is that hunting is an excellent capability to have and rifles are much easier to use than bows. Another thing is the deterrence one provides. If you're moving around the end times with just your fists, you're an easier target than someone equipped. The final bit is if your point is right and living in a fortified structure is the way to go, someone with a rifle and the knowhow to use it is going to be immensely more useful to the group than someone who just knows how to use a computer. In the absence of law, you will be obliged to defend yourself whether that's individually or in a large group.
In real life melee weapons are readily available and far more overpowered that you'd think, but what matters more is that robbery is risky. Winning most of the time isn't enough; you'd need to win all of the time.
Source?
I rather have a few weapons, than no weapons at all.
Either you're a hermit, that really can build that hermit cave in the mountains, far off and all the guns they're stockpiling won't really be used.
Or you're way too close to civilization coz you have an actual family and they'd never do / care about any of that "crazy stuff".
And if you're that close to civilization, it's all about who's got the larger stockpile and larger amount of armed thugs. Are you really gonna fight off 30 guys with AR-15s with a family of four, two of which are children to protect your stash of food and gas and generator(s)?
The only way your "prepping alone" is gonna help you is the hermit case, far far out of sight or if it's "not all that bad anyway".
the common trope of a mad max style wasteland where there are roaming barbarians and everyone is in a state of disorganized chaos is imo overstated. a hobbesian fantasy/wet dream.
humans tend to be self organizing and (mostly) altruistic in the face of disaster. we have plenty examples of this: fukishima, the boston bombing, ongoing ukrainian conflict, syrian conflict.
that's not to say that scoundrels do not exist. times of chaos create space for predators to take advantage of people. it happens more frequently at greater scale. there will be plenty of untethered folks with some form of military training.
similarly, the idea that you could simply ride out a long term disaster in a prepper cave is (again coached in an imho) mostly a fantasy. most people simply need community to survive.
fear of warlord run gangs shouldn't dissuade you from having a small stockpile of goods to survive. if they exist, and you meet they'll probably chop your head off regardless.
the most sensible thing to do is prepare within reason and build a community of people around you that can rely on you and vice verse.
It won't take long for it to become overtly apparent to the members of roving hordes of warlord-run gangs that befriending an off-grid self-sufficient abode is a much, much lower risk option than raiding it.
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...
The idea that what we're seeing is because "too many people voted for the wrong guy" fails to recognize the larger condition for which all of this is merely emergent phenomena. We no longer have the resources to sustain the society we life in so it begins to uncomfortably revert to lower energy states in ways we haven't seen in a long time.
However both of them argue that a stable society can exist with stable energy inputs, but with much less than now.
A one hundred year old farmer's collective with deep assets and a membership that makes US preppers look ... uhhh, unprepped.
Literally established well outside what one US astronaut called the most remote city in the world, it is made up of individuals that are all capable of survival in harsh environments and yet choose to work together to lower collective costs and ensure fires are kept in check, floods don't knock out individuals, roving scam artists get talked about on bush telegraph, etc.
Any group strongly united by a common goal (in this particular case, their religious order) can do surprisingly well.
* one of the best pieces of advice I ever got, related to skating to where the puck is going to be: "if you know where to be, you can let the young guys run"
Easier said than done
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
With thy said, I’ve had a few enthusiast friends the years, and for most of them the amount of ammo was more staggering than the number of firearms. Most also had a fairly well throughout strategy around what the shtf related arms should be chambered in as well as reloading presses. Further, that made sure their trusted group of friends were familiar with their shtf firearms. To be fair, the most excessive of these friends also had an equally excessive build out for water storage.
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 power to their citizens to maintain a stable but effectively symbolic monarchy or overtaxing then losing to a rebellion.
Next week was the pandemic, borders closed. He never left, and now he /still/ cant.
If no one ever defends the dirt, the pieces of earth where you can enjoy a drink in peace and freedom will shrink over time as the aggressors will continue to gobble up land because of the lack of defending.
They keep moving forward, you keep moving back, until you have no where to retreat to.
and this isn't "just politicians", they're cleansing populations and relocating children
The idea of being drafted to defend my country that sells me out at every opportunity is laughable.
When Russia was doing "exercises" at their border in 2022, I asked them in a meeting what they felt (guys living in Lviv). Most of them thought Russia would have done it in 2014 already, and now it didn't make much sense. Only 1 person responded he filled up his gas tank. But in the end, nobody left Lviv right after the invasion.
People are more important than the state. If they are not ready to defend him, why should they be forced? You can offer money or other valuables in return, such as fame, a pension, or a position, but if a person doesn't want to, why should they do it?
My family is from Eastern Europe: if people had not fought "meaningless" battles then the land would have been ruled by genocidal maniacs. As it stand my grandmother almost ended up in an oven.
My very existence is the result of the battles having meaning, that people fighting matters.
Nothing will change for an ordinary person now.
At that time, the Genplan OST implied the almost complete extermination and the enslavement of a small number of the remaining people.
And also going back to the second part of the top commentary. At that time, people had a great motivation to defend their homeland and their loved ones. The survival of the country and the survival of the people in it were inextricably linked.
The current conflict has no such connection. The existence or cessation of the existence of the state is not related to the existence of people in it. Many of whom found life in a completely different country.
There were already volunteers, mercenaries, those who fell for a good salary. Why force those who actively avoid it?
Note that fossil fuel can age out, even with stabilizer.
There are dual- and tri-fuel generators out there that can use natural/methane gas and/or propane. Consider propane as you can get pretty big bottles and it does not expire so can sit around for long periods of time.
you can put in additives to extend the life, and specialized storage can squeak even more out, but ultimately you can't plan on it being good past 12 months, maybe as low as 5-6 if conditions aren't great.
we ran / tested the generators weekly, both just to exercise them and confirm they're good, but also just to burn off old fuel.
Even if things are bad enough for iodine pills, they are only really needed for children. Once you hit your mid teens, your thyroid is fully developed and not pulling in enough iodine to worry about radioactive isotopes.
If you live with-in 50 km of a nuclear power plant (e.g., southern Ontario), you are entitled to free iodine pills:
* https://www.preparetobesafe.ca
* https://www.cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca/eng/resources/educational-resour...
* https://www.torontocentralhealthline.ca/displayservice.aspx?...
* https://www.durham.ca/en/news/ki-tablets-available-for-all-a...
The article did mention using it for treating water, but it's not very good at that, and it tastes awful. Reverse osmosis works much, much better and it doesn't need to be a large permanently installed system; portable gravity-fed versions readily available.
If you’re going to do that, become proficient with said rifle.
I think my exposure to casual discussions of how to arm drones with my Ukrainian friend, and the videos we've all seen on Reddit about drones in Ukraine, have really made their presence feel unwelcome.
and why would you need a 300m+ ethernet cable in a disaster?
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.
The molotov didn't seem out of range for me honestly. Firstly because I know he was one of the first people flying drones for defence, and now they've been mass producing their own for a few years. I have to admit, it seems pretty rational to want to fight back in any way possible.
For ~$200 you can build a very good FPV drone that can carry a dangerous payload and travel at highway speeds. Another ~$200 buys you the video receiver and a controller.
Drone warfare is terrifying.
FPV drones as a fun hobby in the rest of the world has had, in the last 10 years since it became somewhat popular, a total of zero fatalities or serious injuries. Don't let the irrational fear guide you towards further unnecessary regulation that makes others' lives worse.
I think FPV and drones are awesome, and have built several myself. It is pretty hard to argue that they are not also very dangerous in the wrong hands. Are there more dangerous things in the world? Sure, but that doesn’t mean people should ignore an easy attack vector. Given the temperature of things currently, I would be incredibly nervous to hear a drone at a protest or political event.
I saw writing on the wall and donated in 2022 my dji drone to Ukrainian army, hopefully it was used well for defense of their homeland. I don't want to have a hobby that I need to do covertly and illegally, and last thing I want to do during vacations is dealing with bureaucracy.