Category: Daily Living
I think this is the best board to put this on, since it's the closest to a lifestyle category on here. Plus, it has everything from the very useful how-to posts to the very useful whining-about-isms posts.
How-to people will survive, whine-about-isms people will die, should SHTF (sh*t hit the fan).
OK so I have been following this so-called prepping, shtf or whatever you wanta call it movement for a year or so now.
Unlike what the media may portray it as, it's not just a bunch of zealots saying 'niner' on a CB radio, living in the same clothes for 60 days, and eating beanie weenies.
No, in fact the best survival tips come from people like you or me, normal, everyday, working people who don't have storerooms full of food and bunkers full of ammunition. Here are my thoughts, in part specific to us as blind people. I started thinking about the blind in particular after watching a Youtube where a black man was talking about the absence of black 'preppers'.
I think we as blind people have a few distinct advantages. First off, we don't require light to search in a go bag, assemble / disassemble gear, etc. Sure, many sighted people don't either, if they are either avid outdoorsmen or military types. If you don't believe me, ask a military instructor what it's like to teach new recruits to pack and unpack their bags in the dark, dissasemble and field-service a weapon, etc., see how many times they utter the word 'numbnuts' or some similar descriptor in that conversation.
One hundred years ago, most people didn't have access to what amounts to full daylight everyplace they went. They could start fires in total darkness, put up a tent using minimal light from stars coming through a very thick cloud cover, etc.
I think the most important aspects to survival are portability and skills. What some call the 'bug-out' bag, it's even an industry. But in practicality, knowing what you absolutely need in order to stay alive, and maintaining just that much, is more important than storing up silohs full of stuff that will get wet in a flood, be unavailable to you if you are away from it when disaster strikes, etc. Countless thousands of dollars worth of ffood and gear were destroyed during Katrina, because those basements, attics, sheds and other buildings that stored it went underwater.
Skills is even more important than your gear. Despite what you see on Youtube, not every person learns every skill. But there are some basics you're gonna need to learn. If you've never built a fire from start to finish, that's one. Or how to put up a simple shelter? Again, not too hard, and good to learn before you actually need it. If you've got hands and feet, yu can do that one, out of many different types of things.
Here's one that nobody seems to want to talk about: how to sharpen a knife. I grew up learning it, the brothers knew how, the father did it. I had to become an adult before I learned that most people don't know how to properly sharpen and shape a blade. Fancy sharpeners are nice, but people should learn how on a butcher's steel, even a rock. You can awaken the wicked sharpness in many a blade with a little time, a lot of patience and a bit of skill.
You should also learn how to open a can without a can opener.
Then, you can boil water (to purify it), build yourself a place to sleep, and keep your cutlery in shape especially if it had to be used for unintended purposes.
Skills cost you nothing but time and effort to acquire, unlike all the fancy-pants survival gear that has turned a lot of normal-income people off from survival preparedness.
Ready.gov is a great place to start: simple, to the point and a lot of good tips there.
Guess it goes without sayig, but keping fit is paramount.
All I can say from knowing other survival-oriented people is, situations like that, artificial barriers like lack of sight, being gay, religion, skin color, etc. don't matter. What does matter is if you can pull your own loadand learn what you need to learn.
I'm not 'prepping' for any one particular disaster type. I think prophetic things are pretty much for the birds, and every other day someone claims the government this, or the people that. However, catastrophes do happen, local and global, and having a wide and varied skill set plus an assortment of multi-use tools and no marriages to ideology equals highest probability of making it, methinks.
I think it'd be great if others with tips for survival, maybe tactics you used during an emergency situation, etc. would post on here. Most of the good stuff you can learn and use on a daily basis, rather than having to go on some expensive outback-excursion type trip to learn.
Again, I will say: this is not an angry white male thing, it's not a religion thing, not even a Youtube thing: it's an everybody thing.
If you don't know much about knives, but you like to grow your own flowers in a pot, you are still way ahead of many of us. Miles ahead. I noticed this this Christmas when the daughter started on an indoor herb seed garden - admittedly just for fun, but we're all gonna learn quite a bit as a consequence.
If you're no good at tools, but you are good at organizing people, maybe work in the social services or something, you can be a real asset to your neighborhood or your group of friends. You'd be surprised how many of us, even people who've been managers, will turn up useless as shit when it comes to leading a group of wide-eyed panicked spazzes.
There are a lot of skill sets the so-called prepper movement may or may not talk about, which will become essential. It's just a matter of thinking this stuff through, and preparing for situations that are likely to arise in your jurisdiction. I say again: this is definitely not a angry white male thing, an anti-government thing or any of that your friends and people you know probably make it out to be. But in an economic collapse situation, skills are the git that keeps on giving. You can apply your skills in exchange for what you need: it's happened during disasters before and will happen again.
I'd be interested in more responses. In particular, how people identify plants without any eyesight. In a garden, I don't know the difference between a weed and a young plant. I've turned the dirt with a spade, made the trench for it to drain properly.
Hoping others with some neat stuff can post it on here.
Hi,
At this time, i am a boyscout, a star, you know.
Many people come up to me at camps sayin, hmm. How do you disassemble a tent, how do you build a fire, how do you do this, how do you do that, etc etc.
It's all survival skills.
Do you know where to get a text description for your knots? It'd be nice to find something like that, I had to piece together learning a couple to get in the Coast Guard but don't know if I could still do them. A good text description would sure be nice to get a hold of.
I dunno how to build a fire..a lot of basic skills like knives, putting up a tent building a fire things like that I honestly don't know how to do.
It's not that I'm not interested..Far from it! It's that I have no one to teach me and physically show me how to do it. While growing up, my parents kept me away from stuff like that. I wish they had not.
I have been thinking long and hard on how to respond to you.
First I will say that I am blind, even though I don't really respond with your typical institutions-based responses to things, e.g. blame things on blindness-related problems.
You are actually in the majority, something that, again, I had to become an adult to learn. Most people actually don't know how to do a lot of what people think of as survival type skills. It actually doesn't always do you the most good to go off on a holiday to learn how to use skills in the outdoors, if you live most of your life in the inner city. Survival skills are not necessarily lighting fires, building shelters, etc. although I have the luxury of knowing how to do both, so I understand people's reaction to that.
The real test of your survival abilities is what do you do when your normal routine of things gets interrupted? When the basement floods, or the dishwasher breaks down, for starts. Or when your primary means of getting to work is no longer available. Starting small like this gets you thinking in terms of backup plans rather than just assuming what's in front of you will work. More importantly, it makes you realistic: you understand that ultimately, you and only you are going to look after you and your dependents.
I'll tell you what I did once, and on a site like this it will appear rather mundane, but it illustrates exactly what I'm talking about. I was on a business trip, and between flights. I had asked for an airport employee to take me to the next gate, like probably most of us on this site would.
Like what sometimes happens, the airport person stranded me. I had let go their arm, they took a cell phone call, or pretended to, and then ran.
Now, I realize first and foremost, it's actually my responsibility to somehow get my own ass there, and that my contractee wouldn't just pass off my being late because an airport person wouldn't help.
The responsibility of the airport is only on paper. You as a survival-oriented person know that's just artificial: it's actually you that's gonna get you there. To that end, before the customer service person and I had started off, I'd asked how far it was, and what direction it was.
So now, I'm armed, if you will, for the rare but inevitable event which took place. So with that knowledge, I was able to keep going in the direction I needed to go, to get where I needed to go. Meaning, keep going until I found another gate, report what happened, and ultimately get my ass to the next gate.
Pretty mundane for us blind people, I know. And not nearly as sexy as building a shelter on the uphill side of a floodplain - for those who are into that sort of thing. You've probably done something similar in one form or another. But it's an attitude more than anything else, is where it starts. You understand that all institutionalized responsibilities are artificial, and your own responsibilities are very real. If I had missed my flight, while some could philosophize I had been treated unfairly, in reality, the biggest problem is loss of time (which equals money on a business trip), and not being able to be prompt on the job, which again equals better positioning myself. If you stop thinking things like: "They can't do that!" and instead just be prepared, for the scenario that is most likely to go wrong in your given situation, you are going to be miles ahead of most people around you.
That's just how I tend to think: some call it the paleolithic philosophy or lifestyle, but however you think of it, you are lessurprised and more ready if an artificially constructed subsystem falls apart. I disagree with a lot of so-called survival advocates, in that I think your best assets are just that attitude and a general fitness, physically and mentally. You live in a certain geographic area, learn where you need to get should something happen. Learn where the fire escape is, if you live in an apartment building. Don't let someone without a head for heights scare you: going down one of those you have at least three points of contact at all times.
This again, isn't a blind only thing. My sighted nieces and daughter get it from me frequently. Once you develop the attitude for it, your normal human curiosity will drive you to learn a lot of things you'll find useful in your own environment.
By calling socially constructed systems artificial, I am by no means demeaning their value. That would be hypocritical: I myself have sworn an oath to one of these. Many people who work in any number of response organizations, or the community in general, do a great job. But by understanding the system is artificially constructed, you realize ultimately it all comes down to you, not state, not church, nor the authors of each.
To that end, I'm off for my barefoot run.
I realize as usual I kinda rambled a bit there.
However the best thing you can do is take stock of your current situation, and if there is something where you don't feel like you're in control, don't know how it works, your survival skill in that situation is to learn what you can to more fully understand it. It doesn't mean you have to be good at every skill. I'm a rudimentary handyman at best: cut a length to size, tear out stumps and the like, nothing elegant. But over the years, you learn one thing at a time, and most importantly, you learn how to communicate what the problem actually is to the person you ultimately have to use. Homo sapiens survival happens in groups far more often than it does solo.
The Braille Burgers topic was interesting, and brought up the ADA.
Again, if you're bent on your personal survival, you have too look at things like that as merely artificial:
I have a somewhat different view on civil law in general and the ADA in particular.
The debates usually rage as to the fairness of the law to the corporation or person in question. But in reality, for most of us, this point is completely moot.
Civil law is only enforceable insofar as you the plaintiff have the ability to pay. It's not real law, in other words. So I have never taken ADA seriously, be it in employment or places that are so-called "supposed to" provide something for me. Supposed to what? The question is purely academic unless I have the means of enforcement, meaning unless I have the financial ability to seek damages. That does not mean that they have not done so, or that I have not accepted said assistance, though I will get to the acceptance part. I am no convert to what appears to be this religion of independence, a faux survival mechanism that is commical at best and detrimental aqt worst.
Corporations, not people, have this ability. So the so-called civil laws we have are for the most part silly. If someone wantonly sexts my daughter I can report them, at no more cost than the cost to get my buns down to the station, time off work, etc. But if an employer "doesn't provide a reasonable accomodation," their only obstacle is my ability to raise the legal funds to compete with them in the courts.
So a restaurant may be legally obligated to do something like read the menu, but technically they don't have to unless they look at me and say to themselves: "Man! That guy's made of money! He's gonna own this place if we don't act right!"
Ask yourselves how many law-abiding people more than once or thrice will run a red light in a hurry if they think no cop is there to enforce it. I'm not talking huligans: I'm talking church grannies who would otherwise squawk if they heard the word 'dam' and need to be told the discussion was about hydroelectric power. Nobody is excepted.
Basically without enforceability law doesn't truly exist. So to me, civil law doesn't really exist because I don't have the funds to pay for the enforcement.
That doesn't mean people haven't accomodated me, for their own motives, probably at least half of which are purely economical, and probably some because of a personal moral code. Corporations are just hurtling hunks of steel and raw power roaring down the highway at 60 miles per hour. A white-cane-style right of way may be academically nice in that situation, but a pretty moot point if I and that machine meet. This is my perspective on the ADA and similar law. Doesn't really factor into the typical debates about it, and I'm not even posing it as fair or unfair.
Here's a good article on things to consider. Not all apply of course, and every situation is different, but the most important thing is to get people thinking, and release their self-reliant nature:
Surviving Economic Collapse
I'm really glad you started this topic. I've actually wanted to start it for quite a while but was afraid of looking like one of those people you sort of electronically sneered at in post 1.
Anyway, as a mother of a a sighted son and wife of a blind husband, the thought of any sort of apocoliptic disaster whether natural or manmade, scares the hell out of me. I read enough books to know that my family would basically be shit out of luck unless I have arranged to provide for our needs. After downloading and reading some books about food stockpiling etc, I started a stockpile a couple of years ago. I had to discontinue it when we had our last house on the market, something about it looking funny to have green beans and toilet paper in the playroom closet. lol
Anyway, now that we're settled into our new place, I am preparing bugout bags. Living in semi-rural Texas, evacuation due to wild fires has become a concern. An even bigger fear I have though is an electromagnetic pulse. Since I rely so heavily on electronic gadgets to function, that would really screw with my world. I would strongly recommend that each of us who function online, make accessible to ourselves, wheterh in braille or some other format not requiring electronic functioning, copies of all our important information, insurance info, account numbers, etc. That may not do us much good if the grid is down but it would still be a good idea to have.
As far as actual survival skills go, I've learned to cook on a propane camp stove. It's not building a fire from scratch yet but that's soon on the list. I hadn't thought about knife sharpening so thanks for that idea.
I too am interested in hearing responses to your gardening questions. I personally have a black thumb but plan on working side-by-sie with my mom as she starts a garden in her new house. The thought of watching my child starve because I couldn't run helterskelter through a Wal-mart with all the other raging crazies after a disaster grabbing anything I could get scares the absolute hell out of me. I do tend to buy into the theory that something at some point will cappen. Call me a crazy white nutjob if you like but that's just how I feel and the desire to be prepared looms large.
I looked at some of the prepackaged freeze dried food offered online and it's very expensive. I know if something evber does happen, I'll regret not purchasing some but for now, I just can't justify the expense.
All of the advice I've read says to start small so as not to be overwhelmed. Have a plan, followed by a backup plan followed by a backup plan.
Anyway, this looks to be a very interesting topic and I hope to see more posts from people with more information.
I tend to think the bug-out bags, while often underrated, are the best survival tactic to not only start with but keep up on.
Every time you get through a storm more prepared, or better manage a flood or other crisis situation, you're sharpening your skills IMHO.