60 Minutes had a piece on Preppers

I rotate in every shopping trip. Helps financially too...
 
In my opinion the most likely "disaster" or emergency to prep for will be within your own home /ecosystem. Loss of a job, sudden illnesses or accident. Unexpected death of a family member.
If you have enough food for a month and enough savings for a month of bills then you bought yourself a month to figure out what to do next.
 
LakeTrout said:
I’m not sure what good cash is in the situations I’m imagining. You want to trade the cash for the actual thing you’ll need in a survival situation now.
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That's if it's a REAL emergency, not a normal emergency, when a $20 bill will still be worth $20, not just be a piece of toilet paper.

Like this "emergency": A while back, I stopped at Cumbies as was my wont, for my daily Large Iced for $0.99. The system was down. No electronic payments. I gave the cashier a $10, and said, "The next few are on me."

The following day, the cashier said that I'd made several peoples' day, as they had no cash.

That kind of emergency.
 
I have several hundreds in ones stashed away. When the SHTF a purchase for 5.00 dollars is actually 20.00 if all you have is a 20 dollar bill, there is no such thing as change in the apocalypse.

But like most here who know, cash will be toilet paper after a few months.
 
Jason m said:
I have several hundreds in ones stashed away. When the SHTF a purchase for 5.00 dollars is actually 20.00 if all you have is a 20 dollar bill, there is no such thing as change in the apocalypse.

But like most here who know, cash will be toilet paper after a few months.
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That's some good foresight, gonna start buying out the tip cups at dunkin
 
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Bigfudge16 said:
Exactly, cash might be useful for the first couple weeks but then you're going to need bartering tools instead
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For the first couple weeks of what exactly?

There are some situations where cash is obviously of either limited or no use, but one of the most likely things people will need to be prepared for is personal financial disaster.

Lots of scenarios where SHTF and your biggest problem ends up being the bank coming for your home rather than the zombies you were promised.

Cash won’t help you in all of those either ofc. Could get an Argentine type situation where you get sandwiches between hyperinflating property taxes, and “capital gains” on your home. You bought that home for $500,000 and sold it for $3,500,000,000,000, that sure is a lot of capital gains! Never mind that the real value had actually collapsed.
 
P51MA said:
For the first couple weeks of what exactly?

There are some situations where cash is obviously of either limited or no use, but one of the most likely things people will need to be prepared for is personal financial disaster.

Lots of scenarios where SHTF and your biggest problem ends up being the bank coming for your home rather than the zombies you were promised.

Cash won’t help you in all of those either ofc. Could get an Argentine type situation where you get sandwiches between hyperinflating property taxes, and “capital gains” on your home. You bought that home for $500,000 and sold it for $3,500,000,000,000, that sure is a lot of capital gains! Never mind that the real value had actually collapsed.
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personal financial disaster is not a national emergency, despite what the dems say
 
If you were in NC right now expecting a couple of weeks of zero electricity, some oreos might make sense, yes?

While it is an edge case/black swan event, more attacks on transformers and key grid components across the US could put us in the dark ages for a bit… seems like a good enough reason to prep.
 
Finished reading "One Second After" by William Forstchen in 3 days, overdramatic in some parts with the hero making but if you can look past that it is an eye opening glimpse of what is possible if a large portion of the country lost electricity for an extended period of time. This situation involved an EMP detonation so a lot more extreme than the grid going down but still a scary thought
 
EMP (whether from a solar event or man made) is a real threat and it is a travesty that our grid is not protected. It seems much more likely than a traditional nuke attack. The traditional version would prompt a response that would not bode well for the aggressor. An EMP attack, on the other hand, could be launched almost anonymously, from a "normal" satellite that has been up there for years waiting for the trigger signal ... or it could be launched from a crude rocket assembled on US soil that only has to get up there 20-30 miles before detonating ... so there wouldn't be anyone to retaliate against.

If it happens, there are a lot of politicians and policy makers that will be to blame.
 
clampett said:
I love my Game Saver, it is the same as a food saver, it's just a little bigger.
I'm still eating steaks that I packaged and froze back in April 2020.

I'm wondering what the maximum shelf life is.
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I've heard of people saving vacuum sealed frozen meat for 4 to 5 years... ive never had the time to kill enough deer to last nearly that long. Once a package hits 2 years in my freezer it becomes a priority to cook it or give it away
 
Fritz the Cat said:
In my opinion the most likely "disaster" or emergency to prep for will be within your own home /ecosystem. Loss of a job, sudden illnesses or accident. Unexpected death of a family member.
If you have enough food for a month and enough savings for a month of bills then you bought yourself a month to figure out what to do next.
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This, times 10.
The two most likely emergencies are:
1) Personal / family emergency during normal times (health event, loss of job, cars shits the bed etc)
2) Personal financial emergency as part of a national emergency. Most disasters arent the end of the world, and during SHTF if civilization is still semi-functional the bank still might be upset if you miss a payment, and the government might decide you need to pay way more taxes, etc etc.

Pretty much every other prepper scenario is increasingly unlikely as we go down the list from there.

In Argentina during the inflation homeowners were getting smacked for cap gains on their house in nominal terms. Your house could go from $500k USD to $100k USD, but you'd still have to pay huge cap gains because it went up 10,000% in Peso's.

So, yeah, if you are a prepper getting financially squared away comes 2nd only to food and water.
 
P51MA said:
In Argentina during the inflation homeowners were getting smacked for cap gains on their house in nominal terms. Your house could go from $500k USD to $100k USD, but you'd still have to pay huge cap gains because it went up 10,000% in Peso's.

So, yeah, if you are a prepper getting financially squared away comes 2nd only to food and water.
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That’s what I love about California’s state billionaire TAX and Joe Biden suggested billionaire tax.

They wanna charge of capital gains on something you haven’t even sold yet.. every loser in this country really believes that people who make more money should have to pay more than them by percentage…

Sounds great in theory… but since most people don’t researcher understand anything this billionaire tax effects millionaires… who cares right? These are the same people don’t understand inflation. You’re a piece of shit $250,000 house is going to be a “millionaires mansion”..in 10 years.

I’m just glad I’ll be dead before any of the shit matters. But this younger college generation doesn’t know what they’re signing them self up for. With their “ pay my college debt.”

Bullshit. They were getting sold the f***ing pipe dream that they’re probably gonna have to pay for cause their never got amount to anything.

End rant
 
LakeTrout said:
I’m not sure what good cash is in the situations I’m imagining. You want to trade the cash for the actual thing you’ll need in a survival situation now.
Click to expand...
There are entire classes of regional disasters where cash is still useful.
 
drgrant said:
There are entire classes of regional disasters where cash is still useful.
Click to expand...

I don’t doubt it’s useful in the short term. I think when the reality sets in that the “national disaster” isn’t going to be short term, cash becomes less and less useful.

Either way, I’m not banking on it being useful or being able to find the thing I need during the emergency. Besides, what will it cost then when everyone else needs to have it to and is willing to spend whatever it takes?

If I had $2,000.00 to put away in case of a national emergency, I would spend the $2,000.00 now on what I feel I will most likely need at that time. One less step during an emergency, and I can probably buy a lot more of it now.
 
The thing about cash or silver, gold..
It’s about perception, there’s always gonna be profiteering.
Wouldnt you trade all the cash or precious metals on the world to save someone you love?
A simple course of antibiotics, or some insulin could always be more valuable than all the gold on the planet…

Even in a bad situation, a lot of people won’t lose the mentality that a bunch of papers is actually worth something..

I always try to play that to your advantage.

Just like the deed to your house it’s just a piece of paper.


But hey, what do I know I sold off most of my precious metals because I couldn’t eat it
 

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