Come Back To My Place and Check Out My Red, Hard....Wheat

You don't need to hoard water. If you know where to look, there is water everywhere. Even if the water supply was completely shut off, I could get a minimum of 30 gallons of potable, ready-to-drink water from every house in town. It's a matter of knowing where that water is located (which I'm not going to share) and how to extract it.

Most people don't know you can also use bleach to purify water. Too much or too little and you're screwed, though.

 

Y'know... in some cases that might not be a bad thing. Natural selection.

 

Is this guy really that paranoid that other people are going to find out there is a large supply of water in hot water tanks?

 

Not that it really matters. Most people here don't seem to care too much about becoming prepared. They'll forget about it by the time they see the next Justin Beiber video.

See, if something like this ever happens, I'm pretty sure there won't be the intarwebs, at least in the initial stages so people won't be able to research this stuff after the fact. Most people wouldn't think to look in the water heater or even know that it's potable.

 

At least I didn't reveal how to dilute water with Clorox.

 

Have you already forgotten how much medication the loopy bastards around here admitted to being on last "how fucked up are you" thread? This all comes as no surprise.

 

My neighbours have 3 cats and 2 small dogs between them, I have a spit roast attachment for my BBQ and a .22. Food wouldn't be a problem for at least a week.

 

People in general don't really care about odds, if they did they would not play the lottery.

I don't play the lottery but I am prepared for the unexpected.

 

The neighbours also have childrens.

 

No, I don't except seriously bad shit to happen, but I recognize that it might happen. If bad shit happens, I'd like it to inconvenience me and the people around me as little as possible.

Depends what disaster. I'm at college currently, I have no preparations beyond what is in my head. At home, there's at least enough food for a week, and enough water in the pool for the same amount of time.

Odds are good that the USA and Canada are going to keep on being groovy places for us to live in, at least for the rest of our(TiB members) lives. However, there have been instances where things have not been so groovy. Is there a good reason to not be prepared for a very bad week?

You seem to have two issues: you're using "when", instead of "if", and you're assuming "the end of the world as we know it", instead of "a hurricane fucked up a nearby city" or "a blackout struck the area, and power won't be restored for a few days" or "JESUS CHRIST A BEAR".

 

So I wonder: how many Libyans do you think even had enough food to give themselves and their family 3 square meals per day? I'm guessing it was a relatively small percentage. How do you expect people to stock up weeks' worth of food when they don't even have any extra sitting around in the first place? I don't want to be mean-spirited, but I like how in the same sentence you wrote "maybe we are too far removed from dangerous real-world situations" and suggested that poor people in the third world need to stock up lots of food for the future.

Like nettdata said, having enough on hand to survive when the power goes out for a few days is pretty reasonable. Hell, there are parts of the country where doing so is a fact of life - every few months, I hear it casually mentioned in the news about a power outage in a certain area that results in rural areas going without power for several days. But as for the hardcore stuff where people plan to survive for years on end and hunker down preparing to shoot anything that moves when everything goes to shit - it makes me wonder. If things get that bad, what is going to be left to survive for? My girlfriend, for example, would like a job that allows her to take vacation over the holidays to visit her parents. Except her parents don't celebrate the holidays, keep the house just warm enough so the pipes don't burst, and criticize the fuck out of everything she does with her life. Why go to all that effort just to be miserable?

Interesting tidbit: if you all remember that big east coast power outage a few years ago (my family managed to keep cooking food by using the propane stove on the tent trailer) a local pizza chain thereafter made franchises build back-up generator systems so that they'd be able to stay open in the event of a power outage. It was a damn expensive operation, apparently: at least 10K per franchise, and it was forced upon them by higher up. The funny part? As per designs from higher up, the cash register wasn't hooked up to the generator.

 

I'm probably the most unprepared person in the world and even I could make it a fucking week in this scenario. There's enough water in my water heater and pipes to get me through a week and I've got a lot of blankets so I'm not going to freeze to death. I have barely any food in my house right now but I could stand to lose a few pounds anyway. Not having lights would suck but I have flashlights and enough batteries to use them for more than just emergencies. Certainly isn't going to be a very comfortable week but it'd take a lot more to kill me than that.