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The Annoyed Man wrote: ↑Sun Mar 22, 2020 7:05 pm

joe817 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 10:11 pm I've never been smart enough to predict when the a problem arises, or TEOTWAWKI. Now, at the first time I notice that something ain't right...I mean the very first inkling, that is when I have bought a gun, or some ammo...in the past. I have to admit,I was caught flat footed during the extended ammo shortage of the early Obama years. And I learned my lesson.

JRG wrote: ↑Sun Mar 22, 2020 12:03 am I have a small collection of guns, mostly handguns with one AR15 and a 22lr rifle. I have plenty of ammo for these weapons, but I did procrastinate with this pandemic. I have wanted a Mossberg Shockwave as a bedroom gun, but now that I am back in Texas I have noticed that Grab a Gun (where I purchase 90% of my guns) is totally out of all models of Shockwaves and TAC 14 models also. Also noticed that they are out of most models of the Sig 365.

Hopefully, they will regain stock soon. Perhaps I can work a deal where I give them some toilet paper and make it an even swap????

Joe

When I first got into active prepping with something more than a strictly casual interest, it was about 6-7 years ago. I was already into guns and owned a number of them at the time, so I started by buying enough ammo to defend that which I did not yet have.....STORED FOOD, and other survival supplies. Sounds kind of dumb, doesn’t it? You can’t eat boolits. And if your plan is to gun-up and take someone else's food, stop to consider that THEY might have prepared for YOU even better than you did for THEM, and your idea then makes you both:

A. A really bad person from the get-go, so you deserve whatever bad happens to you, and

B. A terminally stupid person from the get-go, so you deserve whatever bad happens to you.

You really need to prepare as if you’ll never again be able to enter a supermarket. The odds are, that won’t be the case. Even if there is a TOTAL social collapse, there’s likely to be open-air markets eventually, etc., but you can’t guarantee that. So stored food isn’t enough. If things are bad enough, you have to be prepared to feed yourself AFTER your stored foods run out. That means a garden, maybe some livestock....and THAT means at the very minimum a pretty large suburban lot. So do you have enough land? And then there’s medical preparedness, and preparing to educate the family's children, etc., etc.

Being serious about it is a never ending quest, but it doesn’t have to hurt. Just determine to pursue self-sufficiency, and then get after it, incrementally, as you can afford to do it.

We were not 100% ready for this particular crisis either, but we were WAY more prepared than we would have been before we started. I have started a list of things we either hadn’t thought of, things we had thought of but hadn’t gotten around to yet, and things we DID do but could have done better. You learn by doing, right?

Our biggest shortfalls were:

1. My wife and I had about 3-4 months worth of food stored up for ourselves, just the two of us. But then 3 years ago, we bought a house with our son and DIL, and we never updated our long term food storage to account for additional mouths .... until about 3-4 weeks ago. I saw this coming, and instead if immediately ordering another 1000 rounds of each caliber (I already have plenty for now), I said nope, we gotta our butts to Costco and add some things to our stores. And I got our son and DIL to add extra purchases to their regular grocery shopping. We now have enough stored to feed all 6 of us for about 3 months....maybe 4 if we get creative and stretch things out a bit.

2. We have not established a garden. Yet. I’m going to be remedying that fact this week.

3. We aren’t in a position to buy a rural property removed from a metropolitan area yet. There’s nothing I can do about that for now.

So, I’ll do like I’ve been doing and keep the idea of buying property alive by researching what’s currently available. I’ll build my garden now. And I’ll continue adding storable foods as I can afford to do so, until I’ve reached my goal of 2 years of food per person in our household.

Until I can have my own rural property, that’s the best I can do for now.

All preparation progress is good progress.