I hope we can have a thoughtful discussion about this.

I'll be 76 in a couple of months, my wife will be 83 next month.

I'm in decent health with the aid of BP meds and statins. Given the dietary limitations imposed by a disaster, I'd no doubt lose weight and the importance of the meds would diminish, so I think it's fair to assume that loss of access to prescriptions wouldn't be a critical factor for me.

My wife not so much. She's in moderate-to-poor health with non-treatable (but manageable with meds) conditions. Loss of those meds would hasten things to some degree, possibly dramatically so.

Given the above, "bugging out" is not really an option. We live in a rural part of a largely rural state so my thinking is that it would take quite a while - if ever - for marauders to start raiding.

Of more immediate concern would be the grid going down. Without electricity, everything changes. Due to fuel shortages transportation of goods would be reduced to a trickle, if not disappear completely. Grocery stores would empty quickly and cease to operate. Even if they somehow kept going, getting to them 20+ miles away would be a huge issue.

With the short growing season where we live and our age and health, growing enough to survive on is highly unlikely or even impossible.

Given all of the above, my thinking is that we'd be royally screwed and no amount of prep would change that. Prepare for short term - 30-60 days - yes. The Apocalypse? Nope.

Am I wrong here? If so, how?

I'm in the same boat. I have a few months of heart medications stored up, but after that it would probably be just a matter of time before I go into heart failure again.

My only hope is that the "Apocalypse" is short-lived, and that the authorities get things tamped down in good order.

In reality I would stick around and take care of people in my church that could not care for themselves rather than leave. I do not have family in my area, my son-in law would care for my daughter so I am free to help out others.

I am not quite your age yet but have thought hard about that scenario. If we ever get to that, there will be a lot of people who cannot fend for themselves.

I think your plan is the best you can do. Honestly though, I doubt I will ever see it in my lifetime. I prepare but I do not overdo it. Prepare but do not worry yourself about it.

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:


Given all of the above, my thinking is that we'd be royally screwed and no amount of prep would change that.

Disagree.
You could stockpile a whole mess of freeze-dried food and be good for a decade (from a pure food perspective).
Meds.... probably screwed.
But food? It's feasible.
Chickens are generally not super terrible to manage - so you could also do that and get fresh eggs every day.

PHPaul, you may know about sites like the one below where you can get prescriptions for extended amounts of time. I can vouch for Jase, I’ve used them twice.

https://jasemedical.com/daily

Talk to your provider. I can't imagine that they won't write you or your wife for more meds. Get a year's supply and just tuck them away.

quote:

Originally posted by creslin:

Disagree.
You could stockpile a whole mess of freeze-dried food and be good for a decade (from a pure food perspective).
Meds.... probably screwed.
But food? It's feasible.
Chickens are generally not super terrible to manage - so you could also do that and get fresh eggs every day.

We kept chickens for many years, both layers and meat birds. We couldn't let them free-range, the varmints - both avian and mammalian - would decimate the flock in short order. Keeping them penned and safe involves feeding them commercial food which wouldn't be available.

The suggestion about freeze-dried food is certainly viable but doesn't take into account the implied question: At our age, do we want to survive The Apocalypse?

PHPaul - your remoteness is an asset. Some kind of dry storage for supplies and a well and you’ll be set.

I am much more suburban and much of my challenge may be fighting off hungry, wandering gangs looking to pillage anything.

For you linking up with a few neighbors would be smart. Discussions on the subject may develop mutual support that could be very important. No matter your age, in this case your experience, wisdom(?) and tools will be an asset to a younger group.
Should you come through the disaster alive, you might be the sage to the rest of the young whipper-snappers.

As previously mentioned, your neighborhood network is critical in a SHTF scenario. Build it.

Ever notice when people talk about bugging out, they never say where they might bugout to? The most logical place for people to be in most disaster scenarios is their own home, assuming, of course, that flood or fire or tornado or whatever has not made that impossible.

If there is a national disaster that severely interrupts supply chains, I would expect that the government- be it federal or state- would prioritize delivering essential medications to the public.

If you're taking an expensive medication or one for an uncommon condition, you'd likely be out of luck, but for medication for high blood pressure or diabetes or other very common maladies, the number of people impacted by inability to obtain these medications would compel the government to act.

Two things I have often thought about:

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Ever notice when people talk about bugging out, they never say where they might bugout to?

A recent local wildfire put me and my disabled wife very close to the “be ready to evacuate” zone. Coincidently just a couple of weeks previously I had asked relatives if we could stay with them for a time if something like that were to happen because I knew the fire danger would be very high this year due to a practically no-snow winter. They live about a three hour drive away which meant it would have been no problem getting there if we were ready to leave on short notice and the gas tank was full.

But what if there was some sort of national upheaval? Why would we go to a place that would be no safer than where we live, and in many ways less so? Having four of us in one place would be an advantage in some ways, but just getting there via heavily-traveled routes including through a metropolitan area would be very dangerous, if not suicidal. Even if we had a stockpile of food at our home, anything we could have transported along with other necessities would have been of minor value.

In the event of the sorts of things most people think about when discussing TEOTWAWKI disasters, go where? We wouldn’t survive long where we live, but would be no better off anywhere else.

And then there’s this:

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:
At our age, do we want to survive The Apocalypse?

I would think that for most of us we're talking about a major natural disaster. Not a truly apocalyptic Hollywood type situation.
Something like a hurricane or other major weather event, forest fires, etc.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
I would think that for most of us we're talking about a major natural disaster. Not a truly apocalyptic Hollywood type situation.
Something like a hurricane or other major weather event, forest fires, etc.

This is true. Outside of an EMP or possibly Yellowstone erupting, a "Hollywood" apocalypse is quite a stretch.

Still, I think an extended (months, not days) failure of the grid would have much the same effect.

It’s a bit of a challenge to find info but the Maine Emergency Management Agency appears to have some helpful information, including a listing of shelters by county. FEMA might also be worth a look.

Silent

There is a reason why the super rich, elite do such things on a global scale like "lets simulate a world wide pandemic."

On the natural disaster on a large scale front there is major earthquakes that could be a chain of quakes that could effect multiple area's.

Or a huge Tsunami is another combined with massive earthquakes.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: old rugged cross,

Okay, I misunderstood.

It seems to me that it wouldn’t be useful to have a six-month supply of gasoline for a generator to keep the four freezers full of meat going and a garage full of nonperishable food if my concerns were fleeing a forest fire or hurricane.

One thing I have noted in past discussions is that a lot of advice about these subjects—and others—are focused on the poster’s very limited situation and capabilities. When I lived in all the high-rise apartments I did for decades, having a generator, fuel, and 12-month supply of freeze-dry wasn’t really very practicable. It would be interesting to know how many members here could survive on the veggies they grow on their property. I actually have enough land that could in theory support a fair amount, but the people who go to great time and trouble to do that where I live are usually very proud of the bunch of radishes and dozen tomatoes they harvest from the imported topsoil at the end of our three-month growing season.

If Yellowstone goes up and I have enough warning to try to get ahead of its effects, I would go as far and as fast east as my car with its single tank of gas would take me. But that also assumes I got the word before the mobs. Once they started moving, motor traffic would quickly come to a stop because people would simply leave their vehicles blocking the roads after they ran out of gas or broke down. Even if it kept more or less moving, it would be very slow; we mountain-dwellers see that all the time at the end of heavy ski days.
(In fact, now that I think of it, I’d probably be as well off just staying in place and hoping the eruption wasn’t as bad as the doomsayers predict. And dying under a collapsed roof wouldn’t be much worse than starving or freezing at the side of a road along with thousands of others.)

None of that is to say it isn’t good to discuss these issues, but what sorts of reasonably-likely situations are most important to consider?

I'm 65, the wife 62.

We want to survive a basic disaster of up to something like 6 months. We aren't looking to repopulate the planet after a meteor strike like what killed the dinosaurs or a plague that kills 90% of humans.

I don't believe we are capable of self sufficiency in a permanent grid-down scenario, such as an emp attack or a Carrington Event level solar storm. There's a super short growing season and we have no skills or equipment anyway.

We're too old to become farmers.

If Yellowstone goes, I'm predicted to only get around 3-4 feet of ash. I might be able to survive that. . Good thing I don't expect it to go for another few hundred years...or maybe a few thousand.

EMP is what concerns me, and I've gotten myself mostly able to weather that storm. For awhile.

I've heard numerous stories and seen many many movies about how the nation as a whole
was drawn closer by the hardship imposed
during WW1 and WW2.

A lot of doing for others or providing for those in need,
Taking others children to raise them ,
Sharing livestock or livestock good. Very inspirational
tales of the good that people extended too others.

I wonder about society these days.
I wonder if we are still capable of this ?

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
I wonder if we are still capable of this ?

Societal questions aside, I believe the types of wartime disasters you are referring to aren’t the sort of things that a lot of us here are thinking about. As bad as the devastation caused by bombing was in WWII, it was generally usually fairly localized. Yes, woe betide you if your home was close to the ball bearing factory because of the horrible bombing accuracy that required dropping huge numbers of bombs over a large area in hopes that a few would hit their intended targets. Other bombing raids didn’t even have specific more or less military targets, with the fire bombing raids being the most obvious examples.

Despite all that indiscriminate destruction, it was still relatively limited in comparison with the entire German, Japanese, or British countryside. The reason the British had a program of evacuating children from London to homes in the rest of the country was because so little of the rest of the country was affected by German bombing. Fantasies about “carpet bombing” are just that: no actual number of bombs or bombers are going to turn vast areas of landscape into cratered wastelands. Except for later fallout, one didn’t have to be all that far from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to suffer no ill effects from the two atomic bombs.

My point of all this is that there were large areas and numbers of people who weren’t affected to the point that they couldn’t help others. But if an event cut power for a prolonged period over the area of several states, or the entire hemisphere, that would be a different matter.

I find it interesting that somewhat paradoxically the COVID-19 event evidently convinced a lot of people that pandemics are no longer anything to fret about as long as we don’t have another Fauci in charge. But when we have one that kills 50 to 70 out of a hundred people rather than one in three hundred sufferers, things will be quite different.

During the so-called “Spanish Flu” pandemic of a century ago, at least one Colorado town avoided its effects by imposing a strict quarantine enforced by armed citizenry. The small town where my father was living as a small child tried to keep outsiders out, but one man snuck in and evidently brought the flu with him; he was issued a heavy fine as a result. There was no welcoming with open arms and, “Come on in, we’ll take care of you.” Many things were of course much different during the waves of plagues from the fourteenth into the sixteenth centuries in Europe, and although there was a lot of heroism displayed, there were also strict quarantines and even reports of the sick being boarded up in their homes to die alone.

Again, my point is that it’s one thing to put up people who are fleeing a forest fire in a local school gym and cater in meals from the local pizzeria for a few days, but it’s quite another when virtually everyone—millions—are in the same dire straits.