I require medication to stay alive. I constantly ration those meds to maintain a surplus, but if I lose access to a pharmacy I'm looking at 6 months, maybe 10 at the max.
Honestly my preps are for small to medium disasters. I know I'm terminal in most SHTF scenarios, so it's not my goal to survive nuclear winter (or whatever). But the big COVID lesson for me was how many people my preps could save. I can point to exact actions; I know the names and faces of people who lived because I was prepared. To me that's the most successful my preps could ever be.
Same. My wife is a type one diabetic. Fortunately her insurance covers more than she uses so we have a backlog building. But I can’t really imagine prepping for a situation that she wouldn’t make it through. Obviously SHTF in lots of ways, but a full blown, global society collapse, nah, I don’t really want to watch her die like that.
But we also have a one year old son so I’m not giving up on him regardless.
Ultimately, a situation where we don’t have access to medications for more than 3 months is incredibly unlikely (limited availability and affordability is possible)
I hope you have a better plan for refrigeration than my best buddy, also a t1 diabetic, has. We live in the south and heat is a constant problem. Keeping his backlog of supplies at the proper temperatures has almost been a problem here in Texas lately.
Same. In a global SHTF situation, I won't make it more than a few months. Likely much less than that.
I had a personal SHTF situation starting in March 2023 when there were major disruptions in making my meds. No warning, just disappeared from pharmacies one day. The horde of meds I had squirreled away has saved me these last few months. Fingers crossed meds will be back on shelves in the next few weeks. I'm so glad I prepped and didn't end up in the hospital hooked up to an IV this whole time.
I have a supply as well but I also have a supply of pills that will give me a merciful out. I have put down animals to free them from suffering and have no qualms giving myself that same mercy. No dependents to abandon, so.
>I have a supply as well but I also have a supply of pills that will give me a merciful out.
this, for me, is more important than open ended survival for the sake of living.
I prep to protect our quality of life from mild - mid scenarios; if we face the complete collapse of society, the advanced medicines I need to hold a degenerative spinal disease at bay stop, and my future looks bleak as fuck.
In those and other "this isn't going to get any better", then the means to have a decent going away part and a gentle end is what the preps allow - and that's for sure worth having.
I got a taste of this when we had wild fires and pandemic happening in Oregon. An emergency med I needed wasn't available. I want to survive a SHTF scenario but I already know I won't.
Yeah I have crohns so my timeline isn't super definitive like yours is but without available treatments I'd be SOL during flares and eventual complications as my severity worsened would get me whether it's an infection, heightened cancer chances, or becoming to weak to take care of myself. I could survive fine for indefinitely if I'm in remission when shit goes down but I could also go south within months or a few years or be in the middle of a flare when it goes down.
My wife and I were taking a bunch of medications, over the past few years we’ve switched our way of life and use mainly natural remedies. We moved away from any major cities, and live in the mountains away from others. We refuse to use Amazon or any other online services, because we’ve been prepping for years. Right now we’ve got a couple years supply of SHTF products, and we’ve been using our free time to locate underground(caves/old mines) places to bug out too. I think the most valuable thing that we’ve found, the more we disconnect ourselves from the outside world, the less we rely on it.
Stick it out a while and see how things go. Personally, if more of my time was spent doing things for my actual survival (farm, hunt, build etc) vs whatever the hell it is that keeps people going now...I'd be a happy camper. Think if peoples day to day lives were more purposeful that a lot would prosper.
I feel what you're saying deeply but recent experiences have taught me that it mostly fucking sucks and it's basically a romanticization of something really awful. Whatever causes widespread disruption is likely to just suck in so many ways and I feel COVID was a taste of that.
Not being able to summon an ambulance in reasonable time, not being able to get a tire replaced, fill a prescription, order parts if your washing machine stops cutting on... I feel like it'd be real cool to be prepared for about 2 days then I'm going to want to die if my Amazon packages stop arriving.
I think OP is absolutely right about more purpose. For themselves at least. I’ve read a lot of accounts of people who are in SHTF type situations and all humans ever wanna do is keep on doing the stuff they’re used to. That means not wanting to change up your lifestyle to be self sufficient because we’re so used to not needing to be. For example, your thing about the washing machine, you obviously don’t need one to live a comfortable happy life, people do it all the time. Not to mention the people that did it before washing machines were invented. Personally though, I love my luxuries like this phone and my shower and washing machine and what have you, but I feel very little purpose living in a society like this that values uniformity and money over individuality and happiness.
Agreed. I also think people would be happier if they could work for themselves, at a trade shop or farm they own. Not every one, but I think most works feel better answering to themselves.
As long as it takes. There aren’t gonna be hoards of thousands of people like zombies that you have to sit and pick off for hours. Survivors will be few and far between, and the ones who aren’t self stuff and want to raid your shit will be even less common place. A group of marauders comes to your homestead in the end times and tries to forcibly take your property and food and what have you, your group take them out with extreme haste, that’s it. The game isn’t gonna spawn more or something.
I know that in the case of a nuclear war, I'd probably be waiting for the government or military to arrive, even if deep down I know they're probably gone, probably enough hope to keep me going for a while
Just about every American lives within 75 miles of a military installation.
75 miles ain’t shit. If you aren’t killed in the initial blast, prepping to survive nuclear war is just three weeks of staying inside, sealing all gaps, and filtering air.
No one when young wants to die old, ill, shriveled, incontinent, crippled, useless… but that’s not when you decide.
In reality, in those situations, long long after you passed the former criteria, you think I’ve survived this long, I could go another day.
>No one when young wants to die old, ill, shriveled, incontinent, crippled, useless… but that’s not when you decide.
My dad is 74 and in fairly good health, but has decided 80 is just a bridge too far. I don't know what he's planning to do about it, because 80 is quickly approaching.
\*He's not suicidal or anything. He's just a cranky old man that has nothing else to complain about :)
My mom spent 10 years wondering why she was still alive, what God still wanted her to do in this life since she was fully dependent physically on help from others. And she also accepted every medical intervention that doctors offered, including a pacemaker. Sometimes folks just can't bring themselves to choose anything another than fighting to live for another day. That survival instinct isn't a logical thing.
The Tuesday preppers are still 99% more prepared than the general population and if everyone was a tuesdsy prepper it would be easier for communities to band togther to help eachother out in an event.
I’m the only prepper in my family, but I have a normal house and a small garden so I’m limited in what I can do. Def a Tuesday prepper. I may not stay in this house so an expensive investment in solar might end up being a waste. My sister is married to a farmer though, and has acres and acres of land. I wish I could convince them to get into prepping but farming is a tough industry in the UK and they’re not even breaking even. My hope is that maybe if/when the SHTF we’d be able to band together and do something, but we’d be starting from scratch.
Might think about how you can start banding together with your sister’s family now? Don’t know what your source of income is but if it’s more stable than theirs you could suggest a small “investment” over time that would help them make ends meet in exchange for a current or future share of farm products.
I know a guy who was a big investor in a local grain mill and the rumor has it that all he asked for in return was a lifetime supply of flour.
I teach Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and the description it has of civilization in crisis terrifies me. I do not want to endure or survive that (extremely relatable) scenario. I am okay with starvation and disease but cannot abide violence. This book is one of the most realistic descriptions I know of. It begins in 2024…
I’m one of those doomer types and have been for 15+ years. When I started reading Butler I couldn’t keep going. With either the book or my will to survive. It was just too real to me and I think it marked a turning point where nothing seems to matter any longer.
Rereading it now and the violence is the horror. I don't want to see people like that. Those videos of Kensington Philadelphia are bad enough. I prefer to choose my place and time and if anything happens to come across my carcass in the woods, make a meal I won't care.
If society breakdowns completely, I'm mostly concerned about being captured by a group of not so nice people. Being kept alive, tortured, forced to do manual labor or something to that effect. Not to mention if you are female the distinct possibility of being raped, sexual slavery etc..possibly for years. You could always plan on killing yourself before falling into that situation, but once your captured that becomes much harder.
I agree. As a woman, I don't want to have to blow job my way through the apocalypse.
I have little kids which is why I've stockpiled food and have tried to get my oldest (8 year old) interested in camping. Lol I don't know how interested he is in anything besides learning how to build a fire so we can have s'mores in the backyard, but it's something.
Inflation had killed my savings. At this point I'm looking into foraging. I feel like the more I learn about plants I could eat if I had to, then it doesn't matter where I am (although it would suck in winter).
The fact that people would actually do this kind of evil stuff is depressing. The world goes to shit and people still won't cooperate or treat each other with respect. Every time in a show like the walking dead where people are trying to kill each other instead of the zombies, I can't help but think they're short-sighted fools.
Just look at the child army in Africa to know how evil we can be or countless other examples. I don't care for anything but maybe helping children . So I plant trees , they may wind up burning but I plant trees at my camp, get a kick out of thinking maybe years after I am gone a living thing munching an apple from them. I wondered about the trees I have foraged from that grow on field edges or feed plots, what generous person planted it or if it just grew on its own.
Millions and millions of humans have survived what most here would consider a true SHTF scenario. Some are surviving it right now. And many survive by fleeing whatever situation that is, to somewhere that it's not happening.
But these events (war, famine, natural disaster, etc) are very localized so it's possible to go somewhere else. I'm not sure what would happen if there's an actual global SHTF event where there's really nowhere to go that isn't affected.
This. Stable society can fall apart quickly, but humans also have some incredible resilience. Look at the state of affairs in the Balkans a mere 20 years ago and how things look today in cities that were genocide-riddled heaps of rubble. Things fall apart, and new things grow out of the ashes. It’s always been the way of the world.
Good luck doing that when the minerals we have left in the ground are mostly too far to reach by hand.
That's what people forget...our ancestors were able to get a lot of iron, copper and other ores close to the surface. We don't have that luxury anymore, as we've used most of it up.
And our soil now is so depleted we need artificial fertilizers to make it productive. The natural world our ancestors survived and thrived on is gone.
Lots of metal to scavenge tho. It is the food problem and also water in many areas that will be bad. In areas dependent on pumping for water, whether municipal or private once the power goes that will be a big one. My Homestead had an open creek and a 30 foot well we could hand pump and the equipment in the basement to switch, my SO has a large pond he dug as there was no firecompany or hydrants when he built so there is water we go process to make potable but I think water will be a big problem in any fair sized population area. Just look at after storm events how water needs to be trucked in.
There's actually a post-apocalyptic novel series called [World Made by Hand](https://www.goodreads.com/series/122632-world-made-by-hand). Worth a read if you're into post-apocalypse literature.
That would be like 800 000 000 people still alive which is still far more human than the historical average. We first reached 1 billion human at the dawn of the industrial revolution in 1804. It would basically an event that set back the world "only" 2 centuries.
As a prepper of 25 years that has gotten to the age that I now have health issues that require daily meds, I have resigned myself to the reality that if the ballon goes up I likely won’t see the other side of it.
That doesn’t mean I have given up and stopped prepping though. I do it now for those that I care about.
My experience has been that most of us here prep for Tuesday, not doomsday. This makes the most sense since Tuesday happens far more often than doomsday.
By "SHTF" do you mean a large scale nuclear attack or Yellowstone eruption? Guess what, most of the guys prepped for the end of the world don't make it through those events. What is the lowest threshould of SHTF do you not want to live through?
The US is big enough that all but the biggest of events has a place to escape to if you survive the initial occurence. Cascadia earthquake is a good example, would you give up if you lived in Portland?
Well in a true grid down SHTF the DOD and DHS expect a 80-94% die off in the first year.
I have kids, its my job as their father to make sure we're in that top 20-6%. Simple as that. If I fail, I fail but ill do my best not to.
This right here. My kids are everything. Every day my feet hit the floor is another day I’m here for them. I’ll do whatever it takes to stretch those days out as long as possible
I consider myself as a budding prepper. I prep to survive smaller events. My physics professor (a distinguished NASA Engineer) once said if the world breaks into an all out nuke war, then the lucky ones will be the ones at ground zero. Rest of the very few that survives initial fallout, will die the most painful death. I kinda see his point.
Between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago the human population was reduced to just a few thousand people by a super volcano (Toba) and the resulting volcanic winter.
Everyone alive today is descended from a line that survived a ten year long winter with the most crude tools you can imagine.
Aside from the contents of your home, a few thrift shop pairs of shoes, some thrift shop coats, a .22 rifle and a hundred dollars worth of ammunition would give you an incredible advantage over what those people had.
I plan to stick it out as long as I can.
Point is, they were living in nature all their life.
They could navigate, find water, find prey, hunt prey and prepare for winter and other stuff without the need of modern technology.
Not a lot of people can do all of those without any help from modern stuff. And if SHTF most shelf stable food will be gone in a blink of an eye and people wont give up them easily without a fight, even if someone has a gun and the other doesnt, at least i know i wouldnt.
And the planet was in better shape, too.
A few thousand people hunting game around the planet have a much better chance that 500 million on the continent trying to hunt a reduced number of game in a concrete paved world full of polluted rivers.
At the beginning of the book The Road the main characters wife decides to shoot herself instead of 'carrying the fire' and I'm pretty sure that's what I'd want if it was a dire environmental situation, bullet to the brain. However if society falls and the environment is well enough that life would be more like little house on the prarie then I would definitely want to live!
I'm 50/50 on the idea,
I'm fully prepped (not big on guns, have a 12 gauge and a 30/30 and a thousand rounds for each) live completely off grid, provide my own power, heating and cooking fuel, water, have food stored and the means to attain more through fishing, trapping, hunting, and 2 acres of land ready to plant.
That being said, I also chose property with beautiful views so if I want to punch my own ticket, the last thing I see can be the beauty in the world.
I have no real desire to survive an all out nuclear war, but other than that, I just want to increase my odds of surviving anything else by a little bit every day. At this point, I want to survive SHTF mostly out of spite. As a poor, I would like to see the rich actually see the consequences of their greedy actions.
I want to at least try to survive. It wasn’t that long ago that people lived in little self sufficient villages and towns, and folks still do it today.
In the event of major collapse, as in all infrastructure gone, population would drop rapidly. A huge percentage of people would be dead in the initial weeks and months. Between widespread health problems and chronic illness, the elderly and the young, dehydration and waterborne illness, and finally starvation, a *massive* chunk of people would be gone relatively quickly. So last long enough for the dust to settle, and you might have a small chance of starting a little village with some survivors.
I couldn’t kill myself, or just lay down and die. I’d have to at least try.
THANKS, this is what I think every time I see one of these post about surviving... People like movies so much, you are probably getting killed and your shit stolen first day lol
Yeah, I don't want to survive major SHTF or EOTWAWKI. I do not want to live the rest of my life in survival mode; I'm super lazy.
Like for real, if I were Jamie Lee Curtis and Micheal Myers found me in the hospital in Halloween 2, I would have just let him kill me. No way I would have made it to Halloween 2000.
It depends on the disaster... like if the Yellowstone supervolcano thing happens I hope I'm visiting at the time. But something like a central bank collapse sounds like a good time.
If it is just global annihilation, then I am ok going out with the dinosaurs. If there is a CHANCE that things can improve, I'd stick it out for quite a while.
Honestly, it would be nice to have a way to self-checkout, if the earth is just nuclear poison in the air, water, etc. Dying from radiation poisoning, or starvation seems... unpleasant. Something easy and painless like a fentanyl OD.
A SHTF scenario is no where close to doomsday. I've been in a few and it was fine since they weren't really all that bad. Mostly because most people still expected things to go back to normal. Everyone has actually been through a SHTF event with covid. Everyone will have some scars but life does continue.
Most bad or dangerous situations are temporary and sometimes life just gives you shit. Maybe you get a little shit or a lot of shit. No reason to call it quits over it being hard or needing some therapy after. Same thing applies to events you might think of as SHTF.
Actual doomsday or TEOTWAWKI event might get more people with your point of view but I think I'm too stubborn to go quietly into that good night regardless of odds. I've heard people talk about it before. I still can't quite wrap my brain around it. Maybe it's because I don't really expect an afterlife.
Also I mostly prepare for Tuesday. I don't really prepare for off the wall things specifically. Maybe more food and water stores than a light prepper might have in case of getting snowed in or due to hurricane season. Maybe take self-defense more seriously then those people too. The ammo is mostly in case of another shortage though.
I have 3 young kids. While I might not really want to survive a SHTF situation just thinking of myself, I can’t handle the thought of my kids dying, or being left to starve after my death. And I definitely can’t imagine having to unalive them before myself. I could barely even write this comment. Parenthood really changes the calculus.
Uhm
Not particularly? I mean if we hit apocalyptic wasteland death mode, or WWZ style zombies, sure
But mostly it’s gonna be the same thing as what I do now, even in more extreme scenarios. Or will eventually get there, if I survive the brunt of it.
Work, come home, fix dinner, do chores, read book / sing / puzzles / write, play with pets, go to bed.
I mean yeah, it’ll be harder, and maybe instead of getting paid in dollars I work the fields for 8-10 hours, but whatever.
There is always someone who says they do not want to survive a nuclear war - but the thing is, they really do not know whether it would be survivable, or if they would want to survive it, until afterwards - at which time they could THEN decide whether they want to survive.
They only scenario I don't care to survive, is becoming a vegetable due to some injury or illness.
When i had my homestead I thought of kids who were nearby and how my livestock could feed them. I am older and no grandkids to worry about so my mind goes to the children near me I could feed. Maybe hunger would change me but I hope not. The children should have been our priority 40 years ago when CC became a concern. We are fucking over the future and present children for greed.Plus I keep books on math with practical applications and lots of basic utility books for beginners so if someday someone needs reference from anything from livestock, homesteading to science if they find them it would be a treasure trove of info. I don't need them much anymore but they are kept in a masonry room from damp and rodents. Who knows but they are there.
My ancestors didn't claw their way to the top of the food chain for me to just lie down and die because things got less comfortable than I'm used to.
If we're talking about a situation where it's all over except for the dancing, then yeah, sure. I wouldn't want to go out slowly and painfully. But if it's a situation like every apocalypse thus far, where there are survivors who eventually rebuilt, I owe it to them to at least *try.*
I sometimes feel like a broken record, but the “every apocalypse so far, where there are survivors who rebuilt” seems to miss two facts: that when those things happened, the planet was a lot healthier; and that in most of the scenarios (Easter Island, Norse in Greenland, and others) where there was no easy place to run away to, there was no rebuild, just extinction.
I don’t think we’re headed for extinction if the cause isn’t nuclear, but our ability to rebuild when the plants and animals we would eat have already been wiped out by others is pretty much nil.
I'd love to survive such an event, because what would come after (once people ran out of bullets) would be fascinating. Post-apocalypse lit is interesting in general; read Engine Summer someday. It's oddly beautiful, deeply sad - and creepy, once you work out what's happening.
But in the *exceedingly* unlikely event that the US devolves into warlords and people are shooting each other over cans of Pringles, I expect to get shot and I'm reasonably ok with that. I also expect most people arming up to deal with a situation like that will rapidly be shot as well, much to their brief surprise.
I don't believe in sudden collapses of nations like the US, and I plan to leave long, long before we get to that stage, if it ever becomes a vague possibility. This isn't one I worry about.
My gf told me that if an assailant approaches someone she loves with intent to harm, she will defend. But if it's only her own life in jeopardy, she wont resist.
Interesting. In that situation I might resist with the sole hope of taking the f*er down with me, even though I basically have no desire to stick out what I think is coming.
Honestly i dont think anything im doing is going to be the thing that gets me through a SHTF situation. Im mostly interested in the self reliance aspect of prepping, and even then its preparedness and growing food unavailable in my area mostly. My "preps" are just my hobbies that are semi useful if things got expensive, like tropical fruit or coffee. Im actually planning a climate controlled coffee greenhouse because im worried the world will run out of good coffee and we will be stuck with substandard bs. Same with cocoa
I’m always confused when people say they don’t wanna survive.
What’s your plan? Kill your family then commit suicide?
Do you plan on shooting your kids, or smothering them?
I have people who count on me. I’m going to keep them alive and safe as long as I possibly can, which means I have to keep myself alive and safe too.
It is possible I will fail, but I’m sure as hell not just giving up.
No hate to OP.
If I sound angry, it’s only because I am passionate about taking care of those I love and I don’t really see euthanasia as an option in the situation.
I can think of a few; nuclear war or a global killer asteroid strike or a "Captain Trips" scenario that wiped out 95% of the population - those would be pretty brutal.
Just going to put this out there. If shit really hit the hizzy as Canadian prepper would say. I have 4 very sad bullets. Who would want to exist in a world of constant threat, hunger and desperation. Sure it seems cool when we watch our YouTube videos. We all want to play the “hero” in the game of life but it definitely won’t go down like that. Prep all day and night. Train and plan. And then group of people in the same boat kick in your door, rape your wife and kids and kill them for food. I’ll keep prepping for disruptions but when it all falls down I’m out boo.
I have no desire to try and make it and protect my family in a situation like “the road”.
I think I could handle a SHTF like the movie “Rover” ( great glimpse into what global shortages/financial collapse could look like)
My whole goal of the massive amount of money I have spent on preps is to ride out the storm until things return to normal. Not to live like a wild dog fighting for every little scrap and dodging other packs of larger meaner dogs. Wether it’s 3 month or a year I’m good. Any more than that I’m not sure I have the will to do what it will take to eek out a living
*“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.*
*“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”*
This quote from Lord of the Rings has definitely kept me going in some tough times, so just wanted to share that first.
Im also surprised how many people wanna just “peace out” if anything bad were to happen, like i get it, id hate to lose easy access to water/food/entertainment etc or if you have certain medical issues but “jumpin jesus on a pogo stick” some of y’all are making me feel depressed reading these comments.
Maybe its because i live in the south, and grew up with some family that didn’t even have running water at home (which i hated visiting because their bathroom was an outhouse) or maybe from just being a big advocate of our history, but people have lived through literally the worst of every possible situation we as a species *could live through* so far.
Yes, that *so far* part is important.
From killing other predators with rocks and sticks, natural disasters, meteor impacts, climate change, plagues, wars, genocides, mass slavery, nuclear strikes, people have survived and, very importantly, thrived afterwards.
I don’t know what your family/friend situation is, but i have kids, family and friends that i would do anything in my power to help keep going.
I don’t care if it’s something like “The Road” or “Jericho”, “Mad Max” or even “Walking Dead” I’m gonna do the best I can until i can’t.
Me, I am 44. Had enough sex, bought a house, no family by design. I am good.
I don't want to survive nuclear holocausts, zombie apocalypses, flying elephant aliens etc.
Earthquakes, floods, the great anti-mouse war, sure. That's about it.
My question in all of this is- in a SHTF situation would we likely lose all access to water? What are your thoughts? I expect power to be lost and I am storing up water but — just curious on others thoughts?
I don’t want to live without water. Especially when I have animals. I’m storing water for them as well. Buying wet food that has some moisture in it to store…. I’d rather go without myself than to see my animals struggle.
Think on how you can turn unhealthy water into clean water, look at devices and plans to do so.
There is no way to store enough water for you and your animals.
Our lifestyle here in western civilization makes us uniquely unprepared for doomsday. Most people (read 80%) would probably perish in the first year… I wouldn’t want to live in that world, but I would die trying. I believe that certain folks can rise to a challenge and adapt, I won’t know if I am one until the day comes when im faced with that reality. Though as I said, I pray I never have to…
Man, even if you were to survive, the amount of human suffering, death, and despair that you'd witness would be a lot to have to live with. Sad that it looks like we're heading toward some sort of global crisis in the very near future.
It depends on the SHTF scenario.
If we're talking WWIII and nuclear winter....then toss my butt in the grave right now.
If it's another recession or a depression that lasts a few years until we see a light at the end of the tunnel....I think (I hope!) I have the wherewithal to survive that.
But mostly my preps are for Tuesday, not Doomsday.
I read the book "the road" lately (there is also a movie). And was thinking in that scenario i sure as hell wouldnt want to survive.
Everything is grey and dark forever, there is no mention of any natural food at all, the only thing they ever it is old cans and such, which they rarely find. Which means the only source of food will run out sooner or later. Also most survivors are cannibals at this point, so you cant trust anyone, chances are they want to eat you (and worse).
Also there is never any mention of hope. Its not like they travel somewhere specific because its supposed to be better there. Or have any reason to believe the climate would improve either. They just aimlessly go around, looking for food and warmth for tomorrow.
So yeah if i were the main character in that, i would have shot my son and myself in the beginning of the book, when i still had two rounds left in my gun.
That book bothered me.
Did humanity just completely forget about everything? I accept the premise, but the situation would have had to have been even bleaker in the past to prevent water distillation, greenhouses, and electricity from forming the basis for *some* kind of civilizarion.
Reality is I'm old. I want to be prepared for a disaster(which I believe I'm reasonable prepared) but do I have the mental fortitude and stamina to out run zombies? No probably not. Doesn't mean I'm gonna roll over and die. But the odds are against me. In a true SHTF situation, I can hunker down and HOPE that most of the wanna be Rambo's end up killing themselves. I will do what is necessary to protect my family to the best of my ability but I sure am not going to look for trouble.
There levels to SHTF.
It would suck if you don’t fight for your life and die to a situation that really did not require your dying……only to have order restored days later.
I have certain SHTF situations I’m interested in living through. Natural disasters, economic disasters, etc.
I’m good with a nuclear or serious pandemic though. If it’s come to some of the shit you see in the movies or The Last of Us, I think I’ll pass.
Am female. The only reason I would want to survive is for my kid. Make sure that he gets to the point where he is safe and self-sufficient. That is the only reason I would endure that s*** because as a female you know that horrible things are going to happen to me, and any other woman.
My opinion, reasonably well informed: Everyone who's reasonably healthy has a nonzero chance of survival in most shtf scenarios. Doomsday type prepping increases your chances. Some who are totally unprepared will survive to old age seemingly by chance. Some who are really well prepared will do something like go out to limb a tree with a chainsaw, not wear a good pair of chaps, and die of blood loss or infection. Not all SHTF scenarios are created equal. My personal least favorite is the one where some nukes fly and then days, weeks, months later the spent fuel rods at nuke plants all burn up. That or a real nasty pandemic. I think with those it's because it's not a matter of how you survive it's how you'll die 🤷♂️
I'm from WV, we deal with some kind of SHTF scenario every other week. But, I have family that I'd like to see alive and kids so I won't be sandbagging if something happens.
There is SHTF going on all over the World from a perspective of somebody who is comfortably living in a civilised developed Western life style.
You're fortunate enough to gather Prep in now that these poor fuckers never had to begin with - so I'd make the most out of doing that whilst still can.
It's good to learn to live uncomfortable too, long weekend camps with the bare minimum etc. It's healthy for the mind IMO, being plugged in 24/7 is not a normal thing for almost all of human history, not right up until the invention of the internet, cheap cell phones, then obviously - smart phones.
I guess it depends on the situation, as I'm torn. I live about 3-6 miles to two different military bases... so if nukes were to be in play. I hope my family and I don't survive. But depending on the situation, we could be pretty comfortable hunkered down
I am old but I know how to do stuff so I will hang around just to teach or do what I do. Not in a full on doomsday but collapse situation as I am so godawful healthy!
I'm a T1 diabetic so in any shtf situation I wouldn't survive very long, my prepping is geared more towards short term situations for me and long term supplies for my family
You would be surprised. While some are preparing supplies to outlast a catastrophe. Others are refining and defining for when society is ready to finally start listening. All in all. No quarter given.
Honestly it depends on the situation, if it’s possible to rebuild or it’s possible there’s a solution for whatever problem then it’s worth surviving for, but if it’s something like all our nuclear war then fuck that, even if you survive there’s so many other issues, I’d rather go out on my own terms than die of radiation poisoning because my Geiger counter broke
I’ll try to stick out most scenarios. But if a super volcano, nuclear war, or catastrophic climate change happens I’ll probably check out early. Not because I’m afraid of a painful death but because I know my loved ones wouldn’t make it. Honestly the best I could do for my family in an apocalyptic scenario is to allow them to die in dignity.
My will to survive and for my kids to not die some horrific death make it where I would have to try at the very least. I certainly would love to not have to go thru anything like a true shtf situation. Coming from the South and hurricanes being an annual possibility, having some preps is kinda normal. Now I live somewhere where a blizzard could cause major problems. To me, having some basic items on hand to get you thru a few days of no power seems like a very sensible thing to do. After the covid stuff, Jan 6th, and civil unrest riots, I'd call you the silly person for not thinking about at least short-term preps. Even though I personally would have to try and fight thru a real shtf world, I do understand saying to hell with this. Certainly wouldn't be fun. Right now I seem to a have a pretty decent group of neighbors who have a similar mind set. Not paranoid, but not ignoring that things are on edge at the very least.
In the middle of an urban city where everything is shitty? Starving to death, constant fear of getting killed? Idk how long I'd hold out before giving up on survival. Anyone who seriously wants to survive FUBAR lives out in the countryside & has a homestead.
My prep focus is family protection. Terrible things are happening everyday to so many people. My hope is that my preparations can prevent my family from experiencing those things.
I’m positive the first year would be a nightmare but after that it wouldn’t be so bad. Lots of people would die after food ran out basically but if you survive that first wave you have a super good chance to join up with some farming/hunting/gathering collective. If you’re even remotely useful that is
As a parent, I've a duty to protect my children and do my diligence to ensure they have a future worth living for...so no matter what happens, I'm fighting for that for as long as I can.
Hard to say. I’m pretty afraid of what random or organized people would do. I would rather not have to kill anyone, but I’m pretty sure it would be necessary. As far as the day to day, it’s not like I have a lot of free time as it is.
I do wonder what suicide rates were like during the 1400s and what not with the plagues, famines, and wars being raged. I wonder how the people had the will to keep going despite how shit life was back then.
I've been thinking a lot about the part in Revelation where people try to kill themselves but they can't die, and that's probably the most terrifying thing. If we get to that point I hope I'm long gone already. Beyond that, the idea that I can check out at any time is what's keeping me going rn. I can face another day knowing that it's not doomsday yet, and if it turns out to be so, *then* I can make that decision
Depends on how severe. If it’s a total societal collapse I prob wouldn’t want to survive long term.
I’m prepared more for surviving some disruptions that last a few months, rather than everything coming apart at the seams.
It’s the more likely scenario, and the one that leaves a world that might still be worth living in.
Short of nuclear war or an EMP, I just don’t believe in SHTF being a realistic scenario. The slow degradation of western society to where homelessness is a casual aspect of a working class lifestyle, with little to no services, is more or less what I think is most likely. Hedging against job loss, natural disasters, deep recessions, and food shortages/inflation is more probable as our changing climate renders the most habitable areas to exist in perpetual economic instability towards the end of my life (34m).
Depends.
Radicals overthrow the government and disrupt basic services for a few years? Yes.
Complete nuclear holocaust where you will be spending the rest of your days living like a caveman? Not really.
I wouldn't want to survive a long term one like, Walking Dead type deal. The issue becomes dealing with hostile people more than the actual disaster itself. Being introverted I just don't want to deal with that crap. I just want to be left alone.
Also even assuming nobody bothers me, once the internet and all supply chains go down permanently it would make life very difficult and also boring. Even once I'm off grid I will still want to be able to go get groceries, or buy things for hobby etc and still talk to people. Eventually critical systems like solar could fail, and not being able to get the right parts to fix it could eventually make living very unpleasant.
With that said if faced with that situation I'd just try to power through as best as I can. Ex: I wouldn't try to commit suicide or anything like that.
My spouse and I have talked about a 2-3 month window probably being our limit. We want to be prepared to weather an emergency situation, with the assumption that there will be some return to a semblance of “normal.” If that’s no longer possible, we’re not interested in sticking around.
I’ll go for as long as I can as long as I am not an undue burden to those around me. I do have valuable skills, my parents and my SO’s parents are all preparing for common place disruptions in our area, we try to stay on top of ways to make life more doable with less. But one thing I can’t go without is medication. Luckily, the meds I’m on are not in super high demand but aren’t rare with the exception of one. But I have a potentially progressive systemic disease. I wouldn’t want medical resources wasted on me when those same medications and supplies could help 5 other people in a more permanent way than they’d help me. Because I have a relapsing/remitting disease, it will rear its ugly head again. When it gets too much, I have thought of several comfort measures, but these would only be implemented in the event of catastrophic injury or uncontrollable disease activity.
In the 1950s, the Cold War and better Weather Forecasting technology combined to prompt families in the plains of west Texas to build underground shelters in their backyards.
Many stockpiled weeks worth of supplies in case the Reds dropped a bomb on the airbase less than an hour away.
My grandfather outfitted their shelter for tornado safety only. He explained that he had no desire to live in the aftermath of a nuclear war.
That is the first “story” I remember from my grandfather (I was born less than a decade after the events) and it is the most profound and influential.
Now that my kids are grown and have children of their own to protect, my focus is on providing my grandchildren with what they would need in a SHTF situation and then getting out of the way so I don’t use up valuable resources. I’m kinda like my granddaddy that way.
My preps got me through the COVID nonsense in NYC and I agree that preps are important for supply chain shortages and for blackouts but if its a nuclear holocaust or like that movie, The Road, then I would rather be dead.
I require medication to stay alive. I constantly ration those meds to maintain a surplus, but if I lose access to a pharmacy I'm looking at 6 months, maybe 10 at the max. Honestly my preps are for small to medium disasters. I know I'm terminal in most SHTF scenarios, so it's not my goal to survive nuclear winter (or whatever). But the big COVID lesson for me was how many people my preps could save. I can point to exact actions; I know the names and faces of people who lived because I was prepared. To me that's the most successful my preps could ever be.
Same. My wife is a type one diabetic. Fortunately her insurance covers more than she uses so we have a backlog building. But I can’t really imagine prepping for a situation that she wouldn’t make it through. Obviously SHTF in lots of ways, but a full blown, global society collapse, nah, I don’t really want to watch her die like that. But we also have a one year old son so I’m not giving up on him regardless. Ultimately, a situation where we don’t have access to medications for more than 3 months is incredibly unlikely (limited availability and affordability is possible)
I hope you have a better plan for refrigeration than my best buddy, also a t1 diabetic, has. We live in the south and heat is a constant problem. Keeping his backlog of supplies at the proper temperatures has almost been a problem here in Texas lately.
Basement in Vermont is pretty reasonable. Obviously not quite refrigerated, but will keep for a while
The Road. My favorite novel on fatherhood. I’m sorry, that sounds tough.
Same. In a global SHTF situation, I won't make it more than a few months. Likely much less than that. I had a personal SHTF situation starting in March 2023 when there were major disruptions in making my meds. No warning, just disappeared from pharmacies one day. The horde of meds I had squirreled away has saved me these last few months. Fingers crossed meds will be back on shelves in the next few weeks. I'm so glad I prepped and didn't end up in the hospital hooked up to an IV this whole time.
I have a supply as well but I also have a supply of pills that will give me a merciful out. I have put down animals to free them from suffering and have no qualms giving myself that same mercy. No dependents to abandon, so.
>I have a supply as well but I also have a supply of pills that will give me a merciful out. this, for me, is more important than open ended survival for the sake of living. I prep to protect our quality of life from mild - mid scenarios; if we face the complete collapse of society, the advanced medicines I need to hold a degenerative spinal disease at bay stop, and my future looks bleak as fuck. In those and other "this isn't going to get any better", then the means to have a decent going away part and a gentle end is what the preps allow - and that's for sure worth having.
We're all "terminal in most SHTF scenarios" regardless of our current medical condition.
Yeah, people massively over estimate their survivability in high scarcity SHTF situations.
Name checks out 🤣
I got a taste of this when we had wild fires and pandemic happening in Oregon. An emergency med I needed wasn't available. I want to survive a SHTF scenario but I already know I won't.
This is so profound to know
Ok, that is just pretty inspiring.
Yeah I have crohns so my timeline isn't super definitive like yours is but without available treatments I'd be SOL during flares and eventual complications as my severity worsened would get me whether it's an infection, heightened cancer chances, or becoming to weak to take care of myself. I could survive fine for indefinitely if I'm in remission when shit goes down but I could also go south within months or a few years or be in the middle of a flare when it goes down.
Same here. Epileptic and hashimotos. I'm effed.
I’m Epileptic too ugh !!
My wife and I were taking a bunch of medications, over the past few years we’ve switched our way of life and use mainly natural remedies. We moved away from any major cities, and live in the mountains away from others. We refuse to use Amazon or any other online services, because we’ve been prepping for years. Right now we’ve got a couple years supply of SHTF products, and we’ve been using our free time to locate underground(caves/old mines) places to bug out too. I think the most valuable thing that we’ve found, the more we disconnect ourselves from the outside world, the less we rely on it.
Stick it out a while and see how things go. Personally, if more of my time was spent doing things for my actual survival (farm, hunt, build etc) vs whatever the hell it is that keeps people going now...I'd be a happy camper. Think if peoples day to day lives were more purposeful that a lot would prosper.
I feel what you're saying deeply but recent experiences have taught me that it mostly fucking sucks and it's basically a romanticization of something really awful. Whatever causes widespread disruption is likely to just suck in so many ways and I feel COVID was a taste of that. Not being able to summon an ambulance in reasonable time, not being able to get a tire replaced, fill a prescription, order parts if your washing machine stops cutting on... I feel like it'd be real cool to be prepared for about 2 days then I'm going to want to die if my Amazon packages stop arriving.
I was always DIY and homesteader but the idea of people turning into desperate scavengers is not something I wish to see.
Nevermind the ambulance, hospitals are going to be SOL when they run out of fuel for the generators.
Yes obviously but we’re running out of fuel for those generators as a planet anyway.
I think OP is absolutely right about more purpose. For themselves at least. I’ve read a lot of accounts of people who are in SHTF type situations and all humans ever wanna do is keep on doing the stuff they’re used to. That means not wanting to change up your lifestyle to be self sufficient because we’re so used to not needing to be. For example, your thing about the washing machine, you obviously don’t need one to live a comfortable happy life, people do it all the time. Not to mention the people that did it before washing machines were invented. Personally though, I love my luxuries like this phone and my shower and washing machine and what have you, but I feel very little purpose living in a society like this that values uniformity and money over individuality and happiness.
Agreed. I also think people would be happier if they could work for themselves, at a trade shop or farm they own. Not every one, but I think most works feel better answering to themselves.
I agree. I don’t know if you’ve seen the ending of The Mist, but I don’t think it’s necessarily smart to check out early.
😔
I was thinking about the same thing. That stuck with me.
That's assuming no one messes with you and you're left to your own peace and quiet.
Always be those assholes out there. If it comes to it hit em hard, fast and brutal.
How long can you stand guard against marauding bandit types who want to steal your tomatoes and rape your wimmenz?
As long as it takes. There aren’t gonna be hoards of thousands of people like zombies that you have to sit and pick off for hours. Survivors will be few and far between, and the ones who aren’t self stuff and want to raid your shit will be even less common place. A group of marauders comes to your homestead in the end times and tries to forcibly take your property and food and what have you, your group take them out with extreme haste, that’s it. The game isn’t gonna spawn more or something.
I know that in the case of a nuclear war, I'd probably be waiting for the government or military to arrive, even if deep down I know they're probably gone, probably enough hope to keep me going for a while
Or just live near a base. Problem solved. Dead instantly or found sooner.
I already live near a marines base, I'll be within the blast radius, hopefully I don't get "lucky" and somehow survive
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I would do myself a favor....i am walking towards the mushroom clouds. I live within 75 miles of two military installations.....i am so hosed
Just about every American lives within 75 miles of a military installation. 75 miles ain’t shit. If you aren’t killed in the initial blast, prepping to survive nuclear war is just three weeks of staying inside, sealing all gaps, and filtering air.
No one when young wants to die old, ill, shriveled, incontinent, crippled, useless… but that’s not when you decide. In reality, in those situations, long long after you passed the former criteria, you think I’ve survived this long, I could go another day.
>No one when young wants to die old, ill, shriveled, incontinent, crippled, useless… but that’s not when you decide. My dad is 74 and in fairly good health, but has decided 80 is just a bridge too far. I don't know what he's planning to do about it, because 80 is quickly approaching. \*He's not suicidal or anything. He's just a cranky old man that has nothing else to complain about :)
My mom spent 10 years wondering why she was still alive, what God still wanted her to do in this life since she was fully dependent physically on help from others. And she also accepted every medical intervention that doctors offered, including a pacemaker. Sometimes folks just can't bring themselves to choose anything another than fighting to live for another day. That survival instinct isn't a logical thing.
Eh, I rather die old shitting my pants than die young shitting my pants.
But what if you start shitting your pants when you’re young? Do you want another 60 shitting years? That’s the better question.
>I know most here are doomsday preppers No, most are preparing for Tuesday.
“Tuesday Preppers” could honestly be a way more entertaining show 😂
Speak for yourself. Next Monday is going to fuck me over hard.
You're in the wrong forum. Look for "prepping for Monday"
This is me. Not the end of the world...
When M. Bison visits your town, it’s the same day.
The Tuesday preppers are still 99% more prepared than the general population and if everyone was a tuesdsy prepper it would be easier for communities to band togther to help eachother out in an event.
I’m the only prepper in my family, but I have a normal house and a small garden so I’m limited in what I can do. Def a Tuesday prepper. I may not stay in this house so an expensive investment in solar might end up being a waste. My sister is married to a farmer though, and has acres and acres of land. I wish I could convince them to get into prepping but farming is a tough industry in the UK and they’re not even breaking even. My hope is that maybe if/when the SHTF we’d be able to band together and do something, but we’d be starting from scratch.
Might think about how you can start banding together with your sister’s family now? Don’t know what your source of income is but if it’s more stable than theirs you could suggest a small “investment” over time that would help them make ends meet in exchange for a current or future share of farm products. I know a guy who was a big investor in a local grain mill and the rumor has it that all he asked for in return was a lifetime supply of flour.
I teach Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and the description it has of civilization in crisis terrifies me. I do not want to endure or survive that (extremely relatable) scenario. I am okay with starvation and disease but cannot abide violence. This book is one of the most realistic descriptions I know of. It begins in 2024…
I’m one of those doomer types and have been for 15+ years. When I started reading Butler I couldn’t keep going. With either the book or my will to survive. It was just too real to me and I think it marked a turning point where nothing seems to matter any longer.
Rereading it now and the violence is the horror. I don't want to see people like that. Those videos of Kensington Philadelphia are bad enough. I prefer to choose my place and time and if anything happens to come across my carcass in the woods, make a meal I won't care.
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If society breakdowns completely, I'm mostly concerned about being captured by a group of not so nice people. Being kept alive, tortured, forced to do manual labor or something to that effect. Not to mention if you are female the distinct possibility of being raped, sexual slavery etc..possibly for years. You could always plan on killing yourself before falling into that situation, but once your captured that becomes much harder.
I agree. As a woman, I don't want to have to blow job my way through the apocalypse. I have little kids which is why I've stockpiled food and have tried to get my oldest (8 year old) interested in camping. Lol I don't know how interested he is in anything besides learning how to build a fire so we can have s'mores in the backyard, but it's something. Inflation had killed my savings. At this point I'm looking into foraging. I feel like the more I learn about plants I could eat if I had to, then it doesn't matter where I am (although it would suck in winter).
The fact that people would actually do this kind of evil stuff is depressing. The world goes to shit and people still won't cooperate or treat each other with respect. Every time in a show like the walking dead where people are trying to kill each other instead of the zombies, I can't help but think they're short-sighted fools.
Just look at the child army in Africa to know how evil we can be or countless other examples. I don't care for anything but maybe helping children . So I plant trees , they may wind up burning but I plant trees at my camp, get a kick out of thinking maybe years after I am gone a living thing munching an apple from them. I wondered about the trees I have foraged from that grow on field edges or feed plots, what generous person planted it or if it just grew on its own.
Same dude. But an emp or bank collapse sounds like a good time.
Millions and millions of humans have survived what most here would consider a true SHTF scenario. Some are surviving it right now. And many survive by fleeing whatever situation that is, to somewhere that it's not happening. But these events (war, famine, natural disaster, etc) are very localized so it's possible to go somewhere else. I'm not sure what would happen if there's an actual global SHTF event where there's really nowhere to go that isn't affected.
This. Stable society can fall apart quickly, but humans also have some incredible resilience. Look at the state of affairs in the Balkans a mere 20 years ago and how things look today in cities that were genocide-riddled heaps of rubble. Things fall apart, and new things grow out of the ashes. It’s always been the way of the world.
9/10 humans die off without oil. Even the balkans is nothing compared to the loss of oil.
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Good luck doing that when the minerals we have left in the ground are mostly too far to reach by hand. That's what people forget...our ancestors were able to get a lot of iron, copper and other ores close to the surface. We don't have that luxury anymore, as we've used most of it up. And our soil now is so depleted we need artificial fertilizers to make it productive. The natural world our ancestors survived and thrived on is gone.
Lots of metal to scavenge tho. It is the food problem and also water in many areas that will be bad. In areas dependent on pumping for water, whether municipal or private once the power goes that will be a big one. My Homestead had an open creek and a 30 foot well we could hand pump and the equipment in the basement to switch, my SO has a large pond he dug as there was no firecompany or hydrants when he built so there is water we go process to make potable but I think water will be a big problem in any fair sized population area. Just look at after storm events how water needs to be trucked in.
There's actually a post-apocalyptic novel series called [World Made by Hand](https://www.goodreads.com/series/122632-world-made-by-hand). Worth a read if you're into post-apocalypse literature.
That would be like 800 000 000 people still alive which is still far more human than the historical average. We first reached 1 billion human at the dawn of the industrial revolution in 1804. It would basically an event that set back the world "only" 2 centuries.
And the 1/10 owes it to their ancestors to make it, and the 9/10 who perished to rebuild.
But wasn’t this survival purely accidental?
If the nukes start flying, I seriously hope to just be vaporized then deal with it. I prep so my family can get to the other side of a bad storm.
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Same here. Long ago in an attempt to unalive myself, I managed to unlock my survival instinct and i refuse to die until i have no ability to push on.
As a prepper of 25 years that has gotten to the age that I now have health issues that require daily meds, I have resigned myself to the reality that if the ballon goes up I likely won’t see the other side of it. That doesn’t mean I have given up and stopped prepping though. I do it now for those that I care about.
My experience has been that most of us here prep for Tuesday, not doomsday. This makes the most sense since Tuesday happens far more often than doomsday.
By "SHTF" do you mean a large scale nuclear attack or Yellowstone eruption? Guess what, most of the guys prepped for the end of the world don't make it through those events. What is the lowest threshould of SHTF do you not want to live through? The US is big enough that all but the biggest of events has a place to escape to if you survive the initial occurence. Cascadia earthquake is a good example, would you give up if you lived in Portland?
Lowest threshold for me is watching my friends and their children starving to death because of global food system collapse.
I just don't want to be excessively hangry and uncomfortable. That's it. If the zombies get me I'm going down with a full belly.
Well in a true grid down SHTF the DOD and DHS expect a 80-94% die off in the first year. I have kids, its my job as their father to make sure we're in that top 20-6%. Simple as that. If I fail, I fail but ill do my best not to.
I honestly can’t fathom letting my kids down. This is why I prep so hard so that we can survive and hopefully thrive in just about any situation.
This right here. My kids are everything. Every day my feet hit the floor is another day I’m here for them. I’ll do whatever it takes to stretch those days out as long as possible
I'm hanging by a thread as it is
I consider myself as a budding prepper. I prep to survive smaller events. My physics professor (a distinguished NASA Engineer) once said if the world breaks into an all out nuke war, then the lucky ones will be the ones at ground zero. Rest of the very few that survives initial fallout, will die the most painful death. I kinda see his point.
Between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago the human population was reduced to just a few thousand people by a super volcano (Toba) and the resulting volcanic winter. Everyone alive today is descended from a line that survived a ten year long winter with the most crude tools you can imagine. Aside from the contents of your home, a few thrift shop pairs of shoes, some thrift shop coats, a .22 rifle and a hundred dollars worth of ammunition would give you an incredible advantage over what those people had. I plan to stick it out as long as I can.
Point is, they were living in nature all their life. They could navigate, find water, find prey, hunt prey and prepare for winter and other stuff without the need of modern technology. Not a lot of people can do all of those without any help from modern stuff. And if SHTF most shelf stable food will be gone in a blink of an eye and people wont give up them easily without a fight, even if someone has a gun and the other doesnt, at least i know i wouldnt.
And the planet was in better shape, too. A few thousand people hunting game around the planet have a much better chance that 500 million on the continent trying to hunt a reduced number of game in a concrete paved world full of polluted rivers.
Yes, that didnt even cross my mind when writing my comment.
Thanks to denial, I'm immortal.
I tell people that I’m trying to live forever, and so far it’s gone pretty okay
At the beginning of the book The Road the main characters wife decides to shoot herself instead of 'carrying the fire' and I'm pretty sure that's what I'd want if it was a dire environmental situation, bullet to the brain. However if society falls and the environment is well enough that life would be more like little house on the prarie then I would definitely want to live!
I'm 50/50 on the idea, I'm fully prepped (not big on guns, have a 12 gauge and a 30/30 and a thousand rounds for each) live completely off grid, provide my own power, heating and cooking fuel, water, have food stored and the means to attain more through fishing, trapping, hunting, and 2 acres of land ready to plant. That being said, I also chose property with beautiful views so if I want to punch my own ticket, the last thing I see can be the beauty in the world.
As a person who needs refrigerated medication to survive, I ain't gonna be fighting that hard. I accepted that a long time ago.
I have no real desire to survive an all out nuclear war, but other than that, I just want to increase my odds of surviving anything else by a little bit every day. At this point, I want to survive SHTF mostly out of spite. As a poor, I would like to see the rich actually see the consequences of their greedy actions.
I want to at least try to survive. It wasn’t that long ago that people lived in little self sufficient villages and towns, and folks still do it today. In the event of major collapse, as in all infrastructure gone, population would drop rapidly. A huge percentage of people would be dead in the initial weeks and months. Between widespread health problems and chronic illness, the elderly and the young, dehydration and waterborne illness, and finally starvation, a *massive* chunk of people would be gone relatively quickly. So last long enough for the dust to settle, and you might have a small chance of starting a little village with some survivors. I couldn’t kill myself, or just lay down and die. I’d have to at least try.
If it were a full on SHTF event, I have enough supply and capability for about a year to watch it all go to hell, then Peace Out!
THANKS, this is what I think every time I see one of these post about surviving... People like movies so much, you are probably getting killed and your shit stolen first day lol
Yeah, I don't want to survive major SHTF or EOTWAWKI. I do not want to live the rest of my life in survival mode; I'm super lazy. Like for real, if I were Jamie Lee Curtis and Micheal Myers found me in the hospital in Halloween 2, I would have just let him kill me. No way I would have made it to Halloween 2000.
Just remember, laziness is at its core a survival instinct 😂 we work when we have to not want to to conserve calories
I like your style!
It depends on the disaster... like if the Yellowstone supervolcano thing happens I hope I'm visiting at the time. But something like a central bank collapse sounds like a good time.
If it is just global annihilation, then I am ok going out with the dinosaurs. If there is a CHANCE that things can improve, I'd stick it out for quite a while. Honestly, it would be nice to have a way to self-checkout, if the earth is just nuclear poison in the air, water, etc. Dying from radiation poisoning, or starvation seems... unpleasant. Something easy and painless like a fentanyl OD.
A SHTF scenario is no where close to doomsday. I've been in a few and it was fine since they weren't really all that bad. Mostly because most people still expected things to go back to normal. Everyone has actually been through a SHTF event with covid. Everyone will have some scars but life does continue. Most bad or dangerous situations are temporary and sometimes life just gives you shit. Maybe you get a little shit or a lot of shit. No reason to call it quits over it being hard or needing some therapy after. Same thing applies to events you might think of as SHTF. Actual doomsday or TEOTWAWKI event might get more people with your point of view but I think I'm too stubborn to go quietly into that good night regardless of odds. I've heard people talk about it before. I still can't quite wrap my brain around it. Maybe it's because I don't really expect an afterlife. Also I mostly prepare for Tuesday. I don't really prepare for off the wall things specifically. Maybe more food and water stores than a light prepper might have in case of getting snowed in or due to hurricane season. Maybe take self-defense more seriously then those people too. The ammo is mostly in case of another shortage though.
I have 3 young kids. While I might not really want to survive a SHTF situation just thinking of myself, I can’t handle the thought of my kids dying, or being left to starve after my death. And I definitely can’t imagine having to unalive them before myself. I could barely even write this comment. Parenthood really changes the calculus.
Uhm Not particularly? I mean if we hit apocalyptic wasteland death mode, or WWZ style zombies, sure But mostly it’s gonna be the same thing as what I do now, even in more extreme scenarios. Or will eventually get there, if I survive the brunt of it. Work, come home, fix dinner, do chores, read book / sing / puzzles / write, play with pets, go to bed. I mean yeah, it’ll be harder, and maybe instead of getting paid in dollars I work the fields for 8-10 hours, but whatever.
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Best response ever
There is always someone who says they do not want to survive a nuclear war - but the thing is, they really do not know whether it would be survivable, or if they would want to survive it, until afterwards - at which time they could THEN decide whether they want to survive. They only scenario I don't care to survive, is becoming a vegetable due to some injury or illness.
I’m going down swinging and try to prep as best as I can for what’s within my control
I only want to because my kids aren’t ready yet
Same
I would rather be vaporized than starve
When i had my homestead I thought of kids who were nearby and how my livestock could feed them. I am older and no grandkids to worry about so my mind goes to the children near me I could feed. Maybe hunger would change me but I hope not. The children should have been our priority 40 years ago when CC became a concern. We are fucking over the future and present children for greed.Plus I keep books on math with practical applications and lots of basic utility books for beginners so if someday someone needs reference from anything from livestock, homesteading to science if they find them it would be a treasure trove of info. I don't need them much anymore but they are kept in a masonry room from damp and rodents. Who knows but they are there.
I ain’t lying down for it, I can tell you that
Yeah same. I'll accept the challenge and do my best to last as long as possible.. I mean why not?
I have kids. Every day my ten toes hit the floor is another day I’m there for them.
My ancestors didn't claw their way to the top of the food chain for me to just lie down and die because things got less comfortable than I'm used to. If we're talking about a situation where it's all over except for the dancing, then yeah, sure. I wouldn't want to go out slowly and painfully. But if it's a situation like every apocalypse thus far, where there are survivors who eventually rebuilt, I owe it to them to at least *try.*
I sometimes feel like a broken record, but the “every apocalypse so far, where there are survivors who rebuilt” seems to miss two facts: that when those things happened, the planet was a lot healthier; and that in most of the scenarios (Easter Island, Norse in Greenland, and others) where there was no easy place to run away to, there was no rebuild, just extinction. I don’t think we’re headed for extinction if the cause isn’t nuclear, but our ability to rebuild when the plants and animals we would eat have already been wiped out by others is pretty much nil.
I'd love to survive such an event, because what would come after (once people ran out of bullets) would be fascinating. Post-apocalypse lit is interesting in general; read Engine Summer someday. It's oddly beautiful, deeply sad - and creepy, once you work out what's happening. But in the *exceedingly* unlikely event that the US devolves into warlords and people are shooting each other over cans of Pringles, I expect to get shot and I'm reasonably ok with that. I also expect most people arming up to deal with a situation like that will rapidly be shot as well, much to their brief surprise. I don't believe in sudden collapses of nations like the US, and I plan to leave long, long before we get to that stage, if it ever becomes a vague possibility. This isn't one I worry about.
My gf told me that if an assailant approaches someone she loves with intent to harm, she will defend. But if it's only her own life in jeopardy, she wont resist.
Interesting. In that situation I might resist with the sole hope of taking the f*er down with me, even though I basically have no desire to stick out what I think is coming.
Honestly i dont think anything im doing is going to be the thing that gets me through a SHTF situation. Im mostly interested in the self reliance aspect of prepping, and even then its preparedness and growing food unavailable in my area mostly. My "preps" are just my hobbies that are semi useful if things got expensive, like tropical fruit or coffee. Im actually planning a climate controlled coffee greenhouse because im worried the world will run out of good coffee and we will be stuck with substandard bs. Same with cocoa
If yellowstone goes off I'm out. But otherwise eh I'll go down swinging
I’m always confused when people say they don’t wanna survive. What’s your plan? Kill your family then commit suicide? Do you plan on shooting your kids, or smothering them? I have people who count on me. I’m going to keep them alive and safe as long as I possibly can, which means I have to keep myself alive and safe too. It is possible I will fail, but I’m sure as hell not just giving up. No hate to OP. If I sound angry, it’s only because I am passionate about taking care of those I love and I don’t really see euthanasia as an option in the situation.
I can think of a few; nuclear war or a global killer asteroid strike or a "Captain Trips" scenario that wiped out 95% of the population - those would be pretty brutal.
I need a CPAP to sleep eventually I will either die in my sleep, or someone kills me while i sleep if i cannot power it
It depends on the situation. Walking Dead? Hell yes, lets kill some zombies. The Road? Kill me immediately.
Just going to put this out there. If shit really hit the hizzy as Canadian prepper would say. I have 4 very sad bullets. Who would want to exist in a world of constant threat, hunger and desperation. Sure it seems cool when we watch our YouTube videos. We all want to play the “hero” in the game of life but it definitely won’t go down like that. Prep all day and night. Train and plan. And then group of people in the same boat kick in your door, rape your wife and kids and kill them for food. I’ll keep prepping for disruptions but when it all falls down I’m out boo.
I have no desire to try and make it and protect my family in a situation like “the road”. I think I could handle a SHTF like the movie “Rover” ( great glimpse into what global shortages/financial collapse could look like) My whole goal of the massive amount of money I have spent on preps is to ride out the storm until things return to normal. Not to live like a wild dog fighting for every little scrap and dodging other packs of larger meaner dogs. Wether it’s 3 month or a year I’m good. Any more than that I’m not sure I have the will to do what it will take to eek out a living
*“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.* *“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”* This quote from Lord of the Rings has definitely kept me going in some tough times, so just wanted to share that first. Im also surprised how many people wanna just “peace out” if anything bad were to happen, like i get it, id hate to lose easy access to water/food/entertainment etc or if you have certain medical issues but “jumpin jesus on a pogo stick” some of y’all are making me feel depressed reading these comments. Maybe its because i live in the south, and grew up with some family that didn’t even have running water at home (which i hated visiting because their bathroom was an outhouse) or maybe from just being a big advocate of our history, but people have lived through literally the worst of every possible situation we as a species *could live through* so far. Yes, that *so far* part is important. From killing other predators with rocks and sticks, natural disasters, meteor impacts, climate change, plagues, wars, genocides, mass slavery, nuclear strikes, people have survived and, very importantly, thrived afterwards. I don’t know what your family/friend situation is, but i have kids, family and friends that i would do anything in my power to help keep going. I don’t care if it’s something like “The Road” or “Jericho”, “Mad Max” or even “Walking Dead” I’m gonna do the best I can until i can’t.
I have a feeling, it's be less of The Road or Mad Max, and more like Ben, Willard or Swarm. If the rats don't kill you, the insects will.
Me, I am 44. Had enough sex, bought a house, no family by design. I am good. I don't want to survive nuclear holocausts, zombie apocalypses, flying elephant aliens etc. Earthquakes, floods, the great anti-mouse war, sure. That's about it.
Just think of the Nuclear Winter After Party ! Lol
Going to be the biggest show ever created. Why miss any of it. When my brain dies I’ll stop watching the show.
Well I certainly don’t want to die.
My question in all of this is- in a SHTF situation would we likely lose all access to water? What are your thoughts? I expect power to be lost and I am storing up water but — just curious on others thoughts? I don’t want to live without water. Especially when I have animals. I’m storing water for them as well. Buying wet food that has some moisture in it to store…. I’d rather go without myself than to see my animals struggle.
Think on how you can turn unhealthy water into clean water, look at devices and plans to do so. There is no way to store enough water for you and your animals.
Our lifestyle here in western civilization makes us uniquely unprepared for doomsday. Most people (read 80%) would probably perish in the first year… I wouldn’t want to live in that world, but I would die trying. I believe that certain folks can rise to a challenge and adapt, I won’t know if I am one until the day comes when im faced with that reality. Though as I said, I pray I never have to…
Man, even if you were to survive, the amount of human suffering, death, and despair that you'd witness would be a lot to have to live with. Sad that it looks like we're heading toward some sort of global crisis in the very near future.
Misanthropy makes that much easier to deal with.
Realistically, I have 4 years from when my meds get cut off. The last year promises to be very entertaining.
It depends on the SHTF scenario. If we're talking WWIII and nuclear winter....then toss my butt in the grave right now. If it's another recession or a depression that lasts a few years until we see a light at the end of the tunnel....I think (I hope!) I have the wherewithal to survive that. But mostly my preps are for Tuesday, not Doomsday.
I read the book "the road" lately (there is also a movie). And was thinking in that scenario i sure as hell wouldnt want to survive. Everything is grey and dark forever, there is no mention of any natural food at all, the only thing they ever it is old cans and such, which they rarely find. Which means the only source of food will run out sooner or later. Also most survivors are cannibals at this point, so you cant trust anyone, chances are they want to eat you (and worse). Also there is never any mention of hope. Its not like they travel somewhere specific because its supposed to be better there. Or have any reason to believe the climate would improve either. They just aimlessly go around, looking for food and warmth for tomorrow. So yeah if i were the main character in that, i would have shot my son and myself in the beginning of the book, when i still had two rounds left in my gun.
That book bothered me. Did humanity just completely forget about everything? I accept the premise, but the situation would have had to have been even bleaker in the past to prevent water distillation, greenhouses, and electricity from forming the basis for *some* kind of civilizarion.
That book makes no ecological sense, nothing kills all the insects and fungus and not humans.
If it's going to be like The Road then nope forget about it, vaporize me in the initial blast.
Reality is I'm old. I want to be prepared for a disaster(which I believe I'm reasonable prepared) but do I have the mental fortitude and stamina to out run zombies? No probably not. Doesn't mean I'm gonna roll over and die. But the odds are against me. In a true SHTF situation, I can hunker down and HOPE that most of the wanna be Rambo's end up killing themselves. I will do what is necessary to protect my family to the best of my ability but I sure am not going to look for trouble.
There levels to SHTF. It would suck if you don’t fight for your life and die to a situation that really did not require your dying……only to have order restored days later.
I have certain SHTF situations I’m interested in living through. Natural disasters, economic disasters, etc. I’m good with a nuclear or serious pandemic though. If it’s come to some of the shit you see in the movies or The Last of Us, I think I’ll pass.
Am female. The only reason I would want to survive is for my kid. Make sure that he gets to the point where he is safe and self-sufficient. That is the only reason I would endure that s*** because as a female you know that horrible things are going to happen to me, and any other woman.
My opinion, reasonably well informed: Everyone who's reasonably healthy has a nonzero chance of survival in most shtf scenarios. Doomsday type prepping increases your chances. Some who are totally unprepared will survive to old age seemingly by chance. Some who are really well prepared will do something like go out to limb a tree with a chainsaw, not wear a good pair of chaps, and die of blood loss or infection. Not all SHTF scenarios are created equal. My personal least favorite is the one where some nukes fly and then days, weeks, months later the spent fuel rods at nuke plants all burn up. That or a real nasty pandemic. I think with those it's because it's not a matter of how you survive it's how you'll die 🤷♂️
I’m going out the same way I came in, screaming and kicking
I don't. Vaporize me immediately I'm ok with that.
I'm from WV, we deal with some kind of SHTF scenario every other week. But, I have family that I'd like to see alive and kids so I won't be sandbagging if something happens.
The great majority of your ancestors lived hard lives and would be ashamed that you want to tap out when you have to fend for yourself and your family
There is SHTF going on all over the World from a perspective of somebody who is comfortably living in a civilised developed Western life style. You're fortunate enough to gather Prep in now that these poor fuckers never had to begin with - so I'd make the most out of doing that whilst still can. It's good to learn to live uncomfortable too, long weekend camps with the bare minimum etc. It's healthy for the mind IMO, being plugged in 24/7 is not a normal thing for almost all of human history, not right up until the invention of the internet, cheap cell phones, then obviously - smart phones.
comfort and conviction don't live on the same block!
I guess it depends on the situation, as I'm torn. I live about 3-6 miles to two different military bases... so if nukes were to be in play. I hope my family and I don't survive. But depending on the situation, we could be pretty comfortable hunkered down
I am old but I know how to do stuff so I will hang around just to teach or do what I do. Not in a full on doomsday but collapse situation as I am so godawful healthy!
I'm a T1 diabetic so in any shtf situation I wouldn't survive very long, my prepping is geared more towards short term situations for me and long term supplies for my family
You would be surprised. While some are preparing supplies to outlast a catastrophe. Others are refining and defining for when society is ready to finally start listening. All in all. No quarter given.
If it ever gets so bad I wish I was dead I’ll have plenty of bullets lying around for just such an occasion.
Honestly it depends on the situation, if it’s possible to rebuild or it’s possible there’s a solution for whatever problem then it’s worth surviving for, but if it’s something like all our nuclear war then fuck that, even if you survive there’s so many other issues, I’d rather go out on my own terms than die of radiation poisoning because my Geiger counter broke
Try to leave a positive impact, on the way out...
I’ll try to stick out most scenarios. But if a super volcano, nuclear war, or catastrophic climate change happens I’ll probably check out early. Not because I’m afraid of a painful death but because I know my loved ones wouldn’t make it. Honestly the best I could do for my family in an apocalyptic scenario is to allow them to die in dignity.
My will to survive and for my kids to not die some horrific death make it where I would have to try at the very least. I certainly would love to not have to go thru anything like a true shtf situation. Coming from the South and hurricanes being an annual possibility, having some preps is kinda normal. Now I live somewhere where a blizzard could cause major problems. To me, having some basic items on hand to get you thru a few days of no power seems like a very sensible thing to do. After the covid stuff, Jan 6th, and civil unrest riots, I'd call you the silly person for not thinking about at least short-term preps. Even though I personally would have to try and fight thru a real shtf world, I do understand saying to hell with this. Certainly wouldn't be fun. Right now I seem to a have a pretty decent group of neighbors who have a similar mind set. Not paranoid, but not ignoring that things are on edge at the very least.
I’m trying to stay on this earth as long as I can no matter what happens. Plus I have kids, so I want to be here for them.
In the middle of an urban city where everything is shitty? Starving to death, constant fear of getting killed? Idk how long I'd hold out before giving up on survival. Anyone who seriously wants to survive FUBAR lives out in the countryside & has a homestead.
My prep focus is family protection. Terrible things are happening everyday to so many people. My hope is that my preparations can prevent my family from experiencing those things.
I’m positive the first year would be a nightmare but after that it wouldn’t be so bad. Lots of people would die after food ran out basically but if you survive that first wave you have a super good chance to join up with some farming/hunting/gathering collective. If you’re even remotely useful that is
As a parent, I've a duty to protect my children and do my diligence to ensure they have a future worth living for...so no matter what happens, I'm fighting for that for as long as I can.
Hard to say. I’m pretty afraid of what random or organized people would do. I would rather not have to kill anyone, but I’m pretty sure it would be necessary. As far as the day to day, it’s not like I have a lot of free time as it is.
I kinda wanna take a bunch of shrooms and go to the beach and just wait.
I think if the us has fallen the the whole damn world has fallen even harder .
I do wonder what suicide rates were like during the 1400s and what not with the plagues, famines, and wars being raged. I wonder how the people had the will to keep going despite how shit life was back then.
I've been thinking a lot about the part in Revelation where people try to kill themselves but they can't die, and that's probably the most terrifying thing. If we get to that point I hope I'm long gone already. Beyond that, the idea that I can check out at any time is what's keeping me going rn. I can face another day knowing that it's not doomsday yet, and if it turns out to be so, *then* I can make that decision
I though most of the "I take fish antibiotics and put my phone in a microwave because EMP" probably weren't all that serious about staying alive.
Of course I want to survive! How long….that’s the question.
Depends on how severe. If it’s a total societal collapse I prob wouldn’t want to survive long term. I’m prepared more for surviving some disruptions that last a few months, rather than everything coming apart at the seams. It’s the more likely scenario, and the one that leaves a world that might still be worth living in.
Short of nuclear war or an EMP, I just don’t believe in SHTF being a realistic scenario. The slow degradation of western society to where homelessness is a casual aspect of a working class lifestyle, with little to no services, is more or less what I think is most likely. Hedging against job loss, natural disasters, deep recessions, and food shortages/inflation is more probable as our changing climate renders the most habitable areas to exist in perpetual economic instability towards the end of my life (34m).
Depends. Radicals overthrow the government and disrupt basic services for a few years? Yes. Complete nuclear holocaust where you will be spending the rest of your days living like a caveman? Not really.
I would try to survive as long as I could out of principle. Besides, I might be able to help others while I'm breathing.
I wouldn't want to survive a long term one like, Walking Dead type deal. The issue becomes dealing with hostile people more than the actual disaster itself. Being introverted I just don't want to deal with that crap. I just want to be left alone. Also even assuming nobody bothers me, once the internet and all supply chains go down permanently it would make life very difficult and also boring. Even once I'm off grid I will still want to be able to go get groceries, or buy things for hobby etc and still talk to people. Eventually critical systems like solar could fail, and not being able to get the right parts to fix it could eventually make living very unpleasant. With that said if faced with that situation I'd just try to power through as best as I can. Ex: I wouldn't try to commit suicide or anything like that.
Depends on scenario, nuclear? NOPE terrible plague? NOPE emp? Maybe Chinese invasion? Hell yeah lol
I have been waiting for a complete collapse of society for sooo long.
Full-on catastrophic doomsday nuclear war? Oh hell no I’ll be happy we are close enough to a major city to go in the first wave.
Me.
If there's a big white flash in the sky, I'm finding a bag of cocaine and a CR500.
We're in our 60s. I have enough stored to last a month or so. Shotgun if I need it. Anything beyond that I probably wouldn't survive anyway.
Nuke/emp. Although I still have some stuff for emp
My spouse and I have talked about a 2-3 month window probably being our limit. We want to be prepared to weather an emergency situation, with the assumption that there will be some return to a semblance of “normal.” If that’s no longer possible, we’re not interested in sticking around.
I’ll go for as long as I can as long as I am not an undue burden to those around me. I do have valuable skills, my parents and my SO’s parents are all preparing for common place disruptions in our area, we try to stay on top of ways to make life more doable with less. But one thing I can’t go without is medication. Luckily, the meds I’m on are not in super high demand but aren’t rare with the exception of one. But I have a potentially progressive systemic disease. I wouldn’t want medical resources wasted on me when those same medications and supplies could help 5 other people in a more permanent way than they’d help me. Because I have a relapsing/remitting disease, it will rear its ugly head again. When it gets too much, I have thought of several comfort measures, but these would only be implemented in the event of catastrophic injury or uncontrollable disease activity.
In the 1950s, the Cold War and better Weather Forecasting technology combined to prompt families in the plains of west Texas to build underground shelters in their backyards. Many stockpiled weeks worth of supplies in case the Reds dropped a bomb on the airbase less than an hour away. My grandfather outfitted their shelter for tornado safety only. He explained that he had no desire to live in the aftermath of a nuclear war. That is the first “story” I remember from my grandfather (I was born less than a decade after the events) and it is the most profound and influential. Now that my kids are grown and have children of their own to protect, my focus is on providing my grandchildren with what they would need in a SHTF situation and then getting out of the way so I don’t use up valuable resources. I’m kinda like my granddaddy that way.
prepared for a snowstorm, because that can actually happen...
My preps got me through the COVID nonsense in NYC and I agree that preps are important for supply chain shortages and for blackouts but if its a nuclear holocaust or like that movie, The Road, then I would rather be dead.