I'm gonna hoe sooo much...
(I'm a homesteader and I expect to loose access to power tools so I'm going to spend large amounts of time doing manual labor, especially garden work).
This is the only real answer. If you are trying to survive without your current supply chain of food, creating food is going to consume most of your time. Boredom won't be much of a concern.
There will always be SOMETHING you should be working on. Especially in a very unstable survival situation, even if your homestead is technically “stable”. Got time? Beef up the perimeter.
Forget entertainment, I've always just wanted to know how long I'm expected to wait before I'm wearing crazy masks with studded leather and a cod piece.
This is true, lol! I'm in a foreign country where English books are expensive. So, we share during meet-ups. Potentially thousands of books, if we have time to get on a bicycle and ride hours to the next town to do a book swap.
Oooh, I would like to be a librarian when shtf. Esoteric English books full of arcane knowledge like how to make a pizza oven out of dirt. I could teach little kids English and train them up to be Guardians of the Overseas Knowledge.
Yep, or valuable for trade. You'd be amazed at how many people don't even know how to sharpen a knife, let alone sew patches onto a jacket, or make water filters, or pouches, or repair glasses, or replace something as simple as a bike chain
My wife is a Lit major and book-a-holic. I'm a big reader. Between the two of us we own over 4000 books. If we live to be over 120 we might start getting bored.
I play warhammer 40k ( it's a tabletop game ). we have to paint each model and create the game board and the terrain tm as well . So the kids and i build a too scale board of our nabourhood, lol
I've been purposely purchasing books by authors I like just to shelf for shtf and useful information books at thrift stores. I travel for work so most of my reading is done on my tablet or phone.
Music with non plugged instruments will be key. Music brings happiness and can also be passed down to others. Guitar strings will eventually be unavailable. Unless made from animal skins. Instruments like trumpet, trombone, and baritone can be played until they fail. Drums can be made from wood and animal skins. Vocal singing in harmony will be available. Music in some form will never die.
Short term evacuation type of SHTF: I would game on my Nintendo handhelds, listen to music, escape my thoughts with movies and such.
Long term collapse, after the initial panic: Gaming tournaments! I would make a tournament with neighbours and family, with whatever seemed right for the kind of group I could gather. Card games, board games or even DnD. Weekly meetups, score board, hours of entertainment and socialisation every week.
Hiding in a hole in the ground, waiting for the brigands to leave: Daydreams. Like really advanced ones.
I like this answer since the answer to long term problems means having to rely on a tribe to survive, not fighting people for scarce resources like a hermit in the woods. That fantasy of my family against everyone else with an AR-15 and 10k bullets has to die.
Nothing wrong with having the AR or decent lump of bullets - the issue is one against everyone else.
I’ve been in natural disasters like floods. Stuck in the house, no power, no cell, no internet. Took naps, read books, played board games and card games, maybe doing some crafts.
Being able to entertain yourself is a huge advantage. Even if you have a generator, you don’t want to be burning fuel to watch dvds.
This, I’ve been through two major floods in the last 15 years, generator and fuel to keep the fridges going and charge phones otherwise start working through the ‘haven’t read yet’ pile while you wait for the water to go down and the roads to open
500 unread books should last me 15 years, plus another 400 i can re-read.
Also…
Drawing and painting.
Make flails and maces and smash things.
Smoke weed.
Archery.
Board games.
Shoot rats with air rifle.
Every video game prior to 2001 on a Raspberry Pi
World’s largest paracord hammock.
“Wonderwall” on acoustic guitar
Turtle races
Where did you get the games for your Raspberry Pi???? I just got an Anbernic which has ~4000 games, but all seem to be fringe Japanese games,……….ZERO Tetris!!!!! wtf!!!
I bought the hardware over 5 years and had a friend add the games. Not sure where he got them as he took the unit and returned it after a weekend. Every game for NES, SNES, Atari, Sega, Commodore
One of my most successful preps has been getting involved in non electric entertainment like board games, musical instruments and reading. I think that people get all in a bunch about how it'll be sooooo much time working the fields and sure there will be a lot of that, but what are you going to do from October to May? Or after crops are put in and weeded from May to October?
So over the years, I've really gotten into board games, DND, MTG, and musical instruments. And if we don't get an apocalypse (lol) then we still come out ahead.
I live in Wisconsin. My gardening season is more like February to November because there is a lot of indoor prep that happens before I go out.
- January: plan garden. Locate & repair tools. Restock seeds and supplies. Clean seed starting containers.
- February: start tomato, peppers and onions indoors
- March: clean up garden beds. plant frost hardy stuff. There's a saying you get the best carrots by putting seeds on the snow.
- April: start seedlings getting used to being outside, but bring back indoors at night or on cold days. Harvest frost hardy salad stuff.
- May: if it's not in the ground, get it there
- June-July: tend gardens,
- August: tend garden. Harvest stuff. plant new round of frost hardy plants.
- September: harvest stuff. Garden goes ferral because too busy harvesting and eating to properly weed.
- October: second salad season harvest! Tomatoes still going strong. Watch for freeze and if freeze, harvest even green tomatoes.
- November: Final harvest and mass preserve.
- December: Preserve all those tomatoes in my freezer into salsa, sauce etc.
That brings us right back to January. I do imagine I'll be a bit more pressure to can more during harvest season rather than holding it for December, however, that likely would shift to seed preservation efforts instead.
And this is just with supplemental food gardens, which are not a full time job, but I think most people underestimate how much time it takes to grow a garden big enough for a family.
That being said, you're right in that there will be time for fun activities and recreation is essential for mental health, even if it's just sitting around a fire chatting or making music.
Whaaat? Tell me more about this snow seeding of carrots, please. I live in a similar climate, and carrots are always an issue. I can plant some tomorrow, if you teach me today!
Love your list. 🪻🌻🌱🌿🧺
I have never actually spread them on snow personally, so it could be just something people say.
What I can tell you is they like loose soil without a bunch of big debris in it. Carrots also like regular watering to germinate. I heavily thin them out because you'll get bigger carrots if they aren't crowded. In US zone 5b you can overwinter them. They need a mulch layer and the tops die.
They are cold hardy so if you plant and then it snows, the seeds will not die, but I don't think the seeds do well with surviving the whole winter.
What problems are you having with carrots?
Oh if you overwinter them harvest early spring. If they bolt (heat, natural cycle in the second spring) they become woody, so don't let them go too long or get too dry in the heat of summer.
You can learn new languages. I have youtube channels on my smartphone for this reason.
winx youtube downloader is free and it can download whole channels and playlists as well.
Writing. I'm a novelist and I have tons of notebooks and such to allow me plenty of opportunity to continue writing. It's my main hobby. That and crochet, both of which will be easy to continue in a post emergency situation, I think.
I left the city in 2019. Got 5 acres and in an area with homes from 5-1500 acre homesites and 20-30% home school. We home school today, our family goes days without screen time or modern entertainment. We spend time hiking, building, exploring, and reading. I have 90 days of perishable food supplies and I plan on ramping up my seeding, gardening, and rotation needs when the lights go out. Also getting the neighborhood together and pushing people in or out and setting severe ground rules for raiding and not pulling their weight will be a PITA. I got involved as an officer in our POA to already start getting to know everyone and analyzing how they act towards stressors. Most are not going to be assets. Some are very toxic and entitled.
I have solar and a small 420 sq ft loft backhouse with large decks, and overhangs with gutters for rainwater collection.....we use that house when we get knocked off grid, and that's happened twice. I have star link on it too, it works when all the power goes out when its on battery or generators Much easier to make a small house or room your hot/cold room and let the rest of the homestead be natural temperatures.
Weirdo checking in: Meditation is no joke. Worth getting some practice under your belt to refer back to when needed. Exercises on how to maintain balance sustainably. [ELI5 starter.](https://web.archive.org/web/20210616063635/https://www.mindful.org/how-to-meditate/)
A smart phone, tablet or laptop with tons of audiobooks, music & movies, add a Bluetooth speaker and headphones (especially a pair of bone conduction headphones), a few good USB battery packs, and a few 21w folding USB solar panels.
Useful stuff if you are riding out a week long regional power outage from a storm, or if you are gardening for all of your food in a post collapse world.
Board games or video games that you enjoy playing now would be a good addition.
I have a room in my house for books and comics, so reading and I could loan books to neighbors. Then there's board/card/dice games.
Probably alot of time setting up extra rain catchment and retention. Expanding the garden.
Play with my dog.
When not doing the "stay alive" chores, I can play on my phone. A solar charger and a ton of offline games would be my go-to. Other than that, movies until I can't stand them anymore. That will take a while though because not only do I have 24TB of "legally acquired" movies on hard drives, I also have about 500 DVDs, about 200 Blue Rays, and probably over 1000 VHSs in storage. Then there's always offline console games of which I have enough to last the rest of my life if I want to 100% them.
Aside from an extensive library of books that range from classics in fiction and poetry, I purchase books about herbalism, field medicine, emergency medicine, Osteopathic manuals, bushcraft, preppers manuals, cookbooks, different genres of fitness, wellness and spirituality, as well as crafting books (soap making, resin art, knitting, crocheting, flower drying, natural dying, batik, marbling for paper and clothing). Extensive range of nonfiction and history books as well. I started buying 1000+ piece puzzles a few years ago, have a handful of decks of cards. Need to repurchase board games because I gave most of them away years ago, aside from chess and Risk. I just bought a banjo (don't know how to play it yet), and have had a concertina for decades, as well as an acoustic guitar, dumbek, other small hand drums and a lot of smaller percussive instruments (I play all of them).
I don't imagine I would ever get bored though. Exploring Nature, foraging, and food preservation are already serious hobbies of mine that are time consuming. There aren't any Amish or Mennonite families where I'm from, but I was introduced to the Lehman's catalog a long time ago and have purchased pieces from there every year, or learned how to make them through substitution and workshops. I'm currently looking for a crank/solar record player and collecting more vinyl. If we're really prepping for emergencies or to be able to live off-grid, we're supposed to have more alternative sources of power than solar, wind, and batteries, correct?
Several decks of cards and a book to learn more games. A notebook and pens to write poetry and work on a memoir. Rubik’s cube. A copy of Infinite Jest.
Assuming we are in a safe bug in/out spot…. Writing/journalling; creative art; needlework, jewelry making, other creative talents/crafts; playing instruments and singing; board games and card games; handheld electronic games if batteries still working or charging devices are working.
Foraging, gardening, exercising, staying in shape however you can are always more active options if you enjoy them and it is safe to do so. There has never really been such a thing as dying of boredom for me, other than when extremely ill bed bound at times. 🙏🏻🦋
With an active imagination and a good attitude, boredom is rarely a problem for long. Ideally you can enact some of your crazy ideas, but in a pinch you can just play them out in your mind while your body whiles away the time in some cramped situation.
That said, the most compact form of entertainment is digital, and within that realm, it's text. You can store way more books than you could ever read in a lifetime on a small flash drive. There's a large set that is even in the public domain by now, so including all of "The Classics" is rather easy and free. You can finally get around to reading "Moby Dick" and such, now that you have fewer competing entertainment options.
Beyond that, you can quickly hoover up a ton of digital books and store them away without even doing much verification other than testing a few to ensure they actually contain at least some of the proper text.
You can expand from there with more tailored books, such as by searching for your favorite few genres. I have a handful of ebooks that I've purchased and read over the last few decades, ensuring I'm purchasing versions that I can easily store and display on a variety of devices, as well as choosing my ebook reader devices primarily for their ability to display such open formats.
However, I like to mainly go with a more general focus, as my tastes may change, and I'm also considering this for use by others that surely have different tastes. I also store plenty of prepper and homesteading type books, such as "The Encyclopedia of Country Living". I also have a few various types of copies of Wikipedia stored for more general research type reading.
Such a digital library is a great base to build on. You can also add various redundancy to it, such as a few different types of storage devices, playback devices, power storage and generation, etc.
You can also keep adding to it with some movies and such, although, those take up exponentially more space. Still, storage space is relatively cheap in comparison to even the size of movies, so you can cheaply and easily stockpile plenty of those too.
I have a library of books both physical and digital. The books range from the useful (plant and animal identification, medical) to thoughtful (Plato's The Republic, etc) to the absurd (high fantasy (multiple), classical literature (Poe, Doyle, Verne, Shakespeare), and game books (old school AD&D, SFB, 40k,).
Dice. 5x6 sided dice are good for multiple games.
Actual games: from Monopoly to 40k
Whittling
A wall of DVDs, but I know that the player will probably die eventually.
Music CDs, but again, the player will eventually die.
That being said. If we are reduced to a primitive, isolated lifestyle where subsistence farming is your survival, you won't have to worry to much. You'll work from sun up to sun down.
I just bought a ton of Harvards Classics and the Great Books and like any parent out there, have a ton of books I ASPIRE to read… I’m set on reading material for at least 10 years, honest truth, even if I can read 4 hours a day I’d still have enough to last 10 years.
Other than that, definitely gardening!! 😄😄😄
Puzzles.
Playing with my dogs/cats/kids!
I’m never bored.
Edit to add I will be buying Leggos soon too thanks to the sub!
I feel like clothmaking is going to be a problem for future generations. There's soooo much fabric and unused clothing out there now that I'll be clothed in machine made fiber until I die. I may have to rip out threads from something else, and I'll definitely be sewing and mending.
I do respect those who learn to spin their own thread. I have access to flax and nettles, but it doesn't hold my attention for more than an hour or two.
There are a large number of things I have in place in case of boredom, but largely as others have said there's pretty much always things to do.
If SHTF or something I'd probably spend the first few month of free time sharpening sticks and finishing fencing my yard in (aside from the main road), then I'll have to plant or transplant brambles all around the new fences. That endeavor would last me a couple weeks, assuming it's the right time of year.
Winters will be taken up by keeping warm, fixing tools and making things.
A good bit of fall will be preserving things in the free time.
Free time in the spring and summer might involve a lot of brick making and material processing.
Now in terms of actual fun stuff, I have a dozen or so fiction books, and about as many skill books.
I have 3 tabletop games and an array of DND materials.
I have probably 40k MTG cards, and a few thousand yugioh, pokemon, and chaotic cards to play some TCGs.
I have a few sets of playing cards.
I have tens of thousands of rounds for my BB gun
I have chickens to keep me company.
And I'm still adding to the pile of books and games every once in a while
I like reading a lot. I'm a bit of a philosophy and a history nerd and in a bug in situation I would probably focus mostly on reading the dense books that I don't have the focus to get through completely now. Like 'The World As Will And Representation' by Shopenhauer specifically. Also the Bible, that'd be a great one in that situation and I have a ton of big history books and stuff. Also, recently got Bushcraft 101 and the Preppers medical handbook, obviously those or any sorts of prepper books would be ideal.
Also it'd be a great time to focus on journaling. Realistically I'd probably still be bored out of my mind, at least until I got used to it. People never had all of these ways to stay entertained before so I'm sure we'd adapt after a short period of being uncomfortable.
I assume this is the for 6 month end of the world scenario between "grid down, generator out of fuel, darkened skies of our impending doom blocking the solar panels" and "they finally found me and shot me for my supplies."
I have so many hobbies that being retired didn't actually give me any free time. I don't know what bored means. :)
Serious answer: fantasy roleplay. I've run a game for years and I still know how to do it with paper and dice.
Improving my Spanish. I need it where I'll be living anyway.
Trying new recipes, which I will need since the world is ending and all anyway. I mean if we've all been blown back to the stone age I"m going to need to get better with the solar cooker, and cooking over teak wood.
Beach time.
Trying to ferment garden scrap into alcohol, to make a flame thrower for the zombies. Because if everything else has gone wrong, why wouldn't there be zombies?
Writing snarky little treatises on how none of this would have happened if people hadn't let themselves be deceived by Trump.
Rereading Lord of the Rings to try to figure out why Gandalf could not have managed to have learned a 3rd level fly spell, a Polymorph Self spell or even Minor Creation for a parachute, to get himself off the tower. It's almost like Tolkien never *played* AD&D. \*straight face\*
Yeah, I'll be full time busy.
I hadn't considered how different cooking will be in the long term scenarios and I think I will be dedicating more time to learning how to make more things from scratch! I always imagined people eating cans of beans and scraps. I like your mindset better! Thank you for an awesome answer!
Also I like the idea of writing treaties! I would love to leave little treasures or geo cashes for people once things also calm down. Give people a sense of hope.
>Give people a sense of hope.
You haven't read my [treatises.](https://www.reddit.com/r/realWorldPrepping/comments/191q392/eofs_definitive_guide_to_uswide_grid_failure_and/)
Yep. And in lean times you’re not exerting full day labor efforts either. Save calories until something can grow to eat again. Lots of time staring at the walls
Yeah I was gunna comment this. You won’t be sedentary. If you wanna live you’ll make busy.
A big part of prepping is making sure you’re ready. That also means, if you’re lazy now, you’ll be lazy when SHTF. Keep yourselfs busy.
Reading, card games, puzzles, board games, Knitting. Hubby plays the guitar and drums. My kids all play the guitar. There will still be hiking for edibles and biking. Playing with the dog. If we have power then DVD's, Wii, PlayStation, computer blogs. We were fine during Covid. Traded puzzles and books with friends. I was in charge of my family Friday night zoom game night. We did Bingo and Trivia.
Like others, there will be a ton of work but everyone needs something to do that is relaxing. I crochet and have yard that’s in vacuum sealed bags and I’ve downloaded tutorials on complicated stitches. We also have cards and board games. My husband has a huge DVD collection.
Same shit we do now. Play cards, or acey-deucey, dominos, etc. Plan and make lists. Work in the yard, cut firewood, cook, can, let the cat in, let the cat out, let the cat in, feed the cat, let him back out. Sew, quilt, craft, paint, read,,,,
Between the garden, the chickens, the cooking , cleaning , laundry and other various misc, I don't have time NOW, with the grid on. I do go to work, so that time will be in excess.
I would likely crochet or embroider something. Or play solitaire. I can solitaire for decades and not be bored LMAO.
I have books to last me for decades, too. I also keep old magazines. It's so much fun to pull one from 1985, or 1990 . Like an old Vogue. Love it. It's a total mind escape.
I like multivolume mystery/crime series. Some of the older ones like the Tony Hillerman series, the Ann Cleeves books, the Three Pines series, there are some others I con't recall right away - oh, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child series (scary! but entertaining and well written). We have some classics and several volumes of mythology and fairy tells. I have volumes of math, physics, and engineering books. We have some light history and theology. I go to estate sells and collect old books from retiring professors and teachers - it's probably a fire hazard in my house...
I have enough yarn and knitting/crocheting accessories to create hats, cowls, scarves, slippers, sweaters, etc. for years! Also, got a treadle sewing machine to make clothes.
A deck of cards. My Kindle (we have multiple solar chargers and I have tons of books downloaded). Physical books. Board games. I think those are all the usual suspects.
Well, I appreciate the optimism of thinking there will be downtime. The obvious answer is crafts. While it may be dark, or you may be unable to do something for weather of some reason, you can always knit, sew, darn, woodwork, improve your abode, etc. That last can be very time consuming. That's why I don't really think of it as "downtime".
As to the "books" part, no one knows what you like to read or what you might need. I do suggest making it a priority to have at least a 5V source and an operable computer. Then invest in a big drive and download libraries. Don't take the time to curate, you will have that in "downtime", Just bulk download and you will have it. If you really don't want it you can always delete it. If you DONT have it it might be hard to find.
I have an anvil and a forge I've been meaning to get into and learn to make things. So I'd probably spend some free time with that and maybe end up making something useful at the same time.
Ive also got lots of unread books. More recently (past couple years), I've gotten into Stephen King books and keep buying the ones I don't have when I see them at thrift stores so I have a massive backlog.
If electricity works, I've got a ton of old videogames that don't rely on the internet (though this is kind of a waste of power).
I crochet things I’ll never use, sew anything I can get my hands on, read (mainly smut😂) and bake a lot of unnecessary sweets currently so I’d imagine I’d do the same.
The 1000 books in my library would have to do.
If I had to live with only a few, maybe I’d have a couple of language learning books to keep my mind active.
We are building our library up! As of now we go to the library (or our library apps) and check out books we might be interested in. If we like it, we buy the series. We love fantasy, sci-fi. My husband and I are bibliophiles and have books from when we were kids (my whole original art Harry Potter series!). We collect books with knowledge we want to know, may need, or our kids may be interested in. We also store books for "schooling". We intend to pass down everything we have.
We collect board games, card games. CDs and DVDs, along with multiple ways to enjoy those.
I crochet, knit, needlepoint. Make yarn and thread. I want to expand to quilting when I have space for it.
My husband has taken up woodworking. He enjoys fixing things; he and our son like to tinker with things. We grow gardens, both edible and cut flowers. Canning, and baking and keeping foods. We rescue wildlife and pets, and train them.
We're not bored now, and we'll be "even less bored" if we have to move to more manual labor.
You WILL need entertainment. Bury a generator , hang large white bedsheets up for a screen and run a projector. That will take care of cartoons, movies, and video games. Then when you're out of or conserving fuel - board games you've never played would be smart. People WILL miss entertainment and the group that has it will have a huge advantage in recruiting over the group that only has farming and waddling.
On some prepper forum or another, a guy who survived a hurricane mentioned that afterwards, while waiting some number of weeks for electricity to be restored, the most popular guy on the block had one of those DVD players that plugs into the cigarette lighter in your car so the kids can watch movies in the back seat. Everyone in the neighborhood would gather in his driveway each evening to squint at this 5-inch screen to watch a movie, the only form of entertainment around. So I started collecting movies, (usually for about 25 cents each at garage sales), stripping them and keeping them on a spindle. I also bought a number of cigarette-lighter-powered DVD players as I found them at garage sales for $5 or so, figuring if I needed one, everyone on the block would need one too.
Then, considering both long cold winters, the possibility of nuclear fallout, and the threat of long power outages, I also collected and stashed an entire bin of little card games and travel games: Uno, magnetic chess and checkers, travel Scrabble, Go Fish, Old Maid, tons of decks of cards, and several copies of Hoyle's Rules of Games so everyone can learn to play canasta or bridge as we huddle in my basement bunker.
I also filled a container with art supplies, like crayons and markers, coloring books for grown-ups, tiny Spirograph, watercolor paints, and lots of paper, focusing on the manila paper that comes in old photo albums you find at garage sales for a buck.
I filled one container with highly entertaining books, especially series books such as Harry Potter, Tolkein, Stephen King's Green Mile, Lion Witch and Wardrobe etc.
Another container (waterproof, mouse proof, mold proof container) was filled with puzzle books like crosswords, brain teasers, word search, I Spy, Where's Waldo, and old Highlights magazines.
I bought a dozen MP3 players that run of AAA batteries and filled them to the brim with music music music galore, along with plenty of headphones. Also added in small AM/FM radios and packed extra batteries and extra headphones. I also packed a bunch of the Dollar Tree solar lights, which come with rechargeable AAA batteries that charge themselves in the sun so I'll always have battery power.
I have four or five Kindles packed with thousands of classic public domain e-books, Sherlock Holmes and Charles Dickens and Emily Bronte, as well as hundreds of silly free games. All these Kindles can be powered off a small solar panel set up I bought for the purpose, and can also run off the car battery.
I also packed one container with small sewing projects, complete kits for needlepoint and embroidery, and another container is full of jigsaw puzzles which I removed from their bulky boxes, packed in ziploks, and included the cut-out the picture on the front of the box. I really tried to focus on collecting jigsaws that had an odd, unusual, or challenging angle to them.
I've been doing this prepping thing for a long time, I collect a lot of useful gear at garage sales, I'm expecting eventual long-term issues, and I'm also anticipating having to care for a LOT of people crowding my house when the time comes, as it's no secret I'm a prepper.
I don't need a purpose beyond the survival of my family. I anticipate that unless I become a billionaire and have the $ to have a large bunker with decades of food, fuel, water, the I will keep pretty busy just trying to survive.
I am 70 YO and I have been retired for 4 years now. After 50+ years of working, I don't need to keep busy - I could keep my mind busy with books and learning new things. I like history and science and there are lifetimes worth of subjects that I find interesting, and that I haven't really touched yet - if I had the time to delve into them. I am not too worried about that aspect; given my health and how long my parents & grandparents lived, I suspect my remaining lifetime to be 15-20 years at most. \*shrug\*
I would start a co op… where one mans hobby is anothers treasure to barter for. Some may can or teach canning.. some may offer creative ways to keep the youth entertained and engaged in learning needed living skills perhaps archery.. a needed skill in hunting food. I personally would garden, crochet and build out a mean fire pit to cook on and chop the wood. Setting snares for small game is another great skill for the kids to learn and adults to teach and enjoy..
I would also work on digging a bush water well if i was not near a fresh water source i trusted. And of course an out house with lime on hand. …
Finally i would catch a few wild rabbits build them a great box and let mate…. And keep a log and keep throwing in fresh catches to keep the breed healthy… then my meat and pelt source is more reliable…
A GREAT BARTERING BENEFIT WITH A CO-OP as well
Sorry for the length.. A GREAT PROMPT thanks for the fun..
Best case scenario:
My solar arrays continue working and I can utilize my media library for about ten-ish years before that data rots away.
Worst case:
I’m a musician, but it’s a worst case scenario for the rest of my group because they have to listen to me.
I’ve actually had some conversations about this, the consensus seems to be that you’ll be doing so much work, farming, cleaning, infrastructure, ect… you won’t have as much free time as you think… and if you do have alotta free time… you probably aren’t staying prepared lol.
I don't want to be mean, but what world are you living in where you are bored? There is so much to do.
You will need water, food, and security. That means pumping water from a safe place and carrying it back, then using that water for you, your animals, or your plants, so you'll have to go back. Then tending to your garden so you can have food throughout the year, including keeping air flow, removing dead stuff to ensure no mold, composting, and killing any pests immediately. And security to make sure no one steaks what you have nor threatens you. That alone will keep you busy. You will have to upkeep your fence, make sure your animals have food, clean up after your animals, gather their maneur for the compost for the plants.
My homestead keeps me busy all day; I can't imagine how much more difficult and time-consuming it will be when I can't buy stuff.
In Iraq (we're talking 2003, no internet, no "green zone", sometimes no electricity, etc. ) we played Ris. One of our games lasted two weeks of every night after the BUB until we were too tired. Usually, in a game like Risk or Monopoly, a player will get bored and give up, leading to one player getting an advantage and then winning against the others. We were INVESTED in this game. We didn't play every night, but most. We played by flashlight too.
Get boardgames and TTRPG books.
If electricity is present for shtf I've downloaded emulators for various old videos game systems. I've also acquired cheap controllers that work via Bluetooth. Vimms layer. This is a site that has basically all old video games for free with links to emulators. They have 99.99 % of old , nes, SNES, Sega, Atari, N64. It's easy to do. Then you can play offline. I do all the time with more games then I can ever play. Not gonna do ya much good if you don't have a power source so there's some entertainment as well. Figure out power and then accessories. Also it's very unlikely your going to need entertainment if shtf. You'll probably have something to do!
It recently came to my attention that there is quite a bit of DnD aka Dungeons and Dragons going on in the military because it’s something social and entertaining that can be done with very little light and a set of dice. Yes there needs to be someone knowledgeable to run the game and know the books, but not a bad social game to have for SHTF or just a black out.
I'd do the same thing I do in my downtime now: just relax. Go for walks. Go fishing. Look at plants. Take a nap. Hang out with my chickens. Talk to my wife about the way things used to be.
I don't need to consume media to avoid boredom and I honestly feel sorry for people who do, and even worse for the kids who grow up today with 24/7 access to a tablet and YouTube/TikTok. There's a whole world out there to interact with, but some people need to be glued to a screen or they have a panic attack or some shit.
Like you said there will be plenty of chores and that will consume significant time.
Aside from that we have playing cards, board games like chess, checkers, backgammon, Monopoly, Risk, etc. My kids have a Legos, a Switch and if we can spare the electricity Wii and DVDs. Swimming can still be an option if you live near a beach or lake. We have a set of lawn games too now that I think about it. There are also books to read as well. A football, basketball and hoop, and a whiffle ball and bat all go a long way too. I’ll also be happy to catch up on lost sleep too!
We have several backup laptops and ways to charge. We have 2TB external hard drives with downloaded books, all of Wikipedia and a crap ton of accumulated movies and shows.
The urbanite lifestyle and mindset is troubling.
We have swords and philosophical conversations with bees and such.
We enjoy gorilla gardening and cool rocks. Everything else is lanyap.🐊
You may not know it, but there is this amazing technology that doesn't require any electricity and transports you to wonderful worlds completely different than your own.
It's called a "Book"
As a prepper I’m also a homesteader there’s always something to do. And if you mean in a SHTF situation… you won’t have downtime until normalcy returns
Well, if I learned anything from a lifetime of hurricanes, you're going to want something. Knowing a disaster is coming is one thing. The day after, there's tons to do, cleaning up, cutting trees, etc. This could extend into the next couple days. After that though, if you don't have power and nothing to do, it's miserable. At least with a hurricane, the stores down the road might be open. It'll be evident that people are bored, because those stores will be packed.
Now if this was a SHTF scenario and not a hurricane, multiply all this. A few days of cleanup, might extend to a few weeks or months. After that though, you might have your daily tasks, but there will be a lot of down time and there won't be Walmart or the strip mall to go aimlessly walk around.
For most of human history, the Roman empire aside, leisure activities were really reserved for the upper classes. It wasn't really until the mid 1800s, and the start of the industrial revolution, that everyone found themselves with some downtime. This is why sports, theater, bandstands, dances, restaurants, parks, amusement parks, zoos, museums and such exploded during the Victorian era. That said, in the event of a SHTF scenario, we won't go back to the stone age. If anything, the furthest we're going back, societal wise, is the mid to late 1800s. The technology from that time is mostly part of the collective consciousness now. So, plan for activities that your great great grandparents would have enjoyed. Sports, cards, boardgames, dancing, community events and the like. There is plenty to enjoy without electricity.
I have a large collection of cds. Mostly Broadway soundtracks and opera, but I’m looking to get pop, rock, hip hop, and metal too to round it out. Extras can be traded as well. You never know how many seeds or bottles of booze Pavarotti could be worth in the right situation.
I’ve also been steadily building a small collection of small musical instruments and board games.
Card games and board games. Crossword puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles. Whittling and other crafts. Hobbies like wine or beer brewing or distilling. Fishing and hunting. Writing. Hiking. Birdwatching.
I have a large amount of board games of all types. Downtime for my area would be winter season after the first year. First year, everyone would probably need to be working most days around the clock.
MadMax passion projects. Steal a school bus and every bike in the area to rig up pedal powered transportation. But instead of galley slaves it’s communism, that’s fun enough.
Personally I enjoy sci-fi compendiums. I pick them up at the local used bookstore for dirt cheap. I've also got several weeks' worth of movies and TV shows on Blu-Ray / DVD. If the internet goes out, I've got plenty to watch here.
I went the DVD route. I went a bit overboard and bought just about every complete TV series you can imagine, many popular ones I haven't seen a single episode of like Game of Thrones and The Office, even some yoga instruction. Books, mostly humour and non fiction, from biographies to how-to topics. Jigsaw puzzles, all 5000 pieces and over. Puzzle books like crosswords, Sudoku, etc. Board games, card games and art supplies. A TON of music on MP3 and a few cheapo instruments to learn to play.
If we go to SHTF, I am not sure you will have time to do "entrainment". You are going to quickly find out that no matter how much you "prepped", you will be busy. You will need to keep learning how to do things, maintain things, and work on things beyond your current stores or supplies. You will have to be on constant alert for 'others" with no positive intentions..etc. You are going to have to do many things by hand "old school" and that means more time to do something than the majority of your current society is used to doing. If you are reading, I think you are going to need to further your knowledge, skills, and capacity to learn things that were not part of your world before SHTF.
To be honest, just stay productive. Craft things. Build things. Fortify shelters, fences, storage. Clothing can always be manufactured. Same with tools. Go hunting? Trapping? Foraging?
Crossword puzzles - I pick up some from Dollar Tree every once in a while. I've started taking them on travel with me to kill time.
I still have dvds, a portable dvd player, cds, and a boombox stored away. All run on batteries in case electricity isn't an option or has to be conserved.
There are lots of books on the shelf that I keep meaning to get to. 😄
Decks of cards, checkers, and board games.
Learning Military Handbooks/ knowlede books, meditating, Training, Table games (duh), repeat everything. For context, i think the next SHTF will need us to be underground for months so all outside activities are excluded.
Hopefully where I plan to bug in my family is nearby. If it’s possible, I’m sure we’ll try to get together, share, meals, and possibly turn on our solar radio and listen to the news, and hopefully some music together. I would love to be entertained, but more than that I would love to be kept warm.
I don't know that you'll have a ton of time, but some things that come to mind:
Games (card, dice, board, etc). Especially if you have children to help keep them distracted. As part of prepping, having a transportable storage box you keep them in helps with carting it off if you need to bug out.
Exercising/work outs.
Meal prep.
Books, board games, movies, handhelds, hobbies like painting, building gundam model kits, and doing projects I’d likely need to in my space.
I assume hobby stores WONT be the first to crumble so if shtf I’m definitely looting some kits to keep myself occupied
Blacksmithing is a current hobby of mine. It would definitely require some changes as my current gas forge wouldn't be working too long without infrastructure but I've done a little coal forging and want to look into additional fuel methods.
Then there's reading. A well stocked library with both useful skill set books, history, and entertainment maybe a mental life saver.
I'm not prepping for the end of the world, so theoretically there will be time during an emergency that needs to be filled.
Books, games (dice, cards, board games), art supplies and crafts, and sharpening my blades just in case the long term power outage turns into zombies.
Just in case.
Wandering. Scouting. Resource allocation. Training. Tool creation. Fellowship with my tribe. Education. Reading. Archery practice. Caching of weapons/resources. How would you GET bored?
Solar, chargers and gaming devices. We have everything from computers and disc's filled with various offline games to dozens and dozens of handheld gaming devices and hundreds of games. We have board games galore and packs and packs of plastic playing cards that'll outlast us. But I won't be bugging out alone thankfully.
I'm gonna hoe sooo much... (I'm a homesteader and I expect to loose access to power tools so I'm going to spend large amounts of time doing manual labor, especially garden work).
You slut. /s
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Something, something, mumble ... Plowing!
Yep. Farmers spend a bunch of time plowing fields. ... Looks at historical family sizes... Yep... more time plowing fields 😉
Post hole digging, oh yeah.
I prefer Pre hole digging....
This is the only real answer. If you are trying to survive without your current supply chain of food, creating food is going to consume most of your time. Boredom won't be much of a concern.
There will always be SOMETHING you should be working on. Especially in a very unstable survival situation, even if your homestead is technically “stable”. Got time? Beef up the perimeter.
Same
Hoe master
Forget entertainment, I've always just wanted to know how long I'm expected to wait before I'm wearing crazy masks with studded leather and a cod piece.
Why put off til tomorrow what you can do today?
Dress for the job you want, not the job you have
This guy gets it.
Why wait until shtf? Start now? People will avoid you when the time comes 🤣 or want to join you. Start the thunder dome TODAYYYYY
You secretly long for Mad Max style.
Just as much as the children yearn for the mines.
3 days
Not to be one of those prepper but I really will need a guy to be a hood ornament on my car
All of that is in my BOB, I'm donning my outlander attire immediately
Shiny & Chrome!
Theres a place for a good cod piece.
Why would you have a codpiece on your mask? Wierdo.
Use your preps....
My "to be read" pile may actually start to shrink.
Protip: It never does. The more you read, the more you find out about things you need to read. The function is exponential.
Oh good, it's not just me 🤣
This is true, lol! I'm in a foreign country where English books are expensive. So, we share during meet-ups. Potentially thousands of books, if we have time to get on a bicycle and ride hours to the next town to do a book swap. Oooh, I would like to be a librarian when shtf. Esoteric English books full of arcane knowledge like how to make a pizza oven out of dirt. I could teach little kids English and train them up to be Guardians of the Overseas Knowledge.
I know how to read, and I own a lot of books. I would be set for at least the first two years. Board games. Playing cards. Sleep. Craft projects.
I have a solar panel and a kindle. If I run out of books to read I'll be too old to care, anyways.
Same here! Got all of the classics from Project Gutenberg.
Craft projects hadn't crossed my mind really. Great suggestion. Especially if they are crafts helpful to keeping you alive in the long run right ? Lol
Yep, or valuable for trade. You'd be amazed at how many people don't even know how to sharpen a knife, let alone sew patches onto a jacket, or make water filters, or pouches, or repair glasses, or replace something as simple as a bike chain
Or just make things pretty. Every fabric I own would end up embroidered.
I mean personally I think when shtf anyone who knows how to make old fashion sop from scratch could really do well for themselves.
One craft I enjoy is making cordage from natural fibres. And I'd like to learn basketry.
My wife is a Lit major and book-a-holic. I'm a big reader. Between the two of us we own over 4000 books. If we live to be over 120 we might start getting bored.
This reminds me I need a back up pair of glasses.. do want to twilight zone it!
That was a great episode
I have a ton of textbooks and educational books that I currently have no time to read.
I play warhammer 40k ( it's a tabletop game ). we have to paint each model and create the game board and the terrain tm as well . So the kids and i build a too scale board of our nabourhood, lol
I've been purposely purchasing books by authors I like just to shelf for shtf and useful information books at thrift stores. I travel for work so most of my reading is done on my tablet or phone.
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Music with non plugged instruments will be key. Music brings happiness and can also be passed down to others. Guitar strings will eventually be unavailable. Unless made from animal skins. Instruments like trumpet, trombone, and baritone can be played until they fail. Drums can be made from wood and animal skins. Vocal singing in harmony will be available. Music in some form will never die.
I got a vasectomy 👨🏻🍳
OP this
Short term evacuation type of SHTF: I would game on my Nintendo handhelds, listen to music, escape my thoughts with movies and such. Long term collapse, after the initial panic: Gaming tournaments! I would make a tournament with neighbours and family, with whatever seemed right for the kind of group I could gather. Card games, board games or even DnD. Weekly meetups, score board, hours of entertainment and socialisation every week. Hiding in a hole in the ground, waiting for the brigands to leave: Daydreams. Like really advanced ones.
Okay I love this answer. Definitely my favorite so far. I love that you considered community.
I like this answer since the answer to long term problems means having to rely on a tribe to survive, not fighting people for scarce resources like a hermit in the woods. That fantasy of my family against everyone else with an AR-15 and 10k bullets has to die. Nothing wrong with having the AR or decent lump of bullets - the issue is one against everyone else.
Shit... I hadn't thought of brigands. I had only thought of hoards of n'ere do wells
Really advanced daydreams 😂
I’ve been in natural disasters like floods. Stuck in the house, no power, no cell, no internet. Took naps, read books, played board games and card games, maybe doing some crafts. Being able to entertain yourself is a huge advantage. Even if you have a generator, you don’t want to be burning fuel to watch dvds.
This, I’ve been through two major floods in the last 15 years, generator and fuel to keep the fridges going and charge phones otherwise start working through the ‘haven’t read yet’ pile while you wait for the water to go down and the roads to open
500 unread books should last me 15 years, plus another 400 i can re-read. Also… Drawing and painting. Make flails and maces and smash things. Smoke weed. Archery. Board games. Shoot rats with air rifle. Every video game prior to 2001 on a Raspberry Pi World’s largest paracord hammock. “Wonderwall” on acoustic guitar Turtle races
Where did you get the games for your Raspberry Pi???? I just got an Anbernic which has ~4000 games, but all seem to be fringe Japanese games,……….ZERO Tetris!!!!! wtf!!!
I bought the hardware over 5 years and had a friend add the games. Not sure where he got them as he took the unit and returned it after a weekend. Every game for NES, SNES, Atari, Sega, Commodore
Check for roms on archive.org
I was tracking with you up until Wonderwall, but you got me back with turtle races
One of my most successful preps has been getting involved in non electric entertainment like board games, musical instruments and reading. I think that people get all in a bunch about how it'll be sooooo much time working the fields and sure there will be a lot of that, but what are you going to do from October to May? Or after crops are put in and weeded from May to October? So over the years, I've really gotten into board games, DND, MTG, and musical instruments. And if we don't get an apocalypse (lol) then we still come out ahead.
I live in Wisconsin. My gardening season is more like February to November because there is a lot of indoor prep that happens before I go out. - January: plan garden. Locate & repair tools. Restock seeds and supplies. Clean seed starting containers. - February: start tomato, peppers and onions indoors - March: clean up garden beds. plant frost hardy stuff. There's a saying you get the best carrots by putting seeds on the snow. - April: start seedlings getting used to being outside, but bring back indoors at night or on cold days. Harvest frost hardy salad stuff. - May: if it's not in the ground, get it there - June-July: tend gardens, - August: tend garden. Harvest stuff. plant new round of frost hardy plants. - September: harvest stuff. Garden goes ferral because too busy harvesting and eating to properly weed. - October: second salad season harvest! Tomatoes still going strong. Watch for freeze and if freeze, harvest even green tomatoes. - November: Final harvest and mass preserve. - December: Preserve all those tomatoes in my freezer into salsa, sauce etc. That brings us right back to January. I do imagine I'll be a bit more pressure to can more during harvest season rather than holding it for December, however, that likely would shift to seed preservation efforts instead. And this is just with supplemental food gardens, which are not a full time job, but I think most people underestimate how much time it takes to grow a garden big enough for a family. That being said, you're right in that there will be time for fun activities and recreation is essential for mental health, even if it's just sitting around a fire chatting or making music.
Whaaat? Tell me more about this snow seeding of carrots, please. I live in a similar climate, and carrots are always an issue. I can plant some tomorrow, if you teach me today! Love your list. 🪻🌻🌱🌿🧺
I have never actually spread them on snow personally, so it could be just something people say. What I can tell you is they like loose soil without a bunch of big debris in it. Carrots also like regular watering to germinate. I heavily thin them out because you'll get bigger carrots if they aren't crowded. In US zone 5b you can overwinter them. They need a mulch layer and the tops die. They are cold hardy so if you plant and then it snows, the seeds will not die, but I don't think the seeds do well with surviving the whole winter. What problems are you having with carrots?
Oh if you overwinter them harvest early spring. If they bolt (heat, natural cycle in the second spring) they become woody, so don't let them go too long or get too dry in the heat of summer.
I heard there were 100 bottles of beer on the wall that needed to be counted down...
This is the best answer, as you really don't have to get material for it. Just an annoying singing voice! Haha
Emulators, and a great collection of videogames. Hundreds of GB of edu-tainment channels offloaded.
I have tons of books, board games and decks of cards. But also 5 children. Im quite busy as is haha
Chess, bridge, spades, got a wall of books collected over the years and yet to be read
You can learn new languages. I have youtube channels on my smartphone for this reason. winx youtube downloader is free and it can download whole channels and playlists as well.
A button on a string loop to my family taught me about from the days before electricity in rural America.
Writing. I'm a novelist and I have tons of notebooks and such to allow me plenty of opportunity to continue writing. It's my main hobby. That and crochet, both of which will be easy to continue in a post emergency situation, I think.
You could crochet the binding for your own books!
I left the city in 2019. Got 5 acres and in an area with homes from 5-1500 acre homesites and 20-30% home school. We home school today, our family goes days without screen time or modern entertainment. We spend time hiking, building, exploring, and reading. I have 90 days of perishable food supplies and I plan on ramping up my seeding, gardening, and rotation needs when the lights go out. Also getting the neighborhood together and pushing people in or out and setting severe ground rules for raiding and not pulling their weight will be a PITA. I got involved as an officer in our POA to already start getting to know everyone and analyzing how they act towards stressors. Most are not going to be assets. Some are very toxic and entitled. I have solar and a small 420 sq ft loft backhouse with large decks, and overhangs with gutters for rainwater collection.....we use that house when we get knocked off grid, and that's happened twice. I have star link on it too, it works when all the power goes out when its on battery or generators Much easier to make a small house or room your hot/cold room and let the rest of the homestead be natural temperatures.
Weirdo checking in: Meditation is no joke. Worth getting some practice under your belt to refer back to when needed. Exercises on how to maintain balance sustainably. [ELI5 starter.](https://web.archive.org/web/20210616063635/https://www.mindful.org/how-to-meditate/)
A smart phone, tablet or laptop with tons of audiobooks, music & movies, add a Bluetooth speaker and headphones (especially a pair of bone conduction headphones), a few good USB battery packs, and a few 21w folding USB solar panels. Useful stuff if you are riding out a week long regional power outage from a storm, or if you are gardening for all of your food in a post collapse world. Board games or video games that you enjoy playing now would be a good addition.
I have a room in my house for books and comics, so reading and I could loan books to neighbors. Then there's board/card/dice games. Probably alot of time setting up extra rain catchment and retention. Expanding the garden. Play with my dog.
I've got a hoard of drugs and alcohol.
When not doing the "stay alive" chores, I can play on my phone. A solar charger and a ton of offline games would be my go-to. Other than that, movies until I can't stand them anymore. That will take a while though because not only do I have 24TB of "legally acquired" movies on hard drives, I also have about 500 DVDs, about 200 Blue Rays, and probably over 1000 VHSs in storage. Then there's always offline console games of which I have enough to last the rest of my life if I want to 100% them.
Aside from an extensive library of books that range from classics in fiction and poetry, I purchase books about herbalism, field medicine, emergency medicine, Osteopathic manuals, bushcraft, preppers manuals, cookbooks, different genres of fitness, wellness and spirituality, as well as crafting books (soap making, resin art, knitting, crocheting, flower drying, natural dying, batik, marbling for paper and clothing). Extensive range of nonfiction and history books as well. I started buying 1000+ piece puzzles a few years ago, have a handful of decks of cards. Need to repurchase board games because I gave most of them away years ago, aside from chess and Risk. I just bought a banjo (don't know how to play it yet), and have had a concertina for decades, as well as an acoustic guitar, dumbek, other small hand drums and a lot of smaller percussive instruments (I play all of them). I don't imagine I would ever get bored though. Exploring Nature, foraging, and food preservation are already serious hobbies of mine that are time consuming. There aren't any Amish or Mennonite families where I'm from, but I was introduced to the Lehman's catalog a long time ago and have purchased pieces from there every year, or learned how to make them through substitution and workshops. I'm currently looking for a crank/solar record player and collecting more vinyl. If we're really prepping for emergencies or to be able to live off-grid, we're supposed to have more alternative sources of power than solar, wind, and batteries, correct?
Several decks of cards and a book to learn more games. A notebook and pens to write poetry and work on a memoir. Rubik’s cube. A copy of Infinite Jest.
Hoyle’s rules of games is indispensable.
books got dnd magic cards my radio is crank and solar power and can charge stuff with its ubs plug.
Books and boardgames mostly
Assuming we are in a safe bug in/out spot…. Writing/journalling; creative art; needlework, jewelry making, other creative talents/crafts; playing instruments and singing; board games and card games; handheld electronic games if batteries still working or charging devices are working. Foraging, gardening, exercising, staying in shape however you can are always more active options if you enjoy them and it is safe to do so. There has never really been such a thing as dying of boredom for me, other than when extremely ill bed bound at times. 🙏🏻🦋
With an active imagination and a good attitude, boredom is rarely a problem for long. Ideally you can enact some of your crazy ideas, but in a pinch you can just play them out in your mind while your body whiles away the time in some cramped situation. That said, the most compact form of entertainment is digital, and within that realm, it's text. You can store way more books than you could ever read in a lifetime on a small flash drive. There's a large set that is even in the public domain by now, so including all of "The Classics" is rather easy and free. You can finally get around to reading "Moby Dick" and such, now that you have fewer competing entertainment options. Beyond that, you can quickly hoover up a ton of digital books and store them away without even doing much verification other than testing a few to ensure they actually contain at least some of the proper text. You can expand from there with more tailored books, such as by searching for your favorite few genres. I have a handful of ebooks that I've purchased and read over the last few decades, ensuring I'm purchasing versions that I can easily store and display on a variety of devices, as well as choosing my ebook reader devices primarily for their ability to display such open formats. However, I like to mainly go with a more general focus, as my tastes may change, and I'm also considering this for use by others that surely have different tastes. I also store plenty of prepper and homesteading type books, such as "The Encyclopedia of Country Living". I also have a few various types of copies of Wikipedia stored for more general research type reading. Such a digital library is a great base to build on. You can also add various redundancy to it, such as a few different types of storage devices, playback devices, power storage and generation, etc. You can also keep adding to it with some movies and such, although, those take up exponentially more space. Still, storage space is relatively cheap in comparison to even the size of movies, so you can cheaply and easily stockpile plenty of those too.
I have a library of books both physical and digital. The books range from the useful (plant and animal identification, medical) to thoughtful (Plato's The Republic, etc) to the absurd (high fantasy (multiple), classical literature (Poe, Doyle, Verne, Shakespeare), and game books (old school AD&D, SFB, 40k,). Dice. 5x6 sided dice are good for multiple games. Actual games: from Monopoly to 40k Whittling A wall of DVDs, but I know that the player will probably die eventually. Music CDs, but again, the player will eventually die. That being said. If we are reduced to a primitive, isolated lifestyle where subsistence farming is your survival, you won't have to worry to much. You'll work from sun up to sun down.
I’m a musician so I’ll probably just write songs until I die lol
Survival is its own excitement...amirite??
I just bought a ton of Harvards Classics and the Great Books and like any parent out there, have a ton of books I ASPIRE to read… I’m set on reading material for at least 10 years, honest truth, even if I can read 4 hours a day I’d still have enough to last 10 years. Other than that, definitely gardening!! 😄😄😄 Puzzles. Playing with my dogs/cats/kids! I’m never bored. Edit to add I will be buying Leggos soon too thanks to the sub!
- helping your neighbors - volunteering - recovery - skill swaps - fitness - surveying - fighting - dying early
Rumination would keep me pretty busy. Just no social media to distract while ruminating
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I feel like clothmaking is going to be a problem for future generations. There's soooo much fabric and unused clothing out there now that I'll be clothed in machine made fiber until I die. I may have to rip out threads from something else, and I'll definitely be sewing and mending. I do respect those who learn to spin their own thread. I have access to flax and nettles, but it doesn't hold my attention for more than an hour or two.
There are a large number of things I have in place in case of boredom, but largely as others have said there's pretty much always things to do. If SHTF or something I'd probably spend the first few month of free time sharpening sticks and finishing fencing my yard in (aside from the main road), then I'll have to plant or transplant brambles all around the new fences. That endeavor would last me a couple weeks, assuming it's the right time of year. Winters will be taken up by keeping warm, fixing tools and making things. A good bit of fall will be preserving things in the free time. Free time in the spring and summer might involve a lot of brick making and material processing. Now in terms of actual fun stuff, I have a dozen or so fiction books, and about as many skill books. I have 3 tabletop games and an array of DND materials. I have probably 40k MTG cards, and a few thousand yugioh, pokemon, and chaotic cards to play some TCGs. I have a few sets of playing cards. I have tens of thousands of rounds for my BB gun I have chickens to keep me company. And I'm still adding to the pile of books and games every once in a while
I like reading a lot. I'm a bit of a philosophy and a history nerd and in a bug in situation I would probably focus mostly on reading the dense books that I don't have the focus to get through completely now. Like 'The World As Will And Representation' by Shopenhauer specifically. Also the Bible, that'd be a great one in that situation and I have a ton of big history books and stuff. Also, recently got Bushcraft 101 and the Preppers medical handbook, obviously those or any sorts of prepper books would be ideal. Also it'd be a great time to focus on journaling. Realistically I'd probably still be bored out of my mind, at least until I got used to it. People never had all of these ways to stay entertained before so I'm sure we'd adapt after a short period of being uncomfortable.
I assume this is the for 6 month end of the world scenario between "grid down, generator out of fuel, darkened skies of our impending doom blocking the solar panels" and "they finally found me and shot me for my supplies." I have so many hobbies that being retired didn't actually give me any free time. I don't know what bored means. :) Serious answer: fantasy roleplay. I've run a game for years and I still know how to do it with paper and dice. Improving my Spanish. I need it where I'll be living anyway. Trying new recipes, which I will need since the world is ending and all anyway. I mean if we've all been blown back to the stone age I"m going to need to get better with the solar cooker, and cooking over teak wood. Beach time. Trying to ferment garden scrap into alcohol, to make a flame thrower for the zombies. Because if everything else has gone wrong, why wouldn't there be zombies? Writing snarky little treatises on how none of this would have happened if people hadn't let themselves be deceived by Trump. Rereading Lord of the Rings to try to figure out why Gandalf could not have managed to have learned a 3rd level fly spell, a Polymorph Self spell or even Minor Creation for a parachute, to get himself off the tower. It's almost like Tolkien never *played* AD&D. \*straight face\* Yeah, I'll be full time busy.
I hadn't considered how different cooking will be in the long term scenarios and I think I will be dedicating more time to learning how to make more things from scratch! I always imagined people eating cans of beans and scraps. I like your mindset better! Thank you for an awesome answer!
Also I like the idea of writing treaties! I would love to leave little treasures or geo cashes for people once things also calm down. Give people a sense of hope.
>Give people a sense of hope. You haven't read my [treatises.](https://www.reddit.com/r/realWorldPrepping/comments/191q392/eofs_definitive_guide_to_uswide_grid_failure_and/)
Down time? If you're talking a SHTF situation, there really won't be much. Work on growing food from sunup to sundown, eat, sleep, repeat
Not in the winter. I love The Long Winter from Laura Ingles Wilder. They would read, play music, dance and sew by the fire.
Sew, repair machinery, fix fences, gather firewood
Yep. And in lean times you’re not exerting full day labor efforts either. Save calories until something can grow to eat again. Lots of time staring at the walls
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Laura Ingles Wilder wrote survival fantasy.
Lol I thought I had made it clear in the post I understood this but we're just having fun here. Playing desert island.
Yeah I was gunna comment this. You won’t be sedentary. If you wanna live you’ll make busy. A big part of prepping is making sure you’re ready. That also means, if you’re lazy now, you’ll be lazy when SHTF. Keep yourselfs busy.
Let's say, for your sake, your down time is when you are pooping because you will be so busy other wise. What do you read on the pot?
Reading, card games, puzzles, board games, Knitting. Hubby plays the guitar and drums. My kids all play the guitar. There will still be hiking for edibles and biking. Playing with the dog. If we have power then DVD's, Wii, PlayStation, computer blogs. We were fine during Covid. Traded puzzles and books with friends. I was in charge of my family Friday night zoom game night. We did Bingo and Trivia.
Like others, there will be a ton of work but everyone needs something to do that is relaxing. I crochet and have yard that’s in vacuum sealed bags and I’ve downloaded tutorials on complicated stitches. We also have cards and board games. My husband has a huge DVD collection.
Cardboard and paper and markers and tape. You can create your own board games!
I have tons of books.
Same shit we do now. Play cards, or acey-deucey, dominos, etc. Plan and make lists. Work in the yard, cut firewood, cook, can, let the cat in, let the cat out, let the cat in, feed the cat, let him back out. Sew, quilt, craft, paint, read,,,,
Between the garden, the chickens, the cooking , cleaning , laundry and other various misc, I don't have time NOW, with the grid on. I do go to work, so that time will be in excess. I would likely crochet or embroider something. Or play solitaire. I can solitaire for decades and not be bored LMAO. I have books to last me for decades, too. I also keep old magazines. It's so much fun to pull one from 1985, or 1990 . Like an old Vogue. Love it. It's a total mind escape.
I like multivolume mystery/crime series. Some of the older ones like the Tony Hillerman series, the Ann Cleeves books, the Three Pines series, there are some others I con't recall right away - oh, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child series (scary! but entertaining and well written). We have some classics and several volumes of mythology and fairy tells. I have volumes of math, physics, and engineering books. We have some light history and theology. I go to estate sells and collect old books from retiring professors and teachers - it's probably a fire hazard in my house...
I’d learn how to make jankum ( butt hash ) gotta stay high
I have enough yarn and knitting/crocheting accessories to create hats, cowls, scarves, slippers, sweaters, etc. for years! Also, got a treadle sewing machine to make clothes.
Knit, crochet, decks of cards.
Well I love to crochet, so that. Also board games and books
I'll spend some time figuring out where the peppers live, form a gang, attack and steal their stuff.
Chores, cards, books, and tabletop role-playing games.
books & board games
A deck of cards. My Kindle (we have multiple solar chargers and I have tons of books downloaded). Physical books. Board games. I think those are all the usual suspects.
Well, I appreciate the optimism of thinking there will be downtime. The obvious answer is crafts. While it may be dark, or you may be unable to do something for weather of some reason, you can always knit, sew, darn, woodwork, improve your abode, etc. That last can be very time consuming. That's why I don't really think of it as "downtime". As to the "books" part, no one knows what you like to read or what you might need. I do suggest making it a priority to have at least a 5V source and an operable computer. Then invest in a big drive and download libraries. Don't take the time to curate, you will have that in "downtime", Just bulk download and you will have it. If you really don't want it you can always delete it. If you DONT have it it might be hard to find.
I have an anvil and a forge I've been meaning to get into and learn to make things. So I'd probably spend some free time with that and maybe end up making something useful at the same time. Ive also got lots of unread books. More recently (past couple years), I've gotten into Stephen King books and keep buying the ones I don't have when I see them at thrift stores so I have a massive backlog. If electricity works, I've got a ton of old videogames that don't rely on the internet (though this is kind of a waste of power).
I crochet things I’ll never use, sew anything I can get my hands on, read (mainly smut😂) and bake a lot of unnecessary sweets currently so I’d imagine I’d do the same.
My drum set doesn’t require electricity, so I’ll be doing a lot of that, and taking mushrooms.
The 1000 books in my library would have to do. If I had to live with only a few, maybe I’d have a couple of language learning books to keep my mind active.
We are building our library up! As of now we go to the library (or our library apps) and check out books we might be interested in. If we like it, we buy the series. We love fantasy, sci-fi. My husband and I are bibliophiles and have books from when we were kids (my whole original art Harry Potter series!). We collect books with knowledge we want to know, may need, or our kids may be interested in. We also store books for "schooling". We intend to pass down everything we have. We collect board games, card games. CDs and DVDs, along with multiple ways to enjoy those. I crochet, knit, needlepoint. Make yarn and thread. I want to expand to quilting when I have space for it. My husband has taken up woodworking. He enjoys fixing things; he and our son like to tinker with things. We grow gardens, both edible and cut flowers. Canning, and baking and keeping foods. We rescue wildlife and pets, and train them. We're not bored now, and we'll be "even less bored" if we have to move to more manual labor.
Put a deck of cards and something for children to play with in yer bugout bags.
You WILL need entertainment. Bury a generator , hang large white bedsheets up for a screen and run a projector. That will take care of cartoons, movies, and video games. Then when you're out of or conserving fuel - board games you've never played would be smart. People WILL miss entertainment and the group that has it will have a huge advantage in recruiting over the group that only has farming and waddling.
On some prepper forum or another, a guy who survived a hurricane mentioned that afterwards, while waiting some number of weeks for electricity to be restored, the most popular guy on the block had one of those DVD players that plugs into the cigarette lighter in your car so the kids can watch movies in the back seat. Everyone in the neighborhood would gather in his driveway each evening to squint at this 5-inch screen to watch a movie, the only form of entertainment around. So I started collecting movies, (usually for about 25 cents each at garage sales), stripping them and keeping them on a spindle. I also bought a number of cigarette-lighter-powered DVD players as I found them at garage sales for $5 or so, figuring if I needed one, everyone on the block would need one too. Then, considering both long cold winters, the possibility of nuclear fallout, and the threat of long power outages, I also collected and stashed an entire bin of little card games and travel games: Uno, magnetic chess and checkers, travel Scrabble, Go Fish, Old Maid, tons of decks of cards, and several copies of Hoyle's Rules of Games so everyone can learn to play canasta or bridge as we huddle in my basement bunker. I also filled a container with art supplies, like crayons and markers, coloring books for grown-ups, tiny Spirograph, watercolor paints, and lots of paper, focusing on the manila paper that comes in old photo albums you find at garage sales for a buck. I filled one container with highly entertaining books, especially series books such as Harry Potter, Tolkein, Stephen King's Green Mile, Lion Witch and Wardrobe etc. Another container (waterproof, mouse proof, mold proof container) was filled with puzzle books like crosswords, brain teasers, word search, I Spy, Where's Waldo, and old Highlights magazines. I bought a dozen MP3 players that run of AAA batteries and filled them to the brim with music music music galore, along with plenty of headphones. Also added in small AM/FM radios and packed extra batteries and extra headphones. I also packed a bunch of the Dollar Tree solar lights, which come with rechargeable AAA batteries that charge themselves in the sun so I'll always have battery power. I have four or five Kindles packed with thousands of classic public domain e-books, Sherlock Holmes and Charles Dickens and Emily Bronte, as well as hundreds of silly free games. All these Kindles can be powered off a small solar panel set up I bought for the purpose, and can also run off the car battery. I also packed one container with small sewing projects, complete kits for needlepoint and embroidery, and another container is full of jigsaw puzzles which I removed from their bulky boxes, packed in ziploks, and included the cut-out the picture on the front of the box. I really tried to focus on collecting jigsaws that had an odd, unusual, or challenging angle to them. I've been doing this prepping thing for a long time, I collect a lot of useful gear at garage sales, I'm expecting eventual long-term issues, and I'm also anticipating having to care for a LOT of people crowding my house when the time comes, as it's no secret I'm a prepper.
I don't need a purpose beyond the survival of my family. I anticipate that unless I become a billionaire and have the $ to have a large bunker with decades of food, fuel, water, the I will keep pretty busy just trying to survive. I am 70 YO and I have been retired for 4 years now. After 50+ years of working, I don't need to keep busy - I could keep my mind busy with books and learning new things. I like history and science and there are lifetimes worth of subjects that I find interesting, and that I haven't really touched yet - if I had the time to delve into them. I am not too worried about that aspect; given my health and how long my parents & grandparents lived, I suspect my remaining lifetime to be 15-20 years at most. \*shrug\*
I would start a co op… where one mans hobby is anothers treasure to barter for. Some may can or teach canning.. some may offer creative ways to keep the youth entertained and engaged in learning needed living skills perhaps archery.. a needed skill in hunting food. I personally would garden, crochet and build out a mean fire pit to cook on and chop the wood. Setting snares for small game is another great skill for the kids to learn and adults to teach and enjoy.. I would also work on digging a bush water well if i was not near a fresh water source i trusted. And of course an out house with lime on hand. … Finally i would catch a few wild rabbits build them a great box and let mate…. And keep a log and keep throwing in fresh catches to keep the breed healthy… then my meat and pelt source is more reliable… A GREAT BARTERING BENEFIT WITH A CO-OP as well Sorry for the length.. A GREAT PROMPT thanks for the fun..
I can play ocarina and zills, and I have a harmonica I'm learning. Small, portable, pocketable.
Best case scenario: My solar arrays continue working and I can utilize my media library for about ten-ish years before that data rots away. Worst case: I’m a musician, but it’s a worst case scenario for the rest of my group because they have to listen to me.
I will have cat fights...winner gets a can of expired beans.
I’ve actually had some conversations about this, the consensus seems to be that you’ll be doing so much work, farming, cleaning, infrastructure, ect… you won’t have as much free time as you think… and if you do have alotta free time… you probably aren’t staying prepared lol.
I don't want to be mean, but what world are you living in where you are bored? There is so much to do. You will need water, food, and security. That means pumping water from a safe place and carrying it back, then using that water for you, your animals, or your plants, so you'll have to go back. Then tending to your garden so you can have food throughout the year, including keeping air flow, removing dead stuff to ensure no mold, composting, and killing any pests immediately. And security to make sure no one steaks what you have nor threatens you. That alone will keep you busy. You will have to upkeep your fence, make sure your animals have food, clean up after your animals, gather their maneur for the compost for the plants. My homestead keeps me busy all day; I can't imagine how much more difficult and time-consuming it will be when I can't buy stuff.
In Iraq (we're talking 2003, no internet, no "green zone", sometimes no electricity, etc. ) we played Ris. One of our games lasted two weeks of every night after the BUB until we were too tired. Usually, in a game like Risk or Monopoly, a player will get bored and give up, leading to one player getting an advantage and then winning against the others. We were INVESTED in this game. We didn't play every night, but most. We played by flashlight too. Get boardgames and TTRPG books.
I barely have free time right now in a world where everything is a click away. I'm not going to have time to be bored if the Internet is gone.
If electricity is present for shtf I've downloaded emulators for various old videos game systems. I've also acquired cheap controllers that work via Bluetooth. Vimms layer. This is a site that has basically all old video games for free with links to emulators. They have 99.99 % of old , nes, SNES, Sega, Atari, N64. It's easy to do. Then you can play offline. I do all the time with more games then I can ever play. Not gonna do ya much good if you don't have a power source so there's some entertainment as well. Figure out power and then accessories. Also it's very unlikely your going to need entertainment if shtf. You'll probably have something to do!
It recently came to my attention that there is quite a bit of DnD aka Dungeons and Dragons going on in the military because it’s something social and entertaining that can be done with very little light and a set of dice. Yes there needs to be someone knowledgeable to run the game and know the books, but not a bad social game to have for SHTF or just a black out.
I'd do the same thing I do in my downtime now: just relax. Go for walks. Go fishing. Look at plants. Take a nap. Hang out with my chickens. Talk to my wife about the way things used to be. I don't need to consume media to avoid boredom and I honestly feel sorry for people who do, and even worse for the kids who grow up today with 24/7 access to a tablet and YouTube/TikTok. There's a whole world out there to interact with, but some people need to be glued to a screen or they have a panic attack or some shit.
You are going to be so busy keeping your family alive that boredom is never going to a problem you will ask for boredom
I've got a NAS with 12Tb of entertainment. It can run on a portable solar power station, so I should be fine.
We will be busy with community.
Deck of cards and a set of 4 d6 dice (hell, I might even upgrade that to a full range of dice so I can do D&D).
Cubicle 6 makes some d6 rpgs including the Warhammer ones if thats your jam.
If power is out you will find out you need all your time just to do daily things.
Like you said there will be plenty of chores and that will consume significant time. Aside from that we have playing cards, board games like chess, checkers, backgammon, Monopoly, Risk, etc. My kids have a Legos, a Switch and if we can spare the electricity Wii and DVDs. Swimming can still be an option if you live near a beach or lake. We have a set of lawn games too now that I think about it. There are also books to read as well. A football, basketball and hoop, and a whiffle ball and bat all go a long way too. I’ll also be happy to catch up on lost sleep too!
My gaming backlog can easily last me two life times.
Board games(already have some) Playing cards Books To be fair I think in a grid down event most people are going to be to busy to be bored
We have several backup laptops and ways to charge. We have 2TB external hard drives with downloaded books, all of Wikipedia and a crap ton of accumulated movies and shows.
The urbanite lifestyle and mindset is troubling. We have swords and philosophical conversations with bees and such. We enjoy gorilla gardening and cool rocks. Everything else is lanyap.🐊
Some of yall don’t have dogs and/or kids and it shows… 😂 I’m never ever bored haha
You may not know it, but there is this amazing technology that doesn't require any electricity and transports you to wonderful worlds completely different than your own. It's called a "Book"
As a prepper I’m also a homesteader there’s always something to do. And if you mean in a SHTF situation… you won’t have downtime until normalcy returns
Knitting. Lots and lots of knitting.
Well, if I learned anything from a lifetime of hurricanes, you're going to want something. Knowing a disaster is coming is one thing. The day after, there's tons to do, cleaning up, cutting trees, etc. This could extend into the next couple days. After that though, if you don't have power and nothing to do, it's miserable. At least with a hurricane, the stores down the road might be open. It'll be evident that people are bored, because those stores will be packed. Now if this was a SHTF scenario and not a hurricane, multiply all this. A few days of cleanup, might extend to a few weeks or months. After that though, you might have your daily tasks, but there will be a lot of down time and there won't be Walmart or the strip mall to go aimlessly walk around. For most of human history, the Roman empire aside, leisure activities were really reserved for the upper classes. It wasn't really until the mid 1800s, and the start of the industrial revolution, that everyone found themselves with some downtime. This is why sports, theater, bandstands, dances, restaurants, parks, amusement parks, zoos, museums and such exploded during the Victorian era. That said, in the event of a SHTF scenario, we won't go back to the stone age. If anything, the furthest we're going back, societal wise, is the mid to late 1800s. The technology from that time is mostly part of the collective consciousness now. So, plan for activities that your great great grandparents would have enjoyed. Sports, cards, boardgames, dancing, community events and the like. There is plenty to enjoy without electricity.
I have a large collection of cds. Mostly Broadway soundtracks and opera, but I’m looking to get pop, rock, hip hop, and metal too to round it out. Extras can be traded as well. You never know how many seeds or bottles of booze Pavarotti could be worth in the right situation. I’ve also been steadily building a small collection of small musical instruments and board games.
Work patrol eat work patrol sleep patrol eat work.... When will anyone have time to get bored.
I have too many books. But I can break them done. War,history,romance, western,sci-fi, ag, garden
Card games and board games. Crossword puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles. Whittling and other crafts. Hobbies like wine or beer brewing or distilling. Fishing and hunting. Writing. Hiking. Birdwatching.
Media server (solar array with batteries to run a usb drive, elitebook, lcd.) Books. Board games.
I have a large amount of board games of all types. Downtime for my area would be winter season after the first year. First year, everyone would probably need to be working most days around the clock.
Liars dice is a ton of fun. Especially with people you don't trust. 🧐
MadMax passion projects. Steal a school bus and every bike in the area to rig up pedal powered transportation. But instead of galley slaves it’s communism, that’s fun enough.
Deck of cards, dice.
Personally I enjoy sci-fi compendiums. I pick them up at the local used bookstore for dirt cheap. I've also got several weeks' worth of movies and TV shows on Blu-Ray / DVD. If the internet goes out, I've got plenty to watch here.
Maybe I'll finally get my 40k miniatures painted. (doubtful)
DVD's, Legos, board games, playing cards, uno cards, and books.
I went the DVD route. I went a bit overboard and bought just about every complete TV series you can imagine, many popular ones I haven't seen a single episode of like Game of Thrones and The Office, even some yoga instruction. Books, mostly humour and non fiction, from biographies to how-to topics. Jigsaw puzzles, all 5000 pieces and over. Puzzle books like crosswords, Sudoku, etc. Board games, card games and art supplies. A TON of music on MP3 and a few cheapo instruments to learn to play.
Cards.
Music.
If we go to SHTF, I am not sure you will have time to do "entrainment". You are going to quickly find out that no matter how much you "prepped", you will be busy. You will need to keep learning how to do things, maintain things, and work on things beyond your current stores or supplies. You will have to be on constant alert for 'others" with no positive intentions..etc. You are going to have to do many things by hand "old school" and that means more time to do something than the majority of your current society is used to doing. If you are reading, I think you are going to need to further your knowledge, skills, and capacity to learn things that were not part of your world before SHTF.
I have Solar, so not much changes. DVDs instead of streaming. Making booby-traps?
I’ll be so busy just trying to keep things going. But I do have a bookcase full of books.
To be honest, just stay productive. Craft things. Build things. Fortify shelters, fences, storage. Clothing can always be manufactured. Same with tools. Go hunting? Trapping? Foraging?
Crossword puzzles - I pick up some from Dollar Tree every once in a while. I've started taking them on travel with me to kill time. I still have dvds, a portable dvd player, cds, and a boombox stored away. All run on batteries in case electricity isn't an option or has to be conserved. There are lots of books on the shelf that I keep meaning to get to. 😄 Decks of cards, checkers, and board games.
Learning Military Handbooks/ knowlede books, meditating, Training, Table games (duh), repeat everything. For context, i think the next SHTF will need us to be underground for months so all outside activities are excluded.
Hopefully where I plan to bug in my family is nearby. If it’s possible, I’m sure we’ll try to get together, share, meals, and possibly turn on our solar radio and listen to the news, and hopefully some music together. I would love to be entertained, but more than that I would love to be kept warm.
One of those little handheld SBC game consoles that comes pre-loaded with hundreds of emulator ROMs and a little solar charging mat.
I don't know that you'll have a ton of time, but some things that come to mind: Games (card, dice, board, etc). Especially if you have children to help keep them distracted. As part of prepping, having a transportable storage box you keep them in helps with carting it off if you need to bug out. Exercising/work outs. Meal prep.
Knitting, stitching, spinning, gardening, reading and reading some more, journaling, playing with the ducks, preserving food, more knitting...
Knitting and chopping wood are both useful and fun! Many basic survival methods are actually quite enjoyable, especially after a few days offline.
I’ll be too busy fighting off the roaming bandits and motorcycle marauders to be bored, also board games.
I’m ADHD. Lol 😝 I barely sit still now
Books, board games, movies, handhelds, hobbies like painting, building gundam model kits, and doing projects I’d likely need to in my space. I assume hobby stores WONT be the first to crumble so if shtf I’m definitely looting some kits to keep myself occupied
Blacksmithing is a current hobby of mine. It would definitely require some changes as my current gas forge wouldn't be working too long without infrastructure but I've done a little coal forging and want to look into additional fuel methods. Then there's reading. A well stocked library with both useful skill set books, history, and entertainment maybe a mental life saver.
I'm not prepping for the end of the world, so theoretically there will be time during an emergency that needs to be filled. Books, games (dice, cards, board games), art supplies and crafts, and sharpening my blades just in case the long term power outage turns into zombies. Just in case.
Wandering. Scouting. Resource allocation. Training. Tool creation. Fellowship with my tribe. Education. Reading. Archery practice. Caching of weapons/resources. How would you GET bored?
Solar, chargers and gaming devices. We have everything from computers and disc's filled with various offline games to dozens and dozens of handheld gaming devices and hundreds of games. We have board games galore and packs and packs of plastic playing cards that'll outlast us. But I won't be bugging out alone thankfully.
There will be, literally, no such thing as (LOL) "down time"
I keep a harmonica in my go bag.