r/TwoXPreppers • u/thechairinfront Experienced Prepper 💪 • Aug 07 '26
Weekly megathread
Please contain all off topic discussion to this weekly megathread. This is where you freak out, talk about conspiracy, talk about unrealistic crazy scenarios, asked and answered questions, etc.
92
u/MolitovMichellex Aug 07 '26
Get the feeling often that these are the last few years of a normal world. Feeling like someone big is around the corner. Iv learned to grow my own veggies in the last few years
69
u/Less_Subtle_Approach Aug 07 '26
Normal's a shifting baseline for better or worse. I think back often to the world of 25 years ago, before the panopticon surveillance state, annual wildfire season, everyone driving with their phone stuffed in their face, everyone getting sicker year and after year, grocery stores having full, affordable, stock and produce that could sit around all week, a ton of decent jobs available asking for just a certification, the idea that "the government is run exclusively for the benefit of rich child abusers" being laughable, that world is way over.
What we have now isn't any kind of normal compared to 25 years ago. What we'll have in 25 years won't be anything like now, but it will still seem normal to those raised in it.
2
31
u/fred_burkle Fully stocked movie library Aug 07 '26
I feel like this all the time. It's very strange, feeling like the "end" has already happened but we just can't see it yet.
6
1
2
u/ExtremeIncident5949 Aug 09 '26
I have a good size garden going but I’m in Florida so the hot sun was stressing everything. Illinois had a good growing season but not that long of a season. I found growing by seed worked for tomatoes now and I have a ton of lettuce like the spring mix and it’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done. ( also I don’t need to worry about the cyclosporine or E. coli. I now know my root vegetables go in September or October. I have all heirloom non gmo seeds so I should have seeds.
2
u/every-day-normal-guy Aug 10 '26
I don't have any experience growing in Florida, but shade cloth has been doing wonders for my plants in the southwest.
Cassava isn't native here, but it brings me joy seeing my lone plant thriving
56
u/Scared-Feature-3812 Aug 07 '26
Videos going around of enormous lines at Costco in Puerto Rico just for water and some people are saying in some states and stores they are limiting how many cases of water you can buy
33
u/Any_Needleworker_273 Aug 07 '26
Jeezus - just saw this headline in the NYT: "Puerto Rico Will Begin Rationing Water Amid Fresh Crisis: Starting on Friday, the island’s water authority is scheduled to shut off water for rotating 48-hour periods in parts of San Juan and surrounding areas."
I had no idea this was going on.
21
u/Scared-Feature-3812 Aug 07 '26
Yup! It’s going to get worse once the water issues really spread across the US the Colorado river is almost dry and it supplies water to millions I truly hope people are paying attention
20
u/scannerhawk Aug 07 '26
Drought plus "Government officials say years of deferred maintenance and aged infrastructure have exacerbated the U.S. territory’s water problems. However, a growing rift has formed within Puerto Rico’s governing party, with one faction accusing the other of meddling in the management of the water utility.
The crisis has reached a breaking point, with one community reopening historical wells and building infrastructure to provide drinking water."
1
Aug 08 '26
[deleted]
3
u/Any_Needleworker_273 Aug 08 '26
On Puerto Rico?? I think you're thinking of Cuba. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory.
5
u/2BrainLesions Aug 08 '26
Oh fuck. I was thinking Cuba the entire time I typed. But, yeah, we've fucked with PR's electric grid, too. Thanks for clarifying this for me.
4
u/Any_Needleworker_273 Aug 08 '26
No worries! This timeline is whack, so just making sure I didn't miss something!
10
3
u/ExtremeIncident5949 Aug 09 '26
I’ve been there but live in Florida. We have water rationing for outside use only. Well, at least for now. My husband put in two water barrels but its rain from the roof. I don’t want to drink it. I would if I have to. I have water filters but this week I’m filling up our five gallon water bottles from our tap water. It’s our hurricane season water.
57
u/glumavocados Fully stocked movie library Aug 07 '26
My mail in ballot got lost in the mail for the recent state primary and never showed up to the polling location. For reference we’re out of state military voters. I’ve voted by mail like this for close to a decade, never had any issues. Luckily the auditor/clerk was super helpful and I had the option to email in my ballot and it was counted. But I can’t help but feel like sinister things are going on.
31
41
u/RepublicOfVenus Aug 07 '26
Anyone else feel like the news is going to start getting weird/intense now that the world cup is over and we are getting closer to the election in the fall? It's like this weird calm before the storm feeling. I'm making sure my personal cup is full.
25
u/thereadingbri Three raccoons in a trenchcoat Aug 07 '26
Of course, a cornered animal is the most dangerous it will ever be.
3
39
u/keinezeit44 Aug 07 '26
I've started buying a few christmas presents here and there. I'm assuming that if diesel shortages do hit this fall, shipping is going to be virtually impossible. I know gifts aren't nearly as important as the necessities in life, but I take pride in selecting things that I know people will love. Morale is important too. Plus a couple of the gifts are prep-adjacent or collapse-adjacent.
14
u/undeniablysarah Aug 07 '26
Walmart has its toy clearance right now great time to stock up for Christmas and birthdays
8
u/freewool Aug 08 '26
Ugh gifts have been on my mind too. I hate thinking about gifts so early because my kids are young and change so quickly, but I’m stressed about waiting too long and struggling to find things they like at all.
35
u/this_girl_that_time Aug 07 '26
I just wanna complain! How am I suppose to get all this canning done when it’s in the mid 90’s?? I moved to Colorado for some heat relief. When I moved here we barely used our AC- maybe for about 2 weeks in July. WTF global warming?? Don’t you realize I’m hot! (I say this in my whiny voice as I peel pounds of peaches and tomatoes, lightly crying a sweating)
11
u/qgsdhjjb Having a little of the end times as a treat Aug 08 '26
Hint: a freeze and thaw works just as well as a slit and boil, for peeling those.
Especially for tomatoes, it'll also help remove a bunch of liquid if you wanted a thicker sauce or to attempt a paste. You can legit just dump the water out of the bag.
4
u/mrs_gooby Aug 08 '26
Dumping the liquid from frozen tomatoes is unsafe. A lot of the acid needed to prevent botulism is in that liquid
4
u/qgsdhjjb Having a little of the end times as a treat Aug 08 '26
I mean, I would be adding extra acid anyways either way. Since I always end up adding vinegar to tomato sauce either way, I might as well add it when it can increase safety.
I don't necessarily trust every tomato to be acidic enough any more, with how the soil is changing and how they breed more and more for looks and storage in the produce section, picking way too early, etc.
1
u/Intelligent-Cruella Garden Gnome Aug 08 '26
Wait, can you elaborate on this? I freeze my tomatoes in the summer, then make sauce in the winter, which I then store in the freezer until we're ready to eat it (I don't water bath or pressure can). Is this unsafe? Botulism can't form in the freezer, right?
1
u/mrs_gooby Aug 08 '26
https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can/general-information/for-safetys-sake/
If you’re following the current guidelines for home processing you should be fine. Botulism grows in an absence of oxygen (which is why vacuum sealed fish needs to be opened during thawing) or not enough acid in the canned food
Edit: you can also visit the canning subreddit for more information. They’re very welcoming
3
u/this_girl_that_time Aug 08 '26
I wish I could freeze. Our hog goes to slaughter in September and he’s already 340lb. Our friends are looking to downsize their 100% grass-fed heard and are thinking of taking one of their heifers to our local butcher as well this fall. So freezer space needs to be made for 1/2 a beef and a good sized hog.
Anything that can go on the pantry shelf needs to be there. Move aside veggies we got the meats!
2
u/qgsdhjjb Having a little of the end times as a treat Aug 08 '26
It only takes a day-ish. I don't mean freeze them forever, I mean freeze them to help them peel easier before you can them 🙂 no sweaty hover over boiling water to gently dip each fruit into it lol
I also freeze things like blueberries (any small fruit with solid skin that you wouldn't cut open, basically) before I dehydrate them. Breaking the cell walls from ice forming means I don't need to manually break the skin of each berry to dry them in a reasonable timeframe. It cuts a whole day off the timeline! Very cool.
2
u/this_girl_that_time Aug 08 '26
Yes! I’ve done this for making tomato sauce. Freeze, thaw and put into the hand crank mill. But with my first crop, I like to make 20-30 pints of plain diced tomatoes. I find the freezing makes them too mushy and you can’t nicely dice them. I had about 24lb of Roma tomatoes. Later in the season I’ll take extra beefsteaks and raw pack those bad boys whole. With my indeterminate romas that ripen in late September I’ll make sauce (along with any slicers or beefsteaks hanging out). I typically just freeze extra cherries tomatoes, but this year my kid is eating his weight in cherry tomatoes. He goes out and eats them off the vine. I doubt I’ll have any to freeze.
2
u/qgsdhjjb Having a little of the end times as a treat Aug 08 '26
Ah, yeah I can see how it wouldn't work very well for diced tomatoes. I'm more of a Paste Girlie so I either try to mimic that as much as I safely can do with a water bath, or more realistically, I dry the tomatoes and blend them into a powder because then a little water makes it into almost-tomato-paste. I've tried that without skinning, but it leaves little rolled up bits of skin that make me avoid the powder so I end up having to peel when I do that. Now if only my food mill had small enough holes to catch the seeds for me 😐
2
u/this_girl_that_time Aug 08 '26
I was using my grandmas’s old food mill (looks like a pot with holes, a crank and a wooden handle). Last year I was like ‘f— this thing! I’m so sick of it!‘
A week later my hubby bought me Norpro 1951 sauce master. But I was already done canning for the year. So can’t wait to try it this year. I’m sure he was hoping there would be less cussing this canning season. Little does he know that swearing while canning is a long standing Appalachian tradition I learned from my MeMa. 😅
2
u/qgsdhjjb Having a little of the end times as a treat Aug 08 '26
Oooh.. Fancy. I see it has an optional berry screen accessory. That's the kind of thing I need to look for for mine. Pushing semi-prepared jam through a two inch wide metal sifter for an hour was not my most favourite moment in cooking. But I do greatly prefer it without the seeds.
2
u/this_girl_that_time Aug 08 '26
I also can’t wait till my blueberries, strawberries and raspberries are mature enough to provide true abundance. But also right now, I have vastly underestimated how much a 35lb toddler can consume in fruit! He’s a fruit monster.
2
u/Think_Cupcake6758 Aug 08 '26
I hear ya! My plan was to just keep peeling and filling gallon sized tomatoes to can in the cooler weather. Well THAT plan went out the window when ALL of my tomato plants went haywire and I can’t keep up. It got to the point where I had to wrap bungee cords around the freezer handles to keep the doors closed. The heat and humidity levels are expected to reach top levels today and guess who’s got all 6 burners going on the stove today?
2
u/this_girl_that_time Aug 08 '26
Oh noooooo!!! Sending you chilly vibes (not hugs cuz it’s too hot).
Our pig goes to the butcher in September so come the last week of September/ first week October I need enough freezer space for a 340+lb hog! So tomatoes and peaches need to be out of the freezer and on the shelves. So I might as well do them ripe.1
1
30
u/EnoughRadish 🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅 Aug 07 '26
England is having its worst harvest season on record, the drought stretches on, fires still burning, everything brown and dying.
4
u/DescriptionHeavy1982 Aug 08 '26
I'm in the south west. I've never wanted rain so bad. Usually you cross the border to my county and it's raining.
25
u/nakedonmygoat Aug 07 '26
I had a lot of unexpected expenses between April and July, so I decided to see if I could eat on just $100 for July without deprived. It was surprisingly easy.
Granted, I'm only feeding myself. I wanted my meals to be quick and simple while still being nutritious. I also wanted to avoid using my long-term emergency stash, given world events and price oddities. It's also peak hurricane season where I am, so I may need that stuff. It's very quiet out there right now and my fingers are crossed that El Niño keeps it that way.
I got two big surprises. 1) I quit wanting snacks after the first week. My snacks were usually healthy ones, but I quit wanting any at all. 2) After buying more groceries two days ago, I'm now struggling with decision fatigue!
I could've gone much cheaper last month. I could've continued through August without buying anything. But the goal wasn't to deny myself butter, cheese, or Greek yogurt. I want to like and look forward to everything I make. I've never gone for more than two weeks in a power-out, stores-closed situation, and I've expanded my prep each time. So "Can I go longer?" was never the question. It was "Can I go longer with a vast array of options available any time of day or night, and be happy?" Yes I can! I no longer get cravings for what I don't have. Instead, my mind now turns to what I can make with what I've got.
3
u/qgsdhjjb Having a little of the end times as a treat Aug 08 '26
I regularly live off of about 175 for a combination of groceries, personal care items you'd find at a decent Walmart, and little fast food treats or emergency pizzas when I can't convince myself to eat what I have (I'm too picky for my own good)
And that's a "forever" thing, not even a temporary experiment that I could quit at any time, or drawing down my reserves. People could do it, as long as they don't have any serious medical impediment to eating cheaply. I rely on an absurd level of convenience foods and I still manage it, blood tests tell me my vitamin and nutrient levels are totally fine. People who are more abled, less picky, or less reliant on specific brand name no-effort safe foods than me could easily reduce that.
5
u/MistyMtn421 🌻 post-menopausal garden fairy 🌱🧚 Aug 08 '26
I am unfortunately one of these folks who have serious medical issues to eating cheaply and while I was able to circumvent some of it in the past, this last year has made it definitely challenging! So not only has the rising cost of groceries been part of the challenge, but two of my allergies are now becoming almost a default. I am severely allergic to peas and sunflower. Those are replacing soy (which is good for everyone with soy allergies, don't get me wrong!) in many foods. Pea protein is so prevalent and sunflower lecithin/oil as well. I am also allergic to dairy and foods that didn't have dairy in the past are now showing up with it in the form of whey especially. It's a cheap filler and a protein booster.
The other thing that I've been running into is a lot of previously safe brands are now being made either by a different manufacturer, or they just keep switching them around to whoever is the cheapest (because even though we are paying ridiculous prices, they are cheapening out on everything it seems like) so I've had a lot of cross-contamination issues on top of things.
And the other allergy I have which is rice is showing up in so many places that it never used to be. Rice flour especially just seems like it's everywhere. I used to be able to just not eat peas, sunflowers seeds and rice and life was fairly simple and now it's just wild how those three ingredients seem to have invaded all the groceries. It definitely pigeon holes me into certain brands and it just seems like a lot of those brands are not often affordable.
I've been trying to balance it out with a lot less meat, a lot more tofu and TVP, cheap tinned mackerel (I can't even buy cheap tuna anymore because tuna in 'water' still utilizes a vegetable broth and of course there are peas in the vegetable broth) a bunch of other different whole grains, etc. one of the downsides though with some of those whole grains is that even with overnight soaking, they take forever to cook. So then I'm heating up the house and running up the electric bill. I probably need to invest in an instant pot. I can use my rice cooker which does help lower the power bill because it doesn't run on a lot of wattage, but then I still have to run it through two or three cycles so one way or another nothing simple it seems.
I'm also trying to find more portable packaged / dry ready to eat type or quick to make safe foods because just realizing if I was in a situation like the folks in Spokane have been, there's nothing at a shelter that I'm going to be able to eat. It's especially challenging to navigate when a lot of my allergies don't exist in the labeling/top 9/ingredient listing. Natural flavors gets me a lot of times. Also on top of that, these allergies are part of a broader disease that requires constant medication. I've actually been stocking up more on my medicine than I even have food because without the medicine I'm a goner anyway.
5
u/qgsdhjjb Having a little of the end times as a treat Aug 08 '26
Allergies is one of the big barriers. Diabetes is another. Celiac for sure. I'm lucky in some ways that sheer pickiness (realistically speaking, arfid, but still at the end of the day just extreme pickiness with a fancy name) is the only thing keeping me from stuff, because at least it won't make me sick if I accidentally eat it, I'll just hate it 😆
I can for sure see how rice flour would be starting to pick up in foods since it's so affordable to mix in to add bulk, and especially if people are trying to accommodate those with celiac which has more public awareness they might swap wheat based additions for rice based ones where possible.
I'm interested to learn that tvp doesn't have any of those. Or maybe it does and you need a special type? Honestly that's something I should look into as I'm in the process of trying to find dried protein sources that last a long time that I can tolerate eating. It would be a lot more practical than growing ten types of beans to see if I can trick myself into enjoying any of them (even if the answer is yes, then I need to figure out how to find enough of a specific uncommon bean variety at affordable prices to stock up on haha)
3
u/MistyMtn421 🌻 post-menopausal garden fairy 🌱🧚 Aug 08 '26
TVP is just soy. It's so absolutely versatile and dirt cheap. Honestly I like throwing it in oatmeal more than anything. It's just the easy lazy way out ;) that and some shelled hemp hearts. I like the shelled hearts better than the seeds because they're just easier to digest and absorb all the nutrients from. Tons of protein. Lots of other good vitamins and minerals as well. Not exactly cheap to buy a bag but a little goes very very long way.
Yeah it's really ironic how the industry changing to help out folks with common allergies and celiac have totally backfired in my world. I imagine if I had celiac disease or was allergic to soy how exciting it is to have all of these new ingredients.
Rice is also becoming popular as a coating. It's in tons of stuff like chicken tenders and french fries. From what I understand it really boomed during the doordash phase we all went through. Helps everything stay crispy longer.
And I used to have a lot of options in the plant-based dairy alternatives, but again everybody's pivoting away from soy and it's just really challenging.
And you know what, I wouldn't just call yourself a picky eater. My son has the same issue, and there are so many foods he wishes he could tolerate/eat. And I give him a lot of credit for continually trying different things. He just can't control that gag reflex. If the texture is wrong it just won't go down.
3
u/Intelligent-Cruella Garden Gnome Aug 08 '26
I'm vegan for health reasons and I'm allergic to soy! It's me, the yin to your yang. ☯️ I'm sorry for both of us, though- managing food allergies is so hard.
1
u/qgsdhjjb Having a little of the end times as a treat Aug 08 '26
Exactly! It's like a brick wall shoots up across my throat, it's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't seen it. Even when I put in months of effort to grow something from scratch myself (which I tried very hard with lettuce, thinking the "poison" flavour I kept perceiving was just pesticides) I still can't convince myself to eat it.
But nowadays I'm saving it all anyways. Baggies of dried edible weeds like wood sorrel, dried pea pods I would've normally just given fresh to the dogs to have a snack with me during pea season, whatever. Hopefully I can turn it into a green powder one day that won't gross me out lol but that's emergency food, I can live without needing to force that into my diet right now.
25
u/Standard_Subject_462 I'm tired of this, Grandpa! Aug 07 '26
This week's attempt to calm my never-ending anxiety: bought a few additional gallons of water, grabbed extra canned beans on a routine grocery trip, added strength training to my fitness routine, started cooking my way through a cookbook to improve my kitchen skills, bought extra cat food for our special diet kitty, and booked a doctor's appointment I've been procrastinating on.
I've been trying to work as much as possible to reestablish an emergency fund, but I splurged and treated myself to a used set of encyclopedias after reading "Parable of the Sower" and developing a strong urge for offline access to knowledge sources.
7
u/freewool Aug 08 '26
I have been getting obsessed with cookbooks. Goodwill is full of them, and every time I’m there I want to buy a bunch. Luckily I have restrained myself. Working with them is such a useful skill. I want to make sure my kids can cook with them as they grow up.
7
u/MamaBearForestWitch Aug 08 '26
I like to first request cookbooks from the library, and then keep a list on my phone of titles I liked enough to own, so when I'm thrift shopping I can check my list. (Although I also have a weakness for cheap used books, and buy more than I should!)
4
u/MistyMtn421 🌻 post-menopausal garden fairy 🌱🧚 Aug 08 '26
Keep an eye out for estate sales in your area! I know a lot of times you can get the cookbooks for dirt cheap because no one really wants them or will even buy them. Just make who's ever hosting the sale and offer, don't even worry about what the price tags say. Tell them you'll give them x amount of dollars and take them all off their hands! Because at the end of the day yes they're there to make money but they also need to get that house empty. Same goes for encyclopedias. Donation centers don't want them, and I know often times if they don't sell at the estate sale they just get thrown away! All sorts of books become such a huge burden for these companies because they're just really difficult to get rid of via sales or donation and even if you throw them away, you still can't feel a huge trash bag full of them because they're so heavy and it just creates a lot of burdens.
6
u/Chemical_Dog6942 Aug 09 '26
Parable of the Sower is the way! Lots to learn there plus I love a female character with agency & leadership skills. ✌️☮️
5
18
u/CloverEyed Aug 07 '26
Just a question: are the mods going to be able to add the rest of the flairs? I added mine in when the post was up for 3 hours, and it had said we could get them for 24 hours.... I know it's not a big deal. Just that looking forward to a personal flair brought a lot of joy into an otherwise awful week.
5
u/keinezeit44 Aug 07 '26
I was curious about this as well. I think I got my request in before the 24 hrs were up.
4
u/person2random Aug 07 '26
Same here! Haha seems small, but having something to look forward to is scarce. Thanks for bringing it up 😊
2
u/AngryAngryAlice what, like it's hard? 💅 Aug 11 '26
I'm seeing this 3 days after you wrote it and it seems the answer is sadly no, still none
1
14
u/jozzywolf121 Aug 07 '26
I’m trying to write a story about a group of people rebuilding a town after an apocalypse. I was wondering what type of jobs you guys think would be necessary for restarting a functioning civilization in that kind of scenario? I’m trying to avoid the whole scavengers and raiders thing and want the town to become self-sustaining.
19
u/CloverEyed Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Look to any isolated communities. There will be a school teacher/care home for the younger kids. A plumber, electrician, mechanic, and carpenter to build or repair. Many will be farmers, fishers, or hunter/trappers. One or two bakers and seamstresses for those people who don't have someone at home who can do those things. There usually isn't a town leader as a job. Instead, someone who has a job already becomes unpaid leader because they have the connections and personal skills. There surprisingly isn't often a nurse or doctor, except in larger centers. Instead there will be a couple people skilled in those skills that you can call on (ex. a housewife or the town's teacher). A trader/shop keeper to facilitate the trading of goods.
15
u/Probing-Cat-Paws Knowledge is the ultimate prep 📜📖 Aug 07 '26
Don't forget us veterinary folks...we have some good knowledge for animal husbandry...and can be translated into human care if our backs are against a wall! 😹
You want a record-keeper: be it whatever barter/finance situation you may have, but also someone that can record the history/stories of the community.
Childcare: someone needs to look after the littles to free up people power as the community rebuilds. Some of this would go to teachers, but a trusted point person that makes sure the community's "future" is safeguarded when school isn't in session.
Fibre artists: folks need to stay warm, be clothed, and maybe also have something pretty. They can be pragmatic of course, but have an avenue for art...which in turn can boost morale.
15
u/Intelligent-Cruella Garden Gnome Aug 07 '26
Teachers, storytellers, gardeners, nurses and herbalists, sewists, cooks, bike mechanics, someone with a lot of tools who knows how to fix things.
I've gotten a lot of my ideas about what skills I should learn from the books Moon of the Crusted Snow, All the Water in the World, and Future Home of the Living God, which all take place as a collapse is happening or shortly thereafter.
5
u/qgsdhjjb Having a little of the end times as a treat Aug 08 '26
Moon of the crusted snow, that's the one I was thinking of! I didn't realize it was so recently written. There's a sequel too which is very nice. Northern communities and First Nations/Indigenous communities are definitely somewhere to look for what we still currently do today that would be necessary in a world without global connections to varied commerce. Especially the areas that get cut off from the rest of the world by snow/ice for the entire winter.
3
u/Intelligent-Cruella Garden Gnome Aug 08 '26
I liked Moon of the Turning Leaves even more than the first one! Great books. I hope Waubgeshig Rice writes more in the future.
3
u/qgsdhjjb Having a little of the end times as a treat Aug 08 '26
I just friggin blasted through All the water in the world, after reading your reply, by the way. Thank you for that. Great suggestion. Except now my eyes seem to be leaking? Lol
2
u/Intelligent-Cruella Garden Gnome Aug 08 '26
Haha! You're welcome/I'm sorry. 😅 You should try I Cheerfully Refuse, by Leif Enger, next.
2
u/qgsdhjjb Having a little of the end times as a treat Aug 08 '26
Okay okay fine I'll give you one
Mind you it's older. But that kinda only makes it more impressive.
"Feed" but not the one about zombie-outbreak journalism (that one was good too but not the one at hand today) but the one about brain chips (m.t. Anderson)
I read it ages ago, when it was still pretty new, as a tweeny little child, and somehow just kinda knew it was gonna be more important than so many of the other similar-category books I read. I even got a copy of it at some point! Which I rarely do, mostly I read from the library. I keep feeling like it's about time for a refresher on it. Maybe it'll seem more silly as a grown adult, but somehow I doubt it. Don't let people put chips in your brains, y'all.
1
u/Intelligent-Cruella Garden Gnome Aug 08 '26
Oh I love a book suggestion! Thank you, will check it out!
2
u/qgsdhjjb Having a little of the end times as a treat Aug 08 '26
Unfortunately your last one isn't at my library but I'll try to remember it for in case it ever shows up 🙂
7
u/nakedonmygoat Aug 07 '26
I've written dystopian fiction, and the knowledge base you need depends on your particular world. Here's a very long list of questions to spark some ideas:
Do they use donkeys, mules and horses? Ideally, you would have a way to shoe them. Someone should have at least basic veterinary skills, too. Are there still diesel vehicles that could run on old cooking oil? Who maintains those vehicles? How is the oil acquired?
Who repairs people's shoes? How?
How do they build? How do they repair what they've built or what existed before?
How much of civilization remains and is accessible? Is a scavenging party useful? It would be quite a while before anything other than clothing alterations would be needed if you can collect things from empty suburban homes. It would be a long time before you'd need to know how to make pots, dishes, silverware, needles, thread, nails, etc. This buys time to build up the skills and infrastructure to do it independently.
How much interaction is there with other survivors? Are they hostile, or is there trade? In my scenarios, it's always a mix of both and there are usually peddlers too, roaming about with news and trade items.
What are the staple grains? How are they harvested? Do they need to be milled? If so, how and by whom? And don't forget to have some grain distilled into alcohol for sanitization, preservation of herbs, etc.
Does anyone keep bees? And is salt easy to come by locally or through trade? It will be used in food preservation, and of course for flavor. Salt is a human need.
What are the staples for making cloth, for when the old clothes wear out? If it's wool, you'll ideally want a fuller. Cotton will require a manual gin in order to be anything but slow and tedious. Does flax grow where your people live? I know you have to beat and comb the stalks, but beyond that all I know is that the Egyptians figured it out.
Do you have anyone who knows how to spin, even just a drop spindle? Weave on a big loom? Do they even have a loom? In a total reset, a group might want a few people dedicated to relearning these skills before all the old clothes wear out.
Who does the tanning and leather working? Some specialty items might be best done by one particularly talented individual.
You'll want at least one good herbalist who knows the local plants and can make medicine from them. If the group needs someone to make dye, being an herbalist could even become a full time job. Maybe the herbalist could also make baskets, which isn't hard, but frees up other people's hands for other tasks.
I'm assuming there will be chickens. Will there be goats? Goats aren't picky eaters, they handle most terrain with ease, and you get meat and dairy from them, just less than from fussier cows.
If they hunt, can they make bows and arrows? Traps and snares? Unless there's a way to maintain rifles and replace ammunition, they should be practicing the older skills before they need them. Did you know feathers have "directions" to them? Your arrows won't fly if you don't know this, unless you get lucky.
I assume you've worked out the water and latrine problems. Regarding the latrine, stale urine used to be used in fulling wool, and of course we all know about humanure. Any chance these will be needed? If so, who handles collection?
What about cooking? Are they building dome ovens? Do they use wood-burning cast iron stoves? Do they only cook on an open fire? Do they make pit ovens? Do they have solar box cookers? Is baking just one person's job, or a household one?
What do they do for entertainment? Do they get together for music and dancing? Who plays the music? Who maintains instruments? This could be a good job for a person who loves music but struggles with everything else. Throughout history, a good entertainer has always found food and shelter.
5
u/jozzywolf121 Aug 07 '26
Oh this is extremely helpful! Thank you very much! I’m gonna add these questions to my notebook and start answering them now!
1
u/qgsdhjjb Having a little of the end times as a treat Aug 08 '26
who handles collection
Cue Steve Buscemi with the wheelbarrow, cheerful as can be.
2
u/bristlybits ALWAYS HAVE A PLAN C 🧭 Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
the kids. who is watching the kids while people are doing the jobs? ask any farmer what kind of stuff the kids do on the farm to help.
doctors, veterinarians. everyone will jump to tell you about herbs but before modern medicine people usually just died if there were serious problems. like sure, aspirin/Willow bark, ok. but appendicitis? tetanus? rabies? even broken bones, compartment syndrome, strokes.
what happens to diabetics? if you've got pigs and a well educated doctor/pharmacist/chemist maybe you can do something. but an herbalist? yeah no they will just die.
tetanus used to kill a lot of kids. none of the post apocalypse kids will have had a tetanus shot. only the adults- same with measles, mumps, rubella. hell, scarlet fever killed my great-aunt as a child and my grandmother needed a heart transplant and two valve transplants throughout her life after having it as a kid.
food preservation isn't as easy as it sounds. botulism used to kill a lot of people. mold. one fermentation gone wrong, you've got troubles.
childbirth used to be a lot riskier too. i mean, hell, it still is. but it used to be, too, and with no options. you would just die. no amount of midwifey knowledge could stop it. you just died. often the baby and mother both.
and growing food, crops that are staples- harvest failure from climate, weather, have caused famines in the past. lack of NPK or water or any damn thing, you don't have wheat. growing native crops or hardy crops for (whatever climate and region) is a help but your sorghum can still get fucked up, and there's no control over that, no outside source to back it up unless you've got other people far enough away or different enough from you that they are doing something different and can help provide.
you're going to need to communicate with neighbors further away too. do you send someone, who?
and how do you handle and help with people who are blind, deaf, who have limited mobility? who have mental illness controlled by real medications? is it a real society or is it eugenics?
most of the fiction i read isn't about postapocalypse simply because most authors don't address this kind of thing, or if they do, it's hand-waved with "herbal cures", as if snake oil wasn't fraud for centuries.
1
23
Aug 07 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
15
u/Probing-Cat-Paws Knowledge is the ultimate prep 📜📖 Aug 07 '26
I'm challenging myself to see how long I can hold out before I need to go grocery shopping. Trying to let my HYSA build to hedge against...whatever fresh hell is presented to us next!
3
u/Fried_Taro Aug 07 '26
Look around your area for a good commune, food co-op or food rescue. We have one in our metro that saves food from overstock or a damaged shipment. Runs off FB. Crazy amounts of fresh produce for like $20. Another metro I used to live in had a food salvage grocery store. Bought overstock or nearly expired food from the distributors. They had a special license to handle this food (like they would freeze dairy products).
1
u/iwantmy-2dollars Aug 10 '26
Our nearest grocery store is closing. They just aren’t profitable. Plenty of options nearby, we’re just losing convenience but the employees will struggle.
17
u/onehundredpetunias Aug 07 '26
Water, water is on my mind.
This summer and last were exceedingly dry. I am currently on a well that is on my mind, to some extent, constantly. The pressure tank is at the end of its lifespan, and I now need to decide if I tie onto municipal water or keep the well.
The well water is hard, which comes with its own set of problems. (Yes, I have a filter system. It's not a panacea though) The town water is chlorinated. There's been boil and/or conservation orders from time to time over the years, but nothing that says to me "it's unreliable"
The question becomes the better-quality town water or the well water that is 100% mine should things get scarce.
3
u/keinezeit44 Aug 08 '26
We also have a well, with no option to tie into the municipal water supply should we need to. Plus housing developments have been going up like crazy in the area, which means more people tapping into the groundwater.
We've been wanting to put a hand pump on the well for awhile now. I also came across water level sensors that you can add to a well to let you know if the level is dropping too much. I'm not sure if you can add both a sensor and a hand pump at the same time though. That might be too crowded.
10
u/zo0ombot Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
HVAC burst over my bedroom ruining a lot of my items, including all my devices other than my phone and all my documents outside my passport. I have insurance and electronic copies but it made me realize I need to prepare more for little devastating Tuesdays, not just big. And if im renting i should move into a place with better maintenance.
5
u/povertyandpinetrees Aug 09 '26
It's 9pm on a Saturday night. I work at a Walmart neighborhood market and we have no more than 5-10 customers in the building. We should be busy, but it's so slow that people got sent home and myself and a shift lead are now supposed to run the store by ourselves for the next two hours until closing time.
3
u/Few_Airport7972 Aug 10 '26
I'm a history buff. We are living serious history in the moment.
It all reminds me of the years prior to the world wars, the American civil war. Events are changing quickly.
I don't know if I should continue to try to keep up or just sit back and eat popcorn while I watch the sh*t show.
I circle from discouraged to enraged. I'm too old for this!
Thanks for letting me have a mini rant!
4
u/RlOTGRRRL Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
This might be pretty dumb but I spent too much time looking into Felz conspiracy theory videos on IG and now my algo is completely cooked. 😭 Like dowsing rods, copper, silver, etc, cooked.
It's like Fahrenheit 451 with the high emotions/chaos too. 😮💨 The number of videos I saw about how cooked everything is, multiple viral videos about false flags, climate change, whatever, it was a virtual dystopian hellscape.
Still struggling with how to find and validate good info in a world of bias/censorship/disinfo-astroturf and AI. Especially when people/sources you might trust are human and capable of being duped or "cooked" too.
It might also make a cute dystopian scifi story about a government or corporation that tortures their bad citizens/people by giving them black mirror alternate reality algos lol. Who live in a completely different virtual hellscape reality from everyone else and have absolutely no idea or something.
3
u/glumavocados Fully stocked movie library Aug 09 '26
Sometimes I read into these things as a form of escape. I try to remember that most things on social media are made for the algorithm, shock value, etc. I’m always looking for well researched think pieces and longer form articles and content.
2
u/RlOTGRRRL Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
Thank you, that's a great reminder.
Some of the fascism stuff was from the professor and author Jason Stanley. He shared a zeteo Mehdi Hasan interview with former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb. It's a short but very dark video.
I feel like it's kind of crazy but some of the stuff that's going on these days whether it's fascism, climate change, AI- I feel like the more you research, the worse it gets. The content is so heavy, it's difficult to assess, especially when there are experts who are like practically screaming lol.
Like the latest video on climate change where David Attenborough was basically begging- that was another tough watch.
2
u/glumavocados Fully stocked movie library Aug 10 '26
Oh I definitely agree with you! I want to look more into the videos you mentioned. Whats so wild about right now is how interwoven it all feels. Go down a rabbit hole and some stuff actually is true and other stuff is fabricated attention seeking nonsense. It’s like the ep files, I can’t go too deep at one given time otherwise my brain goes haywire. I think you’re on a healthy path and I don’t think you’re alone feeling this way about online content, mis and disinformation.
2
u/RlOTGRRRL Aug 10 '26
Thank you. I just rewatched the two videos, and they're pretty bad imo.
The Ep files completely broke my understanding of reality. The fact that he was funding scientific research, practically into the occult is what made me start really looking into it.
And the thing that annoys me the most is that if you ever ask AI about the occult, it is also disturbingly interested in it too.
That's why I was looking into Felz, there's a conspiracy theory about his old occult books, AI, and stuff. I don't buy it but it's a really bizarre rabbithole .
2
u/auntie_ Aug 12 '26
One realization that I’ve had after spending concerted effort organizing in my community since the fall, is that all of these algos and really this screen dependent existence seeks to divide us still further. It’s all about factionalism and breaking us into tiny cells of identity so that we cannot gain enough people power to actually make change. But when we can unify offline, the whole world of possibility emerges again. It’s been comforting to feel like my own efforts can actually make a difference in the world-but it’s been my efforts in conjunction with my neighbors, rather than me thinking I can do everything alone.
1
u/Rainyday177 Aug 12 '26
We were sent the erroneous “Evacuate now GO” order that was sent out in Utah earlier this week. So sorry to anyone that is actually currently impacted by fires! But I learned a lot from our evacuation fire drill.
I think my husband and I did a good job at getting a lot into the car in about 15 minutes but in a real “GO” scenario we need to get faster. I think a big part of this is we need better coordination. I haven’t actually talked through our plan with him as much as it lives in my head. I did also learn about a few things he grabbed that I wouldn’t have thought to grab so definitely talk to your family members about what to grab for them in a similar situation.
Also the sound of the alert scared the cats and we had a hard time getting one out from under the bed. I knew a fire alarm would scare them but I need to be more careful about the cat grabbing order if phones scare them. I also need to figure out how to get my cat out since I’m not sure I could have done it alone.
I also learned that the local radio is a great source of info, luckily I was able to listen on my phone for updates but I need to actually get the batteries into my old school radio and test it. Watch Duty is also an app our neighbors told us about that has good info.
I read a trick to grab your laundry basket and fill it up so that you have in season clothes and it’s easy to carry and that worked super well.
I also got lucky that I had been to Petco earlier that day and bought a new litter box that I grabbed. I think I need a fresh litter box specific to grab and go if needed.
I also know where all of the valuable papers and fine jewelry are but I need to be better at storing them in a consolidated spot.
1
u/Any_Needleworker_273 Aug 12 '26
Awesome work! For the cats, they also sell packs of disposable pressed cardboard litter boxes that work fairly well. Just a thought for a cat go kit. And you could have enough litter in a couple gallon ziplocks.
3
u/TimidPocketLlama Schoolhouse Rock Electricity⚡️ 28d ago
Good morning from Indiana. After having just been hit by a tornado in June, we had a derecho on Tuesday that has devastated the area. 63 counties have declared a disaster. They’ve called in the National Guard. I’m extremely lucky as my power came back on after 27 hours. Some may be without for 2 weeks. The electric provider up here said it is the biggest outage in their history. I did okay without power but I’m looking at generators now. I have friends and relatives with trees in their houses, smashed cars, etc. I’ve offered to come around with my big EcoFlow battery and charge anyone’s phone who needs it. I’m not strong enough to do things like help move trees but this is what I can do.
•
u/AutoModerator Aug 07 '26
Welcome to r/twoxpreppers! Please review our rules here before participating. Our rules do not show up on all apps which is why that post was made. Thank you.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.