Yeah FEMA recommends having a go bag (bug out bag probably sounds too "I'm running from the government" for them) and stuff like that but I only remember hearing ads from them on like AM radio.
I will say even though the people on Doomsday Preppers are often pretty out there, the show sometimes makes them seem more crazy than they are. I don't remember the exact details but I remember one person had said off the show somewhere that they were just preparing for a hurricane but the show had them say it was for a nuclear attack from North Korea or something like that. I love how they're usually like "look at my secret stash of supplies" hidden in the walls or in a secret bunker in the garage or whatever except they're on NATIONAL TELEVISION. All your neighbors have seen your hiding spots by now.
I have the benefit of both a very large garage and utility room, so I've got them decked out with metal racks and tend to shop in bulk, so I'm sort of set by default to be able to survive in place if we had to hole up in the house.
As for a backpack/go bag, I definitely don't have anything that would work for wilderness survival, but once I started driving 60 min each way to work, I decided I should purchase a nice backpack and fill one of the pouches with some basic stuff. Emergency snacks, toiletries, flashlight, good multitool, etc. I did something similar for my wife, who has a gym bag filled with a change of clothes and 1 day's emergency supplies that she can keep in her office in Manhattan.
The backpack contents have helped me out on more than one non-emergency occasion, and my wife has crashed in the city w/ friends multiple times on short notice, and didn't have to think twice b/c she had an emergency overnight bag.
Prepping as a weird survivalist cult yeah, not in other cultures, but being prepared for natural or man made disasters, that's common in many cultures.
In fact it's in Norway that the 'Doomsday' seed vault is located. Completely funded by the Norwegian Government.
Being prepared for events is prudent and like home owners insurance. You hope you never need it, but it's better than being unprepared. I think you can guarantee that people of a certain generation in every part of the former Yugoslavia have a small stockpile of food and water hidden away.
It may not be common for people who live in dense urban areas of their country, but it's just everyday life in parts of the world where the power can get knocked out and stay out for weeks at at time due to harsh weather.
Agreed, but the question was 'Anyone else not even thought about any of this stuff ever?'
I think lots of people think about parts of preparedness.
Prepper is a dirty word, it conjures up images of anti-government wack jobs stockpiling MRE's charcoal pills and bullets and guns, but there are tons of people who take small or big steps to be prepared for an emergency.
Being prepared is just good common sense.
Not thinking about any of it ever doesn't make you a bad person, but it's a privilege of living in an urban area where you have access to basic needs instantly. That could change in a moment based on the right circumstances (hurricane, Paris ATM guard strike and no cash, snow storms, earthquake... etc etc).
Heh.. Yeah, as I was saying on the show (or trying to say around Scott), we kept a lot more immediate-need supplies around when we lived further away from services. Medical supplies mostly.
Ironically, the crazy survivalist people move AWAY from cities to avoid disaster. When you live in the city, you need less emergency rations and equipment. Let's just all move into arcologies already. Let the robots do the farming. Stop living in the sticks.
Then one day the robots stop working and no one can fix them immediately...
They just have to work long enough for us to upload our brains into cyberspace or otherwise elevate our consciousness into immortal beings of pure energy who do not need digestive systems.
Heh.. Yeah, as I was saying on the show (or trying to say around Scott), we kept a lot more immediate-need supplies around when we lived further away from services. Medical supplies mostly.
This, I think, is the crux of it. The US is very spread out, and some people live in areas well-removed from services. I grew up in a town with so little infrastructure that you could literally be snowed in for a week or more at a time during any given winter. Power goes out? It's out for a week.
We once lost running water in the house. These things can happen when you lack the services of a city.
So there is a degree of "preparedness" that really just makes sense in sufficiently remote areas. Medical supplies, generators, clean water.
The people who move out there with the intent to prep are insane.
Most of those guys fear Nukes, disease, and Zombies, which well, is not the time to be in the city. Though a armed take over would also not be great...
While I've not really looked at it in Germany, I do know that england is one of the few countries I've been to where people don't really do that sort of thing. They might have some candles or a torch if the power goes out, or some camping supplies they can re-purpose, but serious preparation seemed to be viewed as either something people used to do during the wars, or a hobby for loons.
Most of those guys fear Nukes, disease, and Zombies, which well, is not the time to be in the city. Though a armed take over would also not be great...
In a land invasion, the city is the place to be. That's where the underground resistance is. That's where you can make a difference. If you're in the sticks, and they conquer your town, you've got nowhere to hide, and not enough people to do anything. Also, there's STUFF in the city. When everything shuts down from being conquered, no more deliveries will be coming to bumblefuck.
Disease I think is actually a real threat. I already see from living in NYC that whenever there is a scare about a disease on the news like Ebola/Zika/whatev, that there always end up being at least a few cases that end up in NYC. The CDC and hospitals have done a really good job of containing these things though. There hasn't been like a huge outbreak of anything here besides the annual flu.
The only reason we have any survival gear is because we use it regularly. As in, multi-day tramping. I also appreciate the minimalism of survival (as opposed to prepping) as a counter for materialism. It appeals to a fantasy of having greater control over and relevance in your life.
As to being in the city, I would rather not deal with fighting hordes for clean water. Chemical pollutants are harder to filter.
Having just moved into a new apartment, we have literally zero "preparedness" materials at all. Some food in the freezer, sure, but that's preparing for when we haven't planned dinner properly, not for a disaster scenario. We have no flashlight, no candles, no bottled water, no... anything! It didn't even cross my mind.
I guess we have camping gear in the cellar, but that is for camping, not for emergencies. And we have a first aid kit, but that is preparing for cutting our fingers when cooking, not for open heart surgery after an earthquake.
Wouldn't you pretty much be dead at the distance you are from a theoretical Nuke at this point if it was dropped in the center of Manhattan. .... Maybe Rubin might be ok, but you are totally toast. You'd have to to be traveling somewhere else at the time :-p
I guess we have camping gear in the cellar, but that is for camping, not for emergencies. And we have a first aid kit, but that is preparing for cutting our fingers when cooking, not for open heart surgery after an earthquake.
And that's fair enough. As long as you have the basics - Y'know, simple first aid kit with some bandages and whatnot, a torch if the power goes, some matches and candles for sustained light or what have you, that sort of thing - that's good enough, and it's all stuff that you'd be using more for household emergencies than anything that would realistically happen.
I mean, having a full kit is cool, and in some places, sensible - but realistically, most of us live in cities that are not exactly disaster prone, and a simple kit would get you through 99% of what might happen there. Having a full kit isn't crazy - but for most, it's just going to be a useful hobby.
In cities like New York, the best possible "major disruption" preparation is an ability to quickly get far away from the city. That means a way to get at least 10 miles distant within a day, and ideally 30-60 miles distant in a couple days. Hard mode: cars are probably useless if you actually need to bug out.
What with the choke points (rivers, bridges, land funnel), the best option if there's a short term disaster is to head east. No bridges, plenty of alternate paths. Cars might even remain partially viable going that way. But, if everyone heads that way: disaster. If the major disruption was a hurricane: it might not be better that way. If it's a longer-term disaster, you're basically stuck with millions of people on a dead-end island that gets most of its services from the single land entry point: the city.
If anything super serious went down, we'd just get on our bikes and pick our way vaguely northwest. As I mentioned in the show, if the disaster led to street violence, we'd probably ditch the bikes and climb overtop one of the bridges to avoid crowds. I suspect most people are too dim or unfit to actually hike a significant distance from the city, and I can maintain an overland rate of 30 miles/day even laden.
I was trying to figure out how far an average adult can walk per day, but that's a tricky question.
From what I can gather, most people who aren't athletes suffer extreme blisters if they try to walk more than ~10 miles, or try to do more than ~6 miles a day for more than a few days. Multiple references put that concern over fatigue or fitness.
Now that I've actually listened to this episode, I have a question: would you, at some point, eat your pet bunnies in an effort to survive?
Also, stray observation: I love how Rym gets to claim he would literally jump from boat to boat, across the entire East River, and Scott does not blink an eye. Yet when Scott merely suggests he could turn the key on a boat engine, Rym spends two minutes beating him into submission on lack of boat knowledge.
Bunny is too lean to be effective survival food on its own. You'd have to have some source of fat to improve its energy density, and at that point you might as well just have a store of bacon or some other meat.
There isn't a scenario in the US in my lifetime where that small amount of food would make the difference between life and death. So there's no scenario where I'd even consider it.
Comments
I will say even though the people on Doomsday Preppers are often pretty out there, the show sometimes makes them seem more crazy than they are. I don't remember the exact details but I remember one person had said off the show somewhere that they were just preparing for a hurricane but the show had them say it was for a nuclear attack from North Korea or something like that. I love how they're usually like "look at my secret stash of supplies" hidden in the walls or in a secret bunker in the garage or whatever except they're on NATIONAL TELEVISION. All your neighbors have seen your hiding spots by now.
As for a backpack/go bag, I definitely don't have anything that would work for wilderness survival, but once I started driving 60 min each way to work, I decided I should purchase a nice backpack and fill one of the pouches with some basic stuff. Emergency snacks, toiletries, flashlight, good multitool, etc. I did something similar for my wife, who has a gym bag filled with a change of clothes and 1 day's emergency supplies that she can keep in her office in Manhattan.
The backpack contents have helped me out on more than one non-emergency occasion, and my wife has crashed in the city w/ friends multiple times on short notice, and didn't have to think twice b/c she had an emergency overnight bag.
In fact it's in Norway that the 'Doomsday' seed vault is located. Completely funded by the Norwegian Government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault
The UK Red Cross has similar recommendations to what you find in the USA.
http://www.redcross.org.uk/What-we-do/Preparing-for-disasters/How-to-prepare-for-emergencies
I'd be willing to be its the same in most European countries.
The UK has tons of survival and bushcraft courses, I'd be surprised if this wasn't the case in the rest of Europe as well.
http://www.woodland-ways.co.uk/
Being prepared for events is prudent and like home owners insurance. You hope you never need it, but it's better than being unprepared. I think you can guarantee that people of a certain generation in every part of the former Yugoslavia have a small stockpile of food and water hidden away.
It may not be common for people who live in dense urban areas of their country, but it's just everyday life in parts of the world where the power can get knocked out and stay out for weeks at at time due to harsh weather.
I think lots of people think about parts of preparedness.
Prepper is a dirty word, it conjures up images of anti-government wack jobs stockpiling MRE's charcoal pills and bullets and guns, but there are tons of people who take small or big steps to be prepared for an emergency.
Being prepared is just good common sense.
Not thinking about any of it ever doesn't make you a bad person, but it's a privilege of living in an urban area where you have access to basic needs instantly. That could change in a moment based on the right circumstances (hurricane, Paris ATM guard strike and no cash, snow storms, earthquake... etc etc).
We once lost running water in the house. These things can happen when you lack the services of a city.
So there is a degree of "preparedness" that really just makes sense in sufficiently remote areas. Medical supplies, generators, clean water.
The people who move out there with the intent to prep are insane.
Disease I think is actually a real threat. I already see from living in NYC that whenever there is a scare about a disease on the news like Ebola/Zika/whatev, that there always end up being at least a few cases that end up in NYC. The CDC and hospitals have done a really good job of containing these things though. There hasn't been like a huge outbreak of anything here besides the annual flu.
YET
1. Nuke downtown
2. Garbage strike
NYPD strike is the time to bug IN for the most epic party in human history.
As to being in the city, I would rather not deal with fighting hordes for clean water. Chemical pollutants are harder to filter.
I guess we have camping gear in the cellar, but that is for camping, not for emergencies. And we have a first aid kit, but that is preparing for cutting our fingers when cooking, not for open heart surgery after an earthquake.
I mean, having a full kit is cool, and in some places, sensible - but realistically, most of us live in cities that are not exactly disaster prone, and a simple kit would get you through 99% of what might happen there. Having a full kit isn't crazy - but for most, it's just going to be a useful hobby.
What with the choke points (rivers, bridges, land funnel), the best option if there's a short term disaster is to head east. No bridges, plenty of alternate paths. Cars might even remain partially viable going that way. But, if everyone heads that way: disaster. If the major disruption was a hurricane: it might not be better that way. If it's a longer-term disaster, you're basically stuck with millions of people on a dead-end island that gets most of its services from the single land entry point: the city.
If anything super serious went down, we'd just get on our bikes and pick our way vaguely northwest. As I mentioned in the show, if the disaster led to street violence, we'd probably ditch the bikes and climb overtop one of the bridges to avoid crowds. I suspect most people are too dim or unfit to actually hike a significant distance from the city, and I can maintain an overland rate of 30 miles/day even laden.
I was trying to figure out how far an average adult can walk per day, but that's a tricky question.
I guess people don't walk that much?
Also, stray observation: I love how Rym gets to claim he would literally jump from boat to boat, across the entire East River, and Scott does not blink an eye. Yet when Scott merely suggests he could turn the key on a boat engine, Rym spends two minutes beating him into submission on lack of boat knowledge.
There isn't a scenario in the US in my lifetime where that small amount of food would make the difference between life and death. So there's no scenario where I'd even consider it.