Preparing for troubled times ahead - Advice on what is needed.....

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Woody girl

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Mar 31, 2018
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I think the average person now has more than enough on their plate just feeding their family, heating their home putting fuel in their car and paying bills to bother about stockpiling extra stuff for 'just in case'. A lot of families can't afford 3 squares a day never mind 3 plus 2 for next week. Thats why there are food banks nowadays - they didnt exist when I was a lad.

That's probably because they still had wartime memories or parents who did and they knew how to cook and make ends meet. Could knit and sew, mend shoes.
kids generaly knew how to make their own entertainment.
Cars and giant tvs in every room were not the norm, Also kids were not asking for mobile phones, and fancy trainers.
Few families had one car, let alone one for each parent and school leaver.
We had allotments and grew veg.
Times were different.
Rationing only ended a few years before I was born.
We never took credit, if we couldn't pay cash, we went without.
I had 3 jobs at 13 and earned my own pocket money. I cleaned out stables every Sunday for 75p, worked in a cafe after school washing up and making teas, for £2.00 and Saturday mornings I worked in the local shop. For another 75p. Try getting a kid to do that nowadays!
We always had enough food, and nothing was bought pre prepared, we ate seasonal, and microwaves and microwave meals didn't exist, nor did freezers and personaly we didn't get a fridge untill 1972.
Now people expect to have all these things and consider themselves hard done by if they don't have them.
I know someone with a massive hundreds of pounds TV on their living room wall, living off food banks. Complaining that they only have a small 20inch TV in the bedroom.
It's about priorities.
 
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Coach

Banned
Oct 3, 2017
168
80
Uk
"Its about priorities" is exactly my point. Most people prioritise surviving today rather than worrying about tomorrow, we live in a culture where for many it's still 'fags and booze' before food - you cant expect everyone else to think the same as you. As you say its a different world with much different pressures.
 

Robson Valley

On a new journey
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,669
McBride, BC
I never see any one describing mariculture= the alteration of your sea coast beaches for the deliberate cultivation of oysters, mussels and clams. Along both the east and west coasts of North America are shell middens which are measured in the thousands of cubic meters of shell. 27,000m^3 is a big pile. Hills of it. 50-60' deep and still going.

Of course, even today, the beaches are claimed as part of traditional territories. You can go dig but take only enough for one meal, never try to harvest the beach. Every flat sandy shore, swept by the tide, is a shellfish garden.
Everything was cooked. Clams were shucked and strung on long cords to be smoke/heat preserved over lodge fires. Possibly one of the most addictive deadly treats ever devised by Man.

So what could you do to enhance clam and oyster production?
 
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Deleted member 56522

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Along both the east and west coasts of North America are shell middens which are measured in the thousands of cubic meters of shell. 27,000m^3 is a big pile. Hills of it. 50-60' deep and still going.
Simple question: do freshwater rivers and lakes anywhere have these middens or are suitable shellfish only found at the coast?
 

Robson Valley

On a new journey
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,669
McBride, BC
Most inland rivers that I've explored (with bare feet) have substantial clam beds. I have no idea if these were ever exploited by First Nations as they did on the coast. I have fond memories of "clam digging" at low tide with my grandfather.

Not so many years ago, fresh water pearls were a fashion necessity. Huge inoculated rafts of spawn. Multi strand ropes of them in pinks and purples. Never learned what became of the clam meat.
 
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Deleted member 56522

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Most inland rivers that I've explored (with bare feet) have substantial clam beds. I have no idea if these were ever exploited by First Nations as they did on the coast. I have fond memories of "clam digging" at low tide with my grandfather.

Not so many years ago, fresh water pearls were a fashion necessity. Huge inoculated rafts of spawn. Multi strand ropes of them in pinks and purples. Never learned what became of the clam meat.
Earlier this year I had a look at the family tree of "shellfish" and I discovered that things we might think are extremely closely related, are in fact as closely related to each other as we are to them (I might have got that wrong). And, I think one of these "pairs" is the freshwater and sea mussel. So, just because marine shellfish are good for eating, doesn't mean the freshwater ones are.

Another possibility is that freshwater middens were built where floods washed them away, and if not, in flat river valleys the rivers change course and if not moving toward the midden and washing it away, the midden is now so far from the river that it is buried deep under flooding silt which obscures its form so they couldn't be found. Either way, they are extremely hard to find, whereas coastal ones tend to be on high ground above a beach, and so it is very obvious where to look for them, especially if the ground is eroding.
 

nigelp

Native
Jul 4, 2006
1,417
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New Forest
newforestnavigation.co.uk
What the water quality like? The presence of micro plastics, pesticides, nitrates and also sewage and agricultural runoff and ‘permitted’ sewage discharge makes a lot of UK coastal foraging untenable. In some areas they still ‘grow’ muscles on ropes and have worked to reduce the levels of pollutants to make those safe to eat.

The archeological record certainly shows that the British and Irish coastline was exploited to a massive scale with similar shell midden found.
I remember going down to the foreshore as a child with my Dad ‘winkling’ - a lot of effort to pick tiny edibles out of shell with a pin.
 
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What the water quality like? The presence of micro plastics, pesticides, nitrates and also sewage and agricultural runoff and ‘permitted’ sewage discharge makes a lot of UK coastal foraging untenable. In some areas they still ‘grow’ muscles on ropes and have worked to reduce the levels of pollutants to make those safe to eat.

The archeological record certainly shows that the British and Irish coastline was exploited to a massive scale with similar shell midden found.
I remember going down to the foreshore as a child with my Dad ‘winkling’ - a lot of effort to pick tiny edibles out of shell with a pin.
Microplastics are no more of a problem than sand. High levels of nutrients are a problem creating toxic algae, but the problem is during low flow levels and not high levels when permitted discharge levels apply. And, I'd add to your list the female contraceptive pill which seems to be having some pretty dire effects on the men who drink recycled water.

However, that is really only a problem in England. From personal experience on the lowest fording points across almost all the major rivers of Scotland, the water quality is good. The worst by far was the lower Kelvin (years ago) where the panty liners hanging on the rocks were a right discouragement to put any part of the body in it ... but I hear it has since been cleaned up. The worst of the major rivers was the forth, where the problems at Stirling were old bikes, traffic cones ... and 3m deep mud at the side that would stop an army ... (thank goodness for my ape ancestors and a chance washed up tree to climb down).
 

Coach

Banned
Oct 3, 2017
168
80
Uk
What the water quality like? The presence of micro plastics, pesticides, nitrates and also sewage and agricultural runoff and ‘permitted’ sewage discharge makes a lot of UK coastal foraging untenable. In some areas they still ‘grow’ muscles on ropes and have worked to reduce the levels of pollutants to make those safe to eat.

The archeological record certainly shows that the British and Irish coastline was exploited to a massive scale with similar shell midden found.
I remember going down to the foreshore as a child with my Dad ‘winkling’ - a lot of effort to pick tiny edibles out of shell with a pin.
The coastline here had huge quantities of cockles which were very good healthy eating, until gangs of unlicensed commercial cocklers from a nearby large city stripped the beds bare. Last time I went down you would be lucky to get a cup full. Damn shame.
 

nigelp

Native
Jul 4, 2006
1,417
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New Forest
newforestnavigation.co.uk
The coastline here had huge quantities of cockles which were very good healthy eating, until gangs of unlicensed commercial cocklers from a nearby large city stripped the beds bare. Last time I went down you would be lucky to get a cup full. Damn shame.
That’s a shame. Hopefully they will recover.

The shore line where I grew up was more rocky so suited winkles and whelks. Not sure what is there now. The water quality in the late 70’s was terrible but I do remember having to soak the things to purge them.
 

slowworm

Full Member
May 8, 2008
2,171
1,106
Devon
I often wonder about the humble and edible garden snail, easy to collect and purge they must provide a decent amount of protein. I've tried eating them on a couple of occasions but not found a recipe that makes them very palatable to me. If I was starving they would be more appealing.
 

Yngve Cymric

Member
May 25, 2020
28
12
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Wales
Buying at least one traumafix field dressing, I used mine on the weekend on myself, I had just started cutting my tipi poles when a momentary lapse in concentration meant that my left thumb got in the way of my silky saw!!
Incredibly lucky that the angle was such in that only the tip of my thumb and a good portion of my thumbnail have gone.
Hit a blood vessel, and my advanced wilderness medic training kicked in.
Traumafix can be applied one handed and absolutely did its job.
So my preparation is training and kit to back it up with.
Interesting that my first reaction was to look at the moss on the forest floor to potentially use that as a initial dressing
 
D

Deleted member 56522

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As a few here have commented upon -self sufficiency is almost an impossible utopian holy grail.

Trying to compare living in more sparsely populate rural wild game rich areas of Mainland Europe to population dense Middle England isn't going to work.
One thing, which people don't seem to appreciate, is the psyops wars that are going on ... quite literally people are trying to play with our minds. That is because the internet and particularly social media makes people particularly vulnerable to "nudging" types of attack. What those do is to change people's "world views" ... by which I mean their perception of "what is normal" ... which means people start to accept things which they would never in their life have believed they would accept (like literal house arrest for covid)

Another type of attack, is one that undermines the social integrity of society. These may be intentional (I'm particularly suspicious of China), but we are also now suffering from what I call "delusional feedback loops" ... which is that delusional ideas spread like a virus, particularly when scepticism is being censored as is happening now. And it has been my observation that what I call "Group-thinkers" who include journalists, civil servants and politicians are some of the most vulnerable to accepting, without critique, delusional thinking.

However, social media also spreads the truth that the old media don't want us to hear. The Old media call these truths "conspiracies" ... but it is strange how many conspiracies over the last two years were true. And, for example, you will hardly get a grain of truth on the climate from the old media. So, it may be that we are for the first time in history, actually getting to know the truth particularly about what the elites are planning for us ... and that is why so many are prepping.

Recently, people have been talking about food shortages. These are made to look like ordinary people expressing genuine concerns. But, I am sceptical, because I have seen the same pattern before when there is a concerted campaign to spread disinformation by government, by foreign government or by malicious organisations. Are these shortages real?

If so, one possibility is that government is deliberately sabotaging the food supply. The most likely reason would be as insane part of the "green agenda", which long ago adopted psyops propaganda as a mode of working. Here, a very possible scenario, is some campaign started to get people to grow their own food ... but as happens, that morphed into "destroy the type of farming greens dislike".

Another possibility, is that world food production was so severely disrupted by the stupid covid restrictions and the cuts to fertilisers and pesticides, that government now know we are about to get a global shortage of food. Government know it is coming ... so they are trying to get us used to the idea before it hits, to prompt a bit of home growing, but mainly to reduce the anger when the effects hits.

Another possibility, is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with global food productions, but that foreign powers are trying to stoke up discontent in the west in order to distract the west whilst they take over Taiwan (not being too specific ... LOL)

And a final possibility ... it is just delusional thinking spreading like a virus, feeding off a few quite normal events.

How do we prepare?
I don't have a clue. The only thing I do know, is that we are getting episodes of mass delusional thinking which seem to be growing in magnitude as I predicted some years ago would be created by the internet in something I called a "crisis of truth" ... where we just wouldn't know what is true any longer.

So, I think the first thing, is to take everything we are told with a massive pinch of salt, from those who are saying "the end of the world is nigh ... you must prep", to those who are saying "there is absolutely nothing to worry about ... just follow the latest government guidance ... and you'll be fine ... the government are here to help".

But, if you look at the worst episodes in human history, from the Nazis, to Stalin's five year plan, to Pol Pot, what we find is that most people went along with them. These appalling episodes occurred because the press and most people agreed that ... they should accept the "five year plan" or "we are the master race", they were delusions and almost everyone went along with it. So when they occur .. we are very likely to be caught up and go along with it (at least initially). So, the idea we can grow a few carrots as a way to stop being caught up in that type of delusion is ... delusional.

When we look back at history, the "prepping plan" that works ... is to be aware of what is happening, to be sceptical and know where "the groupthink" is leading, and to have a plan to get out of these insane cultures that can develop as early as possible ... and well before you are caught in them.

And, the other thing that history teaches us ... is it is far easier to spot the developmnet of these insane Totalitarian cultures ... with the benefit of hindsight.
 
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D

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Cant beat a good old conspiracy theory to get a reaction.
The earliest conspiracy theories were developed by the CIA! They deliberately spread rumours about "UFOs" to discredit those who were reporting their sighting of the U2 spy planes taking off.

And, those with a good memory might remember that just before all the 911 conspiracies hit the news and stopped anyone talking about anything else ... a group of CIA operatives had been telling the press that the CIA's own incompetence had prevented them stopping the 911 bombers. But we never heard anything more ... because the press were led off on a wild goose chase after the conspiracies ... how convenient!
 

TeeDee

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Nov 6, 2008
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I'm not sure if the Great Reset is a conspiracy theory when its so openly advertised and so well endorsed by all the critical geo-political players.

I'm sure Mr Gates has purchased all that farmland just because he wants to raise some cute Moo-moos.
 
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I'm not sure if the Great Reset is a conspiracy theory when its so openly advertised and so well endorsed by all the critical geo-political players.

I'm sure Mr Gates has purchased all that farmland just because he wants to raise some cute Moo-moos.
What they want to do is to destroy the fossil fuel economy, because they have this idea that out of the ashes will come some hobbitland Utopia and everyone live happily ever after. The problem is that destroying the fossil fuel economy will AT BEST give us Mordor, and for most it will give us Stalin's five year plan and mass starvation. However, on the good side, it will almost certainly lead to us stringing up the evil people who foist it on us ... and eventually we'll restore the fossil fuel economy, albeit we'll all be a lot poorer ... but hey! It's only money.

Just to put it all in context, the people pushing the green reset, are the kind of people who wrecked their own economies when in power, or are just wetdreamers with a massive ego, and a tenuous hold on the reality of how energy systems and economies function.
 

henchy3rd

Settler
Apr 16, 2012
612
424
Derby
The coastline here had huge quantities of cockles which were very good healthy eating, until gangs of unlicensed commercial cocklers from a nearby large city stripped the beds bare. Last time I went down you would be lucky to get a cup full. Damn shame.
I met a coastal forager the other week near Tenby in Wales.
He said theres certain cultures of restaurant owners who come & take all the shell fish with no consideration for others or the ecosystem.
Damn shame.
I had no reason to disbelieve him as he seemed very knowledgeable & passionate of his surrounding area.
He also cooked & shared his meagre catch with me & said 10 or 20 years ago he could get bucket loads of shell fish if he so wished, but only took what he needed to feed himself.
He also pointed to all the spider crab pots on the foreshore.. apparently they just mince them all up & use them for fish bait on the trawlers. I can’t repeat the colourful language he used on here.
 
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