Swedish preparedness pamphlet

[Laurentius]

I wouldn't say I've planned at all for an emergency but we could easily survive for 3 months without going out and much longer if necessary. I just find life is easier if we stock up when we can.

I wonder if it's genetic to some degree?

There is a certain matter of luck to it as well. If you succumb to a bad infection or viral disease and there is no help, no amount of prepping will save you. Essentially survival is about communities not about individuals. I think communities are becoming less resilient because the younger generations have not endured the difficulties and hardships of our respective parents and grandparents. My parents were born in a world before antibiotics and treatments for conditions like diabetes. I am only here because of antibiotics, the NHS and the vigilance of my grandmother.

 

[Laurentius]

3 huge poly tunnels destroyed on the farm here. I;m in a tent. I love it.

Last year I had an unwanted polytunnel land on my allotment, one of my neighbours seems totally incapable of keeping any structure undamaged on there, I have seen him lose sheds, greenhouses and the massive polytunnel that was lifted up by the wind and blown over the top of my hedge.

 

[demented dale]

Last year I had an unwanted polytunnel land on my allotment, one of my neighbours seems totally incapable of keeping any structure undamaged on there, I have seen him lose sheds, greenhouses and the massive polytunnel that was lifted up by the wind and blown over the top of my hedge.

. We are on the west coast of Ireland. It has blown over now but earlier this evening the winds were very powerful.

 

[Laurentius]

I'm not a hoarder - by that I mean the type of people that become housebound under their own detritus and fear of letting anything 'go' , but maybe both people of a prep mentality and hoarders suffer with anxiety issues. Anxiety is said to be a situation where one is concerned or trapped in a possible future yet to exist , so incapable of living in ( and enjoying fully ) the moment.

Anyhooo - musings.

I guess I am a borderline hoarder though I would describe myself as a collecter, and it is certainly a characteristic of other members of my family. My collections are on display to any visitor but if it reaches the point where major parts of my collection have to be packed away in boxes and put into storage (like the British Museum) then I will have gone beyond the point of any function in it.

 

[TeeDee]

I guess I am a borderline hoarder though I would describe myself as a collecter, and it is certainly a characteristic of other members of my family. My collections are on display to any visitor but if it reaches the point where major parts of my collection have to be packed away in boxes and put into storage (like the British Museum) then I will have gone beyond the point of any function in it.

I guess if you had family members that had the same shared behaviour that would / could be more Nuture vs Nature?

 

[Paul_B]

Lucky for you.
Did you move to the village for those reasons? if not its more serendipity than specific planning I guess as its reliant upon structures provided by others.

I moved to be in an area that consistently had very low covid rates throughout the pandemic. When rates were at their highest the rate in the village was so low that they didn't release the number of cases because it would allow identification. In the second peak it was also low. In addition it was in a different county whose council supported and gave cover to schools that chose to stay open when they were allowed to. The county we were in said up to schools but anything happens it's on the headteacher. As a result all primary schools closed. Most primary schools in our current county opened.

We lived in a town with fire & rescue in it before. Coastguard wasn't there because it wasn't exactly on the coast. The local rescue team operates in both areas but didn't exist when I moved up this area it my old house.

So this house choice is based on specific planning. For more reasons than one given too. And yes, the village I live in does make me feel very lucky. As someone who has lived around a bit I've never really felt I belonged anywhere. Until two or three weeks at my current house I was walking along, through the village and I just said to my partner that the move was one of the best things I'd done in my life as I finally felt like I belonged somewhere. So very lucky indeed!

 

[Robbi]

. We are on the west coast of Ireland. It has blown over now but earlier this evening the winds were very powerful.

I'm on the north east coast... Very very blowy at the moment.!

 

[Laurentius]

Lucky for you.
Did you move to the village for those reasons? if not its more serendipity than specific planning I guess as its reliant upon structures provided by others.

Grew up in an era when there was a police house in every neighbourhood, but those times are long gone, it is a long walk to the nearest fire station and my block of flats would have burnt to the ground long before any of us could get there. Hospital is about half an hours walk away, but that depends on my being able to walk doesn't it?

 

[Robbi]

Grew up in an era when there was a police house in every neighbourhood, but those times are long gone, it is a long walk to the nearest fire station and my block of flats would have burnt to the ground long before any of us could get there. Hospital is about half an hours walk away, but that depends on my being able to walk doesn't it?

Where are you from.?

 

[Paul_B]

Actually I think there's a lot of fire & rescue stations round here. If you were to drive 15 or 20 minutes away you'd probably be able to get to maybe 5. Considering they've been closing them around the country I think over the years that's a bit ofa cluster. However police stations are rare. 20/30 minutes one way and a bit longer the other, in another county though.

5 minutes away there's a large police house which had been decommissioned many decades ago. Same with the one in our village. I did meet an ex police officer who was based in it. Possibly the last! He was the grandfather of a kid at my son's primary school. We also looked around it before we saw our current house. It was a bit too big and expensive. Plus expensive too heat I reckon.

My previous town closed its police station and house. The village I lived before that closed its police house. The officer moved out but was still the area Bobby. He was a keen Gardner and wrote an article in the local neighbourhood watch newsletter. I only read it once. In his article he recommended plants to places under windows, around drainpipes etc that would deter burglars or mark them badly! One was a species of climbing euphorbia iirc that had long, vicious thorns that left really nasty weald that would last rather painfully for weeks. He argued that if the burglar persisted he'd get marked and he knew most of the local, operating burglars so he'd find out who did it and have enough to get a warrant. What a nice, sadistic copper!

 

[demented dale]

I'm on the north east coast... Very very blowy at the moment.!

antrim then? tell me Robbi is it a good place to find flint? i heard it was

 

[alphaburner]

Wind up radios arrived today. Nice little bits of kit.

 

[Bushjack]

I wouldn't personally involve the govt. in anything to do with this site, next thing you know, it will be banned for promoting the use of "dangerous" weapons, blah, blah, blah. They will twist anything to sound like they're getting a 'handle on the problem"!

Correct. I wouldn’t trust anyone in the government.

 

[Fschwep]

People probably don't realise the royal navy have had a nuclear deterrant in the form of a nuclear weapon carrying submarine since 1969. That's always at least one sub somewhere out at sea underwater just in case. There's really not many countries that can say that. Even the French navy which is often thought of as better than ours, on account of having an aircraft carrier in service when we had decommissioned ours and had messed up on the replacement one. Even now they can't achieve that at sea deterrant. Despite a pitiful number of surface and submarine ships/boats we've still got quite an effective navy in terms of deterrant. Of course only with usa but then the whole of nato is probably only effective with usa involved.

I do think as a nation we're often doing our own country down. I can't see bits shouting UKUKUK like Americans shout USAUSAUSA at the slightest opportunity! I'm not into jingoism but I do think we could do with just a bit of our own style of American patriotism at times.

Just a little detail, France has four nuclear ballistic missile submarines forming their nuclear deterrent with at least one always at sea. They don't need US permission to fire the nukes in anger as they built their own. They also have 5 nuclear attack subs. Most of them very modern.
Plus of course they still have that aircraft carrier...

 

[TeeDee]

Just a little detail, France has four nuclear ballistic missile submarines forming their nuclear deterrent with at least one always at sea. They don't need US permission to fire the nukes in anger as they built their own. They also have 5 nuclear attack subs. Most of them very modern.
Plus of course they still have that aircraft carrier...

Pretty sure they would. Like us they probably wouldn't want to openly admit it. Maybe its in the small print of the NATO paperwork

 

[Fschwep]

France has always been a bit more independent and even outside NATO for a while; they kicked out all US forces from bases inside France and have a couple of former NATO air bases to play with as a result.
As for the deterrence, the French president does not have to ask permission from his own parliament to declare war on anyone, or to launch. Nor from anyone else. He can just give the order. In theory that's even more of a mandate than the US president.
France also still has an air deterrence capability with nuke-tipped almost-hypersonic cruise missiles (about 120 of them if I remember correctly), with a range of around 1000 km and flying very low at Mach 4, that can be fired from Mirage 2000 or Rafale multirole fighters, that can take off from French soil and refuel in flight. They call that 'raid nucléaire' and train for it, openly. The explicit goal of that is to be able to 'escalate to de-escalate' or go tit for tat if Russia uses a tactical nuke on a European battlefield. The UK has no tactical nuclear weapons anymore; NATO had a lot of them but destroyed/decommissioned them after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Even the US has only a very few left. Russia however still has a lot of them. Or at least they consider mid-range missiles with an 800 kiloton warhead that can wipe out a major city as 'tactical'... Their dogmas are different.

I don't think this is the place to get into 'who's stick is bigger' discussions; this is about bushcraft and at most, individual preparedness for disasters, of which war is just one amongst many possibilities. And in war there are only losers. I just wanted to set the facts straight, as I live in France under their largest low-flying training area (plus during the cold war I served as a noncom in the Dutch artillery corps, as an NBC specialist trained in determining fallout patterns and unit survivability calculations on a battlefield after the use of tactical nukes; and I also was watch commander on a site with nuclear ammunition, so let's say I have a particular interest in the subject...).
Better go back to tp, canned food in the pantry and splitting firewood for the living room stove during a blackout. ;-)

 

[GreyCat]

My other half is a radio amateur. Have kit lying around and he's also into making so has the skills and bits lying around to build stuff. Knows Morse code too. If a signal is weak it's amazing what can get through on Morse code which cannot get through on speech. Interesting stuff, especially the history of ships radio offices before the days of modern satellite comms.

There was once a voluntary organisation called "Raynet" which was comprised of radio amateurs who can help emergency services with comms in event of some sort of emergency situation. A chap I worked with several (over 10) years ago was a member (as was his wife). No idea whether it still exists though.

GC

 

[TeeDee]

France has always been a bit more independent and even outside NATO for a while; they kicked out all US forces from bases inside France and have a couple of former NATO air bases to play with as a result.
As for the deterrence, the French president does not have to ask permission from his own parliament to declare war on anyone, or to launch. Nor from anyone else. He can just give the order. In theory that's even more of a mandate than the US president.
France also still has an air deterrence capability with nuke-tipped almost-hypersonic cruise missiles (about 120 of them if I remember correctly), with a range of around 1000 km and flying very low at Mach 4, that can be fired from Mirage 2000 or Rafale multirole fighters, that can take off from French soil and refuel in flight. They call that 'raid nucléaire' and train for it, openly. The explicit goal of that is to be able to 'escalate to de-escalate' or go tit for tat if Russia uses a tactical nuke on a European battlefield. The UK has no tactical nuclear weapons anymore; NATO had a lot of them but destroyed/decommissioned them after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Even the US has only a very few left. Russia however still has a lot of them. Or at least they consider mid-range missiles with an 800 kiloton warhead that can wipe out a major city as 'tactical'... Their dogmas are different.

I don't think this is the place to get into 'who's stick is bigger' discussions; this is about bushcraft and at most, individual preparedness for disasters, of which war is just one amongst many possibilities. And in war there are only losers. I just wanted to set the facts straight, as I live in France under their largest low-flying training area (plus during the cold war I served as a noncom in the Dutch artillery corps, as an NBC specialist trained in determining fallout patterns and unit survivability calculations on a battlefield after the use of tactical nukes; and I also was watch commander on a site with nuclear ammunition, so let's say I have a particular interest in the subject...).
Better go back to tp, canned food in the pantry and splitting firewood for the living room stove during a blackout. ;-)

Although you certainly seem keen to go down that road.

 

[TeeDee]

Better go back to tp, canned food in the pantry and splitting firewood for the living room stove during a blackout. ;-)

Bit of personal resilience and not relaying on the JITOS Min/Max stock system is no bad thing. I had always assumed away from the larger French cities there was a more entrenched rural minarchy and food provision. Quite jealous of the type of markets you have there.

 

[lou1661]

My other half is a radio amateur. Have kit lying around and he's also into making so has the skills and bits lying around to build stuff. Knows Morse code too. If a signal is weak it's amazing what can get through on Morse code which cannot get through on speech. Interesting stuff, especially the history of ships radio offices before the days of modern satellite comms.

There was once a voluntary organisation called "Raynet" which was comprised of radio amateurs who can help emergency services with comms in event of some sort of emergency situation. A chap I worked with several (over 10) years ago was a member (as was his wife). No idea whether it still exists though.

GC

Raynet still exist

Raynet website