ok, safely in the weeds section i am sure the topic has drawn your interest - otherwise you would not read it 
south africa is facing an energy grid collapse - the question is not if but when. even eskom admits it could happen any moment [as could death which to some of us will actually be preferable].
in order to at least survive the initial discomfort of the collapse a minimum of stuff will be required, obviously we will have to focus on the āneed to haveā for gone will be the ānice to haveā option.
i have yet to see a āprepper combo kitā on takealot or wherever - here is something for the budding entrepreneur 
for a capital outlay of 2k to 100k i am sure the basics could be covered - anything from drinking water through baked beans and anti-biotics and pepper sprayā¦
your thoughts 
The most important component in your prepper kit should be a valid passport.
How about internet access? (I can help!)
For proper grid collapse, the ISPs will go down eventually. Radio will be a more reliable communication method.
Iām sorted for water and (of course) electricity. Iāve got 10kl of water that I can boil to drink (or drink as is, but my wife wonāt).
Food will be a problem (at the moment), as will medicine (very difficult to plan for, given what you can get OTC). I need dog food as well. Pepper spray is a good idea, but Iāve seen that be rather ineffectual, so call me old fashioned, but some type of firearm seems like a necessity. That will also be a problem, since I donāt have a licence. My plan is to be able to wait out three to six weeks at my house, hope for the best, and re-evaluate. At that point the grid probably would have started up again, if not, at that point Iāll probably try to get out of the country.
What I donāt have plans for is what to do with my family (not immediate family, but parents/grandparents).
The problem with a kit of sorts is that stuff expires. So you will actually have to use it and replenish it over time. Many people might buy a bunch of baked beans but then donāt want to use it unless necessary. You can eat tinned food years after expiry, it just tastes worse, but probably still preferable to cycle.
Perhaps an instruction manual of what to buy, how to use, how to cycle, will be better?
10klā¦ not bad , donāt worry, they will drink it if its potable - even straight , without eishā¦ but calculate your daily consumption, how long will it last?
Iāve said this before, it came about on another forum yonks ago, where the group deduced, the āHaveāsā will be in a vast minority to the āHave Notsā, the Haveās will become āHave Notāsā quite fast. For this intellectual exercise at the time, a self-sustaining farm was used ā¦ and how to protect that when masses of desperate people start to move after promises of food and water.
Being prepared individually/close family is one thing i.e. a short-term plan or to get to the final plan/destination. To plan for weeks/months or longer, a whole new set of complications.
The passport thing ā¦ unless you are the first few thousand to skip the borders would probably close, or other countriesā borders will close for that particular brand of passport. Think of military border protection.
I mean we have seen this in the news the last few decades when masses of people get desperate.
Skipping over the border to NAM, for example, the same thing, thousands will come to the same conclusion.
100ās, no problem.
10 000ās will become a problem.
But at 100 000ās are more being affected wanting to sort things ā¦ not good at all.
Yeah, Iāve read a thing or two about this particular subject matter. The physical goods and plans are one thing, the human factor is a whole new uncontrollable factor when real desperation sets in.
Gets to become really important to change oneās mindset, and deeply so like go to the level of the āKarenāsā getting desperate when their little ones are really hungry, sick, and thirsty ā¦ and they want what you have.
ā¦ we have been there since madame eve, hence the popularity of theft etc, even our lights shining during outages make us lucrative targets; the human factorā¦ yet as we canāt change that weāll have to be practical - i will attempt to draw up a list of items or find lists and then post on the documents section of this forum, should be an interesting and hopefully valuable exercise 
Maybe.
I think back to my days in a Y2k project for a big corporate.
Legal advice had been, essentially and a little cynically, that we had to make a show of doing things. So on the night we had a center of operations set up, a quorum of the board to be available, some of the board at the ops center, tankers full of diesel standing by in case we had to start filling up generators etc etc.
We were particularly concerned about communications. The company had a deal with Vodacom, but what if Vodacom were down. OKā¦ there was still MTN (in those days), so we ensured that there was a mix of Vodacom and MTN phones. But what if they BOTH went down? OKā¦ so there were Telkom land lines. But if THAT failed?
We made contact with the national association of ham radio operators, and they set up at various key (to us) sites.
Come the dawning of January 1st, both the cell networks and the land lines stayed up, but (for those who know Johannesburg) the station at our ops center in Auckland Park couldnāt raise the station in Milpark, despite the short distance as the crow flies.
So two things (since Iāve been through this before).
- Radio is not always reliable (in this case the problem was said to be high sunspot activity)
- The big corporates will already be taking precautions. Medicilinic were in the news recently, talking about possible grid failure. They said they didnāt think it likely but also that they couldnāt take chances. So they have doubled up on-site generation at most of their sites, and already have large quantities of diesel that they have already paid for, and tankers to deliver that diesel to their sites.
A lot of this sounds familiar from Y2k preparations. I know of two hospitals in Johannesburg (and there may be more) that were modified at that time so that they could go three days with no supply from the municipality nor the grid. Weāve been there, done that, and the big corporates know what to do.
Small business? Much harder for them, because it costs money to take these precautions. But whilst I fear that a grid shutdown would not make life easier, I also donāt fear a total meltdown.
yip - it is unrealistic to ignore reality, for instance eskom already burning 6 million plus liters of dieselā¦ [eish, sorry have to edit, suddenly my unfinished post was publishedā¦] PER DAY!
i believe to 1st think of personal, home situation - only then can one start to assist family and community
Well I would definitely put that in the top five, right after a weekās supply of drinking water (3 liters per person per day), some water for cleaning and stuff (so if you have a swimming pool youāre fine), enough Diesel/Petrol to reach the nearest border (Namibia for me), and of course the passport.
Planes are out. Everyone will be gunning for the planes.
Timing is also important. You should try not to do what everyone else is doing. You either need to leave immediately as in within hoursā¦ or wait a few days. Depends on your chosen route.
Having backup power, after day 3ā¦ more of a convenience.
eishā¦ ukraine here we come, gunning for the planes - pun intended
What are the rules for asylum seekers? If thereās unlivable conditions in a country, is the passport necessary?
It comes down to a simple thing actually. At the big corporate I am busy not naming, they were quite blase about Y2K, but thought that maybe they should have a meeting and listen to the nerds.
About 30 minutes into this meeting, their legal hot shot banged on the table, told them they all had it wrong and they should shut up and listen. He said (Iām paraphrasing here): āYou think youāre OK because you have insurance. Youāre not OK. Insurance wonāt pay out for things that you know are going to happen, and we all know that January 1st 2000 is coming. Nowā¦ you might say well whatever it is that happens is because of a bug in Microsoft office or whatever, but the insurerās default position will be that you KNEW this day was coming, and it will end up in court, and you will have to retain lots of costly lawyers, and you will have to demonstrate that you took precautions regarding everything you can control.ā
Once that man had spoken, everything changed.
I would bet that there were many similar conversations in board rooms across the country. Probably they have recently been repeated, because this year the question changed. We no longer ask āwill there be load sheddingā. We ask āat what stage are we load sheddingā.
So corporates know the drill. They will take precautions, not necessarily for altruistic reasons, but they will take them.
The legal oke was a bit silly though. Insurance often insure against events that are going to occur (such as death), but uncertain when. They also insure events that are going to occur, but uncertain the size of the loss. Something of which both the size of the loss and the timing of the event are known with 100% certainty, doesnāt make sense to insure.
Y2K wasnāt certain to occur (we didnāt know thereās a bug - turns out there wasnāt as far as I recall) and the size of the loss also wasnāt certain. Iām sure you wouldāve been able to insure against it, but it would have to have been specifically insured. Not sure if general business interruption clauses would cover it.
those entities depend on people like you [and me], but they donāt necessarily cater for the survival of the individual, especially not a retired employee - at that level it is more or less everyone for himself for the ācorporateā will actually dissolve in a situation without electricity and comms - as einstein answered the reporter asking him with what kind of weapon ww3 will be fought - the dr answered that he doesnāt know - all he knows is that ww4 will be fought with sticks and stones 
Take the Santam/COVID19 business insurance thing. Youāre insured if a specific team within your organisation gets dreadfully ill and causes a massive loss. You are not insured if the government takes your healthy people and locks them up at home. Fine print can be a bugger. As I understand, Santam lost that case in court, but they still tried.
Iām not going to get into an argument about Y2k now (I did later the same morning when I heard some talk show host going on about how it was a hoax all along). The point was that the insurers would take the position that whatever the claim against you was had not happened because of some random accident. There had been lots of publicity, and at the very least there should be a proper investigation to see if you had any exposure to this computer bug. You must have a list of possible risks, and tick them off one by one.
OKā¦ maybe he was talking about short term insurance, which is what businesses usually have. They donāt usually take out life insurance. Buildings, business continuity, injuries to people on your premisesā¦ this is all short term insurance. Long term insurance (life, dread disease) is, as you say, a different game.
My point here is that whether or not you believe that there was a Y2k bug, businesses know that they cannot be seen to be being too nonchalant. They donāt want to go belly up, nor do they want to expose themselves to multiple law suits with all the costs and brand damage that go with that. So they will take precautions.
this is not something new, collapses, whether grid or other major upheavals like war have taught us valuable lessons - it is just a matter of applying already used common sense - take any war-like situation; so for instance my mother told the interesting story about ensuring you have post-apocalyptic stuff to trade with; she mentioned buying cigarettes and sealing them in 44 gallon drums, for especially during war, cigarettes trade at an enormous premium and can nearly buy anything - insurance money will be valueless in cases of emergency, a packet of siggies could get you on a plane 
edit
if my memory serves me - at all - i believe that hi-value barter in the novel KING RAT was toilet paper
Yes, lockdowns were quite untested from an insurance perspective. Iām not close to the short-term market at all, but I should make a note to ask around a bit to find out what happened to all the BI claims.
In theory, Iād imagine such a risk would be uninsurable, because the loss can be so arbitrarily high that the insurance premium wouldnāt make sense. A further complicating issue is that a third party (the government) forces āthe lossā to occur, but doesnāt really have skin in the game, so to speak.
Similar, but not directly comparable, is the fact that you cannot take out life insurance on a random person, because you yourself have no interest in their life.