Ready made prepper combo kits - grid collapse

Off-Topic (In the weeds/General Discussion)
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I get the radios, that it is a “disappearing act” but I must note, on a thread of sharing thoughts and ideas of a “prepper combo kit”, I struggle to find the relevance of what the Y2k bug 22 years later has to do with “what if” Eskom goes deeper down the tubes. :rofl:

I get the innuendo it can all be a hoax but then if it does not happen today, it may happen in the future one day, or not.

But failing to plan is planning to fail … like we don’t go trapping all over the country with no spare tire on hand … ok, we do, we forget to plan to check the tire, so we planned to fail. (Bwahahahahahaha!!!)

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Because some of the preparations people did for y2k… you will also do for this. That is the relevance.

And then after all you’ve done, it may turn out nothing happens.

And then there will be people who laugh at you and call it a hoax. Because people have really short memories.

There are people who laugh at the fears we had in the 80s, not knowing their history at all, not knowing of the fall of the Berlin wall, of the soviet union, of UN resolution 435, and so forth…

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63

Was working at a big corporate insurer (IT support) at the time with Y2K so yeah, know all about mainframes and desktops and clients and interconnectivity with clients, and then the mainframe crashes because of dates. It was a serious event at the time, for some.

The good thing though is software/firmware developers learned there is now more space to store two more digits, in my non-technical/scientific description of the end result. :wink:

Still, same today as back then when there was a serious risk with like financial systems calculating heavily on dates, not blerrie lifts(!), today where we have serious energy shortages with a Gov that has lost its way … no money to fix it, nor the time, billions lost due to production all over SA.

So yeah, Y2K is 22 years back, it is over, we learned. Some industries had a real problem, but most did not.

Energy is a real actual problem today, and affecting all of us in real life daily.

64

it has become like water on-tap, can we still draw water from the well? sure we can… it takes some effort but we can; howzabout fire… can we still rub sticks? ahaa… with a little practice maybe… and alive comes the little voortrekker/boyscout/hitlerjugend/maccabis/green beret/reccie/spesmag/young pioneer or whatever in us, i.e. the ‘mensch’!.. but lets never forget the lessons of ‘Lord of the Flies’ - but then again, is not that exactly why we sit in this mess :thinking:

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Your post made me think of a book I read the other day, the guy had a flat tyre and upon lifting up the boot floor to take out the spare, he found a case of beer with a note stuck to it. The note was from his buddy who borrowed the spare and by the date on the note it was almost a year ago. He commented that fortunately for the health of his buddy the beer was still good.

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ergo bibamus

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This is a classic example of legacy systems: The coders of the day had a job to do and never did they think that their code would be around in the next century! I have a colleague who is one of a handful who know an obsolete OS for mainframes. She gets projects from time to time to deal with obsolete systems that have fallen over or threaten to. The war stories she tells I find hilarious…

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Ditto, and way back when they were developed, memory and disk space were at a huge premium.

So, a real problem for some systems, a huge fiasco created around it, some because of the unknown, and then some fearmongering … lifts will drop.

Back to the thread:
Still saying, LS today is not fearmongering, it is affecting huge swaths of businesses, huge impact on traffic, time wasted, and transformers and other equipment being damaged …

Will it or will it not become a real debilitating problem, Stage 7/8 or higher?

We don’t know.

But rather have a plan, and a few ideas, than having none at all scrambling around in panic … remembering this thread here … then realizing, o, cannot access it now, the internet is down. :rofl:

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69

indeed - let’s get to the thread… or rather threat
maybe the grid collapse warrants its own slot on this forum… or better still, its own forum
i know there is a danger of re-inventing the wheel here, which if managed efficiently, can be prevented - so without sounding too paranoid i would appeal to the guys with the necessary skills and knowledge to ‘ponder this concept’ [obviously the powers that be have such ‘committees’ etc - but what about the ordinary chap, i.e. most of us?]
… it is obvious to me that the internet marketing algorithms seem to ‘read my mind’… i was presented with this , enjoy https://youtu.be/_OpC4fH3mEk

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part of your so called prepper kit would have to be guns, for the inevitable looters and criminals.

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thanks @Juan91 - indeed, i presume most farmers are armed, hence the good previous tip to pack our stuff and pay your long lost farmer family/friend a visit.
with the red tape of acquiring a fire arm licence and the concomitant problems of owning, never mind using it in self-defense investing in a good slingshot might me an option :rofl: - although repeater airguns and paintball gear with interesting alternative ammo and crossbows also come to mind… but a firearm is as useless as your mind [common sense] if not applied correctly; and just as dangerous :face_with_open_eyes_and_hand_over_mouth:
whilst i am on the forum i bid all of you a blessed Christ feast, a tad belated, but then the exact date is not really an issue :star_struck:

2 Likes
72

YES!!!

And you run out of bullets too.

To add to that. Being armed is one thing. Killing another human being is not in everyone’s ability.

Generally speaking:
No, don’t tell us how big a killer you are … unless you have actually done it, you are “talking the walk”.
And if you have had to do it … you know what I’m talking about.

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being attacked… at that stage the concept 'human being ’ takes back seat, could just as well be a rabid dog… just my two pence… - g’nite

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As a parent and grandparent you will probably admit that you will do a lot without thinking twice to protect your loved ones… not something we like to think about though.

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Correct, this is a lot harder than one thinks. Prior to changes in training, 25% of people in wartime couldn’t pull the trigger on the enemy trying to kill them. One of the changes was target practice against targets that represented human shapes and not just regular bullseye paper sheets.
This pushed the ratio up to only 10% of people unable to pull the trigger.

PTSD also went through the roof.

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interesting to note that ptsd treatment was mostly done by the victims themselves- alcohol… unbeknown to the public a classified depressant

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When people mention arming themselves, they are thinking about it, but not to the final “conclusion”.

Guns make untrained people feel “strong and invincible”.

Jip, as parents one is more “dangerous”. Keep in mind that @calypso used stats in a military conflict situation, and a rather large percentage was still not able to act.

Taking that to a civilian untrained level, a lot of bad decisions are going to ruin a lot of lives, decisions taken due to inexperience with the consequences of one’s untrained action.

Yeah, I have thought about this a wee bit … just bad to much worse conclusions. Hence my reaction when people say "I have a gun and lots of bullets … " and other variations of that. People who fully understand the situation would never say things along those lines.

Avoiding deadly conflict at all costs is a good motto, to begin with.
Run as fast as you can until you have absolutely no cards left to play with.
Then only act with a deep understanding of what is coming next.

EDIT:
Wife and daughter went to a self-defense class. The trainer asked who has a gun in her handbag. One lady indicated she had. He swapped it with a training “gun”. Back in her bag. He stood 10m away, told her he is coming for her, she must get the gun out, and “stop” him.

He walked, yes walked closer (fast) shouting and screaming at her … she never even got her purse open. She was so rattled.

Try that with a trained person who knows to keep the gun loaded at all times, just the safety on … and not in a handbag either. :wink:

EDIT 2:
Our son’s career choice is a stuntman. He trains and trains how to pull and “use” a weapon, yes, it is for movies, but the trainers are the real deal. Over and over he trains till he gets it right.

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i have a friend who was a policeman for more than 20 years, most of the time carried a 9mm as well as a walther ppk as backup - only shot at 5 people in his career, no fatalities; and yes, he told me shooting someone is no fun but if push comes to shove it has to be done - soos pakslae :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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what i like about this forum is the hands-on realism of most of the forumites. we discuss real life contrary to what is being sold as such by inter alia the main stream [and social] media. hence preparing yourself for for instance a grid collapse is not a taboo, just as taking out life-cover is not frowned upon but rather lauded - also by those selling rosy five-year plans in parliament - or in the same vein kindly note that police stations all have burglar bars.
which brings me back to the much frowned upon and laughed at topic of the grid collapse, you get an inkling of how noah must have been ridiculed whilst constructing his life raft.
as promised i will have to upload a basic ‘prepper-list’ dealing with this looming reality… same reason i have been inoculated against rabies or whatever. also in preparation for the event - not that as a result of zero electricity it would be worth anything - i have registered the domain gridcollapse.co.za just in case we need [another] platform in cyberspace.
oh yes, being in the weeds [off topic] i take the liberty of including a dose of realism which has a direct bearing upon our economic demise The causes and consequences of the Ukraine war A lecture by John J. Mearsheimer - YouTube
regards
g

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I do think you probably have to put something on there before the grid collapses? :stuck_out_tongue: