Hi RamblerDodger

I'm in the Lower Mainland of BC so we're in earthquake country though there are the occasional tsunami alerts. Why prep? Well it helped us get our family of six through 9 months of unemployment in 2009, then 3 months of a low paying job before something better came along. After that year my food storage had a lot of empty spots on the shelves but it got us through. As soon as we started getting a bit more money again I started shopping the sales and I save a lot of money by buying ahead. I don't pay $1.59 to $1.79 for a 796ml jar of tomato sauce I wait until it's on for 99 cents and buy 24-36 cans. 10kg of sugar is 13.99 right now, I buy it when it's 7.99 Another practical part of food storage is that I'm not running out to the store constantly because there's no food in the house. We can be in the middle of dinner and someone uses the last of the bbq sauce and I just pull another one out of my food storage.

Last year one of the water systems near us was contaminated and an area was on boil water alert until they fixed it but that took almost two weeks, that's why I have water. It was a relatively small area but if that happened to a larger area or the entire city the stores would be out of water quite quickly. What if the truckers go on strike? The stores only have 2-3 days of food and I sure don't want to be fighting the crowds for a can of vegetables. No zombies 🙂 just life.

Hi, Rambler Dodger. It would be nice if more people were as level headed as you sound. Thankfully, there are preppers who do so without the fear you talk about.

Personally, I've done one kind of prepping or another since I was 18 and newly married, but it wasn't called prepping then. It was just the way we lived. I enjoyed the good feelings that came from canning food from my father-in-law's garden, and using it to feed my family for the winter.

I've kept small livestock, sold my hand made soap at farmers markets, butchered meat rabbits, chickens and pigs mostly all by myself (except the pigs), but with some help from in-laws because my husband has never been 'on board' except when a meal is put on the table. You are very fortunate that your wife is agreeable. It's almost impossible if the 2 of you aren't together on this.

I don't buy into the conspiracy theories either. I just feel fulfilled with the lifestyle.

Please, listen to this podcast. There is no fear mongering in it. It's about an hour long, and I think you and your wife may find it an interesting way to think about prepping. It may speak to you, it may not, but I bet it will cause some paradym shifts in your thought processes, and at the very least give some non-fearful reasons to prep.

http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/episode-506-why-we-prep-the-real-reasons

Welcome, to the board!

Sue
ps. You can ramble all you like. 🙂 Sometimes it helps get the points straight in your head to get things down and permanant, no matter how long it takes to get there.

Greetings Rambler,

I have always been a rather casual prepper, just another way of saying I'm a sucker for a sale 😆 I always like to have emergency food supplies, extra candles, ect, and have always been drawn to cool things like wind-up radio's.

Due to my desire to always be as prepared as I can be, I've actually been asked point blank "What are you afraid of?" The honest answer is: "Nothing"

I've always tried to be prepared for "The Worst" is this a fear thing? No. I see it as a common sense thing. What is the worst? In my area, the worst I can expect is mass flooding, maybe the odd tornado, a black out, amazing amount of snow or more realistically sudden unemployment. Really nothing when you compare it to the nightmare many of our friends in Japan are facing.

My being the "Weird Guy" who prepares for no reason, has been put to the test a couple times. The most recent occasion a few years ago: A Forest Fire took out the towns main power station plunging most of the city into darkness. While most of the people I know were sitting around in the dark, Because I was prepared for possible emergencies and was ready for an outage like this I was sitting around watching movies and listening to the radio.

Being prepared has nothing to do with being afraid, its simply about thinking ahead.

deleted

First off Rambler, I apologize for not welcoming you to the site earlier. I have a lot of blogs and forums to keep up on and sometimes don't get around to looking into new posts. Anyways, that being said, you may want to turn to The Canadian Preppers Network blog. I will have a post going up on Saturday outlining the different levels of preppers that you may find helpful. I agree that the zombie scenario can be hard to rationalize, but like Foxglove mentioned, unemployment is high on my "reasons to prep" list. I agree that SW Ontario is not exactly a disaster magnet, but things can and sometimes do happen to the nicest people in the nicest places. My advice is to research local disasters over the past 100 years or so to get an idea of what you could expect. Check out the blog site here...

http://www.canadianpreppersnetwork.com/

And feel free to ramble all you want, that is the only way we can learn from each other, and that's what this forum is all about.

South-Western Ontario, I'd get out of there, just kidding. I,m prepped to keep the gun crazed, zombie obsessed conspiracy theorists away from my front door. Especially the conspiracy theorists who believe the world is going to stop turning on dec 21 2012 and start turning the other way. True or not, unless your bill gates or some other supper wealthy person, the only thing you can do is ride it out. I don't think that is going to happen, but I do think global warming is NOT caused by us humans, but a natural warming of the Earth, were we are going to get more saver weather, earth quakes and hurricanes flooding , droughts , you name it, what ever Mother Earth wants to do, we need to live with her not against her. Remember a lot of animals put away food stores. I'm liking all the comet on this subject, its better to have prep and not need it, than need it and not prep. that's my short answer. 😀

Hi, Rambler...I'm worried a little about food shortages and starving with Russia's entire wheat crop lost to floods last year; 4 million acres of farmland flooded by the Missouri River; a locust in Russia recently; 4.5 million fish dying from volcanic ash in Chile; Texas, Arizona, and Oklahoma burning fields to control the burn of scorched crops; North Dakota losing acres due to floods from Souris River; Japan having contaminated livestock and crops from radiation; the current rebursting of the sea floor from the Gulf oil disaster---again!!!; Oklahoma and Texas selling livestock due to crop shortages;

And that's just off the top of my head...yeah, I'm not gun crazed, zombie obsessed, or a conspiracy theorist.

I'm a southern belle afraid of dying from hunger or even worse, for lack of clean water.

And, Rambler, your great lakes are being slowly depleted by China...don't you watch Jesse Ventura??? Even Michigan residents can tell you that.

Foxglove...are you my twin????

Hi JayJay

I think there are a lot of twins out there these days, people who got hit with the economic down-turn though here in Canada it was better than the US. Luckily my husband if on board about food storage even though he leaves it mostly to me, the biggest selling point for him is the amount of money we save.

Foxglove

should we fear chemtails. The chemtrail conspiracy theory holds that some trails left by aircraft are actually chemical or biological agents deliberately sprayed at high altitudes for purposes of changing weather patterns. Now I love a good conspiracy story, but after hearing a news story on cbc about how they plans to move the hubble space telescope so it can look at the clouds over Ontario, it made my spider senses tingle. Now the cbc news story had there expert Bob McDonald's explaining it was to look at the clouds, hummm

Beth im going to help you by telling you I work on those planes everyday. I have traveled all over repairing them and not once have I ever had to repair the mind control gas spraying nozels on the wings that I have been on under and inside of on every kind of aircraft you can think of. I think that is one of the most amusing things i have ever heard.
I prep because I believe the hole 2012 thing only because i can rationalise it in my head, maybe not to the extreme most people think but in one way or another something will happen. weather it is good or bad i will be ready for it as much as i can. When you think about it the world we live in is a giant clock that we count to know when things will happen like the change of seasons or phazes of the moon. It is one big cycle and we have not been around long enough to understand the cycles of the earth let alone our solar system. i have spent alot of time reading and listing to everything i can on it and it seems as though something is going on. All you have to do is look at nasa, 3 years ago they said will be no solar flares during 2012, and now they are sending out warnings about them near the end of this year. maybe im crazy and just rationalising some sort of insane bable from some guy as crazy as me but i would rather be prepared for nothing than not. i just hope i dont sound as crazy as beth with the hole planes spraying stuff in the air. (sorry beth)

Sorry I should have made that more clear, I was just pointing out the conspiracy on chemtrail. I didn't say i believed it.
But hubby who is so not any thing conspiracy has said the stuff that comes out of plans flying stay in the air and hangs there, unlike what we are use to, unusually the cloud like substance coming out diapers very fast and is push by the wind fast. this new crap hangs there like a think cloud. Is it just new fuel they uses or what.

Just think of it as a cloud . The easy way of explaining it is that the heat from the jet engine is forming moisture in the air forming a cloud in the shape of the trail the jet leaves. It has to do with the hight that the aircraft is flying at as well... they dont leave the trail when the are close to the ground because of the amount of oxagen in the air. thats why a jet engin whines because of the build up of moisture and is louder in the rain or snow. there is a big scientific thing but it would take to long to type and im to lazy.... sorry...

still doesn't explain what is happening now, back in the day, jets flying high, there trail would disperse fast, now it stays. So ether way they have change the fuel or something. Its not the same as it was.