Prepping and General Emergency Preparedness - Preparing for the worst, hoping for the best.

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I don't care about making preserves atm but I have a lot of cheap pectin. I'm trying to use it to thicken homemade yogurt now. No great result yet but I was being lazy.
Your traditional pectin relies on sugar to activate. A lot of it. So consider that. Why do you want to thicken homemade yogurt? You can strain the whey out in a cheesecloth set in a colander. You can even get it to the consistency of soft cheese. I did that earlier this year with buttermilk I had cultured. So fucking good.
 
I have tried and failed at gardening many times, but I've had my best success this year after spending a few months following this guys content. Like JP Sears, Garden like a Viking features a ginger with a real hippie persona who is very practical about low-input, organic-style gardening.

He basically does a great job of practically showing and explaining the concepts and what it actually takes.

He's a low key prepper, and he foresees bad times ahead, but is positive and upbeat and encourages the viewer to do more to become self sufficient. He has suggestions on good varieties to grow, how to feed the soil so the microbes do a bunch of work.

Sample relevant to upcoming fall season to get ready for next year:
 
Why prep? If you're hoping for civil unrest, nuclear attack, asteroid strike, zombie invasion etc. you'll be disappointed you wasted your money on all the things.

Prep for things that might actually happen in the next 12 months.
  1. Bad weather. Depending where you live, this could be hot, cold, dry, wet, windy, shaky, or a combination of. Oops, there went the electricity. Could be hours or days before it's back on. Live in a highrise? Lol no elevators. You might lose water pressure -- oops no flushy flush. Did you know you can pour a bucket of water into the terlet and it'll flush? By the way, the stuff in your freezer is melting.
  2. Natural disaster. Some dumbass launched a bottle rocket into a pile of pallets next to the electrical substation and kitty corner to the refinery and whoosh! Another idiot dragging a chain made sparks along the highway and set the tumbleweeds on fire, then the wind blew them around and set everything else on fire. Can't get in or out by road and you left the hovercraft in your other pants. Or the county spent more of our hard earned tax dollars on powerpoints than dam maintenance and oops I meant to say "former dam." Anyhoo, another reason to be stuck at home with no way in or out. At least your house is above the 500 year flood level, right? Right?
  3. Ah-choo. I'm sick, you're sick, we're all sick. Locked the fuck down sick. Not dyin' sick, but deffo nobody's leaving the house sick. Pukin and snottin and shittin sick, as it were. This too shall pass, but forget about shopping for at least a week and doordash won't come cause as usual the cards are all maxed out. Fuck.
  4. That rainbow-haired theythem at work went to HR because you forgot and used yesterday's pronouns instead of today's and you got escorted out with your coffee mug, potted fern and sweater in a bankers box. Or head office had to make room for two new levels of middle managers by allowing the lowest ranking "team members" and "associates" to continue their careers outside of Innitech (Is it good for the company?). Or senior management watched an Enron documentary and said "hold my beer." Whatevs, no severance, no pension, hand in your keys and uniforms and walk home in your underwear. Oh, and could you hang onto your final paycheck for a few more days before you try to cash it please? 'Preciate it kthxbye.
  5. I really fucking can't right now, sorry.
Do you actually have enough food and supplies (toiletries, meds, etc.) on hand to last till the power comes back on, water comes out of the tap again, the roads are passable, you're feeling well enough to shop, you pick up a low paying gig to get by while you look for a real job? Could be a couple days, could be a few weeks. Meanwhile the kids are crying and the phones are all outa battery and I swear if I don't find a cigarette I'm climbing the walls and jumpin from the ceiling fan, see if I don't.

Bet you don't. Bet you got lots of guns and ammo, drums of fuel, heirloom seeds, bags of red AND white wheat in mylar, books about humanure and improvised nuclear weapons, anti-radiation supplies, a couple acres up in the mountains to bug out to when SHTF, complete field hospital in a foot locker, 200 kilos of ivermectin and some silver bullion though. Anything you don't have you can steal from your zero-opsec cuck neighbors with the garden and chickens and goats, amirite?

Prep for mundane disasters first. Stupid stuff that is more of a major inconvenience rather than the end of civilization. Once you've laid in a couple weeks or a month worth of food and water and stuff to keep you and your family from dismembering each other out of ennui, then you can start prepping for fun stuff like volcanic eruptions and alien invasions.
 
Just wanted to bring up that you need a small group of like minded people within a couple mile or so of each other as a single person can't survive long by themselves. Eventually, the crowd of looters will wear you down or you will need a skill that you don't currently possess.
 
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We replaced our wood stove and chimney because our old one was unsafe.

It was just planned as a backup to our propane furnace, we assumed we would stay with that and just run the wood stove in emergencies.

That changed the second we ran a trial fire. Even buying the firewood, the savings will pay for the stove in three years, especially with the carbon tax up here.

The heat is so much nicer, it makes the whole house feel so cozy. Last winter I don’t believe the propane furnace kicked in, even during the -40 cold snap.

So in this case, our back up preparation actually improved our quality of life day to day. Happy accident.

My other preparations aren’t usually so immediately useful.

Our propane usage is now just the hot water tank, which is so much less.
 
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