Any preppers on here?

[Beany]

Just stock up on lard

*checks self in mirror*

My god, I might live forever!

[KiwiDave]

Just stock up on lard

*checks self in mirror*

My god, I might live forever!

Years back when I lived in Wellington, one of my primary signs of me getting out of the 'living on the breadline' state and into having some money at all, was to put together an earthquake kit. Wellington sits on fuck knows how many fault lines and it's really common to feel seismic activity of some form. Genuine quakes to be worried about are few and far between, but they're due something scary. Those kits were designed to have food, medicines, sanitary goods etc. for two weeks. One of the weirdest things was to buy a heap of those thin thermal blankets, the silver tin foil things. The food and medicine replacement was the trickiest part once you'd done the initial outlay. I just had a Google calendar event to replace all the tins every year.

I've been in Auckland now for coming on 12yrs but some of it has stuck. We have four gas bottles and two are always full, the other two in use. I have two huge water vats and know that a pipette of bleach in each one keeps them safe to drink for a year etc. Both of those things and what is affectionately known as 'the tin mine' (tinned food that will keep you alive and fed if it comes to it) have come in handy several times. Huge storms blow through and you're a few days without power or water etc.

It's not a bad idea to have the basics I guess. You don't need to go full nuclear bunker about it.

[Nefarious]

As well as food, water and some kind of heat/power strategy, money might be quite an important one to think about. Doesn't hurt to keep a few hundred quid in cash. Or a wee bit of small denomination silver/gold, if you're being really belt and braces.

There have already been a number of major financial institution hacks, and it feels like that's the logical place to attack if you're a malicious foreign power. Short term powercuts and failures to the water supply stress national infrastructure, but are ultimately an inconvenience (albeit a large one) and probably strengthen national resolve (blitz spirit and all that), but if you zeroed everyone's bank account (or at least prevented access for long enough to create doubt that it would ever come back) people would go feral in 5 minutes flat.

[Gavster]

Totally agree, and even at a smaller scale, I’m sure POS systems could be another target and meaning that having enough cash for a few days would be a lifeline.