Doomsday opinion

[SamuraiCO]

Get and read the book "One Second After". It will help you go through the thought process and put you in the right frame of mind. Your ability to know you are in an emergency situation and have a plan will keep you from freezing and not being able to make any decisions.

As others have stated you can do small things that would allow your household function for days to weeks w/o power. You have food stores so the emergency situation that occurs every time a blizzard is in the forecast is no problem you already have everything needed. I have extra food of staples that we buy every almost weekly like extra spaghetti sauce, spaghetti, mayo, mustard, canned goods etc. We buy beef once a year so at any time I have a lot of beef in the freezer. I also buy extra chicken and vacuum pack the breasts to protect. Extra bacon, fish etc. i have extra propane so if the power did go out for an extended time I would either can or jerk most of my meat in the freezer. Many options for freeze dried foods that store under beds and have 25 year shelf life.

You can move to more serious preps like the ability to heat water and food, have access to some water stores (water barrels in basement, water bob that fits in your bath tubs for water storage, ability to filter water), alternate heat source for rooms (propane or kerosene space heater) to wood stove backup if feasible.

Then think about what would happen if you needed money for emergencies. During a power outage your debit card does not work. Those businesses open will be on cash basis for goods. Have cash reserves in the home or bank for several months of bill payments if you are able to build those reserves. Further diversification of cash with purchase of gold/silver (is at a low right now), alcohol (great barter good that does not go bad and has several uses), etc.

Lots of resources but don't be get overwhelmed by those that seem to have everything and are living "off the grid". That is quite a serious life decision.

I think what will get us is our economy collapsing from debt and the digitizing of our monetary supply, ie the Federal Reserve is adding money to its reserve and buying the US debt. How much longer will that be allowed to occur without severely devaluation the dollar creating inflation or deflation or both ie what happened in Germany between WWI and WWII.

Oh....and guns......lots of guns.

[KestrelBike]

[Economic Collapse] It's a matter of when. Uh oh

Yeah, we're pretty screwed. For 2014, they're estimating a $649 Billion budget deficit. This is better than the previous obummer years: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals

2009 $1.413 trillion
2010 $1.294 trillion
2011 $1.300 trillion
2012 $1.087 trillion
2013 $680 billion [average GWB year was $221 billion deficit]

If you take all of the expenses that make up that deficit, there are really only 4 large items:
Dept of HHS (medicare) 26%
Social Security 25%
Dept of Defense 16%
Dept of Treasury (roughly 75% of this is paying interest on our debts) 13%
The minor crap: Dept of Agriculture (paying subsidies to big agro, no shit) 4%
The rest is about 2% or less: Transportation; Labor; Education; Homeland Sec; Dept of Housing & Urban Dev; DOJ (just 0.8%). Things like the Nat. Science Foundation gets only 0.2% of the budget (NASA gets ~0.4%).

Imagine if you went crazy and cut the Department of Defense's budget in half (this would *never* happen). At $580 billion (FY 09/30/14 amt), you only took $290 billion from the budget deficit so theres still a ~$400 billion deficit. Medicare and Social Security are entitlements. Beyond the obvious negative connotation we have with that word, it means that it's beyond the control of the budget, there would have to be laws passed to cut those amounts that are "owed" to the recipients. In short, we're on an inexorable path towards default on our loans with china. Wonder what will happen when we cannot pay them, or they have an economic meltdown of their own and come looking to us to cash in their chips. (remember why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor: We stopped selling them oil)

[SamuraiCO]

All that with record revenues made to the IRS by those of us still fortunate enough to be working. When will enough be enough.

[GilpinGuy]

When will enough be enough.

When America is "fundamentally transformed" forever.

[KestrelBike]

All that with record revenues made to the IRS by those of us still fortunate enough to be working. When will enough be enough.

ding ding ding NEVER. Well actually, http://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/fsrep...mt/mts0914.pdf

for FY 09/30/14, receipts were $3.02 trillion. 3 big items:
Individual income taxes 46%
Payroll (social sec, medicare, retirement withholding on paychecks & employer contribs) 34%
Corporation income taxes <11%

It's going to be a miracle making corporations pay. Republicans want corps to pay even less, while democrats want individuals to pay more. Guess who's on the winning end in both scenarios lol. It is almost a disincentive to earn more to pay more taxes, because the gov will just waste it some more. Government spending is a rabbit hole that no amount of tax revenue will ever fill.

ETA: Going a bit farther, the entire legislature system is broken because Congressmen have zero incentive to pay off the debt ($18 trillion as of last week, with at *minimum* half a trillion each year being added to it with no end in sight) because it does nothing tangential nor immediate for their constituents who elect them. Hah, can you see a senate or rep candidate on a platform of "I pledge to pay $500 billion to the chinese to pay off our debt!" Hell no. They're going to run on a platform of bringing bridge repairs for their district (adds to the debt) or promising to keep their medicare intact (adds to the debt). Zero political incentive to pay off the principal of the debt, lots of incentive to add to it.

[Great-Kazoo]

They way this bridging the racial barrier's been going, hopefully not too much longer. Burn this Bitch DOWN!
Not as long as Im holding the fire extinguisher

[Bailey Guns]

We have a great well and have a means of easily getting water out of it...it's 385' deep.

How will you do this? I have been wanting a solution for getting water out of my well as well. It's 400 or so feet deep, but water level is at 80 feet, approx.

Sorry...actually, a couple of ways. One is a hand pump a friend setup. Had to have some special valve or something...plumber/well guy speak and it was way over my head. But the easiest way is a generator. We can run the pump off a portable generator. Had the same friend set that up when we put in a new pump in 2011.

Our static level is about 45'. There's also an artesian spring just off our property that we could access.

All else fails you can use a rope and a small bucket, I guess.

[GilpinGuy]

Sorry...actually, a couple of ways. One is a hand pump a friend setup. Had to have some special valve or something...plumber/well guy speak and it was way over my head. But the easiest way is a generator. We can run the pump off a portable generator. Had the same friend set that up when we put in a new pump in 2011.

Our static level is about 45'. There's also an artesian spring just off our property that we could access.

All else fails you can use a rope and a small bucket, I guess.

A hand pump is the way I'm leaning, but they're $1K+ for a decent one with a depth of 80'+. If I need to, my plan is the coffee can and rope method like you, unless there's enough snow outside to melt on the wood stove.

[BushMasterBoy]

The best survival food is at the dollar store.

[theGinsue]

The best survival food is at the dollar store.

You can't drop something like that & walk away. Details man; details!