Good topic. It's been a hobby for decades, but having wife and kids adds many challenges over what it would take to keep a single person alive and relatively well.

Water - the potable type. Better know how to filter and purify once you can no longer turn on a tap. How to get it when it's scarce.

Food - For now and later. What you can gather, plant, trap, spear, shoot, etc. What's good and what will kill you. What time of year and which part is edible.

Shelter - Gotta stay warm in the winter and not broil in the summer. Can you build your own?

Protection - both from the critters and especially the two legged varmints.

First Aid - Days of $20 copay are no more. Can you treat injuries and alleviate sickness?

What skills can benefit not only yours, but those around you? Can you fix, fabricate and scavenge what you or others need?

The list of possibilities, probabilities and problems are endless. You now have until October to prepare (-:

Tornadoes are now on the way. Computer is in the safe room. Someone come dig me out if need be.

Going back to this, my interest in the subject is mainly just a "Hurricane Katrina" sort of scenario. Likely candidates for my area range from the recent tornado which just plowed through a town two hours south of me, killing 90 people, and the collapse of the New Madrid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone) fault line, which would wipe out most of the infrastructure of my state.

I'm not really factoring in terrorist attack because, really? So it's mostly natural disasters that are on my radar as concerns.

If you're trapped under something without food for days waiting for rescue, fat reserves are useful.

Otherwise, I can't think of many natural hazards that a human needs to out-steady run for a mile but you might well want to be able to climb out of danger. Being lean is certainly a help there.

It might help to be a strong swimmer too.

I don't know if the long term survival skills people like Ray Mears (or whoever Les Stroud is) teach would be totally useless. You might spend a night or two without proper shelter and need to dress wounds, find clean water, light a fire etc..

Actually, hurricane season is probably the only time it pays to be the fat guy in a trailer park.

to add

I must stand twice to cast a shadow. Very handy for presenting smallest target possible.

to add

I must stand twice to cast a shadow. Very handy for presenting smallest target possible.

Don't be too modest. Your evil Judo will always come in handy.

i was in katrina (north of the hardcore disaster area, but we still got hit fucking hard)

you know what skills best served me in that SHTF week? i could safely operate a chainsaw, sledge ax, and wedge.

the fact that my dad and grandfather took me out on a million wood chopping trips is the one skill that everybody wanted from me when SHTF. you know what else helped me? the fact that i was a waiter when it happened.

i only had time to go to my bank about once a week or so. i was making 350-500 a week in cash through tips. when katrina hit, i had about 700 bucks in cash in a lock box in my closet. i also had a 9mm in that same box.

while ATMs were down everywhere, and looting was rampant for about 18 hours, i didn't go without ****. i had a gun, 300 rounds of ammo, and enough cash money to buy anything i needed to buy at a fair price while everybody else was going ape **** because they couldn't use visa as a life boat anymore.

survivalists are typically dumbtards who have never been in a real SHTF situation.

In like a total apocalypse situation I'd get myself a couple of guns and a solid, working Landie defnder. Fill it with as many supplies, jerry cans of fuel and books on how to make stuff as I could and then **** off to an island in Scotland with a whisky distillery on it.

Then live out my days as drunken lord of the isle.

i'm learning to weld. i'm not horrible at it right now. that's gonna be my ace in the hole when road warrior turns real.

Do we get cool cars with chariot style blades on the wheels?

if so, I'm in.

Did anybody mention the whole gutting, cleaning, and cooking dead animals thing? Something to be said for that. I doubt the average twinkie eater would have the stomach for it.

i'm learning to weld. i'm not horrible at it right now. that's gonna be my ace in the hole when road warrior turns real.
That 'when' was meant to be an 'if' right?

Didn't you realise there are black people in the white house. With that kind of fucked up **** going on Ragnarok is only just around the corner.

There's a difference between being a sociopath and lacking social skills. Some of history's greatest sociopaths had loads of social skills. You don't become a leader of any group, be it a tribe of post-apocalyptic raiders or the local skeptics meet-up group, without possessing superior social skills relative to those around you.

This is one of the threads I was referencing: http://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/dq6i9/i_want_to_share_a_quote_from_one_of_the_greatest/

The difference between the stereotype of a sociopath and the sociopaths that function well in society is often one thing: intelligence. A low intelligence sociopath will usually, due to his or her lack of empathy never really go beyond bullying in order to get what they want. The intelligent sociopath, on the other hand, will often start off as a bully but will learn over time and in a very scientific manner how other people's emotions work and how to use them to their best benefit and become either emotional bullies or master manipulators. The problem is that they're usually found out, but I'd imagine they'd often do very very well in a long term SHTF scenario. Probably as a part of the new clergy, whatever form that takes.

I'm kind of hoping for a fist of the north star post apocalypse, where my martial arts training will make me pretty much invulnerable. Martial artists in FotNS dont even need to eat or drink.

Unfortunately, everyone you know and love still dies of radiation poisoning.

i'm learning to weld. i'm not horrible at it right now. that's gonna be my ace in the hole when road warrior turns real.

Welding is the **** - making heavy stuff. I now want to learn how to use a plasma cutter so I can convert worn timber mill saw blades into Gladius.

Living in any major urban centre will be two edged - ample resources in the short term with high competition. Interesting looking at Katrina and how New Orleans society seem to go Lord of the Flies within 24 hours. NZ and Oz disasters seems to bring out collaboration and mutual support. Anyone care to write a discourse on geo-political-cultural differences? Is New Orleans a pretty fractured/polarised community with people itching to have go at each other, what gives?

I'm lucky my old man was a tradie, jack of all trades, ex military hunter gatherer type and off a farm - best education I could ask considering the looming Gotterdammerung.

"I shoot fish, hunt, Vote, drink , knit and seem to get punched a lot"

the problem with new orleans was that the people that were stuck there didn't have the resources to leave. also, evacuation efforts were slim to none, and what did exist was horribly planned. the logistics just weren't there for a lot of people to catch a ride out. plus, they had no where to go to after they got into the safe zone.

i didn't evacuate because i didn't think it would be as bad as it was as far inland as i was.

but in NO, you wound up with massive numbers of people (new orleans has a huge population of people in extreme poverty) who were now without the basic shelter, clean water, and electricity that they depended on. it very quickly became every man for himself.

a few miles down the coast in biloxi mississippi, things were bad. they were worse than where i was, but society didn't go lord of the flies because biloxi had a pretty good economy (casinos and tourist money) and simpler evacuation plans that went much more smoothly.

finally, louisiana has some of the most corrupt politicians in the nation. mississippi is no freshly fallen virgin snow, but compared to new orleans, you could call it freshly fallen snow that i peed on. that helped us and hurt them a lot.