Some pacific islands are probably safer and less likely to be hit 
(and much nicer to live, you can even be self sufficient I know people into that kind of things 
)
I thought they will be under water in a few decades? 
I’d go with the Canadian / Australian outback plan. Although the minor African country has a sound logic behind it, there you’re identifiable as ‘the guy with money’ from 100m distance.
Otherwise staying fit and functional under stress, Krav Maga or whatever, and surviving a week or two without power or shopping sounds like a good idea. Learning skills that could be useful to you and your community, say medical aid, fixing things, etc., can be fun and in some ways useful in unexpected ways short of a war as well.
Unfortunately in my case the ‘fit’ part has suffered a lot in the home office, that would be the first to tackle…
Agree, when it comes down to apokalypse, all the “normal” skills from the normal world won’t help. Knowledge in medical aid, chemistry, physics, handcrafts would be a good asset. However, if the nuclear disaster breaks out, none of these helps. We’re screwed anyway.
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From my personal view, the only viable option if a large scale war breaks out in Europe, is to get out of here as soon as possible (considering nobody starts to shoot nuclear weapons - then we’re anyway completely f**ked).
Let’s face it: almost all of us keyboard jockeys (me included) are not equipped to survive for an extended period of time outdoors and on our own. You would still need a place to stay and be safe.
Most of the prepper stuff doesn’t really make sense, because people usually don’t have an idea how the end game looks like. It won’t help you to have enough food and water, if you can’t defend yourself. And defending yourself will only work if you are part of a bigger group, which can defend their terroritory against others (think war lords or bandidos). Unless you have a place which has huge advantages due to it’s setup (e.g. having two sides of your house covered from a mountain) and a machine gun with a lot of ammunition, you won’t survive for a long time on your own. If there’s a well organized and armed group coming at you, you don’t stand a chance.
Things like Krav-Maga might work if you have a 1 on 1 situation, but it fails if your enemy has a gun. Just look at riots from the past or the present: the “winners” are people who have guns, and who organized (think street gangs all over the globe).
So while I agree that being fit and having learned some effective martial arts like Krav-Maga might help you in general, it won’t be enough in case of a huge scale war or civil war.
Side-note: I’ve been serving in the army, and I also trained some Krav-Maga like martial arts for several years. Money quote from my teacher: “every fight which last longer than 10 seconds is a bad fight”. I know how to severly injure an enemy, but I’m pretty realistic that this won’t help me much if we have a big war breaking out. Also, it’s been some years since I stopped training.
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Maybe these kinds of fears will help drive a move to decentralized, resiliant infrastructures like mesh telecoms, DeFi, etc. and away from big tech. On the one hand, you have fear of Russia in NATO countries which could encourage a move away from dependence on location-based critical infrastructure. In the rest of the world, you have fear of being cut off from services provided by companies in NATO countries like Russia has been, which may drive a move away from big tech to decentralized solutions which can’t be centrally controlled. Of course, this is all hypothetical, but I’m interested in seeing if and how the decentralized-tech sector will be impacted.
So you mean mandatory military service? I have heard switzerland has some kind of system like that 
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I also heard that fire engines are not so useful if a hostile superpower steamrolls us. So let’s get rid of them, what a waste of money…
Reminds me somehow of a certain fighter jet campaign or martial arts discussions that end with “…but what would you do if suddenly 20 Ninjas jump on you”. Between today and the “we’re fucked whatever we do” scenario you have the full spectrum in between. With variable likelihoods of them actually happening.
My point is, if you look at actions/skills that will help yourself, your family and maybe your community, many of them will be useful in situations before the ultimate disaster. Like maybe help someone in an accident, provide safe baby food even though the water supply is contaminated, maintain a general level of fitness, etc. Pick those.
I also like the other idea proposed, to have a network of friends across multiple countries. Sounds like a good idea on many other levels too.
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This is currently the case with our army… Every soldiers in Switzerland have their assault rifles or gun at home, without amunition of course. I had mine for five years, sitting under my bed until the end of my services (I’ve done the long services, but was on the reserve for 5 years).
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So mandatory military service for everonye? If you can’t stomach the 18 weeks of basic training I’m not sure if you are ready for war.
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Isn’t it the whole point of the army? Train you to stop thinking and follow order?
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Then go on and fight alone. Group decisions are not the best decisions for every single person but for the whole group. If you didn’t get that during your basic service I’m not surprised you had problems.
From your posts to me it looks like your military experience was mostly ruined because of bad supervisors. Also there are two easy differences between tasks in the military.
- Stuff that you get ordered to do without ability to contribute/improve/change → just fucking around with the recruits
- Stuff where you get a task and the supervisors actually listen to meaningful and effective improvements from the recruits → real tasks needed for training
Premptively building relationships with people who, put together, have a broad set of skills and are fairly resilient by themselves is part of the prepper setup. Or, if it isn’t, then it should.
Regarding the end game, the idea isn’t to be perfectly prepared for the specific scenario you’ll encounter but to build anti-fragility and improve your odds around a wide array of scenarios, while staying adaptable on a tactical level as things pan out.
That’s something you plan for in advance in order to give you better odds if things go south. You can’t guarantee you’ll have access to your setup, but that’s where being nimble and adaptable enters the play.
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Is anyone here preparing for power supply outages? How?
I thought of
- Power Banks
- Candles
- Drinking water
- Books
- Food that can replace bread in the morning
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I was looking at candles as well. Not sure if it is best to buy tall or large one as I never used any.
If you live in a city centre like me, the storage is big issue.
You can buy tacos wrap or crackers instead of bread. You could replace butter with almond or peanut butter as you can store them on the shelf.
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Müsli, it’s basically bread, in a different form factor.
I happen to buy mine in bulk, so the bulk is at the same time my emergency food store.
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You can also buy Puffed Rice Cake that can be kept for few month.
For main meal, a bag of 5-10kg of rice will do for few months.
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I’ve bought one gas canister more for my camping fire thingy. Mostly because we need hot water for baby milk powder and it is nice to know I can always boil water on the balcon with my camping gear, anytime. Because babies cannot wait 
Parentheses; I still had the price of my last gas can, now empty: 6.90 chf for 220g butane 10 years ago.
This time I could buy 230 g for 5.90.
So inflation amirite?