Crisis or no crisis?

[Woody girl]

Us luddites have a head start!
Access to cash is a biggie.
I have back up at home, a month's rent, a month's food and a month's electric....Well, maybe not so much the electric nowadays.!!!!!!!!!
If I had a car, I'd have enough for a month's worth of petrol too.
All in a cash safe.locked away and hidden for emergencies.

An X class solar flare could do as much damage, or more, as any cyber attack.
That will set us back for a very long time. The sun is very active at present and there have been a lot of blackouts in various places round the world recently due to flares hitting the earth, but so far, nothing major,.... fingers crossed.

 

[C_Claycomb]

@Woody girl
Your post reminds me of one on a US forum discussing societal collapse, poster proudly shared the details of the cabin he had fully stocked, until it was pointed out he had painted a target on himself if that situation ever occurred.

 

[Scottieoutdoors]

@Danceswithhelicopters
This is very true. The scary thing really is that the bank account disappeared from anything I could access... banking app, online banking etc..naturally we don't have paper statements - so the bank card I held (which didn't work) and a printed statement without doing some digging were basically the only things we had on hand to say we had a bank account... with the evidence of the account also went the balance...

 

[C_Claycomb]

@Scottieoutdoors
that is the strangest banking story I have heard. Very curious which bank and what it was that they or asked for did that needed your input. Blocking n account from all access is pretty extreme.

 

[Scottieoutdoors]

@C_Claycomb
It was natwest and its a business account. I believe its to do with new FCA rules, they needed to update details of the account holders (me n her) and sometimes they can do it in house themselves, other times they need more details which is what happened with her this time... she had to take a selfie and wiggle her nose (sounds like pish take i know) - showing shes alive basically..., then passport photo, then a bill with her name and address...

The account blocking could have been avoided had she not filed the letter she received about it, in the "do not bother reading" pile

 

[demographic]

I don't think that negotiating harsher trading with our closest and largest trading area was the sharpest move and getting a deal with relatively small populations like Australia isn't going to make up for it.
Closing our minds and going "Lalala, its not happening" isn't going to sort it out either.
In totally unrelated news, our energy prices have gone up more than any other country I know of so how come their governments seem able to sort it better than ours? There's obviously levers our government is unwilling to pull, I wonder why.

 

[Tengu]

I attend an allegedly agricultural Uni.

Its mostly horses.

 

[Woody girl]

A simple analogy to present times.
We check the weather before leaving home. If its cold, we put on a warm coat and have gloves, hat and scarf.
If its wet, we have a waterproof coat decent boots that don't leak, and possibly a brolly.
If its sunny, a t shirt and shorts, sunhat, sunglasses and cream.
We are seeing storm clouds right now, so be sensible and prepare accordingly.
If this storm passes over, we may be OK, but if it hits, and you are still in your summer clothing, you will be in trouble.!
We have had a long summer, of many years, time to think differently about our lives. There is a perfect storm out there, and personaly, I'm not hanging around to wait for it to hit without being appropriately prepared.
I'm not going to panic about paying bills, I either can, or I can't.
Whatever the shower of...sorry, government say they are going to do, I'm afraid trust in their policies and competence is minimal for me.
I've always been an independent person, so I'm mitigating as much as I can and have been for a long time. I'm not waiting for the crunch before I act, as it will be too late.
That's my view.
Meanwhile, I'm having as much fun as I can. Off to a vintage fair today.
I can't do the lindy hop nowadays, but I may get a few Woody Girl flops in!!

 

[bearbait]

From today's Grauniad:

The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse

Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences

www.theguardian.com

Just think what preparations you could do - if you had the odd spare hundred million lying around doing nothing!

 

[Woody girl]

I'm thinking of converting my coal bunker.
Well it is a bunker....

 

[Paul_B]

As someone who deals a lot with buying and selling around the world I can assure you that companies cope with whatever system they have to work with. The only issue we have had is with the island on Ireland, both North and Republic. They are the only places where couriers fail to deliver because of the trading system in place. Europe, America, Canada, Australia are all no problem.

 

[Scottieoutdoors]

As someone who deals a lot with buying and selling around the world I can assure you that companies cope with whatever system they have to work with. The only issue we have had is with the island on Ireland, both North and Republic. They are the only places where couriers fail to deliver because of the trading system in place. Europe, America, Canada, Australia are all no problem.

I think this is the reality. The decisions made over the last 8(?) Years has changed the status quo, but I don't personally feel like anything is particularly unreachable, just things are slower or have more hurdles or indeed slightly more expensive in the worst case scenarios, in the best case its business as usual.

 

[TLM]

They are the only places where couriers fail to deliver because of the trading system in place.

Sounds a bit strange, could you clarify a little.

 

[Paul_B]

Nearly forgot, Poland, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Czech Republic are places we ship to and from every month. Often twice a week a truckload.

The media like to play up issues of trading difficulty but the end result is companies plan and implement whatever is needed to carry on.

Don't believe all the hype either way. The first couple of weeks were difficult but only because there was a new system to be followed and nobody knew what it was! You can't plan for incompetence with UK and EU authorities and we found both to be as incompetent as each other.

PS you export to different countries within the EU and they interpret rules slightly differently and do things slightly differently.

 

[Paul_B]

Sounds a bit strange, could you clarify a little.

Couriers are simply poor at setting up systems that work for deliveries to the island of Ireland IME. Collecting taxes, working out any tariff charges, etc. Other countries had no issues but eire and NI end up with 3 out of 4 packages getting returned. It's not just couriers as whichever ones we used failed to deliver. It's like the tariffs and tax due surprised them and they have reduced time to allow for it to be cleared than other countries.

At one point we very nearly stopped selling into the island of Ireland at all.

 

[demented dale]

Good thread. bringing it back to bush craft, this is one of the reasons I got into it. I dont have a crisis agenda though. I think it is good to be prepared , period. How many of us have a spare tyre,a jack and more than a days food in the house? thats prepping.
It dawned on me some years ago that I didnt know how to feed myself. I actually felt ashamed and set about learning more about foraging, fishing and improving my hunting. I rarely take anything from the wild these days but I.m practiced and can draw on it at the drop of a hat and I always say its better to have something and not need it than to need it and not have it. I feel fairly confident that whatever might happen I have some tools and experience I can draw on. Thank you again everyone x