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Part of my mitigation strategy for TSHTF scenario is to draw up a list of sudden/volume purchases should a panic situation emerge.

If I have a pre-prepared list then if and when the panic arises I will not be in panic because I will have a list detailing exactly what I am happy to spend a thousand pounds buying!

So this is a list of (mainly) food that I will go to a wholesalers and purchase many items in the hours before the rest of Joe Public get the same idea and strip the shelves bare.

So what should be in this list? Certainly not short shelf life products that are likely to go "off" quickly. High calorie products are likely to be important. Plenty of protein in the products, plenty of Vitamin C.
Canned meat
Canned fruit
Canned vegetables
Dried foods - pasta, rice, cereals

Please let me know your thoughts.

I'm not a fan of this strategy - very risky to wait until the hours before the crush!

Why not buy tomorrow? The stuff you've listed there lasts for years, and if it's the stuff you eat anyway (and it really should be) just keep 6-12 months in stock at home and rotate.

Agree, Chris!

You should also remember basic things like salt, pepper, baking powder, yeast, milk powder or long life milk, vegetable oil, butter, lard, stock cubes.

I'm not the cook in the house so you might want to check with someone who actually does the cooking before finalising the above list.

There might be an added danger of waiting that long if people notice and remember you doing the bulk buy. Also, buying now means the stores will restock before the big panic and you won't be part of the shelf stripping.

For your list: extra medications and first aid supplies because the last places you want to go are the pharmacy or doctor.

There are a few things that cost pennies and every prepper should have. Water sterilization tablets are an obvious example, not just for drinking water but to make a strong bleach solution if necessary. More relevant to recent threats are perhaps firelighters, disposable lighters, disposable rubber gloves, waterproof paper overalls ( getting a bit difficult to find right now, search 3M 800j ) etc.,

I am very well stocked with the essentials, so my personal "crash" plan includes building materials such as roofing felt, plywood, insulation boards, cls timber, plastic water pipe and fittings, screws and nails. I might have to construct accomodation for family and friends, and once they're in a trip to the farm suppliers for barbed wire might well be in order.

The ladies of the house went shopping yesterday and topped off supplies with the news in mind. Carrying it in I noticed about twice the normal amount of meat, (Bulk packs of chicken breasts etc. ), some additional rice , five lb.s to add to the 25 in store, 4lbs. of dried soldier beans, and three boxes of wine.
If your going to spend a month at home while the world goes to hell around you you might as well be well fed and have a glass with dinner.

Vitamins,.Whatever happens it's important to keep your immune system healthy and in the absence of fresh fruit and veg (tinned being next best thing) a good quality multivit with iron can really help.

holing up is not an option for me, at least in the early stages. Apart from being in the middle of the village, I could never keep the kids under curfew, and if I didn't send the kids to school they would come round and drag them out of bed (they actually do that at the village college - they send older kids to get younger kids out of bed).

I haven't brought the topic up at home, we keep a reasonable stock of dry food, but isolation really isn't going to happen. Ebola is not going to be over in a month once it arrives, it will be a year at least.

Agreed it makes sense to buy now rather than wait till the shops of full of screaming , panicking hoards. Long life canned and dried foods would seem the order of the day and non food stuffs should probably be looked at too. For example simply things like toilet rolls...
http://www.citylab.com/work/2013/06/ven ... tage/5801/

PS_RalphW wrote:. Ebola is not going to be over in a month once it arrives, it will be a year at least.

On a nation wide basis yes and perhaps in urban environments but in a rural area such as mine they tend to come as a wave and then pass on. If it takes longer we will stay isolated longer.
What happens to the ravens that eat the unburied dead?

clv101 wrote:I'm not a fan of this strategy - very risky to wait until the hours before the crush!

Why not buy tomorrow? The stuff you've listed there lasts for years, and if it's the stuff you eat anyway (and it really should be)

I don't eat canned meat, fruit and veg, and don't agree that one should eat it. Quite a lot of the fruit and veg I eat is foraged from the wild, and the rest is either home grown or bought fresh from the local supermarket. Canned stuff is inferior, both in taste and nutritional content.

vtsnowedin wrote:

PS_RalphW wrote:. Ebola is not going to be over in a month once it arrives, it will be a year at least.

On a nation wide basis yes and perhaps in urban environments but in a rural area such as mine they tend to come as a wave and then pass on. If it takes longer we will stay isolated longer.
What happens to the ravens that eat the unburied dead?

Ravens will probably be fine. All known carriers are mammalian. Dogs and cats are a very interesting question. I saw one report of unburied ebola victims in Africa being consumed. The Texas nurse's dog is being cared for in isolation, which is a good scientific move, as long as it is done properly.

snow hope wrote:Part of my mitigation strategy for TSHTF scenario is to draw up a list of sudden/volume purchases should a panic situation emerge.

If I have a pre-prepared list then if and when the panic arises I will not be in panic because I will have a list detailing exactly what I am happy to spend a thousand pounds buying!

So this is a list of (mainly) food that I will go to a wholesalers and purchase many items in the hours before the rest of Joe Public get the same idea and strip the shelves bare.

So what should be in this list? Certainly not short shelf life products that are likely to go "off" quickly. High calorie products are likely to be important. Plenty of protein in the products, plenty of Vitamin C.
Canned meat
Canned fruit
Canned vegetables
Dried foods - pasta, rice, cereals

Please let me know your thoughts.

Seems a good list, but I would strongly advise purchasing now, most unwise IMHO to leave it until the last minute.
Panic can spread very rapidly indeed and unless you are alert and watching 24/7, retail shops could be stripped bare in an hour or two.
Wholesale suppliers keep larger stocks but IMO it would be most unwise to count on such establishments in an emergency.
TPTB might well requisition the stocks at wholesalers, or the owners might shut up shop in order to keep potentially scarce supplies for favoured regular customers, friends and family, or themselves.
I doubt that TPTB have the resources to guard and requisition each high street shop, but a handful of wholesalers would be a high priority.

clv101 wrote:I'm not a fan of this strategy - very risky to wait until the hours before the crush!

Why not buy tomorrow? The stuff you've listed there lasts for years, and if it's the stuff you eat anyway (and it really should be) just keep 6-12 months in stock at home and rotate.

This idea/plan is PART of my strategy. I already have a fairly good degree of stocks of lots of things including long shelf life food which I rotate. But one always wants more! Especially if you have 6 or 7 people or even more who may need fed if things get seriously bad.

I don't plan to join the crush, I plan to be there amongst the first shoppers - keeping abreast of the current situation all the time through a small network of people allows one to act quickly and this is critical to this idea.

Whilst most people subscribe to the slow crash scenario, I think there is an uncomfortably high chance of a fast crash situation and ebola and its implications are increasing chance in my opinion, hence the thoughts of a sudden large shop if/when a panic situation emerges. I think this is sensible strategy.

I don't think anyone's mentioned water yet. In the event of a major pandemic, utility workers will be off sick just like everyone else;

A simple and effective method of purifying river water is distillation. One way to do this is to connect a pipe to a kettle spout and feed that pipe to a receptacle. As the kettle boils, the steam will travel through the pipe and then condense in the receptacle as distilled water. At which point it will be safe to drink.