Eat/use up/sell/give away your preperations

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

There are four stages of y2k effects:

1) Before 1/1/2000. We all agree that these have been trivial (except for Hershey, Samsonite, and a few other companies that rushed ill prepared new computer system into the front lines.

2) Onset. The exact moment of 1/1/2000. Don't fake it. Most of use expected some large scale effects, especially in the third world. Enough to unglue the economy. This did not happen.

3) A few days later from 1/1/2000. Here we see the direct effect of consumers with on-line transactions/banking/stock exchanges. Virtually no glitches. None that really damage the economy. Everything that has been annoying can or will be fixed in one day or a few days.

4) Longer term (some weeks or months from 1/1/2000). Here we are looking at the large scale mainframe systems that generate checks, do payroll, schedule production, order product, and keep companies alive. There are hints of trouble here, but no real evidence that things cannot be fixed before they become a real problem for people/companies. There may be large failures. Or companies will have the time and the resources to fix things before they get fatal.

So why are people saying "save your preps"? For what? What are you really expecting at this point that you need a generator, a wood stove, and a lot of canned/freeze dried food?

On the news, I noticed that the long term bond rate is climbing. This is a sign that bond holders are getting nervous about dollar holdings. This in fact can lead to a slide in the US dollar if Europeans and Japanese sell US Treasury bonds (lowering their price and raising rhe yield even more) and US stocks (causing more concern about the US dollar). Once this cycle starts, it is hard for Greenspan and his PPT to put a stop to it. Stock prices and bond prices would go down considerably.

So Y2K may lead to a financial failure in the US precisely because Y2K remediation was a success all over the world. If only the US was in good shape, then the overseas investment would stay in place.

Those here who placed bets against the dollar (buying gold, buying stock puts) may get their reward because of the success of y2k remediation! Such irony.

But please, start eating your preps. Yesterday, I made a lunch of summer sausage with onions over rice, with canned peas (from a 7 lb can) on the side. My son hated the taste of the peas. For dinner, I made tuna noodle cassarole with 3 cups of canned peas in it. He loved it. There is a lesson to be learned there too.

I will start by examining our food stocks. Some will be donated to neady families we know. Some will be donated to food pantries. Some we will eat. Some we will sell.

Even if we do end up with a financial (dollar) crisis in America, owning equipment designed to help with a power outage will do not good. Figure out how much food you have that you will really eat. Give the rest away. Do it before anything goes bad.

I hate all these posts that say "save your preps!!" Why? It is time to reallocate our resources and our time to more productive resources. I have enjoyed my time here.

I hope my non-traditional investments make up for not being in the stock market for over a year and a half and pay for preperations that did not prove useful.

How about you?

-- David Holladay (davidh@brailleplanet.org), January 03, 2000

Answers

Yeah, but first I gotta get another kerosene heater so that I can burn off my kerosene in some reasonable calendar period.

dave

-- dave (wootendave@hotmail.com), January 03, 2000.


David...you make some good points. What I like even more about it is, unlike the way the Pollies are coming in with the annoying 'Hah-ha!'s is how you thought out what you should do. Personally, I'm going to keep my own preps and rotate them. I've been on the homeless side before and, if it weren't for the fact that I have been a 'Survivalist' for years, I would be dead. So I personally feel better having these things as insurance.

I didn't get a woodstove or generator. Deciding I wanted mobility instead. Now, I will re-evalute what I've got, make some other purchases as I see fit and then I will be in a better postion if some unforseen things were to happen.

There are a lot of people here who are really in better positions than they were before the 'Y2K crisis' was even thought about. I would reccomend staying in that position and teaching others how to get into it as well. Like I said elsewhere...who will be in a better position if there was a major blizzard or drought or hurricane?

The Prepped or the Pollies?

-- Satanta (EventHoriz@n.com), January 03, 2000.


Excuse me?

David, I can not understand why anyone who has begun a preparedness program would ever consider going back to not being prepared.

If you actually did prepare (and I have my doubts) then you lost sight of what was being said about preparedness and you had only a foggy notion of why you were preparing or what it was for which you were preparing.

-- (4@5.6), January 03, 2000.


David, why go back to being unprepared? I can't imagine why, since we don't have any guarantee that we will not suffer a natural disaster, like earthquake or flooding, or ....?

Nope, I like being prepared because I like being *independant*.

-- (formerly@nowhere.zzz), January 03, 2000.


Thanks for all the helpful advice, folks, but I did not say when.

dave

-- dave (wootendave@hotmail.com), January 03, 2000.



and besides, I've still got my woodstove!

dave

-- dave (wootendave@hotmail.com), January 03, 2000.


Wow, Dave, are you a programmer? You seem amazingly complacent.

First, any problem is going to be covered up as long as possible by the company involved. Glitches can hurt stock value or competitive position, and managers all down the line will cover it up to protect their jobs/reputations. There may be fatally wounded companies out there, whose low-level managers know they're doomed, but whose CEOs won't know it until next week. It's surprising that we've heard ANY bad news already.

Second, the "no real evidence that it can't be fixed", tells me that you don't work with mainframe systems. Read some Cory Hamasaki. A 2-digit year in a database key field can bring down the company for months. Evidence for that? Tough to find; it's mostly experience that tells you. Robert Maxwell's empire supposedly crashed because it couldn't handle a decade change.

So your points 3 and 4 have not BEGUN yet, much less been passed with flying colors. And for the last 6 months we've been saying that power probably WOULD stay up. It's not the plants themselves, now, it's the ability of railroads to deliver coal.

About all we can say so far is: The power stayed up. Hang on to your preps - this ride is just starting, and we don't know how it will end.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), January 03, 2000.


i'm with you bw i feel the "bump" will allow me to prep even more. i love this new feeling of being prepared for y2k or otherwise. i cant believe how many people are disappointed that more bad news didnt happen on rollover. you can bet 100% that problems will be covered up in the public and private sector till it cant be anymore. i think the "doomers" who feel the worst right now are the ones who spent too much versus their assessment of the risks. if i was a 9 or 10 i would have made a greater attempt to move to a more rural area but i'm more a 4/5 and couldn't risk my present employment. for those of you who made huge lifestyle changes in the face of adversity, there are some of us who dream they could. ratt

-- ratt (in@cag.e), January 03, 2000.

ratt....

Hell, I envy those that had the means to move rural and become self sufficient. Any that decide they don't like it and want to donate a home/land/provisions-whatever to a visually impaired, deaf, diabetic....give me a hollar!

-- Satanta (EventHoriz@n.com), January 03, 2000.


Even if we do end up with a financial (dollar) crisis in America, owning equipment designed to help with a power outage will do not good. Figure out how much food you have that you will really eat. Give the rest away.

What utter nonsense! I, for one, think that a financial crisis in America is inevatable at some point in the near future. The correct response to such an eventually would be to strive for more independence of every kind, and not less - including a woodstove and a well-stocked food larder, where possible. Fincial crises usually lead to unemployment, which equals no money for food or to pay power bills...

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), January 03, 2000.



Get rid of my preps? You crazy?

I bought some additional foodstocks (canned Comstock fruit fillings @ .66 each) today and have plans to maintain my current level of stock at least thru 2000. Then I might let it contract a wee bit, to say a six month supply for two. We're eating and rotating the food I bought 8/98-11/98 now and working our way up. Actually plan to expand and "refine" my preps over this next year. We live in a much more dangerous and volitle world than we did 10 years ago...see no reason to join the ranks of the unprepared.

-- Don Kulha (dkulha@vom.com), January 03, 2000.


Store what you eat. Eat what you store. That's a mantra. Preps are always good. Yes- you should eat them. Regularly. And buy more. I would think you haven't leaned much if you really feel there is no more need to "prep" and you wish to go back to the old days of "nothing in the house to eat, gotta go eat out tonite." Or maybe, we should let you and others who think that way do that once again. Mother nature has a way of weeding out fools from the gene pool...

-- farmer (hillsidefarm@drbs.com), January 04, 2000.

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