Things we will absolutely need should SHTF

[IHuntDragons]

The bug going around got me thinking about basic necessities, and even though I always have, always had years worth of non-perishable food on hand, I bought a hand-crank flour mill and a hand-crank oil press. My line of thinking was that cooking without oil and baking without flour are simply impossible. The mill is already here, and I have tested it. Works wonders on everything but rice (due to its extremely hard grains it is hard to mill and has to be milled thrice). Now my wife's cookies and pancakes are better then ever.

Next on my list is a balance weight scale, for reloading, past the point where batteries could be obtained.

I can melt lead in a cooking pot.

The last concern is tumbling. What does everyone expect to use for tumbling, should no electric power be available? Or is it Okay to reload w/o tumbling the cases? My impression is that using a dirty, sooty case results in more heat transferred to the barrel. Any other disadvantages from that?

I have a flour mill, but hadn't thought of the oil press. Have you tried that out yet? What are your results, and would you recommend the one you purchased?

[HATCH]

These discussions are always fun to read.

Your talking Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome right here.
No electric power, no batteries available.
I don't know what your situation is up in Great White North, but down here in states it would be a different animal if we are at that point.
No electric power for extended periods of time (ie EMP) would throw us into civil unrest.
It would be crazy. After a week most homes would be without water. After 3 weeks or so most would be without food.
I suspect we would have a very high rate of death as people will do anything to survive and especially here in the south everyone has guns.

The best case deal would be some sort of virus that knocks out 1/2 to 3/4 of the population and puts the rest of us in the dark ages.
If that was the case then the point to where you would be making flour and making oil is 12 to 18 months.
if we still had 100% of the population then you would be lucky to be alive after 6 months of no power

The time to prepare for such events is long before the events happen.
If I am at the point that I have to start reloading ammo to survive then that means I have burnt thru 10s of thousands of rounds of ammo already. You are talking a pile of bodies
You reloading ammo should be the least of your concerns.

[RogerDat]

Yeah the only thing y2k did was insure I will never run out of .22 rimfire in this lifetime. I don't really get some of this. Long term survival in a greatly degraded society would be a crap shoot. Subsistence farming is a rough life. Would be almost impossible with the population still alive. You have 350 million people who are starving and then you have folks growing food.... I recall a story from the siege of Leningrad where the sugar factory burned and people paid money for the dirt with sugar melted into it. Pretty sure your chickens or crops are going to be a tough proposition to keep from a starving hoard of 300 million people.

Myself I now focus my resources ($) on buying things I can actually use. Not stash on a shelf to be useless unless things go sideways in a major way. The disasters I prep for are tornado and snow/ice storms. These things will happen so preparation for them makes total sense. If you buy whole grain and grind your own flour more power to you. If you buy a press just to have it for in case? I think it is a waste of money. Expensive stuff sitting on the shelf. I pack a good first aid kit when I go camping. I don't have a rolling trauma center. Takes up too much space, too expensive, and kills my gas mileage towing it.

I see no advantage in portable reloading "kit" for disaster for the simple reason transport of completed ammo for my own firearms takes up less space. Only one small advantage would be if I could reload for someone else's weapon. That would presume I had dies for some caliber I don't have any use for since I would be transporting ammo in the caliber I did use.

Scoops are fool proof and require little set up, can reload with a hand tool next to a campfire if you want to imagine such a scenario. Balance scale is what many of us use so no reason to get rid of the one we already have.

Since the original question was item you must have I would add my vote for water that someone mentioned in an earlier post. Then salt. Preserving food and required for survival. Salt. I had to laugh as I went through the grocery store at pandemic start and saw the flour decimated and the salt untouched.

I would say for a prepper at least a couple of 40# bags of sea salt for use in softeners would be required for the stash. What the heck it's cheap buy 3 or if like me you have a water softener that uses salt keep a 6 bag supply on hand and replace as you use. I hate running low on salt and I think the softener works better if kept fairly full. Solar salt not the pellets. I do use a bag of pellets to each 2 bags of regular rock salt. My guess is after 6 months a pound of salt would have a fair amount of purchasing power. Depending on access to salt water or salt mines.

If I'm not going to make beer to drink I'm not buying beer making equipment. Or making a still unless I want to make booze. Of course there is mead, which tastes like, can't think of what would get past the word filter and still describe the taste of mead, but mead is booze from fermented honey. Simpler recipe than beer I would say. Ingredients supply readily available. You can get drunk on it. If you have that or nothing. Go find a specialty wine store and pick up a bottle. Amazing what people will drink, but having "taste mead" off of your bucket list has some value.

Some plastic bottles of whiskey kept in the basement pantry should allow me to savor shooting starving people who see signs of activity at my house. or more likely provide some relaxation to surviving an ice storm taking power out for a week.

[Lloyd Smale]

yup I have 3 complete sets and two extra radios. We use them for crop damage deer shooting and I allways figured if shtf I could give a set to my other two neigbors and it would help secure our dead end road.

The next item on the list is communication equipment.
I have walkie-talkie with hands-free. They run on 3x AA batteries as well as on the expensive proprietary batteries from Motorola that I cannot even find new anymore.
Batteries are the weakest link for a group, but the reliable communication is the weakest link between groups.
There has to be a reliable way to differentiate MAGs from raiders, but I do not know one. Is asking them a quiz on reloading reliable enough?

[Tokarev]

For those who are interested in pressing oil, my press has arrived.
It is a cute little machine, crudely made and in need of minor tweaks and upgrades.
The first thing that I noticed was that the clampdown screws were too short for my kitchen tabletop. Will have to find something to shim the thing with, like a piece of veg tan leather.
As soon as I will go out and buy a sack of sunflower seeds, I will test the pressing process.

[BamaNapper]

Am I understanding this correctly? I won't have a need to reload once it hits the fan? Then why do I have shelves of powder and ammo cans full of primers?

Just a thought: Why would any of us hunt in a survival situation? You've got a ton of things that must be done to survive and spending a day wandering the woods is a luxury that's not affordable. Daylight is too valuable. Knowing how to set snares or build a live trap is a far better option. You can spend the day gathering mushrooms and watercress while unsuspecting squirrels are filling your snares. Then at night, while you're sleeping, raccoons and other critters are checking out the scraps you tossed into your live traps. Any method of collecting food without being directly involved is far more efficient.

[Nobade]

Am I understanding this correctly? I won't have a need to reload once it hits the fan? Then why do I have shelves of powder and ammo cans full of primers?

Just a thought: Why would any of us hunt in a survival situation? You've got a ton of things that must be done to survive and spending a day wandering the woods is a luxury that's not affordable. Daylight is too valuable. Knowing how to set snares or build a live trap is a far better option. You can spend the day gathering mushrooms and watercress while unsuspecting squirrels are filling your snares. Then at night, while you're sleeping, raccoons and other critters are checking out the scraps you tossed into your live traps. Any method of collecting food without being directly involved is far more efficient.

Agreed.

[rancher1913]

For those who are interested in pressing oil, my press has arrived.
It is a cute little machine, crudely made and in need of minor tweaks and upgrades.
The first thing that I noticed was that the clampdown screws were too short for my kitchen tabletop. Will have to find something to shim the thing with, like a piece of veg tan leather.
As soon as I will go out and buy a sack of sunflower seeds, I will test the pressing process.

you will need to make sure you get oil sunflowers and not confectioners sunflowers, big difference. the oil kind is very dark and the confectioners is like what you buy in a store to eat. if you can not find any oil type, pm me, can probably get you a flat rate box to try.

[Tokarev]

I pressed a quantity of oil from a cup of sunflower seed today. Pure, clear oil drips from the plug while oil from the slit comes muddy.
The machine is tricky to the amount of heat it needs, and the crank handle strikes the tabletop all the time. Overall, I am not happy.

[RoyEllis]

Am I understanding this correctly? I won't have a need to reload once it hits the fan? Then why do I have shelves of powder and ammo cans full of primers?

Just a thought: Why would any of us hunt in a survival situation? You've got a ton of things that must be done to survive and spending a day wandering the woods is a luxury that's not affordable. Daylight is too valuable. Knowing how to set snares or build a live trap is a far better option. You can spend the day gathering mushrooms and watercress while unsuspecting squirrels are filling your snares. Then at night, while you're sleeping, raccoons and other critters are checking out the scraps you tossed into your live traps. Any method of collecting food without being directly involved is far more efficient.

Don't forget deadfall traps and the various fishing setlines (limbline, trotline etc) as well as fish & crawdad traps....lots of productive ways to get protein without wandering the woods hunting. Like the saying goes, work smarter not harder.

[HATCH]

Am I understanding this correctly? I won't have a need to reload once it hits the fan? Then why do I have shelves of powder and ammo cans full of primers?

You have shelves of powder and primers so when we can’t get them or it gets too costly to buy them.

I can still load 38sp for 7 cents a shot not including the brass. Heck any round definitely less then ten cents a shot (any round I normally load).


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[roadie]

At the current rate of the Canadian government as far as banning firearms, you may well have none to reload for when the SHTF.

[dverna]

Ammunition is to defend what you have, barter with friendlies, or take what you need. Hunting is a low priority and a low round count. Even where I live, with thousands of acres of state land around me, it will be hunted out very quickly unless the population is dramatically reduced quickly.

[Hogtamer]

This kind of speculation is kinda fun but my gues is that most of you are "seniors" like me (67). Realistically when the insulin, the beta blockers, antibiotics, eye doctors and cardiologists are no longer available we would be better served getting our spiritual affairs in order. Yep, we've got lots of experience, still shoot better than most and are sitting on an arsenal of guns and ammo. HOpefully I can get to my sons' house in my EMP proof 72 Land cruiser pulling a trailer full of guns, ammo and the food we have stored. And defend it with my life as my sons struggle to survive with their families. It ain't a pretty picture but one thing will always remain...my salvation and the surety of life everlasting in the presence of Almighty God.

[farmbif]

coffee--and cans of dinty Moore are two I'm thinking of right off the bat, I can always hike up the mountain out back to the spring and gather water.
but with gods grace things won't completely fall apart, and suppliers will keep on supplying and the pre packers will keep on packing and the truckers will keep on trucking. but I'm still gonna get a few more piglets and chickens this fall just in case.

[farmbif]

I might add that at least George bush and dick Cheney had the foresight to make us energy independence from the arabs.

[ascast]

I did not see glasses mentioned- I can't really see much in close without them, maybe could shoot a deer? My age has kinda stabilized my eyes so I can wear 20 years old with out headaches. A friend was in Bosnia during the war. He observed that there was no game of any kind in the woods, and no fish in the streams. Of course, there are dairy cows.

[JShipwash]

I love my beam scale. I do not trust electronic ones at all. Seen them affected by WIFI or other electrical sources. One thing to think about in a SHTF situation Where are you going to get batteries? I believe the OLD way the best way. Plus every round I reload is on a single stage RCBS from 1974. Cast Iron. My scale that press everything is uniform and exactly the same. Yes it takes time. But I have definitely learned patience in five decades. Thats my two cents

[GhostHawk]

I have been investing in green unroasted coffee beans and ways of roasting them.

The simplest and best is an air popcorn popper from the secondhand store. Although a stainless steel utensil holder over an open fire is not bad either.

I figure when all the other coffee has gone flavorless and flat. I'll still have a cup of good coffee when I need one.

Other than that, things that are hard to make myself. Cordage, bank line, paracord, braided nylon rope.
Yes it can be done but it takes a lot of materials, some tools and a whole lot of time to make even 10 feet of cordage.
Also things like Duct Tape, glues, epoxy's. I could probably make hide/hoof glue with some practice, or fish glue with a lot of practice. But for some things it is hard to beat good epoxy or glue.

[Bazoo]

That's a good point Ghosthawk, all of it.

If I'm not mistaken, won't coffee beans last for decades if unground?

Paracord, and rope, cordage of all kinds are going to be scarce and much needed post shtf.

A few packs of JB weld, will be a handy thing to have. Even opened, the tubes last a decade or better.